Europe Since 1918

by Herbert Adams Gibbons

Almost immediately after his inauguration Mr. Harding declared that the American Government was studying the problem of how we could best help Europe, and pointed out the obvious fact that the burden of heavy armaments was the main cause of the inability of European states to put into execution programs for economic rehabilitation. Although the victory had resulted in the complete disarmament of their enemies, the Entente Powers were spending more money for military purposes than before the war. So was the United States, for that matter. The question of limiting land armaments, however, was complicated by the reparations question and the Bolshevist menace. Could not a beginning be made in limiting naval armaments? The Principal Allied and Associated Powers had complete and absolute control of the seas. The German and Russian navies no longer existed. Why, then, the mad race for more battle-ships? The victors could only be building against one another.

President Harding invited into his Cabinet two men peculiarly qualified to advise him. No outstanding figure in American life had enjoyed a better opportunity to study European conditions during the war and the Peace Conference than Herbert Hoover. The new secretary of state, Republican candidate at the preceding election, was an enthusiastic protagonist of American coöperation in world affairs. The President gave Mr. Hughes real authority in the State Department, and was not jealous of sharing with him what glory might accrue from success in administration policies.

President Harding and his advisers could not misinterpret the strong sentiment that prevailed throughout the United States, irrespective of party lines, to cut down the army and to modify the naval building program that was an inheritance of the Wilson administration. Generals Pershing and Bliss were the first to recognize the connection between a reduction of the military and naval establishments of the United States and the general problem of world peace. The press hailed with satisfaction their declarations. Then Senator Borah introduced a resolution, as follows:

The President is authorized and requested to invite the Governments of Great Britain and Japan to send representatives to a conference, which shall be charged with the duty of promptly entering into an understanding or agreement by which the naval program of each of the said Governments, to wit, the United States, Great Britain, and Japan, shall be substantially reduced annually during the next five years to such an extent and upon such terms as may be agreed upon, which understanding or agreement is to be reported to the respective Governments for approval.

The proposition for a naval holiday was indorsed by a conference in Chicago in May, attended by official representatives of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, the National Catholic Welfare Council, and the Central Conference of American Synagogues. Public sentiment enabled Senator Borah to get his resolution adopted as a rider to the Naval Appropriation Bill. The details of the plan had to be worked out carefully by the State Department. From a practical point of view, it did not seem possible to the Administration to ignore France and Italy, and Secretary Hughes advised the President that any discussion of naval armaments would inevitably bring up the subject of the balance of power in the Pacific. A proposal for a naval holiday, to be entertained by Japan, would have to take into account China and the Anglo-Japanese alliance.

After these matters had been considered by sounding the powers interested, identical invitations were sent to Great Britain, Japan, France, and Italy, inviting them to participate “in a conference on the subject of limitation of armament, in connection with which Pacific and Far Eastern questions will also be discussed, to be held in Washington on November 11, 1921.” An invitation was sent also to China, in which the paragraph concerning naval armaments was omitted.

The unrecognized Far Eastern Republic of Siberia, Belgium, Portugal, and Holland asked for invitations, on the ground that any international discussion of Pacific and Far Eastern questions interested them as vitally as the other powers. On October 4, Belgium, Portugal, and Holland were asked to send delegates. The request of Siberia was refused, with the following explanation:

In the absence of a single, recognized Russian Government, the protection of legitimate Russian interests must devolve as a moral trusteeship upon the whole Conference. It is regrettable that the Conference, for reasons quite beyond the control of the participating Powers, is to be deprived of the advantage of Russian coöperation in its deliberations. But it is not to be conceived that the Conference will take decisions prejudicial to legitimate Russian interests or which would in any manner violate Russian rights.

It should be noted that the term “limitation of armament” was used in the original invitation and in all the later official correspondence concerning the conference. The American Government was anxious not to lead the people to expect too much of this first attempt to get the powers together to listen to reason on the subject of competitive armaments, and it was necessary to show that a naval holiday agreement was a benefit that could not be gained without the assumption of definite responsibilities and pledges in regard to international questions, the method proposed for the solution of which had hitherto been force alone.

The success of the Washington Conference depended upon the fulfilment of four conditions, the first of which affected all the powers participating, and the second, third, and fourth of which affected Great Britain, Japan, and the United States respectively. The conditions were: (1) that matters other than those on the agenda be rigorously excluded from the discussions; (2) that the British be willing to give up the supremacy of the sea; (3) that Japan agree to accept an agreement regulating the status quo in the Pacific in return for consenting to an inferiority in sea-power and the abrogation of the Anglo-Japanese alliance: and (4) that the United States ratify a treaty binding us to coöperate with other powers in maintaining a fixed political status quo for a period of years in Eastern Asia and the Pacific. Without these conditions, limitation of naval armament was impracticable. If they were fulfilled, nothing that France, Italy, the lesser European states, China, or Russia (for the time being) could say, would wreck the adoption and execution of the proposed program of the conference.