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

by Ida M. Tarbell

Patience won the day. It took thirty-eight “conversations,” interminable cables, breaks, returns, the constant counsel of Mr. Balfour and Mr. Hughes—“Steady now, steady. Don’t give it up. You must do it yourselves”—to bring a final agreement between the two nations. But in the end they did settle the Shantung difficulty. It was a tremendous victory for the new international method of handling quarrels.

How reasonable it is that it should be so. It is a direct attack on a difficulty not a roundabout one by correspondence through ambassadors. Face to face, you examine the basis of suspicion. You ask, Is this true or not? Are you doing so-and-so or not? Do you aim to do so-and-so? Thus the actual situation, not the imagined one, is arrived at. It becomes the actual property of a group of negotiators sitting at the same table; and when the actuality is before them all, being turned over and examined by them all, adjustment is almost certain if there is good will. And here you come to the crux of the whole matter—you get no adjustment unless the negotiators are working in a spirit of good will.

When I first set out to observe the Washington Conference I looked up a man unusually wise and experienced in international affairs, one who for many years has been collecting, arranging and explaining the diplomatic adventures of men and of nations so that each coming generation might have, if it would, the materials from which to find out what men had already done in making peace and, if it were wise enough, why they so often had failed. I was in search of just the material of which he of all men knew most. “What shall I read first?” I asked him. His instant reply was, “Æsop’s Fables. That should be the textbook of the Conference. Read Æsop,” he said, “to see what they can do, and follow with Don Quixote to see what they cannot do.

“But there is one book more important than all for the Conference—the Gospels. But not King James’ version. That is a great and wonderful translation, but it has done some harm in the world by not always giving true values to great truths. It promises peace on earth and good will to men. But that is not what was promised. Peace was promised to men of good will. The success of the Conference will depend upon the degree to which men of good will are able to prevail over those of ill will.”

This is the way it turned out in Washington. At every stage it was good will which carried the undertaking forward. What will happen now in the various countries to which the pacts of the Conference go will depend upon the spirit of the peoples to which they are submitted, whether it be malicious or charitable. Will there be good will enough in Japan to make such rearrangements of her claims in China that Chinese bitterness and suspicion will be removed? Will there be enough good will in China to coöperate when these rearrangements are made? Will there be enough in the United States to accept the pledges of mutual support which must be made if the nations concerned are to limit their armaments? Have we enough faith in men to accept the only possible alternative in the present world to unlimited armament, and that is, a union of peoples pledged to face misunderstandings at their beginning, to separate them into their elements, and to bring all the force of collective judgment and intelligence to adjustment?

It may be that the United States does not yet sufficiently understand that the principle of unionism which is its strength is a world principle, that one primary cause of wars in this world is isolation, with its necessity of being suspicious, on guard, ready to strike—like a rattlesnake. Æsop is a guide here, with his fable of the bundle of sticks—sticks easy to break if separated, unbreakable when bound together.

It may be that the Senate of the United States will refuse to back this pact of good will which is just as essential to carrying out the program of limitation of naval armament as a guarantee to France against unprovoked aggression was two years ago (and is still) to European disarmament. But, refuse it or not, the day will come—and nothing has ever demonstrated it more clearly than the Washington Conference,—when we are going to understand that the world can only remain in peace through a union which is a practical application of the brotherhood of man, not a limited brotherhood of man, such as Mr. Wells preached in his final comment on the Arms Parley, but one including all men.

Mr. Wells’ idea of a brotherhood of nations is—or was!—one that includes not every state of the world but “the peoples who speak English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Japanese, with such states as Holland and Norway and Bohemia, great in quality if not great in power—sympathetic in training and tradition.” He would admit only people of like ideals, exclude Russia, India, China. Could there be a surer way to throw Russia and India and China into an alliance against this so-called “Brotherhood of Man”? Is there a surer way to awaken an ambition for liberty, to spread ideals than to share what you have with those that seem to you—and yet never in all respects are—backward nations? Is there any brotherhood of man worthy the name which does not include all men?

However we may feel about it as a nation to-day, though we may ruin the present program for limitation of armament by rejection of its underlying pacts, the day will surely come when we shall realize and admit the fullest international association and coöperation. It is the one real asset humanity has carried from this war—the sense of the oneness of the world, the impossibility of order and progress and peace except as each is allowed to develop its individuality, in a free continuing union of all.

Eventually the Washington Conference for the Limitation of Armament will be judged by what it contributes to this union of nations, exactly as all its predecessors will be judged. The Washington Conference is but one in a long chain of international undertakings looking to peace. It is built on the experience of many different men, of many different countries, running back literally for centuries. Its immediate predecessor was the Hague Conferences and tribunal and the Paris Conference with its resultant League of Nations. So far the League of Nations is at once the most idealistic and the most practical scheme men have yet framed, the broadest in its scope and the most democratic in its spirit. It may prove that humanity is as yet too backward to grasp and realize its intent and its possibilities. It may make too great a demand on their faith, their charity, their love; but nothing can destroy the great fact that it has been undertaken by fifty-one nations, that it is alive and at work. That fact will stand as a hope and a guide to the future.