The Conference at Lausanne - Our hopes that by this
time the Conference at Lausanne would have begun have been deferred and deferred again indefinitely. We may not have been justified in expecting at the moment anything more than some plain speaking, but that would have cleared the air and made plain the urgency for the steps that must be quickly taken to avert catastrophe. Great Britain and Germany have pressed for the meeting. France has held back. Our Prime Minister has sought an interview with the French Premier in preparation, but M. Laval has not felt able to acquiesce. He and his Government received last week by a majority -of fifty-one in the Chamber the vote of confidence which, after the reconstruction of the Cabinet, they wanted in order to give them the assurance of their country's backing abroad. But still they do not move. It can only be because they feel that they have not put clearly before the French people the truth about the heavy permanent reductions, if not deletion, of German Reparations, which the rulers of Europe as well as the financial experts now know to be inevitable. That truth would probably be made brutally plain at a Conference. * * *
