MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
NO student of public opinion could deny that the result of the Atlantic meeting proved for the ordinary man and woman in this country something of an anti-climax. It is important to assess the causes and nature of this disappoint- ment. After all, we had for months desired a personal colloquy between the two great leaders of the West: for two years many of us have been longing and working for a simple statement of our peace-principles such as would furnish to our propa- ganda that unity of purpose which it has hitherto lacked. The meeting has now taken place in circumstances of moving drama, and eight peace-principles have been issued which are no less idealistic than the Fourteen Points of President Wilson, but which have about them a tang of realism and resolution which was absent from the more rhetorical pronouncement of January 8th, 1918. Nothing, to my mind, could be simpler, more comprehensive or more important than these eight prin- ciples. They stand stripped of all the trappings of self- righteousness as the eight steel girders of reconstruction.
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