rents of thought in Japan. The more Liberal elements, we were told, are all for frankness and away with reservations. But Mr. Hara and Viscount Shibusawa appear to hint at the old ''special interests'? which cannot on any account be discussed. If the conferences at Washington ate to be the foundation of that sure and lasting peace which they may be and for which the world so passionately longs, there must be an equal readiness on all hands to subordinate private amditions to the common weal; and the friends of Japan cannot believe that she will isolate herself against the general wish, for selfish alme, which in the long run cannot but bring the inevitable penalty.
For China, the conferences at Washington mean nothing less than a chance of new life. We do not merely mean that, if she plays her cards better than she did at Versailles, she has.a good prospect of redressing old grievances, but that the invitation, sent to her from Washington and endorsed in the most flattering terms by Great Britain, ig indirectly a call to the whole nation to act-conjointly for the good of all and should serve asa stimulus to the many conflicting parties to put country first and leave their own discrepant schemes to find satisfaction in the welfare of all. The idea that withdrawal of the Powers' recognition from Peking might be the only way to the salvation of China has been seriously canvassed in recent Weeks in more than one important quarter. But of this there appears no hint whatever in the utterances of Mr. Lloyd George and President Harding. We see there only the desire that China's interests shall be as closely studied as those of any other participant in the conference, in which she is called to sit as an equal among equals. That is a compliment to which Peking and Canton, Tuchuns and provincial assemblies, mercantile bodies and student organizations surely cannot fail to respond.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.