Washington and the Riddle of Peace

by H. G. Wells

And, following upon its assent to those resolutions, the conference voted upon certain special applications of them. The abolitions of the extra territorial grievance, the right of China as a neutral power to escape the fate of Belgium and the right of China to be informed on the article of any treaty affecting her were established as far as a resolution of the conference could establish them.

And then came Senator Lodge. For the fourth plenary session “featured” Senator Lodge just as previous ones had “featured” Secretary Hughes, Mr. Balfour and M. Briand. Fifteen years ago I came to Washington and Senator Lodge showed me a collection of prehistoric objects from Central America and talked very delightfully about them. Fifteen years have changed Washington very greatly but they have not changed Senator Lodge.

He seems perhaps just a little slenderer and neater than before, but that may be a change in my own standards, and it was entirely in character with my former impressions of him that in putting the four-power treaty before the conference he should indulge himself and his hearers in a vision of the realities of the Pacific, the multitudinous interests of its innumerable islands, its infinite variety of races, customs, climates and atmospheres.

It was a most curious and attractive phase of the always-interesting conference to have this gray-headed, cultivated gentleman breaking through all the abstract jargon of diplomacy and militarism, all the talk of powers, radii of action, fortifications, spheres of influence, and so forth, in his attempt to make us realize the physical loveliness and intellectual charm of this enormous area of the world’s surface that the four-power treaty may perhaps save now and forevermore from the fear and horrors of war.

The proposed four-power treaty which thus starts upon its uncertain but hopeful journey toward ratification by the Senates, Legislatures and Governments of the world is essentially a departure from the normal tradition of the treaties of the nineteenth century. It is the first attempt to realize—what shall I call it?—the American way or the new way in international affairs. Its distinctive feature is the participation of two possible antagonists, America and Japan. Instead of a war they make a treaty and call in Britain and France to assist. It is a treaty for peace and not against an antagonist.

I think that the difference between “treaties for” and “treaties against” is one that needs to be stressed. The Anglo-Japanese treaty was a “treaty against,” a treaty against first Russia, then Germany and then against some vaguely conceived assailant. It is a great thing to have Japan and England cordially immolating that treaty now that this four-power treaty of the new spirit may be born.

After Senator Lodge came M. Viviani with a very fine, if guarded, speech. M. Viviani is a great speaker but he is not merely eloquent, and I find people here saying little about his wonderful voice or his overtones and undertones or his romantic charm but much about the subtle things he said. In a gathering that is tense with attention one is apt, perhaps, to transfer one’s own thoughts and expectations to the gathering as a whole, but it seems to me that when M. Viviani rose to welcome this great beginning on the Pacific, we were all thinking: “And how much further and to what other regions of the world are you prepared to extend this spirit and method of this Pacific bond? There is another rather threadbare ‘treaty against’ or at least an ‘understanding against,’ known as the Anglo-French entente. Is the time due yet for the merger of that also in another and greater bond of peace?”

I do not know how far the question that was in his mind was in the mind of the meeting, but I think that M. Viviani made it very plain that it was in the background of his own mind. His speech was designed to bring the simplicity, the easiness of the Pacific problem into sharp contrast with the tortured complexity of the Atlantic—the Afro-European problem. He spoke of the freedom of the Pacific from long established hate traditions. He reminded us of the twenty centuries of war and trampled frontiers and outrages and counter-outrages that had left Europe and North Africa scarred and festering.

He conjured up no bogies; he had nothing to say about those 7,000,000 phantom Germans ready to extract their hidden rifles from 7,000,000 mattresses and haylofts and rush upon France; but he reminded the conference, gravely and wisely, of the relative complexity of the European problem, of the new untried nationalities that had been liberated, of the vast heritage of tradition and suspicion that had to be overcome. He addressed not only the conference but the impatient liberal aspirations of the world. “I ask you for forbearance,” he said, and repeated that—“I ask for forbearance.”

Now that was a great speech, and M. Viviani is manifestly the sort of Frenchman with whom the new spirit can deal. “Forbearance” might well serve now as the watchword of Europe. And I wish that Mr. Balfour could have shown a fuller recognition of what M. Viviani had said. Mr. Balfour had been so fine on several occasions at this conference that I felt it is a little ungracious to him to confess, as I must do, that twice in this day of the fourth plenary session, once in the conference and also in the evening when he replied for the Allies at the Gridiron Club, he seemed to be missing an opportunity—the opportunity of holding out a hand of friendship to liberal France.