Mr. Balfour and Sir Auckland Geddes, sitting where I could look them full in the face, had just the faintest expression of “seeing things.” I would not have been surprised if they had raised their hands in that instinctive gesture one makes when he does “see things” that are not there. The Japanese took it without a flicker of an eyelash—neither the delegates at the table nor the rows of attachés and secretaries moved, glanced at one another, changed expression. So far as their faces were concerned Mr. Hughes might have been continuing the Harding welcome—instead of calling publicly on them for a sacrifice unprecedented and undreamed of.
The program was so big—its presentation was so impressive (Mr. Hughes looked seven feet tall that day and his voice was the voice of the man who years ago arraigned the Insurance Companies) that one regretted that there were omissions so obvious as to force attention. There was a singular one in the otherwise admirable historical introduction Mr. Hughes made to his program. He reviewed there the efforts of the first and second Hague Conferences to bring about disarmament—explained the failure—and jumped from 1907 to 1921 as if in 1919, at the Paris Peace Conference, man’s most valiant effort to bring about disarmament had not been made. He failed to notice the fact that to this effort scores of peoples had subscribed, including all of the nations represented at the council table; that these nations had been working for two years in the League of Nations, under circumstances of indescribable world confusion and disorganization, to gather the information and prepare a practical plan not only to limit the world’s arms but to regulate for good and all private traffic in armaments. Before Mr. Hughes sat M. Viviani of France who had been serving on the Commission charged with this business. Before him, too, was man after man fresh from the discussions of the second annual Assembly of the League. Disarmament and many other matters pertaining to world peace had been before them. They came confident that they had done something of value at Geneva however small it might be compared with the immense work still to be done. Arthur Balfour of England, Viviani of France, Wellington Koo of China, Senator Schanzer of Italy, Sastri of India, Van Karnebeck of Holland—were among those that heard Mr. Hughes jump their honest efforts, beginning in 1919, to bring the armaments of the world to a police basis. It must have bewildered them a little—but they are gentlemen who are forced by their profession to take hints quickly—they understood that as far as the American Conference on Limitation of Armament was concerned, the League of Nations was not to exist. From that day, if you wanted information on the League from any one of them you had to catch him in private, and he usually made sure nobody was listening before he enlightened you as to his opinions, which invariably were “not for publication.”
One could not but wonder if Mr. Balfour had this omission in mind when at a later session he said in speaking of Mr. Hughes’ review of past disarmament efforts that “some fragments” had been laid before the Conference. What Mr. Hughes really did in ignoring the work for disarmament carried on at Paris and Geneva in the last three years was to call attention to it.
After all, was it not petty to be irritated when something so bold and real had been initiated? Was it not yielding to the desire to “rub in” the omission as bad—or worse—than the omission? As a matter of fact, the thing going on at the moment was so staggering that one had no time for more than a momentary irritation. Mr. Hughes swept his house on November 12—swept it off its feet. If secret diplomacy was given by him such a blow as it never had received before, diplomatic etiquette was torn to pieces by the Senate and the House of the United States, each of which had a section of the gallery to itself. Possibly their action was due to a little jealousy. They are accustomed to holding the center of the deliberative stage in Washington, and they always have, possibly always will resent a little the coming of an outside deliberative body which for the time being the public regards as more interesting than themselves. They made it plain from the start that they were not awed. The House of Representatives particularly was a joy to see if it did make a shocking exhibition of itself. It looked as if it were at a ball game and conducted itself in the same way. It hung over the gallery, lolled in its seats, and when the President struck his great note, the words which ought to become a slogan of the country—“Less of Armament and None of War”—it rose to its feet and cheered as if there had been a home run.
Having once broke out in unrestrained cheers, they gave again and again what William Allen White called “the yelp of democracy.” Even after the program was over and the remaining formalities customary on such occasions were about at an end, they took things into their own hands and finished their attack on diplomatic etiquette by calling for Briand as they might have called for Babe Ruth. “It isn’t done, you know,” I heard one young Britisher say after it was over. But it had been done, and the chances are that there will be more of it in the future.
If this day does work out to be portentous in history, as it possibly may, the time will come when every country will hang great historical pictures of the scene in its public galleries. We should have one, whatever its fate. And I hope the artist that does it will not fail to give full value to the Congress that cracked the proprieties. Let him take his picture from the further left side of the auditorium. In this way he can bring in the House of Representatives. He can afford to leave out the diplomatic gallery, as he would have to do from this position. The diplomatic gallery counted less than any other group in the gathering.
Secrecy and etiquette were not the only vested interests attacked on November 12, 1921. There was a third that received a blow—lighter to be sure, but a blow all the same and a significant one. The exclusive vested right of man to the field of diplomacy was challenged. Not by giving a woman a seat at the table, but by introducing her on the floor, in an official capacity, a new official capacity, rather problematical as yet as to its outcome—a capacity which if it ranks lower than that of delegate is still counted higher than that of expert, since it brings the privilege of the floor.
Behind the American delegation facing the hall and inside the sacred space devoted to the principals of the Congress, sat a group of some twenty-one persons, the representatives of a new experiment in diplomacy—a slice of the public brought in to act as a link between the American delegates and the public. Four of these delegates were women—well-chosen women. They are the diplomatic pioneers of the United States.
Who were those people, why were they there? I heard more than one puzzled foreign attaché ask. When you explained that this was an advisory body, openly recognized by the government, they continued, “But why are women included?” They understood the women in the diplomatic gallery, the women in the boxes. It was a great ceremony. It was quite within established diplomatic procedure that the ladies of the official world should smile upon such an occasion.
They understood the few women scattered among the scores of men in the press galleries—but women on the floor as part of the Conference? What did that mean? It meant, dear sirs, simply this, that man’s exclusive, vested interest in diplomacy had been invaded—its masculinity attacked like its secrecy and propriety. What would come of the invasion no one could tell.