The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1921-08-24
Practical Plans
Made by President
CONFERENCE TO DISCUSS ARA
MENT LIMITATION AND FAR
EAST PROBLEM is POPULAR.

NOT only nave the lnCefeSCeQ powers
agreed to accept without qualification
President Harding's invitation to a
conference in Washington to discuss
the limitation of armaments but they
have acquiesced in the proposition to
discuss also the related problems of
the Far East. This is another victory
for that candor of purpose, directness
of speech and sincerity of action which
is once more Distinguishing American
diplomacy and characterizes this ma
tion's dealings with other powers.
When President Harding issued his
call for the conference, he specifically
and clearly set forth the purposes to
be twofold,-the limitation of arma-
ments and the discussion of those Far
East problems which are so intimately
related to the question of ornaments.
Since then partisan critics and those
who are opposed to any move in the
direction of disarmament, have en-
deayored to stir up a public sentiment
that the President had undertaken to
do too much-that he should have con-
fined his call to the discussion of
ornaments and not have included any
of the problems effecting the Orient
and the Pacific ocean.
Harding Is Sincere.
Whatever its motive and source,
this propaganda has signally failed.
This country is even more solidly and
earnestly back of the conference than
it was at the time it gave such an
enthusiastic reception to the presi-
dents call. The growth of approving
sentiment in this country is matched
only by the growth Of similar senti-
ment in other countries, particularly
the countries included in the invita-
tion. People have been quick to see
not only the wisdom, but the sinceri-
ty, back of the Presidents linking the
question of ornaments and Pacific
problems. Any discussion of the re-
duction of ornaments without some
settlement of the problems of the Far
East, would be merely academic and
therefore sham and pretense.
To discuss, however solemnly, the
reduction of ornaments without going
backt to first principles and discussing
international differences which make
ornaments necessary would be a futile
and hypocritical proceeding, produc-
tive of nothing good or enduring and
calculated only to serve the ends of
political expediency President Hard
ing and Secretary Hughes realized this
when they included the discussion of
the causes zof ornaments.
There is no doubt that both of
them appreciated the difficulties of
such conference, because any confer
ence which discusses seriously the
causes of international friction and
attempts to remove them, goes to the
very roots of war and attempts to up
root them. It would have been much
easier to have limited the conference
to an academic and idealistic discus
sion Of universal peace and adjourn
without accomplishing anything prac-
tical, but to have done so would have
been cheap political trick, designed
to fool the American people and the
result of which certainly would have
broken the hopes Of all peoples.
It is because both the President and
his Secretary of State, and all of his
advisors in the Administration and the
Congress, desired sincerely to remove
causes of armament and thereby sure
~ hasten the day of universal peace,
that the subject matter of the pro-
posed conference was widened to in
clude the Far East problems. No
thing testifies more to the sincerity of
the Administration than this one fact.