News of the Week
The NaVal Conference rpm visible tendency to be impatient with what is 1 thought to be the slowness of the Naval Conference in getting to work was perhaps inevitable. Nevertheless, it is unreasonable: The public was a little spoiled for the Con- ference by the ease with which the Prime Minister and President Hoover settled their. differences in Washington. But the conditioni of a friendly .encounter between two men who were determined in advance to agree were as different as they could poiiibly be from the conditions of this Conference where there is a clash of worldwide preju- dice and traditional doctrine. If we were invited to give a word of Counsel in regard to public conduct now we should say that the most important thing is to avoid wantonly preparing the ground for disillusionment: If people expect great and immediate concluSions and talk about them as the only tests of success, they will do a very ill service to the cause- of disarmament. -! For it • is certain that if the Conference were publicly branded- as a failure it would lie impossible to summon such another Conference for several years. The chief public virtue, therefore, in this tentative period is patience(
