WHAT HAS BEEN ACHIEVED.

FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.

GENOA, Friday Afternoon.

The Conference has been an almost continuous conflict of extreme opposites in principle and policy. Mr. Lloyd George laboured as he had never done before in all his strenuous career to reconcile these hostile elements, and Signor Schanzer, the able and far-seeing Foreign Minister of Italy, lent him powerful aid. These two protagonists of peace and reconciliation nearly toiled in vain. Over and over again hut for the British Prime Minister’s unrivalled powers of persuasion and accommodation the Genoa Conference would have come to an abrupt and perhaps angry termination. .

But, turning aside from that aspect of the situation, what has been accomplished at Genoa?

A very great deal that will tend to the good of Europe. Financial arrangements, based largely on the recommendations, of the Brussels Conference, held, by the way, under the auspices of the League of Nations, were agreed upon which will set the life-blood of trade flowing again in the stagnant veins of Europe. It has been decided to set up a great international corporation, with an initial capital of £20,000,000, to assist the revival of commerce. For the moment, Russia, because of the action of her representatives at Genoa, will not share in the new movement, but the rest of Europe will, and trade, slowly at first, but with everincreasing volume and energy, will begin and continue until normal conditions are restored. Then there have been definite agreements reached regarding international railways and waterways that will remove many of the hindrances that now hamper commerce between the nations. Economic questions have been studied by experts and decisions of vast importance taken in matters relating to removal of Customs and other restrictions which are bound to have wide and beneficial effects. And, perhaps most important