I begin with America, as the leading spirit in the Conference and the dominant Power in the world.  American public opinion is in favour of peace, and at the same time profoundly persuaded that America is wise and virtuous while all other Powers are foolish and wicked.  The pessimistic half of this opinion I do not desire to dispute, but the optimistic half is more open to question.  Apart from peace, American public opinion believes in commerce and industry, Protestant morality, athletics, hygiene, and hypocrisy, which may be taken as the main ingredients of American and English Kultur.  Every American I met in the Far East, with one exception, was a missionary for American Kultur, whether nominally connected with Christian Missions or not.  I ought to explain that when I speak of hypocrisy I do not mean the conscious hypocrisy practised by Japanese diplomats in their dealings with Western Powers, but that deeper, unconscious kind which forms the chief strength of the Anglo-Saxons.  Everybody knows Labouchere’s comment on Mr. Gladstone, that like other politicians he always had a card up his sleeve, but, unlike the others, he thought the Lord had put it there.  This attitude, which has been characteristic of England, has been somewhat chastened among ourselves by the satire of men like Bernard Shaw; but in America it is still just as prevalent and self-confident as it was with us fifty years ago.  There is much justification for such an attitude.  Gladstonian England was more of a moral force than the England of the present day; and America is more of a moral force at this moment than any other Power (except Russia).  But the development from Gladstone’s moral fervour to the cynical imperialism of his successors is one which we can now see to be inevitable; and a similar development is bound to take place in the United States.  Therefore, when we wish to estimate the desirability of extending the influence of the United States, we have to take account of this almost certain future loss of idealism.

Nor is idealism in itself always an unmixed blessing to its victims.  It is apt to be incompatible with tolerance, with the practice of live-and-let-live, which alone can make the world endurable for its less pugnacious and energetic inhabitants.  It is difficult for art or the contemplative outlook to exist in an atmosphere of bustling practical philanthropy, as difficult as it would be to write a book in the middle of a spring cleaning.  The ideals which inspire a spring-cleaning are useful and valuable in their place, but when they are not enriched by any others they are apt to produce a rather bleak and uncomfortable sort of world.