It was a mistake of emphasis, that brilliant journalist Simeon Strunsky said. He pointed out that the thing really relevant in M. Briand’s speech was practically concealed from the public, that France had disarmament plans on hand which soon would reduce her army one half and her term of military service from three years to eighteen months. M. Briand’s tragic picture of the danger of France so obscured this statement, so vitally important to the work of the Conference, that not a few people contended that no such statement was ever made. One has only to look at the text of the address to see that it was there, though so out of proportion to the bulk of the speech that it failed of its effect.
The speech was disastrous. “I was never so heartsick in my life,” I heard one of the greatest and most important men in Washington say after it was over. Mr. Wells, that ardent advocate of the brotherhood of man, knocked his doctrine all to smithereens by accusing France of wanting arms to turn against England. Lord Curzon, as militant as Mr. Wells, made a most unguarded speech for a man in his position.
France, sore and sensitive, cried aloud that the United States and Great Britain were trying to isolate her. Mr. Hughes and Mr. Balfour had, to be sure, made consoling speeches after M. Briand’s outburst, but they were rather the efforts of serene elderly friends trying to calm the panic of a frightened child, and their effect was rather to aggravate France’s determination to assert herself, to prove herself the equal, by arms, if necessary, of any nation in the world, England included.
The irritation of that day spread over the world. The Conference was “wrecked,” cried the lovers of gloom and chaos. Washington buzzed with gossip of wrangling between even the heads of delegations. There was a rumor spread of a sharp quarrel between Mr. Balfour and Mr. Hughes on the way the discussions in the committees were to be handled. It was said that Mr. Hughes wanted everything that was voiced put down; that Mr. Balfour thought a digest of the discussions would be sufficient. This rumor was followed by the story of an ugly scene in committee between the French Premier, Briand, and the Italian Senator Schanzer over the morals of the Italian army.
Now, luckily the Conference was admirably arranged to scotch vicious rumors. There never has been a great international gathering in which the press had as real an opportunity to learn what was going on. Every morning there was given out at press headquarters a list of delegates who at fixed hours would receive the press. This morning bulletin ran something like this:
| 11:00 | A.M. | Lord Lee |
| 11:30 | Ambassador Schanzer | |
| 3:00 | P.M. | Lord Riddle |
| 3:30 | Secretary Hughes | |
| 4:00 | The President of the United States (twice a week) | |
| 5:30 | Admiral Kato | |
| 6:00 | Mr. Balfour |
and so on. Every day from six to eight opportunities were given to correspondents to question principals of the Conference. How much they got depended upon how much they carried—how able they were to ask questions—how sound their judgment was of the answers they received—how honest their intent in interpreting. When ugly rumors such as those which disturbed the second week of the Conference’s life occurred, this method of treating the press was of real advantage to the powers concerned. It was a joy to see the way Secretary Hughes, for instance, handled the rumors at this moment.
It was always a joy to see Mr. Hughes when he was righteously indignant, and he certainly was so on the afternoon of November 25. He lunged at once at the report of the break between himself and Mr. Balfour. The statement had no basis but the imagination of the writer. It was unjust to Mr. Balfour, who had been coöperative from the start. To put him of all men at the Conference in a position of opposing the United States was most unfair. There had been no clashes in committees, no quarrels. There had, of course, been differences in points of view, candid statements, free explanations, but any one with common sense knew that such exchange of views must take place. It was a fine, generous, convincing answer to the ugly rumors, and the beauty of it was that you believed Mr. Hughes. You knew that he was not lying to you. I believe this to have been the general conviction of the newspaper men. He convinced them and they were all for him. This was a real achievement for any man, for the press craft are hard to convince and quick to suspect. Many of them have been for years in the thick of public affairs, watching men go up and down; seeing heroes made and unmade; the incorruptible prove corruptible. One wonders sometimes not that they have so little faith, but that they have any. They believed Mr. Hughes. When he denied the rumors his word was accepted. But the rumors were out, and had been cabled abroad and were already doing their ugly work there—fighting right and left like mad dogs. There was even riot and bloodshed in Italy over the report that Briand had spoken lightly of their army.
It looked for the moment as if an atmosphere was gathering around the Washington Conference similar to that in which the Paris Conference had done its work. Indeed, already the observer who had been in Paris in 1919, had been more than once startled with the way the two conferences were beginning to parallel each other. Just what happened in Paris had already happened here—a wonderful first stage in which a noble program had been given out—a program to which all the world had responded with joy and hope. Then came a second stage in which the delegates attempted to make their noble ideas realities. It was in this transition period that the first convulsions of public and press began. They saw that, as a matter of fact, the Conference had no magic to practice, that it was nothing but the same old hard effort to work out by conferring, by bargaining, by compromise, the best that they could get. And they saw, too, that most of this work was going on behind closed doors. The moment that the Washington Conference attempted to get down to cases there was the same burst of remonstrance, suspicion, accusation that we saw in Paris. “Secret diplomacy.” Then came rumors of quarrels. If it was secret, must it not have been because there were things that they did not want known outside—breaks in their good will? The rumors of quarrels were spread with relish, and often malice. Dislike of this or that nation flared up, mistrust of this or that man. Washington air was saturated with impatience, suspicion, intrigue. Was the Conference to gather about it the same storm of wicked passions that had been so strong in Paris, doing their best to wreck the work, and frustrating some of the noblest attempts. That dreadful “outside” of the Paris Conference, created by the unreason, hate, vanity and ambitions of men, seemed about to be duplicated. I had never set down my impressions of the Paris atmosphere at the time of the Peace Conference; I would do it now, that I might have it to compare with what seemed to me was about to develop in Washington.