THE GENOA CONFERENCE..
(To MI EDITOR 01 THE " SPECTATOR."] Stn,—Intellectual indolence, prevalent enough, has never been a vice of the Spectator, and your notice in this week's issue of the Genoa Conference and its accessories, deprecating criticism and voicing a pathetic contentment to wait and see what the gods will give us, is a little surprising to an old reader. I seem to read in it a certain prepossession—I will not say obsession—attributable to direct contact with the oratory of that countryman of Owen Glendower whose "necromancy" (your own word) you recognize as the dynamic of his influence. Except on this hypothesis I can hardly under- stand your half-humorous tolerance of his Genoese histrionics. which, except for their by-products, the sinister influences they may foster and extend, no doubt invite derision. Unfor- tunately, though oratorical effect is as (intellectually) evanescent as you say, the dissipation of thought it engenders may bo more lasting as a moral solvent. It has not been Mr. Lloyd George's provincialism, his economic nescienee or inconsistent speech, which unfit him to speak in the country's name, but rather the primitive insensibility that blinds him to the crime that by inviting murderers and robbers to the comity of nations he inflicts a blow on the civilization of which he prattles which it may take generations to repair. The one bright spot of the Conference is that the United Slates are out of it. May they keep clear of the contamination l You are, indeed, justly concerned lest Mr. Lloyd George go too far in the policy of placation. May I refer you and your readers to a graphic description of that policy and the motives thut prompt it in the fifteenth verse of Isaiah xxviii., and in verse seventeen the natural result?—I am, Sir, &c., National Club. IYARCY COLLYER.
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