The Evening Star FRIDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1921. Awaiting Washington.

Evening Star, Issue 17792, 14 October 1921, Page 4

The Evening Star FRIDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1921.

Awaiting Washington.

Ix three weeks’ time the Washington Conference is to assemble for business. That business, il it is to be tackled in earnest, means more to the work! than almost a.ny man-devised scheme yet considered. As the time approaches the convener of the Confeienee has been busy trying over bis stops like.nn organist who gets to church half an hour in advance of the congregation. Cable facilities enable him to address the world at large, including delegates preparing In start for America and some alreadv cn route, in a series of prefaton speeches. In one of these lie warns the world against propaganda, and in another lie combats one specific kind of propaganda which has gained headway in his own country. It appears that among the idealistic. and sentimentally impulsive, if occasionally not very deep-thinking, Americans there is a movement in favor of going the whole hog and getting the world to completely abolish .armaments, instead of merely coming to some agreement ,o limit them. President Harding is not in anv wav hacking down from his original standpoint when ho deprecates any such agitation. Tlis own common sense tells him that any such attempt would he so far beyond the realms of practical politics as to bo quite chimerical. '• Were we to attempt to undertake the impossible and fail.” he writes, “we might leave our last state worse than the first.” One cannot help thinking that America has learned a lesson in attempting the impossible from her experiment of Prohibition. I3y Act of Congress, which took the hulk of the people imuwaie, a continent was declared bone-dry, and immense sums are being spent to try to enforce tiic drought; bat showers of alcoholic liquor, come of it of devastating quality, still drench a thirsty people, and scores of visitors tel! ns that some very bad effects, both direct and indirect, are showing up in the national life and character. So President Harding is not anxious to asms!, the whole world to the feat of attempting to run before it, can walk, for a fall would be inevitable, and the bulkier the experimenter the heavier and more crippling the fall.

'When on its appearance wo analysodthc agclKla paper prepared for the Conference we concentrated chiefly on the limitation of naval armaments. This first item on the agenda 'paper still overshadows the other live. The Pacific continues to be a? ranch thought about, spoken about, and written about as the North Sea was in the Great War. One of the most naked statements was an article appearing early tills month in the 'Daily Express,’ which, however, has not outlived its early reputation for a love of sensationalism. The writer enumerated the present defined causes of friction between the United States and Japan, and went on to say :

Bevnnd these causes of friction some indefinable impulse, drives the United States to push its tentacles towards the Wee tern Pacific, while the growing population and military ambition urges the Japanese to earmark the Pacific as theiifc own. Unless those ambitious impulses ho reconciled rival shipbuilding will proceed, and when naval building has reached a certain point, probably about 1923, there ”11! come another war.

He asks whether the .Washington Conference will avert this peril. The sposcsmen of the fcwd interested nations evidently hope so. They are, at any rale, approaching their meeting in the t'apito! City in the right frame of mind. Huron Kalo, who reached Honolulu on Wednesday, smoke with admirable tact and restraint of the gravity of the task ahead, and if his eiruvrity is equal to tho other two qualities just mentioned as having been shown by him. then much may be hoped for, Liko President Harding, he is against attempting the impossible. “There should,'’ ho said, “be an nineserved exchange of opinion with the solo arm of devising measures which may be actually carried into effect. Agreements will bo unavailing unless they arc practicable.” Pessimists and sceptics will perhaps declare that Japan and America arc in this way leaving themselves a loophole for preparing for a trial of strength on the Pacific, the battleground 'to be the prize.

It is. however, almost morhliy certain that, should both Japan and America press for complete disarmament—which is highly improbable—an obstinate opponent to any such agreement would l )e found in France. Her attitude to disarmament has been outlined before tho League of Nations. Sho is primarily concerned with land armaments, and it is unlikely that tho Conference will make !rih of naval armaments and (lee!) of land armaments. France, whether rightly or wrongly, profoundly distrusts Germany, and she has the lessons of history for centuries back to support her view. Pacifists havo preached to France that her real security lies, not in leaning on Britain for support against Germany, or in fostering Teuto-phobia in Warsaw or Prague, but in conciliating tho Germans, But Franco was bitterly disappointed. when Congress refused to ratify the. Anglu-Amcriean-Franco treaty of alliance in the event of Germany wantonly attacking Franco again—as Congress also refused to have anything to do with another Versailles product in tho shapo of the Leagim of Nation.-;, France’s mood in sending delegates to Washington may o.rely be surmised. It may bo asked wluit better chance of peace-making will the Washington Conference have than tho League of Nations. It has, however, to be remembered that thus far in its career tho League has boon overshadowed, very often stultified, and sometimes directly opposed by the Supremo Council, of whom it is said that “ for two years it has lived loss by solving difficulties than by creating them.''