Peacemakers—Blessed and Otherwise / Observations, Reflections and Irritations at an International Conference

by Ida M. Tarbell

Moreover, M. Briand came to the Conference at considerable peril to himself. He was Premier, and in this office he had been doing as much as he seems to have thought possible to hold down the military trend of the country. His policy had been fought for a year by a strong party, intent on demonstrating that France was the most powerful nation on the continent of Europe, that it was her right and her ambition to hold first place there. M. Briand’s friends thought that he should not come to the United States. But, as he publicly said, he wanted to come in order to persuade the Conference that France was not as military in spirit as much of the world seemed to believe, that she did want peace, that her refusals to disarm came from the fact that she was still threatened by both Germany and Russia and must either have arms or guarantees.

M. Briand knew the line of argument that the Hughes program would awaken in France. This argument was admirably set forth early in the Conference by the semi-official Le Temps:

“I. Under a régime of limited armaments such as that of which Mr. Hughes has defined the basis, each state has the right to possess force proportioned to the dangers to which, in the opinion of all the contracting powers, it may reasonably believe itself to be exposed.

“II. When powers agree among themselves to limit their armaments they oblige themselves by that very fact even though tacitly aiding that one of themselves which should find itself at grips with a danger which its limited armaments would not allow it to subdue.

“III. It is not possible to have a contractual limitation of armament without there being at the same time among all the contractants a joint and several obligation of mutual aid.”

It is not unfair, I think, to say that when M. Briand came to speak to the Washington Conference on November 21, he was not thinking of the peace of the world; he was thinking of the needs and ambitions of France. Moreover, his mood was not the most conciliatory in the world. His pride and his pride for his country had been deeply wounded on the opening day of the Conference. He had found himself on that occasion set at one side. To be sure, he and his colleagues were given a position at the right of the American delegates, Great Britain being at the left; but when Mr. Hughes presented his naval program, France did not figure in it, except incidentally. The whole discussion was centered on Great Britain, Japan and the United States. France and Italy were set aside with the casual remark that it was not thought necessary to discuss their tonnage allowance at that time.

Did Mr. Hughes lack tact and understanding when he confined his opening speech to three nations? I think that the after events point that way. To have invited eight nations and to have spoken to but two at the start was a good deal like inviting eight guests to a dining table and talking to but two of them through the meal. The oversight, if that’s the proper word for it, was forgotten, if noticed by any one in the really tremendous thing that Mr. Hughes did. The trouble is that there is almost always one among a number of neglected guests that does feel and does not forget it.

The opening week of the Conference kept France in about the same position that she had on the opening day. She was not yet a principal, and another point—and one that is hard on the French—they saw here what they began to see in Paris in 1919 and so openly resented there—that English is taking the place of French as the language of diplomacy. There is no mistake about this, and I don’t wonder that all Frenchmen resent it. At the opening day every delegate, except M. Briand, spoke in English; the French translations which followed each speech were made purely out of compliment to the French delegation. M. Briand is one of not a few in France who will take no pains, whatever their contracts, to learn a word of English. For the last two years he has been constantly in conference with Lloyd George, he has had most of that time the remarkable interpreter, M. Carmlynck, at his side. I have heard M. Carmlynck say that in all this time M. Briand has not learned a word of English, although Lloyd George, who at the start understood no French at all, is now able to follow closely the arguments in French, and even will at times correct or question the phrasing of the translation into English.

The French are not a race that conceal their feelings. An Englishman, an American, is apt to accuse anybody who does not cover up disappointment, resentment, of being a poor sport. France’s chief contempt for the Anglo-Saxon is that he is not out and out with everything; that he has reticences and reserves, conceals his dislikes, his vices, his emotions. The French showed at Washington from the start that they were disappointed. They did not mix freely; they did not use the ample offices prepared for them in the Annex to the Pan-American Building, where the delegates sat, although every other nation was making more or less use of these quarters. They insisted on conducting all their press meetings in French alone, although every other nation, when it put up somebody who did not speak English, provided a translator. The result was that the French press gatherings were sparsely attended.

And then came M. Briand’s speech, which caused the first Conference crisis. For days after that speech was made, I listened to people remake it, giving their idea of how he might have used the same matter and carried his audience with him, giving them the impression of a courageous people, as they really are, intent not only on the restoration of their tormented and suffering land but willing to do their part to restore the rest of the world. Instead, M. Briand gave an impression of a land in panic, its mind centered on possible dangers from a conquered enemy. It was France Sanglante that he held in upraised arms before the Conference, a bleeding France at whom ravening German and Russian wolves were snapping and threatening. All his powerful oratory, his wealth of emotional gesture, upraised arms, tossed black locks, rolling head, tortured features—all these M. Briand brought into play in his efforts to arouse the Conference to share the fears of France. He could not do it. He was talking to people as well informed as himself on the actual facts of Europe, but people who are not interpreting those facts in the way that the French do. He was talking to people who view the situation of the present world as one to be corrected only by hard, steady sacrifice and work in a spirit of good will and mercy. Unhappily he gave them the impression that France thought only of herself and of what the world should do for her to pay her for her terrible sacrifices. In his picture of bleeding France he did not include bleeding Belgium, Italy, England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, all of whom sat at the table and all of whom had suffered losses and are staggering under debts, if not equal, at least comparable to those of France.