device for making the
world safe for humanity, and that the alternative is a Harding-Republican
expedient for making Washington the new hub of the world.

Sir Herbert is much too cordial a cosmopolitan to begrudge Washington any
eminence she can get from imitating the League. He is too charitable
even to admit that if Dr. Wilson had stood for peace first and covenant
second, no Washington Conference would have been needed. He is also
Canadian enough to realize that transferring the centre of the Peace
propaganda to the leading Capital of the New World is a good way to
remind the Old World that Ottawa has more to do with Washington than even
London has. Out of the Washington Conference may arise the Canadian
envoy. Whatever happens in the Pacific zone of the world-open diplomacy
can never hurt Ottawa---nor disturb the complacent optimism of Sir
Herbert Ames, Financial Director of the Secretariat to the League of
Nations. The time may come when even Ottawa is considered a better place
than London or Geneva for the conduct of world-peace agenda.

When Sir Herbert Ames was chosen Financial Director of the League
Secretariat he was chosen less to please Canada than to vindicate his own
ability. When he spoke in Canada on how the League works he showed his
remarkable optimism by extolling its operations at a time when Europe was
more anarchic than at any time since the war.

Every forward nation should have its Ames. This one justified his
existence in Canada long before he became a knight or even an M.P. for
St. Antoine, Montreal. At one time in his citizenship he was the
incarnation of what a large number of people would be anxious to avoid;
in the days when he used to pack his grip from Montreal and go forth on
lectural pilgrimages over Ontario and other parts. On a platform he
always seemed like a long, lean schoolmaster. Sometimes he used a
blackboard. One of his pet subjects was prohibition. He looked entirely
like it. One could scarcely recollect having heard quite so dry a man on
any subject. He looked like the genius of self-denial--like a man who
long ago should have gone into a monastery, doing penance for the uplift
of the world as mirrored in his own conscience, instead of remaining at
large a common Presbyterian and a very uncommon sort of Tory.

I was agreeably startled to find Sir Herbert in 1920 one of the most
cordial and amiable men on the roster of Who's Who. He was no longer
dry, bigoted