The Peace Conference has been at work all the week,
but the great number of the delegates, their want of knowledge of each other, and the absence of any preliminary work to clear the ground and to settle a detailed programme, have caused a good deal of confusion and waste of time. These defects of organisation—except the excessive numbers—will, however, be cured by time. The only event of importance as yet has been M. de Staal's opening speech. After the necessary com- pliments and generalities, he pointed out that among its chief objects the Conference would seek to generalise and codify the practice of arbitration and mediation. There must, how- ever, be no attempt to enter the region of Utopia, though there was reason to ask "whether the peoples will not demand a limitation of progressive armaments." We have not the slightest desire to belittle beforehand the effect of the Con- ference, or to speak of it without respect, but as we have pointed out elsewhere, M. de Steal's reservation that the Powers are to sacrifice nothing of their "ulterior hopes" is an indication of the impossibility of any tremendous and epoch- making results being achieved by the Conference. It is in those ulterior hopes, which cannot and must not be sacrificed in any respect, that lie, and always have lain, the seeds of war.
