My dear Dodd:-
 
 
I am glad to have your letter of December eighth. It did not reach me
until the twenty-eighth- Something must be wrong with the mails or the
courier.
 
 
From what you write and from what I
read of events since then, the leadership in Germany seems to be in a
rather difficult situation just now. The trouble about any world
conference, as you know, is that it would bring fifty-five or sixty
nations around a table, each nation with from five to ten delegates and
each nation, in addition, with no authority to agree to anything
without referring the matter home. From a practical point of view, the
type of conference is an impossibility unless, as in the case of B.A.,
there are one or two simple principles on which all will agree
beforehand.
 
 
That story by Arthur Krock was not wholly crazy. If five or six heads
of the important governments could meet together for a week with
complete inaccessability to press or cables or radio, a definite,
useful agreement might result or else one or two of them would be
murdered by the others| In any case it would be worthwhile from the
point of view of civilization|
 
 
I wish you could have seen those South American crowds. Their great
shout as I passed was "viva la democracia."  Those people
(15) Schacht