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

by Ida M. Tarbell

Moreover, if you ask her to sacrifice without a guarantee, will she do it? Not Japan. Thus it became more and more clear that the success of the naval program depended on some kind of a pact which would satisfy Japan that she could agree to what Mr. Hughes had asked and still have no reason to feel herself in danger.

The first definite black-faced, full-width-of-the-page headline came, as I remember, on December 5—“Four Power Entente to Replace Anglo-Japanese Alliance.” The morning after this bold announcement it was not quite so sure. The newspapers were keeping a line of retreat open. As they now put it: “Discussions of the proposals have reached a well-advanced stage,” none of the governments concerned had given final approval. There was enough that was sure, however, to give the wicked a chance to jeer at approaching “entangling alliances.”

By Friday, December 9, the most careful journals were saying, on what they declared to be the best sort of authority, that the United States was going into a pact with Japan and England and France, guaranteeing various things. There was considerable diversity in the assertions about what it guaranteed. Washington said nothing. The news came from all of the capitals of the powers concerned, except our own. It was evidently very hard for Washington to say “treaty.”

There was much entertaining gossip running around as to how Tokyo and London and Paris had been able to give the press the news of what was going to be done, while Washington was silent. One story was that a clever Japanese journalist had managed to get a glimpse of the document in preparation and had cabled what he had been able to make out of its contents to Tokyo; that from there it had gone to Paris and London and finally came here. That was one story. Another was a rather thin version of that old, old device of writers of diplomatic fiction—a lively and lovely lady lunches with an elderly diplomat, who, to win her favor, reveals the secret that is in the air. That evening she dines with a young journalist whom she naturally (and necessarily for the purpose of the plot) much prefers, and to prove her devotion she tells him what her elder suitor has revealed. Threadbare as the formula is, it was honored the week that the treaty was coming out of the fog by at least one important newspaper.

Mr. Hughes seems to have concluded by the end of Friday, the 9th, that unless he acted quickly his reputation for dramatic diplomacy might be shaken, and so the hasty summons, the thrill at the breakfast table, the quick readjustments of plans, the rush to make sure that your credentials were all right and your ticket waiting you.

From the beginning of the Conference, sun and air were in league with those who were staging it with such a sense of dramatic values. Never was there a morning of lovelier tenderness than that on which they carried the Unknown Soldier to his grave; Mr. Hughes’ big gun was fired under a perfect morning sky—it was only when we came out that things had grown stern and the clouds were dark, as if to give us a sense that a serious thing had been done that morning and it was well to get down to work, if it was to be made good.

The morning of December 10 there was frost on all the Washington roof tops, the sky was clear, there was an air that put a spring in your heels and it was a joy to hurry down with the crowd to get your ticket; it put you in mood for something exciting, helped enormously the keen anticipation that stirred the town.

The scene in the Conference was what it had been at the three previous open sessions: each delegate in his place, the advisory board banked behind them, the boxes overflowing with ladies, the press in their usual seats, the House gallery even more amusing than on the opening day. It was quite full, for somehow the House had obtained permission to bring its family along, and there were many ladies sprinkled through the gallery. They made it more animated but not a whit more dignified in its behavior.

And then, on the tick of the hour, Mr. Hughes arose. What an orderly mind! A mind that must know where it is headed, how it is going to get there, the exact point it has reached at the given moment! He must know himself, and he never fails, when he presents his case, to make sure that you know. Again and again in his talks to the press he would carefully point out to the correspondents who were given to jumping to the future, running back to the past, wanting to know this or that that was not on the agenda by any stretch of the imagination, just what “the muttons” were in this particular Conference. “The agenda is our chart, here is where we have arrived to-day. We are moving in this or that direction. I shall have nothing to say about what we find when we arrive until we are there, then you shall know everything.” That is, Mr. Hughes did his utmost to keep the mind of press and public concentrated on the actual problem under his hand. He started the Plenary Conference of December 10 in the same fashion.

The session, he said, was to be devoted to that part of the agenda which concerned itself with the Pacific and Far Eastern questions. The committee charged with these questions had taken up first a consideration of China; certain conclusions in regard to China already given out to the public had been reached. It was the business of the full Conference, however, to assent to these conclusions. In turn, Mr. Hughes reviewed them, and in turn the Conference assented to them: