Candid Prime Minister.

Though the limitation part of the Treaty does not yet cover either as many Powers or as many ships as its designers aimed at, it effects a tremendous money saving (with, of course, consequential unemployment in dockyards), and it tends to clear the atmosphere of the Atlantic and the Pacific, while effecting some break in the European clouds. Though the London page 22 Naval Conference proves to be a starting-place rather than a goal, it admittedly raises the prestige of the British Government. Mr. Ramsay MacDonald has clinched his success by refusing to claim too much success. “Compared with Washington and Geneva,” he says, “we have progressed far; compared with our desires, we are still short.” Some ships that might have been sunk by the gunfire of the London Naval Conference have survived, but, comments Mr. MacDonald, “reduction of building programmes is almost as valuable as scrapping.” The Government has achieved enough in this crucial phase of policy to hearten it up in its efforts to deal with the Egypt-Soudan problem, and the trouble in India.