The Prime Minister on Monday welcomed the statesmen hem the
Dominions and India who had come to attend the Imperial Conference. The war, he said, had exhausted the belligerents, but at home there was no such distress as Great Britain endured after Waterloo, and the world in general was slowly working through its troubles—" first of all denying the existence of palpable realities and then settling down to act upon them." Germany was completing her disarmament and had accepted a very practical plan of making reparation. Mr. Lloyd George went on to insist that " the first essential to peace -and reconstruction is that we should stand by our treaties." We could not renounce our responsibilities in this quarter or in that. We might relax the treaties, to suit new conditions, with the oonsent of all the parties, but the treaties as a whole must stand. We must honour our signatures.
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