Atmosphere always counts for something, and often for a good
deal, at an international conference, and it is rather an unfair handicap to the delegates at South Kensington that pessimism about the outcome of their labours should be disseminated quite so industriously everywhere. The Conference may or may not succeed, but it is far too early yet for any gloomy declarations that it is bound to fail. Every conference must have its crisis—the patho- logy of them is as familiar as ABC to old habitues—and we have not even got to the first crisis yet. But a defaitiste attitude at the outset lowers the patient's whole power of resistance: The Prime Minister's possunt quia posse videntur note in his opening speech was manifestly the right one, and the best service anyone can do to the Conference is to keep on 'emphasizing it.
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