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

by Ida M. Tarbell

Mr. Hughes lost a second great opportunity in the submarine matter. A few days before Christmas, when it became obvious that the submarine was in danger of destroying the American delegation’s plans for a glorious Christmas present to the nation, Mr. Balfour asked for an open session in which to discuss the matter. For some reason not at all clear, Mr. Hughes did not consent. Our Secretary of State proved himself a superior dramatist at the Conference, but in this instance a poor psychologist! If there was to be no holiday, as had become clear, then an open session with a chance to hear Mr. Balfour, Lord Lee, M. Sarraut, Admiral le Bon, Senator Schanzer, in the free discussion of a matter in which the whole country was tremendously interested—such an open session would have been a Christmas present in itself, and it would have done much to have cleared up the thick atmosphere.

In these conferences the atmosphere easily becomes heavy with suspicion. The sight of a group of eminent gentlemen of various nationalities shutting themselves up morning after morning, for hours, considering matters which concern the peace and happiness of the world, if too long continued, stirs up resentment in the best of us. If you are an impersonal, detached, philosophical, fairly well-informed person, it is not difficult for you to visualize what those gentlemen are doing; if you take the trouble you can even build up in your mind what they are saying. Suppose it is a question of the ratio of capital ships. You know that they are listening to disputes over tonnage and the way it has been computed, are studying long arrays of figures, matters dull in themselves and requiring the closest attention. Most of us would not remain a half hour, unless we were compelled to when such discussions were going on. But if you are a suspicious person, if you have been trained in the cynical school of sensational journalism, to look for mischief and intrigue—and often it must be confessed finding it—you have dark thoughts about the gentlemen.

The only way in which such suspicions can be cleared up—or better, prevented,—is by frequent open sessions and much freer discussion at those sessions than we had at the Conference for Limitation of Armament. Some of the Americans prominent in the Conference have in the last two years frequently criticized the secrecy with which the Paris Conference was conducted but there was very little difference in the procedure from that in Paris. The work there as here was done in committees. There as here there were daily communications to the press. They were more satisfactory here, fuller, but that was made possible by the fact that the situation here was far less complicated and by the rigor with which Mr. Hughes kept one thing at a time on the table. As for the press conferences, in Paris as here they were held daily by the Americans and frequently by all of the other delegations. Nobody in Paris, of course, was so satisfactory to the press as Mr. Hughes. His candor, his good humor, his out-and-out, man-to-man conduct of his daily meeting cannot be too highly praised. He has set a pace for this sort of thing very hard to follow. There was no American in Paris in a position to do for the press what Mr. Hughes did in Washington. President Wilson had not the time. The other members of the delegation were not in Mr. Hughes’ position. Nobody else in our delegation here would have had the authority, even if he had had the ability, to do what Mr. Hughes did. The difference here and in Paris was mainly a difference of situation—the difference between an infinitely difficult and complicated situation and a comparatively well defined and definite one.

Mr. Hughes himself was partly responsible for the resentment that the press felt at the failure to follow Mr. Balfour’s suggestion and conduct the submarine discussion in the open. Any one who took the pains to read the text of these discussions as they were printed in the leading journals of the country, can see how well adapted they were to a public meeting. There was nothing in them that would jeopardize any nation; there was much in them that would have been illuminated, its impression intensified, if it could have been heard instead of read. Mr. Hughes in his talk of these discussions to the correspondents was actually tantalizing. When he walked briskly into his press conference at the end of a long committee discussion and told a hundred and more men and women gathered around him what an intellectual treat it had been, of how Mr. Balfour had been in his best form, of how lively the exchange had been between French and English, his snapping eyes, his appreciative voice, his glow of enthusiasm, were actually antagonizing. He overlooked entirely the fact that he was making more than one in the assembly say: Selfish man, don’t you suppose that we would have enjoyed seeing and hearing Mr. Balfour in his best form? Is there anything at this Conference that we would have liked so much, except of course hearing you? Do you think we are going to be satisfied with your promise that we shall have full reports of all that was said?

I know very well that it is not considered good form to use the words League of Nations in connection with the Conference on the Limitation of Armament, and no offense is intended—but if one is really interested in trying to decide just how much publicity is wise in such a conference as this, any experience of other similar bodies should be considered, and after all it cannot be denied that the assembly of the League of Nations is a similar body to this, the chief difference being that it includes some fifty nations instead of nine. At the second meeting of the assembly of the League last fall, lasting four and a half weeks, there were 33 plenary conferences. One cannot say that the matters under consideration there were less delicate and dangerous than in Washington. They were even more inflamed at the moment, including such open irruptions as the boundary dispute between Jugo-Slavia and Albania.

It was not only Mr. Hughes’ naval program that was seeing heavy weather; the Four Power Pact was in trouble. The President did not agree with the American delegation that the mainland of Japan was covered by the treaty. For my part I had never questioned that when this Four Power Pact talked about insular dominions as well as insular possessions it meant what it said, and that Nippon as well as Australia and New Zealand was included. Moreover, Mr. Hughes had repeatedly told the press that was the intention. There seems, however, to have been doubts in some minds, and when finally twelve days after the Pact itself was submitted and accepted by the full Conference, an insistent journalist presented Mr. Harding at his biweekly press meeting with a written question. (The President was now requiring all questions at these gatherings to be submitted in writing.) He remarked in his casual manner, “No, the Japan mainland is not included in the treaty.” To be sure he took it back that night in a public document, but here was food for the trouble makers—a disagreement in the cabinet! All of those who, while loudly declaring themselves advocates of peace, were doing their utmost to belittle the efforts of the responsible, to magnify differences in interpretation, to fan partisan jealousies, to read in intrigue and deceit and concealment where there was usually nothing worse than blundering or stupidity, declared with satisfaction or despair that the Conference was now surely wrecked. Joined to the cry of anguish that was rising over the failure to limit the submarine and auxiliary craft, the chorus was dismal enough.

Little by little, however, events shut off the pessimists. For instance, one of the “intrigues” that had been brought to light was that Japan and France had combined on the submarine issue, and were lining up in the Conference against England and America. But Japan destroyed that fine morsel, declaring formally that she felt it would be a misfortune if the Conference failed to come to an agreement on limitation; that she supported the original American proposal of November 12 in regard to auxiliary craft and hoped that agreement would be reached on that basis.

She followed this quieting information by an announcement that she did not consider it consistent with her dignity as one of the four powers to accept any special protection, and that she therefore asked that the Four Power treaty be amended so as to exclude her mainland.

Even the submarine became less threatening as the discussion went on. If it was not to be limited in number, it was in field of action—so far as a rule of war could limit. If auxiliary craft were to be built according to the “needs” of each nation, their tonnage was not to run over 10,000 tons each and their guns were to be but eight inch. Add this to the ratio in capital ships now fixed—5–5–3—1.75—1.75—and to a ten years’ naval holiday, and you had a solid something.

One grew philosophical again and reflected how childish it was to suppose that a Conference of this importance could be carried on without sharp differences of opinion, without those periods which we call “deadlocks,” without the flaring up at times of century-old feuds, such as that between Great Britain and France. All of these things, we told ourselves, were part of the problem of working out new understandings, and to overemphasize them or willfully to exploit them in order to increase ill will and obstruct a progress which was necessarily slow and difficult, was work fit only for the irresponsible and the malicious.