dertones. They need to be done with the full knowledge and
authority of the participating peoples.

The Russian example has taught the world the instability of diplomatic
bargains in a time of such fundamental issues as the present. There is
little hope and little strength in hole-and-corner bargainings between
the officials or politicians who happen to be at the head of this or
that nation for the time being. Our Labour people will not stand this
sort of thing and they will not be bound by it. There will be the plain
danger of repudiation for all arrangements made in that fashion. A
gathering of somebody or other approved by the British Foreign Office
and of somebody or other approved by the French Foreign Office, of
somebody with vague powers from America, and so on and so on, will be an
entirely ineffective gathering. But that is the sort of gathering of the
Allies we have been having hitherto, and that is the sort of gathering
that is likely to continue unless there is a considerable expression of
opinion in favour of something more representative and responsible.

Even our Foreign Office must be aware that in every country in the world
there is now bitter suspicion of and keen hostility towards merely
diplomatic representatives. One of the most significant features of the
time is the evident desire of the Labour movement in every European
country to take part in a collateral conference of Labour that shall
meet when and where the Peace Congress does and deliberate and comment
on its proceedings. For a year now the demand of the masses for such a
Labour conference has been growing. It marks a distrust of officialdom
whose intensity officialdom would do well to ponder. But it is the
natural consequence of, it is the popular attempt at a corrective to,
the aloofness and obscurity that have hitherto been so evil a
characteristic of international negotiations. I do not think Labour and
intelligent people anywhere are going to be fobbed off with an
old-fashioned diplomatic gathering as being that League of Free Nations
they demand.

On the other hand, I do not contemplate this bi-cameral conference with
the diplomatists trying to best and humbug the Labour people as well as
each other and the Labour people getting more and more irritated,
suspicious, and extremist, with anything but dread. The Allied countries
must go into the conference _solid_, and they can only hope to do that
by heeding and incorporating Labour ide