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

by Ida M. Tarbell

First, there were the scapegoats. There are bound to be periods in all human undertakings when the way is obscure, when failure threatens, when it is obvious that certain things on which we have set our hearts are unobtainable. Irritation and discouragement always characterize these periods. It is here that we fall back on a scapegoat. An international conference usually picks one or more before it gets through—a nation which everybody combines to call obstinate, unreasonable, greedy, a spoke in the wheel. Then comes a hue and cry, a union of forces—not to persuade but to overwhelm the recalcitrant, to displace it, drive it out of court. The spirit of adjustment, and of accommodation which is of the very essence of success in an undertaking like the Conference on the Limitation of Armaments is always imperiled and frequently ruined by fixing on a scapegoat. Would this happen at Washington?

Of course the nation on which irritation and suspicion were concentrated might be in the wrong. It might be deep in evil intrigue. It might be shockingly greedy. But it was a member of the Conference and the problem must be worked out with it. You work nothing out with scapegoats. Abraham Lincoln once laid down a principle of statesmanship which applies. “Honest statesmanship,” he said, “is the employment of individual meanness for the public good.”

It takes brains, humor, self-control to put any such rule as this in force. If unhappily the Conference did not furnish a sufficient amount of these ingredients, would the press and public make good the deficit? They are always in a strategic position where they can insist that everybody must be considered innocent until he is proved guilty, that nothing be built on suspicion, everything on facts. Something very important for them to remember if they insisted was that these facts had a history, that they were not isolated but related to a series of preceding events. For instance, there was the high hand that Japan had played with China. We must admit it. But in doing so we must not forget that it was only about sixty years ago that the very nations with whom Japan was now to meet in council in Washington had gathered with their fleets in one of her ports and used their guns to teach her the beauties of Christian civilization. She had decided to learn their lessons. She has wonderful imitative powers. She had followed them into China, and if she had played a higher hand there than any of them—and there might be a question as to that—it should be remembered that she had only sixty years in which to learn the degree of greed that can safely be practiced in our modern civilization. We must consider that possibly she had not had sufficient time to learn to temper exploitation with civilized discretion.

No scapegoats. No hues and cries. And certainly no partisanship. Was it possible for the United States to hold a truly national parley, one in which party ambitions and antipathies did not influence the negotiations? We had had within three years a terrible lesson of the lengths to which men’s partisanship will go in wrecking even the peace of the world. Would we repeat that crime? It was an ugly question, and be as optimistic as I would I hated to face it.

There was another danger on the face of things—crudeness of opinion. We love to be thought wise. There are thousands of us who in the pre-Conference days were getting out our maps to find out where Yap lay or the points between which the Eastern Chinese railroad ran, who would be tempted sooner or later to become violent partisans of, we will say: Yap for America—Shantung for China—Vladivostok for the Far Eastern Republic. There was danger in obstinate views based on little knowledge or much knowledge of a single factor.

And there were the sacrifices. Were we going to accept beforehand that if we were to have the limitation of armament which we desired—we, the United States might have to sacrifice some definite thing—a piece of soil, a concession, a naval base in the Pacific—and that nothing more fatal to the success of the Conference could be than for us to set our teeth and say: “We must have this”—quite as fatal as setting our teeth and saying: “This or that nation must do this.”

But my chief irritation in these pre-Conference days lay with the agenda. It was illogical to place limitation of armament at the head of the program. That was an effect—not a cause. It looked like an attempt to make reduction of taxes more important than settlement of difficulties. Was the Conference to be merely a kind of glorified international committee on tax reduction? Not that I meant to underestimate the relief that would bring.

Suppose the Conference should say: We will reduce at once—by the simplest, most direct method—cut down fifty per cent. of our appropriations—for five years and before the term is ended meet again and make a new contract.

What a restoration of the world’s hope would follow! How quickly the mind sprang to what such a decision would bring to wretched, jobless peoples—the useful work, the schools, the money for more bread, better shelter, leisure for play. How much of the resentment at the huge sums now going into warships, cannon, naval bases, war colleges, would evaporate.

The mere announcement would soothe and revive. Labor bitterly resents the thought that it may be again asked to spend its energies in the creation of that which destroys men instead of that which makes for their health and happiness.