Aug. 22.
PRONOUNCEMENTS of views on the Pacific and Disarmament Conferences reach us to-day through Reuter from Viscount Uchida and from Viscount Kato—on the heels of many similar utterances, from Mr. Hara the Premier, from Marquis Okuma, from the Japanede Society for the Propagation of the League of Nations, or some such name, from the Young Japanese Liberals and goforth. We do not suggest that they are deliberately meant to produce the idea that all parties are at one as to Japan's attitude to the Washington conferences, but that is certainly the result achieved. For they all telh exactly the same tale in slightly different words: no one more anxious than Japan for the peace of all the world and the apoisement of the Far East; no one more ready to enter into discussion of how this may be attained with the frankest spirit and the readiest will to sacrifice private interests but of course there can be no talking about fairs accomplish, Yap, for example, and Shantung and there must be a clear understanding first what lines the conference is to follow. Now in the first place Yap and Shantung and the Twenty-one Demands are not fairs accomplish, for America - violently disputes the one and China the other and neither of these countries signed the Versailles Treaty. But the point of this note is regret that Japanese politicians do not yet perceive how much harm they do their country and how greatly they add to the mistrust with which they have got themselves regarded abroad by insincere professions of frankness towards the conference immediately made valueless by reservations on the very points whereon the conference might achieve some useful result. Apply the same sort of spirit to the disarmament question and that too becomes a farce, for every country might argue that every penny voted for its army, and navy was fait accompli about which there could be no discussion. President Harding's proposal was born amid) many bright hopes and opened a -way to the most solid work for-the peace.of the world that any scheme has
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.