ble difficulties or so-called impossibilities and thus you achieved your glorious result. I know the parallel is by no means perfect, but it is at least suggestive of what might be done. You, of all men in the world, can, as you now stand, stir up a public opinion in favor of this course, which the objectors might find it hard to resist. The obstructions may even turn out to be less than we now imagine. You say: “I suppose it would be very difficult to get Russia and Japan to come to a common agreement on this point.” May it not be that Russia and Japan in their state of financial exhaustion might greet such an agreement as a happy line of escape from great embarrassments? Besides, the Russian Czar stands solemnly committed to this idea by his own public declarations made some years ago.
Truly, here is an opportunity—perhaps the grandest of the age—for rendering a supreme service to mankind, worthy of the noblest ambition. You may well be envied for having it in your grasp.[1]
TO PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT
I was exceedingly glad to find in your letter of September 18th an assurance that your active sympathy may be looked for in the matter of gradual disarmament. You will build up a monumental record in history.
Your interview with Baron Rosen was indeed comical enough. It shows to what straits the luckless Czar, after the terrible breakdown of his military absolutism, is reduced in trying to recover some of his prestige. What poor comedians some of those high potentates are! As if any one person in the world would now believe the Czar to be the true initiator of the Conference! Of course, his
- ↑ Col. Roosevelt properly refused permission to publish his answer to this letter.
