May 28.
Te conference at Genoa has passed, and so far The Hague has not progressd far enough to offer us anything tangible. It has to be confessed that some expect nothing from it, for in their view Genoa brought Europe no closer to relief from the prevailing disarray of business and everything else, so they look with coldness upon the gathering in Holland. People are ever more inclined to treat scoptically all the suggestions of our statesmen that they can evolve a better condition by means of these conferences, and after all that has happened since the high hopes engendered by the Armistice disappeared, there is little wonder that. deep gloom should settle upon the distraught peoples of the Continent. Yet these efforts are not being wasted, and if the process is slow and laborious, good reason exists for the belief that with every such meeting we are coming a step nearer to the desired goal. Our readers have already been introduced to a well-known economist at present in the Far East, Mr. Eddie Williams, whose remarks on the subject of Mexico in yesterday's issue were, we have no doubt, read with much interest. His studies into war and post-war economics have been of the most extensive and searching nature, and on that account he can appreciate, what is probably not apparent to the man-in-the-street, a degree of progress at Genoa and important possibilities at The Hague. Genoa, he has pointed out in a recent lecture, achieved much by defining with a fair amount of clarity the attitude of the different nations, and he is convinced that if not at The Hague, then subsequently, Mr. Lloyd George will succeed in bringing about the restoration of trade with Russia.
Before dealing with the tertible legacies of the struggle of 1914-18, it is as well to recall the fundamental idea of Germany in forcing the war upon Europe, for, to an ever greater degree as these events recede into the past, the efforts to obscure the original issues tend to meet with success. Germany. wanted new markets, new sources of raw mater-jai and if possible new colonjes, and her hope was to obtain them, besides an indemnity comparable with that of 1871, by a short, ruthless war.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.