Washington and the Riddle of Peace

by H. G. Wells

There was a great chatter of conversation when I entered. Everybody was greeting friends, flitting from group to group. It was one of those gatherings where everybody seemed to know everybody. Socially, it was extraordinarily like a very smart first night in a prominent London theatre.

“Last time I came to America,” I found myself saying, “I brought a silk hat and morning coat, and never wore them once. Now everybody seems to be wearing a morning coat and a silk hat.” It was the sort of occasion one dresses for. And that was the tone of the conversation.

It was difficult to believe that this gathering could be the beginning of anything of supreme historical importance.

Came a slight hush in the conversation. The delegates appeared, all with tremendously familiar faces taken out of the illustrated papers. They disposed themselves in their seats in leisurely fashion. One seat remained vacant for a time—the seat of the President. Then appeared President Harding, and there was a great clapping of hands. It became more and more like a first night. Then a hushing of enthusiasm, and silence, and he spoke.

It was a fine speech, less ornate and more direct than the Arlington oration. And the galleries above, behaving more and more like a first night audience, interrupted with rounds of applause whenever there were definite allusions to disarmament. He finished and declared the conference open and departed. Mr. Balfour followed, echoing the President’s sentiments in a few well chosen words and proposing Secretary Hughes for the Chairman of the conference.

The Hall became aware of a check in the onward flow of the proceedings. An interpreter got up and repeated Mr. Balfour’s speech in French for the benefit of the French delegation. He had made a shorthand note as Mr. Balfour spoke. This, we learned, was to be the procedure throughout the conference. Every speech, question and interruption was to be dealt with in this interlinear manner. Fortunately, it was not necessary to do this in the case of the President’s address, nor was it necessary in the case of the address of Secretary Hughes, which was now impending because these had already been printed and distributed and a translation made of them.

Their linguistic isolation is likely to prove unfortunate for the French. The Belgian, the Dutch, the Chinese, Japanese and Portuguese delegations all speak in English and listen to the English speeches. Consequently, the French are in a position in which they seem to be the most foreign people present. This must be disconcerting to them now.

It will be much more disconcerting if, at a later stage, German delegates speaking English should appear upon some extension or side committee of the conference. But I do not see how it can be avoided. The French are a little out of touch in the conference because of this; they must be much more out of touch with the incessant conversation in clubs and at dinner tables and everywhere in Washington, which makes the atmosphere in which the conference is working.

This, however, is a note by the way. Secretary Hughes took the chair and delivered his address. It was a very carefully arranged surprise and its effect was really dramatical. It jumped the conference abruptly from the fine generalizations that had hitherto engaged it to immediately practical things. Secretary Hughes sketched out what was evidently a carefully worked out scheme, a most explicit scheme, for the complete cessation of naval armament competition.

America wanted at the very outset, he said, to convince the world that she meant business in the conference, and so she had taken this unexpected step of putting immediate practical proposals upon the table. She would scrap completely all the ships she had still under construction and all her older ships and she would discontinue all naval construction for ten years if Britain and Japan would do the same.