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

by Ida M. Tarbell

Sub-headings the same as those under China with railway sections eliminated.

What reasons were there for thinking that the nations—England, France, Italy, China, Japan, Belgium, Holland, Portugal—could, with the United States, handle these problems of the Pacific in such a way that they would be able to cut their armaments, and, cutting them, find a satisfactory substitute. There were several reasons.

A first, and an important one, was that the difficulties to be adjusted were, as defined, confined to one side only of the earth’s surface which, if huge, is nevertheless fairly simple, being mostly water. It was the problems of the Pacific Ocean that they prepared to handle. These problems are comparatively definite—the kind of thing that you can get down on paper with something like precision. They had one great advantage, and that is that in the main they did not involve a past running into the dim distance. England has held Hongkong for only about eighty years. We, the United States, have had port privileges in China only since 1844. France first got a stronghold in Cochin China in 1862, and her protectorate over Annam is less than forty years old. It was only twenty-five years ago that the war between Japan and China over Korea began; the complications in eastern Russia are still younger. So are those in Shantung, Yap, the Philippine Islands. That is, the chief bones of contention in the Conference were freshly picked. In most of the cases there were men still living who helped in the picking.

It was the same when it came to concessions. The question of the ownership and administration of railroads and mines—they belong to our age. We can put our fingers on their beginnings, trace with some certainty what has happened, find the intriguers, the bribe givers and takers, the law breaker, if such there have been. In the case of most of the concessions we can get our hands upon the very men involved in securing them and in carrying on their development.

How different from the problems of Europe, running as they do through century after century, involving as they do successions of invasions, of settlements, of conquests, of incessant infiltration of different races, and the consequent mingling of social, political, industrial and religious notions. The quarrels of Europe are as old as its civilization, their bases are lost in the past. Without minimizing at all the difficulty of the questions on the agenda of the Conference, they did have the advantage of being of recent date.

There was encouragement in the relations of the conferees. These were not enemy nations, fresh from wars, meeting to make treaties. They were nations that for five years had been allies, and from the life-and-death necessity of coöperation had gained a certain solidarity. True, their machinery of coöperation was pretty well shot up. The frictions of peace are harder on international machinery than the shells of war. The former racks it to pieces; the latter solidifies it. Nevertheless, the nations that were coming to the Conference were on terms of fairly friendly acquaintance, an acquaintance which had stood a tremendous test.

These nations had all committed themselves solemnly to certain definite ideals, laid down by the United States of America. True, their ideals were badly battered, and as a government we were in the anomalous position of temporarily abandoning them after having committed our friends to them. However, they still stood on their feet, these ideals.

It could be counted as an advantage that the associations of the years of the War had made the men who would represent the different nations at the Conference fairly well acquainted with one another. Whatever disappointments there might be in the delegations we could depend upon it that the men chosen would be tried men. They were pretty sure to be men of trustworthy character, with records of respectable achievement, men like Root and Hughes and Underwood in our own delegation. They would not come unknown to each other or unknown to the nations involved. It would be a simple matter for us, the public, to become acquainted with their records. If by any unhappy chance there should be among them a political intriguer, that, too, would be known.

These were all good reasons for expecting that the Conference might do something of what it started out for. How much of it it would do and how permanent that which it did would be would depend in no small degree upon the attitude of mind of this country, whether the backing that we gave the Conference was one of emotionalism or intelligence. We were starting out with a will to succeed; we were going to spend our first day praying for success. It would be well if we injected into those prayers a supplication for self-control, clearness of judgment, and willingness to use our minds as well as our hearts in the struggles that were sure to come.

Alarms went along with these hopes. There were certain very definite things that might get in the way of the success of the Conference—things that often frustrate the best intentions of men, still they were matters over which the public and the press would have at least a certain control, if they took a high and intelligent view of their own responsibility.