Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
Washington and the Riddle of Peace
INTRODUCTION
These twenty-nine papers do not profess tobe a record or description of the WashingtonConference. They give merely the impressionsand fluctuating ideas of one visitor to that conference.They show the reaction of that gatheringupon a mind keenly set upon the idea ofan organized world peace; they record phasesof enthusiasm, hope, doubt, depression and irritation.They have scarcely been touched, exceptto correct a word or a phrase here orthere; they are dated; in all essentials they arethe articles just as they appeared in the NewYork World, the Chicago Tribune, and the otherAmerican and European papers which firstgave them publicity. It is due to the enterpriseand driving energy of the New York World, beit noted, that they were ever written at all. Butin spite of the daily change and renewal ofmood and attitude, inevitable under the circumstances,vithey do tell a consecutive story; theytell of the growth and elaboration of a convictionof how things can be done, and of how theyneed to be done, if our civilization is indeed tobe rescued from the dangers that encompass itand set again upon the path of progress. Theyrecord—and in a very friendly and appreciativespirit—the birth and unfolding of the “Associationof Nations” idea, the Harding idea,of world pacification, they note some of thepeculiar circumstances of that birth, and theystudy the chief difficulties on its way to realization.It is, the writer believes, the most practicaland hopeful method of attacking this riddleof the Sphinx that has hitherto been proposed.