Geneva Conversations The misfortune that involves the Prime Minister in
the necessity of a second operation for glaucoma is likely to have no serious influence on the course of home politics, for there seems every reason to hope that after an interval of five or six weeks he will be in active work again, and his place in the meantime will be very adequately filled by Mr. Baldwin. But with Mr. MacDonald in a nursing- home the further Geneva conversations projected for the middle of this month with Dr. Bruning, Signor Grandi, the French Prime Minister (whoever he may be), and an American delegate will not take place. Last week's conversations had the advantages and defects common to all such interchanges. Personal contacts between statesmen of different countries arc always beneficial, and substantial progress towards agreement between Mr. MacDonald, Dr. Briining and Mr. Stimson on disarmament questions seems to have been reached. But that does not go very far, since it did not carry with it French assent, M. Tardieu being kept away from Geneva by laryngitis, to say nothing of the General Election he was to face two days later. As no new French Prime Minister is likely to commit himself far till after he has met the Chamber early in June, the mid-May conversa- tions would probably have come to little in any case. It is important that these talks between Premiers, valuable as they are, should be treated as an adjunct to the public discussions of the Disarmament Conference, not a sub- stitute for them.
