PEACEMAKERS—BLESSED AND OTHERWISE
_Observations, Reflections and Irritations at an International
Conference_
BY
IDA M. TARBELL
FATHER ABRAHAM
IN LINCOLN’S CHAIR
HE KNEW LINCOLN
THE WAYS OF WOMAN
THE RISING OF THE TIDE
NEW IDEALS IN BUSINESS
LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
HE KNEW LINCOLN, AND OTHER BILLY BROWN STORIES
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PEACEMAKERS—BLESSED AND OTHERWISE
_Observations, Reflections and Irritations at an International
Conference_
BY
IDA M. TARBELL
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1922
_All rights reserved_
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
COPYRIGHT, 1922,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and printed. Published April, 1922.
Press of
J. J. Little & Ives Company
New York, U. S. A.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOREWORD
This book does not pretend to be a history or even an adequate review of
the work of the Conference on the Limitation of Armament, nor does it
pretend to be the writer’s full appraisement of that work. It is what
its sub-title suggests, a collection of observations, rejections and
irritations. These were set down each week of the first two months of
the Conference and were published practically as they stand here by the
McClure Syndicate.
I. M. T.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. PRE-CONFERENCE REFLECTIONS 1
II. ARMISTICE DAY 29
III. NOVEMBER 12, 1921 41
IV. THE FRENCH AT THE CONFERENCE 60
V. THE PARIS SHRINE OF OUR LADY OF HATES 83
VI. WHY DID HE DO IT? 99
VII. DRAMATIC DIPLOMACY 114
VIII. THE MOODS OF AN INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE 137
IX. PUT YOURSELF IN THEIR PLACES 160
X. CHINA AT THE CONFERENCE 186
XI. THE MEASURE OF THE WASHINGTON CONFERENCE 206
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PEACEMAKERS—BLESSED AND OTHERWISE
_Observations, Reflections and Irritations
at an International Conference_
CHAPTER I
PRE-CONFERENCE REFLECTIONS
When one attempts to set down, with any degree of candor, his
impressions of a great gathering like the Conference on the Limitation
of Armament, he will find himself swayed from amusement to irritation,
from hope to despair, from an interest in the great end to an interest
in the game as it is being played. My hopes and interests and
irritations over the Washington Conference began weeks before it was
called. What could it do? All around me men and women were saying, “It
will end war,” and possibly—so deep was the demand in them that war be
ended—believing what they said. It has always been one of the singular
delusions of people with high hopes that if nations disarmed there could
be no wars. Take the gun away from the child and he will never hurt
himself. If it were so easy!
Their confidence alarmed the authors of the Conference. They did not
mean disarmament, but limitation of armament. Moreover it was not even a
Conference _for_ but one _on_ limitation. This was equivalent to saying
that there were other matters involved in cutting down arms—the causes
that had brought them into being in the first place, the belief that
only in them was security, and that if you were to do away with them you
must find a substitute, and a way to make this substitute continually
effective. That is, there were several problems for the Conference to
solve if they were to put a limit to armaments, and they were not easy
problems. But those who kept their eyes on disarmament, pure and simple,
refused to face them.
Along with the many who believed the coming Conference could say the
magic word were not a few—the sophisticated, who from the start said:
“Well, of course, you don’t expect anything to come out of it.” Or, “Are
you not rather naïve to suppose that they will do anything?” And
generally the comment was followed by “Of course nothing came from
Paris.”
This superior attitude—sometimes vanity, sometimes disillusionment,
sometimes resentment at trying any new form of international dealing—was
quite useless to combat. You had an endless task of course if you
attacked them on the point of nothing coming out of Paris when you
believed profoundly that a great deal of good, as well as much evil, had
come out of Paris, and that the good is bound to increase and the evil
to diminish as time goes on.
Very singular, the way that people dismiss the treaty of Versailles,
drop it out of count as a thing so bungling and evil that it is bound to
eventuate only in wars, bound to be soon upset. The poor human beings
that made the treaty of Versailles lacked omniscience, to be sure, and
they certainly strained their “fourteen points,” but it will be noted
that not a few of the arrangements that they made are working fairly
well.
Moreover, what the Superior forget is that that treaty had an instrument
put into it intended for its own correction. The Covenant of the League
of Nations is a part of the treaty of Versailles and it says very
specifically that if at any time in the future any treaty—if that means
anything it must include the treaty of Versailles—becomes
“inapplicable,” works disturbance between the nations instead of peace,
the League may consider it.
The belief in political magic on one side and doubt of all new political
ventures on the other, made the preliminary days of the Washington
Conference hard for the simple-minded observer, prepared to hope for the
best and to take no satisfaction in the worst, not to ask more than the
conferring powers thought they could safely undertake, to believe that
the negotiators would be as honest as we can expect men to be, and that
within the serious limits that are always on negotiators, would do their
best.
One had to ask himself, however, what substantial reasons, if any, he
had that the Conference would be able to do the things that it had set
down as its business. This business was very concisely laid down in an
agenda, divided into two parts and running as follows:
_Limitation of Armaments_:
(1) Limitation of naval armaments under which shall be discussed
the following:
(A) Basis of limitation
(B) Extent
(C) Fulfillment
(D) Rules for control of new agencies of warfare
(E) Limitation of land armaments.
_Far Eastern Questions_:
(1) Questions relating to China
First. Principles to be applied
Second. Application
Subjects:
(A) Territorial integrity
(B) Administrative integrity
(C) Open door
(D) Concessions, monopolies, preferential privileges
(E) Development of railways, including plans relative to the
Chinese Eastern Railway
(F) Preferential railway rates
(G) Status of existing commitments.
_Siberia_:
Sub-headings the same as those under China.
_Mandated Islands_:
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.
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.
“Get them to plowing again, to popping corn by their own firesides, and
you can’t get them to shoulder a musket again for fifty years,” Lincoln
said of the soldiers that the approaching end of the Civil War would
release. As a matter of fact—suppression of the Indians aside—it was
only thirty-three years when they were at it again, but there was no
great heart in the enterprise; they still preferred their “plows and
popcorn,” and the experience of the Great War had only intensified that
feeling.
Cut down armament now merely for sake of reducing taxation and you would
give the world’s love of peace a chance to grow—and that was something.
But it was something which must be qualified.
The history of man’s conduct shows that however much he desires his
peaceful life, the moment what he conceives to be his country’s
interest—which he looks at as his interest—is threatened, he will throw
his tools of peace into the corner and seize those of war. It does not
matter whether he is prepared or not. Men always have and, unless we can
find something beside force to appeal to in a pinch, always will do just
as they did at Lexington, as the peasants of Belgium did at the rumor of
the advance of the Germans—seize any antiquated kicking musket or
blunderbuss they can lay their hands on and attack.
There was another significant possibility to limitation, on which the
lovers of peace rightfully counted—certainly believers in war do not
overlook it—and that was the chance that the enforced breathing spell
would give for improving and developing peace machinery. It would give a
fresh chance to preach the new methods, arouse faith in them, stir
governments to greater interest in them and less in arms.
It was a possibility—but to offset it experience shows that with the
passing of the threat of war, interest in pacific schemes is generally
left to a few tireless and little considered groups of non-official
people. Active interest inside governments dies out. The great peace
suggestions and ventures of the world have been born of wars fought
rather than of wars that might be fought. The breathing spell long
continued might end in a general rusting and neglect of the very methods
for preventing wars which peace lovers are now pushing.
What it all amounted to was that the most drastic limitation was no sure
guarantee against future war. Take away a man’s gun and it is no
guarantee that he will not strike if aroused. You must get at the
man—enlarge his respect for order, his contempt for violence, change his
notion of procedure in disputes, establish his control. It takes more
than “gun toting” to make a dangerous citizen, more than relieving him
of his gun to make a safe one.
If the Conference only cut down the number of guns the nations were
carrying, it would have done little to insure permanent peace. The
President’s conference on unemployment which held its sessions just
before the Conference on the Limitation of Armament spent considerable
time in considering what the industry of the country might do to prevent
industrial crises. Among the principles it laid down was one quite as
applicable to international as to business affairs.
“_The time to act is before a crisis has become inevitable._”
That was the real reason for the existence of the coming Conference—to
act before the jealousies and misunderstandings around the Pacific had
gone so far that there was no solution _but_ war. Let us suppose that in
1913 say, England, France, Germany, Austria and Russia had held a
conference over an agenda parallel to the one now laid down for the
Washington Conference—one that not only considered limiting their armies
and navies but boldly and openly attacked the fears, the jealousies, the
needs, and the ambitions of them all—might it not have been possible
that they would have found a way other than war? Are governments
incapable in the last analysis of settling difficulties save by force
and exhaustion, or are they made impotent by the idea that no machinery
and methods for handling international affairs are possible save the
ones which have so often landed their peoples in the ditch?
In his farewell words to this country at the end of his recent visit,
the late Viscount Bryce remarked that anybody could frighten himself
with a possibility but the course of prudence was to watch it and
estimate the likelihood that it would ever enter into the sphere of
probability.
It is just here that governments have fallen down worst. They might
watch the war possibilities, but they have refused or not been able to
evaluate them. They seemed to have felt usually that closing their eyes
to them or at least refusing to admit them was the only proper
diplomatic attitude.
As a rule, it has been the non-responsible outsider that has exploited
war possibilities. Sometimes this has been done from the highest
motives, with knowledge and restraint. More often it has been done on
half-knowledge and with reckless indifference to results. There are
always a number of people around with access to the public ear who love
to handle explosives—never quite happy unless their imaginations are
busy with wars and revolutions. There are others possessed by the pride
of prophecy—their vanity is demonstrating the inevitable strife in the
situation. They are the makers of war scares—the breeders and feeders of
war passions. Sometimes war possibilities are the materials for skillful
national propaganda—the agent of one nation working on a second to
convince it of the hostile intent of a third.
It is the governments concerned that should be handling this sort of
stuff and handling it in such a way that they would cut under the
malicious and the wanton, get at the real truth and get at it in time
and get it out to the world.
One of the chief reasons for some sort of active association of nations
is that there should be a permanent central agency always working over
war possibilities, estimating them, heading them off.
Present diplomacy does not do it. Could the coming Conference find a way
for just this service in the Pacific situation?
How could the public be sure the Conference was really seeking these
ends? Only by openness and frankness. Could one really expect that? No
one of sense and even a very little knowledge of how men achieve
results, whether in statecraft or in business, would think for a moment
that the Conference must sit daily in open session with a public
listening to all that it said. There was only one practical way of
handling the agenda. The Conference must form itself into groups, each
charged with a subject on which it was to arrive at some kind of
understanding. The report must be presented at the Conference. But when
this was done there should be free, open discussion.
To handle the plenary sessions of the present Conference as they were
handled in Paris in 1919 would be a tragic mistake. These plenary
conferences were splendidly set scenes. No one who looked on the
gathering at which the Covenant of the League of Nations was presented
would ever forget it. Nor would he forget how the gloved-and-iron hand
of Clemenceau never for a moment released its grip; how effectively, for
example, the incipient revolt against the mandate system aimed at making
nations the protectors and not the exploiters of the German territories
to be disposed of was soft-pedaled. Nor would he ever forget certain
sinister faces in the great picture that chilled at their birth the high
hopes which the Conference championed.
Free discussion, running, if you please, over days at this juncture,
might have insured an easier, straighter road for the treaty of
Versailles and particularly for the League of Nations.
Frankness would be the greatest ally of all who looked on the great
mission of the coming Conference as preventing the Pacific crisis from
ever ending in war. Frankness would break the war bubbles that the
irresponsible were blowing so gayly. It would be the surest preventive
of the fanatical and partisan drives which are almost certain to develop
if there was unnecessary secrecy. Naturally, those on the outside would
look on a failure to take the public in as proof that sinister forces
were at work in the Conference, that dark things were brewing which must
be kept out of sight.
As a matter of fact, one look inside would probably show a group of worn
and anxious gentlemen honestly doing their best to find something on
which they could agree with a reasonable hope that the countries that
had sent them to Washington would accept their decisions. After one good
look the public might change suspicion to sympathy.
There was always the argument from the conventionally minded that “it
isn’t done,” that diplomacy must be secret. John Hay didn’t think so. He
told his friend Henry Adams in the course of his efforts to establish
the “open door” in China that he got on by being “honest and naïf!”
The point in this policy at which most people, in and out of the present
Conference, would stick is that word “naïf.” They would prefer to be
thought dishonest rather than simple-minded. However, if everybody who
had a part in the gathering could be as simple-minded as he was in fact,
would pretend to know no more than he did in truth and would be as
honest as it was in his nature to be, there would be a good chance of
keeping Mr. Hay’s door in China open. And if that could be done along
with the other things it implied, the Conference would have actually
contributed to the chances of more permanent peace in the world and
could cut down its armaments, because it had less need of them, not
merely because it wanted temporarily to reduce taxation.