M. Briand and Mr. MacDonald still hope to agree upon
an interpretation of Article 16 of the Covenant. This means little, of course, except that the wrappings have been torn from the fundamental issue, between organizing peace by conference, conciliation and co-opera- tion, and intellectually conceiving a state of peace established by a permanent threat of war and coercion, How unpractical is the French " realist" thesis was demonstrated very well by Mr. Sisley Huddleston in the New Statesman last week. Mr. Huddleston, from long residence in France, might well have been expected to take a different view. His plea for__" the total (though doubtless in process gradual) elimination of war-thinking and military sanctions " in preference to " unworkable universal alliances and promises of sanctions "-is certainly backed by the common people in all countries. Mr; Leonard Harding gave us in the. Manchester Guardian of Wednesday' a timely - warning against - the natural disposition here to take the Paris Press as representative of French public opinion.. . That it most certainly is not.
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