A s there was never any prospect that the Foreign Ministers
would achieve anything at Geneva there need be no alarm over their decision to adjourn. These conferences can only be justified as a way of making it just that little bit more difficult for international relations to deteriorate up to the flash point. It may seem futile, admittedly, that the Foreign Ministers of the Big Four should fritter away six weeks achieving nothing; but better this than that they should be sitting at home planning to invade somewhere. The chief weakness of this particular conference, as our Geneva correspondent suggested last week, seems to have been that the Ministers have taken it all too seriously : a little gaiety— the occasional gala ball in the evening— would have given diplomacy back some of the glamour it is now in danger of losing completely. Geneva was bound to be a failure; but need it have been such a bore?
