Others, evidently, showed less concern for Germany or her inhabitants, but were

of the opinion that the economic chaos of that country, if not halted, might

spread with alarming rapidity to the world at large.

 

By the turn of 1922, his lordship was working with a clear goal in mind. This

was to gather under the very roof of Darlington Hall the most influential of the

gentlemen whose support had been won with a view to conducting an 'unofficial'

international conference - a conference that would discuss the means by which

the harshest terms of the Versailles treaty could be revised. To be worthwhile,

any such conference would have to be of sufficient weight so that it could have

a decisive effect on the 'official' international conferences - several of which

had already taken place with the express purpose of reviewing the treaty, but

which had succeeded in producing only confusion and bitterness': Our Prime

Minister of that time, Mr Lloyd George, had called for another great conference

to be held in Italy in the spring of 1922, and initially his lordship's aim was

to organize a gathering at Darlington Hall with a view to ensuring a

satisfactory outcome to this event. For all the hard work on his and Sir David's

part, however, this proved too harsh a deadline; but then with Mr George's

conference ending yet again in indecision, his lordship set his sights on a

further great conference scheduled to take place in Switzerland the following

year.

 

I can remember one morning around this time bringing Lord Darlington coffee in

the breakfast room, and his saying to me as he folded The Times with some