“The trouble with the world,” he replied, “is that it is perpetually expecting the millennium. They expected it after the Congress of Berlin. They expected it to emerge from the Hague Peace Conference, and they got the Great War! They expected a new Heaven and a new Earth out of the Peace Treaty; they got the League of Nations, which was an enormous step forward. And because the League hasn’t revolutionised humanity, because in the space of two years it hasn’t yet effectively counter-checked all the instincts and passions which man has inherited from the anthropoid ape, they brand it as a failure—or, at best, a half success—and turn their eyes to Washington; and if we should not be able (and who can predict that we shall be able?) to realise all the passionate hopes and aspirations in their hearts, they’ll turn away from our work in despair (however useful and practical it may be), and they’ll go on staring into the future, straining their sight in search of changes, that, by their very nature, are not to be perceived; and, because they cannot watch a kind of sensational picture-drama of evolution unfolding before their eyes, they will condemn each progressive step as a futility.”
“Now, in this particular case,” I began, for he had paused dreamily.
“I have always had warm feelings for America,” he continued, inconsequently as it seemed; “indeed, some of my earliest public speeches were devoted—Yes? Were you about to say anything?—were devoted to pleading for what one might call a Pax Anglo-Americana, as something wider than the Pax Britannica, and as a step towards—a step towards some better understanding between the various states of the world.”
I sought to pin him down. “And is that your expectation of the outcome of this Conference?”
“I see no reason why one should not hope, and ... and, indeed, there seems to me every reason for believing, that our ... our discussions and conversations will reveal sufficient of our respective points of view to serve as a basis for future negotiations, and possibly to give a broad indication of the lines upon which a general agreement might ultimately be reached.”
I changed front swiftly. “You were in the United States in 1917?”
“In 1917, yes.”
“Do you notice many changes?”
“I can’t help feeling that there is a certain popular aridity which, I should have said, was conspicuously absent on the occasion of my last visit. Naturally, during a war, public opinion tends to be exuberant and ... and, indeed, at times fluid——”
“Then you think the political atmosphere of America has become noticeably drier?”