Never, so far as I am aware, have peace negotiations been conducted with open windows.

It would be impossible that negotiations of the depth and extent of the present could from the start proceed smoothly and without opposition.
We are faced with nothing less than the task of building up a new world, of restoring all that the most merciless of all wars has destroyed and cast down.

In all the peace negotiations we know of the various phases have been conducted more or less behind closed doors, the results being first declared to the world when the whole was completed.

All history books tell us, and indeed it is obvious enough, that the toilsome path of such peace negotiations leads constantly over hill and dale, the prospects appearing often more or less favourable day by day.

But when the separate phases themselves, the details of each day's proceedings, are telegraphed all over the world at the time, it is again obvious that nervousness prevailing throughout the world must act like an electric current and excite public opinion accordingly.