THE DISARMAMENT QUESTION BEFORE THE WASHINGTON CONFERENCE
Observers of European politics invariably write that the verdict of
General Elections is the result of a number of causes, and that it
is difficult to assert how a so-called paramount issue would have
been decided had not other considerations entered in to confuse and
influence the judgment of the electors. If this be true in European
countries enjoying representative institutions, how much more true is
it of the United States, where elections are held at stated intervals,
and where great issues can never be brought before the country as
they are in Europe? The American executive is vested with great
powers, is not dependent upon Congress, and enjoys office for a fixed
period. Midway in the Presidential term a national election is held
that has no power to change the policies of the administration. When
Presidential year arrives, the outs are determined to become the ins.
A moot question is found--it is sometimes a question of secondary
importance--around which the campaign centers. Is it safe to assume
that the people cast their votes upon the merits of this question,
throwing aside all other issues?
When Mr. Wilson, returning from Paris with the Treaty of Versailles,
failed to secure its ratification without reservations by the Senate,
he appealed directly to the people and declared that the Presidential
election of 1920 would be a “solemn referendum” on the question of
our entry into the League of Nations. Eminent Republicans who were
convinced pro-Leaguers announced their intention of sticking by their
party, and begged others to do so, on the ground that a vote for Mr.
Harding was not a vote against American participation in world affairs.
They deplored the attitude of politicians in both parties, who had
never considered the League issue on its merits, and expressed their
belief that the cause of international coöperation would gain more
by the election of Mr. Harding than by the election of Mr. Cox. They
based this opinion upon the Republican platform, which did not reject
the idea of international coöperation, but only opposed the League of
Nations without reservations, as Woodrow Wilson would have it. Give the
Republican administration the chance, and we should be in the League
more quickly than if the Democrats remained in power, they argued.
It is true that the Republican candidate stood on a platform, binding
us to take the initiative in bringing the nations of the world
together. As was so frequently said during the campaign, none was
opposed to the attainment, with the coöperation of the United States,
of a new world order through a properly constituted and properly
functioning League of Nations. “We are not against a league of
nations, and we should even have entered the Versailles League, had we
been allowed to make the strictly necessary reservations,” said the
Republicans. “The issue is the Versailles Covenant without reservations
safeguarding the liberty of action of the United States.”
Almost immediately after his inauguration Mr. Harding declared that
the American Government was studying the problem of how we could best
help Europe, and pointed out the obvious fact that the burden of heavy
armaments was the main cause of the inability of European states to
put into execution programs for economic rehabilitation. Although the
victory had resulted in the complete disarmament of their enemies, the
Entente Powers were spending more money for military purposes than
before the war. So was the United States, for that matter. The question
of limiting land armaments, however, was complicated by the reparations
question and the Bolshevist menace. Could not a beginning be made
in limiting naval armaments? The Principal Allied and Associated
Powers had complete and absolute control of the seas. The German and
Russian navies no longer existed. Why, then, the mad race for more
battle-ships? The victors could only be building against one another.
President Harding invited into his Cabinet two men peculiarly qualified
to advise him. No outstanding figure in American life had enjoyed a
better opportunity to study European conditions during the war and
the Peace Conference than Herbert Hoover. The new secretary of state,
Republican candidate at the preceding election, was an enthusiastic
protagonist of American coöperation in world affairs. The President
gave Mr. Hughes real authority in the State Department, and was not
jealous of sharing with him what glory might accrue from success in
administration policies.
President Harding and his advisers could not misinterpret the strong
sentiment that prevailed throughout the United States, irrespective
of party lines, to cut down the army and to modify the naval building
program that was an inheritance of the Wilson administration. Generals
Pershing and Bliss were the first to recognize the connection between
a reduction of the military and naval establishments of the United
States and the general problem of world peace. The press hailed with
satisfaction their declarations. Then Senator Borah introduced a
resolution, as follows:
The President is authorized and requested to invite the Governments
of Great Britain and Japan to send representatives to a conference,
which shall be charged with the duty of promptly entering into an
understanding or agreement by which the naval program of each of
the said Governments, to wit, the United States, Great Britain,
and Japan, shall be substantially reduced annually during the next
five years to such an extent and upon such terms as may be agreed
upon, which understanding or agreement is to be reported to the
respective Governments for approval.
The proposition for a naval holiday was indorsed by a conference in
Chicago in May, attended by official representatives of the Federal
Council of the Churches of Christ in America, the National Catholic
Welfare Council, and the Central Conference of American Synagogues.
Public sentiment enabled Senator Borah to get his resolution adopted as
a rider to the Naval Appropriation Bill. The details of the plan had
to be worked out carefully by the State Department. From a practical
point of view, it did not seem possible to the Administration to ignore
France and Italy, and Secretary Hughes advised the President that any
discussion of naval armaments would inevitably bring up the subject of
the balance of power in the Pacific. A proposal for a naval holiday, to
be entertained by Japan, would have to take into account China and the
Anglo-Japanese alliance.
After these matters had been considered by sounding the powers
interested, identical invitations were sent to Great Britain, Japan,
France, and Italy, inviting them to participate “in a conference on the
subject of limitation of armament, in connection with which Pacific and
Far Eastern questions will also be discussed, to be held in Washington
on November 11, 1921.” An invitation was sent also to China, in which
the paragraph concerning naval armaments was omitted.
The unrecognized Far Eastern Republic of Siberia, Belgium, Portugal,
and Holland asked for invitations, on the ground that any international
discussion of Pacific and Far Eastern questions interested them as
vitally as the other powers. On October 4, Belgium, Portugal, and
Holland were asked to send delegates. The request of Siberia was
refused, with the following explanation:
In the absence of a single, recognized Russian Government, the
protection of legitimate Russian interests must devolve as a
moral trusteeship upon the whole Conference. It is regrettable
that the Conference, for reasons quite beyond the control of the
participating Powers, is to be deprived of the advantage of Russian
coöperation in its deliberations. But it is not to be conceived
that the Conference will take decisions prejudicial to legitimate
Russian interests or which would in any manner violate Russian
rights.
It should be noted that the term “limitation of armament” was used in
the original invitation and in all the later official correspondence
concerning the conference. The American Government was anxious not
to lead the people to expect too much of this first attempt to get
the powers together to listen to reason on the subject of competitive
armaments, and it was necessary to show that a naval holiday agreement
was a benefit that could not be gained without the assumption of
definite responsibilities and pledges in regard to international
questions, the method proposed for the solution of which had hitherto
been force alone.
The success of the Washington Conference depended upon the fulfilment
of four conditions, the first of which affected all the powers
participating, and the second, third, and fourth of which affected
Great Britain, Japan, and the United States respectively. The
conditions were: (1) that matters other than those on the agenda be
rigorously excluded from the discussions; (2) that the British be
willing to give up the supremacy of the sea; (3) that Japan agree to
accept an agreement regulating the status quo in the Pacific in return
for consenting to an inferiority in sea-power and the abrogation of
the Anglo-Japanese alliance: and (4) that the United States ratify a
treaty binding us to coöperate with other powers in maintaining a fixed
political status quo for a period of years in Eastern Asia and the
Pacific. Without these conditions, limitation of naval armament was
impracticable. If they were fulfilled, nothing that France, Italy, the
lesser European states, China, or Russia (for the time being) could
say, would wreck the adoption and execution of the proposed program of
the conference.
In view of the many problems confronting Japan in world politics,
discussion of which is beyond the scope of this book, it was predicted
freely by Far Eastern experts that Japan would make embarrassing
demands at the conference, and that the refusal to accede to them would
lead to the withdrawal of Japan. But the same irresistible current of
public opinion, voiced by a war-weary and tax-ridden people, forced
Japanese statesmen to enter the conference with the idea that failure
to arrive at an agreement was unthinkable. In October, just as the
delegation was leaving, Tokio newspaper comment indicated this. For
example, the “Yomiuri” said:
As to the questions of population and food, these are, of course,
matters of life and death, and it is necessary to make efforts
at every possible opportunity to secure an understanding with
the Powers. But at the same time ... all intelligent men in this
country are unanimous in taking the stand that there is no other
means of solving these problems except by making our policy toward
China thoroughly pacific and economic and by thus developing our
trade and industry.... It is urged that the open door and equal
opportunity are synonymous with equality of races, and that as such
race equality should be proposed to the Conference. If the Japanese
delegates should withdraw in case that proposal is rejected,
Japan might be the victor from the point of view of international
morality, but the practical result would be greater isolation. We
cannot afford to attend the Conference in expectation of increased
international isolation.
The British had long known that it was hopeless to expect to continue
indefinitely the effort to keep ahead of the United States in naval
construction. They were pitted against a people possessing superior
wealth and means of production, whose Government was already committed
to the elaborate program adopted in 1916. It was better to adopt the
principle of equality of sea-power with the United States than to
find themselves outclassed within the next decade. While it was true
that American sentiment had turned against extravagance in naval
construction, refusal on the part of the British Government to accept
limitation of armament on the basis of equality would undoubtedly have
resulted in a determination of the Americans not only to go ahead with
their program but to match any program Great Britain might adopt as
a counter-measure. British public opinion did not regard the United
States as a potential enemy, as had been the case with Germany, and
as would be the case with any other European country or Japan. Public
opinion in the British self-governing dominions was in favor of the
termination of the Japanese alliance, and this fact had to be taken
into account by the British Admiralty. The British faced graciously a
condition, and accepted it.
Disarmament, or rather limitation of armament, had become a policy
almost universally favored among Americans. There was something of
religious fervor in the spirit with which the Americans opened the
conference. The program proposed by Secretary Hughes meant relief from
taxation, of course. But to the man in the street it signified far
more than that. Looking at the problem of both land and sea armaments
from a more academic standpoint than the other Powers could afford to
adopt, the American people believed that the naval holiday was the
first step toward the genuine reëstablishment of peace and good will
among nations. They were taken somewhat aback when it developed during
the conference that the agreement limiting armaments would have to be
accompanied by other agreements that appealed less to the imagination
and awakened again the fear of foreign entanglements. But in order to
secure the first agreement the Senate felt that it did not dare to
refuse to ratify a four-power treaty, binding the principal Pacific
powers to respect one another’s Pacific territories.[25]
When the conference finished its work at the beginning of February,
there was dissatisfaction in many quarters in America. Some felt that
the naval holiday should have included sweeping reductions and a
fixed ratio in other kinds of naval craft than capital ships. Others
argued that the conference, before breaking up, should have bound the
participating powers to reassemble in the near future to consider land
armaments. All believed that the old principles of world politics were
too much in evidence in the treatment of China. But none was able
to contest the statement of President Harding that the Washington
Conference was epoch-making in that it marked the beginning, and a
distinct step forward, on the path toward a new method in putting an
end to competitive armaments.
The conference had also to its credit the diminishing, if not the
removal, of causes for conflicts among the powers in the Far East. For
a time, at least, there would be no more loose talk of the inevitable
war between the United States and Japan, and the suspicion and discord
resulting from the Anglo-Japanese treaty improved the relations
between the United States and Great Britain, between Great Britain and
her self-governing dominions, and between Great Britain and China.
The subsequent withdrawal of Japan from Shantung indicated how the
Washington Conference had made possible the fulfilment of Japan’s
promise to President Wilson. On the other hand, the character of the
decisions made at the Washington Conference was in no way harmful to
the interests of Russia, and will not be upset when Russia becomes once
more a factor in Far Eastern affairs. The non-participation of Russia,
therefore, does not vitiate the work of the Washington Conference in
the same way as the exclusion of Russia from the deliberations of the
Lausanne Conference threatens to make ineffective its decisions as to
the Straits and other Near Eastern problems.
From the success of the initiative of the American Government in the
autumn of 1921, however, it is unsafe to draw the analogy that we
should have been equally successful had we made the same proposal
that the powers come together in our far-off and virtually neutral
capital to make a similar beginning in solving the imperative problem
of limitation of land armaments of European nations. We had a stake
at Washington which we do not have in Europe. We had vital interests
to safeguard which we do not have in Europe. We had means of bringing
pressure to bear upon the participating powers which we would not
possess in a land disarmament conference. At Washington we gained
equality of sea-power with the greatest naval nation without having to
pay heavily for it. No balance of power question or any other subject
of international politics in Europe affects our interests in the way
the balance of power in the Pacific and the amelioration of China’s
international position do. At Washington we had the trump argument
that if competition in naval armaments was not stopped we should be
compelled to become the predominant naval power.
Naval disarmament was essentially an extra-European question. Land
disarmament affects primarily the nations of continental Europe, and
enters only secondarily and indirectly into American, British, and
Japanese foreign policy. In contrast to the Washington Conference, the
continuation conferences in connection with the Paris peace settlement,
as we shall see in the next chapter, have been dominated by France’s
fear of Germany and the anxiety of the other beneficiaries by the
treaties to preserve their newly won independence and increases of
territory. Reparations are subordinated to security, and security seems
still to depend upon standing armies. Standing armies are a drain
on the finances of states already on the verge of bankruptcy. And,
inseparable from the question of reparations and security, from the
standpoint of the European states, is the problem we vainly try to make
a business matter, the settlement of interallied debts.