THE FRENCH AT THE CONFERENCE
The morale of an international conference is easily shaken in the
public’s mind. Seeming delay will do it. Those who look on feel that
whatever is to be done must be done quickly, that things must go in
leaps. They mistrust days of plain hard work—work which yields no
headlines. It must be, they repeat, because the negotiators have fallen
on evil times, are intriguing, bargaining.
Two days after Mr. Hughes had laid out his plan for ship reduction, and
it had been accepted in principle and turned over to the naval
committee, I heard an eager, suspicious young journalist ask Lord Lee
who, at the end of eight hours of committee work—grilling business
always—was conducting a press conference, if they were really “doing
anything.” His tone showed that he doubted it, that in his judgment they
must be loafing, deceiving the public; that if they were not, why, by
this time the program ought to be ready for his newspaper. Lord Lee was
very tired, but he had not lost his sense of humor. He made a patient
answer. But one understood that there had already begun in Washington
that which one saw and heard so much two years and a half before in
Paris—a feeling that taking time to work out problems was a suspicious
performance.
The calm of steady effort on the part of the Conference was brief. Mr.
Hughes in closing the second plenary session where his naval program had
been so generously accepted “in principle,” had said “I express the wish
of the Conference that at an opportune time M. Briand will enjoy the
opportunity of presenting to the Conference most fully the views of
France with regard to the subject of land armaments which we must
discuss.” Mr. Hughes kept that promise, fixing November 21, nine days
after the opening, as the “opportune time.”
The Conference went into M. Briand’s open session serene, confident,
self-complacent. It came out excited, scared, ruffled to the very bottom
of its soul. In an hour one-third of Mr. Hughes’ agenda had been swept
away. Could this have been avoided? I am inclined to think that it would
have been if there had been a larger sympathy, a better understanding of
the French and their present psychology. If we are to carry on the world
coöperatively, as seems inevitable, we must have a much fuller knowledge
of one another’s ways and prejudices and ambitions than was shown at the
outset of the Washington Conference.
Back of the commotion that M. Briand stirred up on November 21 lay the
idiosyncrasies and experiences of France. To understand at all the
crisis, for so it was called, one must understand something of
France—that she is a land which through the centuries has held herself
apart as something special, the élite of the nations. The people of no
country in the civilized world are so satisfied with themselves and
their aim. There are no people that find life at home more precious,
guard it so carefully, none who care so little about other lands, and it
might be said, know so little of other lands.
It is only within the last twenty years that the Frenchman has come to
be anything of a traveler. To-day, in many parts of France, the young
man or young woman who comes to America has the same prestige on
returning that thirty years ago the person in towns outside of the
Atlantic border had in his town when he returned from a trip abroad. I
was living in Paris in the early 90’s when Alphonse Daudet made a trip
to England. It was a public event. Peary discovered the pole with hardly
less newspaper talk.
Now this country, so wrapt up in itself and the carrying out of its
notions of life—among the most precious notions in my judgment that
mankind have—finds itself for a long period really the center of the
world’s interests. It makes a superhuman effort, is valiant beyond
words, practically the whole civilized world rallies to its help. It
comes off victorious, and when it gathers itself together and begins to
examine its condition it finds the ghastly wounds of a devastated
region; the work of centuries so shattered that it will take centuries
to restore the fertility, beauty, interest. It finds itself with an
appalling debt; with a population depleted at the point most vital to a
nation, in its young men, threatening the oncoming generation. It sees
its enemy beaten, to be sure, but with its land practically unimpaired.
France not only had her condition in her mind, she had all her
past:—reminiscences of invasions, from Attila on. Old obsessions, old
policies revived:—the belief that she would never have safety except in
a weak Central Europe—a doctrine she had repudiated—broke out.
She came to the peace table in Paris under an accepted program which
said: Reparations, but no indemnities. And her bitterness so overwhelmed
her that she forgot the principle pledge and demanded indemnities in
full. She forgot her pledge to annex nothing and called for the Rhine
Border. Every effort to reason with her, to persuade her not to ask the
impossible of her beaten enemy, she interpreted as lack of sympathy, and
pointed to her devastated region, her debts, her shrunken population.
She accused of injustice those who felt that mercy is the great wisdom.
Justice became her great cry. Intent on herself, her dreadful woes, her
determination to have the last pound, she magnified her perils, saw
combinations against her, and went about in Europe trying to arm other
peoples, to build up a pro-France party. Any effort to persuade her that
the spirit which underlay the Versailles Treaty was pro-humanity and not
pro-French embittered and antagonized her. She resented the English
effort to bring some kind of order into the Continent. She resented the
conclusion of the world—slow enough though it was—to let Russia work out
her own destiny.
No lover of France has any right to overlook or encourage this attitude.
It is the most dangerous course she could take. She is building up
anti-French antagonisms in beaten Europe, and she is alienating
countries that want to bring the world onto a new basis of Good Will and
who believe it can be done.
When M. Briand came to the Washington peace table, he left behind him a
country in this abnormal mood—her thoughts centered on herself—her
needs, her dangers. M. Briand knew well enough that she would not see
the program that Mr. Hughes had thrown out as it was intended—a
tremendously bold suggestion for world peace—a call to the sacrifice
that each country must make if order was to be restored, the awful
losses of recent years repaired. M. Briand knew that what France
expected him to get at Washington was recognition, sympathy, guarantees.
The last thing that she wanted brought back was a request to join in a
program of sacrifice.
Moreover, M. Briand came to the Conference at considerable peril to
himself. He was Premier, and in this office he had been doing as much as
he seems to have thought possible to hold down the military trend of the
country. His policy had been fought for a year by a strong party, intent
on demonstrating that France was the most powerful nation on the
continent of Europe, that it was her right and her ambition to hold
first place there. M. Briand’s friends thought that he should not come
to the United States. But, as he publicly said, he wanted to come in
order to persuade the Conference that France was not as military in
spirit as much of the world seemed to believe, that she did want peace,
that her refusals to disarm came from the fact that she was still
threatened by both Germany and Russia and must either have arms or
guarantees.
M. Briand knew the line of argument that the Hughes program would awaken
in France. This argument was admirably set forth early in the Conference
by the semi-official _Le Temps_:
“I. Under a régime of limited armaments such as that of which Mr.
Hughes has defined the basis, each state has the right to possess
force proportioned to the dangers to which, in the opinion of all
the contracting powers, it may reasonably believe itself to be
exposed.
“II. When powers agree among themselves to limit their armaments
they oblige themselves by that very fact even though tacitly aiding
that one of themselves which should find itself at grips with a
danger which its limited armaments would not allow it to subdue.
“III. It is not possible to have a contractual limitation of
armament without there being at the same time among all the
contractants a joint and several obligation of mutual aid.”
It is not unfair, I think, to say that when M. Briand came to speak to
the Washington Conference on November 21, he was not thinking of the
peace of the world; he was thinking of the needs and ambitions of
France. Moreover, his mood was not the most conciliatory in the world.
His pride and his pride for his country had been deeply wounded on the
opening day of the Conference. He had found himself on that occasion set
at one side. To be sure, he and his colleagues were given a position at
the right of the American delegates, Great Britain being at the left;
but when Mr. Hughes presented his naval program, France did not figure
in it, except incidentally. The whole discussion was centered on Great
Britain, Japan and the United States. France and Italy were set aside
with the casual remark that it was not thought necessary to discuss
their tonnage allowance at that time.
Did Mr. Hughes lack tact and understanding when he confined his opening
speech to three nations? I think that the after events point that way.
To have invited eight nations and to have spoken to but two at the start
was a good deal like inviting eight guests to a dining table and talking
to but two of them through the meal. The oversight, if that’s the proper
word for it, was forgotten, if noticed by any one in the really
tremendous thing that Mr. Hughes did. The trouble is that there is
almost always one among a number of neglected guests that does feel and
does not forget it.
The opening week of the Conference kept France in about the same
position that she had on the opening day. She was not yet a principal,
and another point—and one that is hard on the French—they saw here what
they began to see in Paris in 1919 and so openly resented there—that
English is taking the place of French as the language of diplomacy.
There is no mistake about this, and I don’t wonder that all Frenchmen
resent it. At the opening day every delegate, except M. Briand, spoke in
English; the French translations which followed each speech were made
purely out of compliment to the French delegation. M. Briand is one of
not a few in France who will take no pains, whatever their contracts, to
learn a word of English. For the last two years he has been constantly
in conference with Lloyd George, he has had most of that time the
remarkable interpreter, M. Carmlynck, at his side. I have heard M.
Carmlynck say that in all this time M. Briand has not learned a word of
English, although Lloyd George, who at the start understood no French at
all, is now able to follow closely the arguments in French, and even
will at times correct or question the phrasing of the translation into
English.
The French are not a race that conceal their feelings. An Englishman, an
American, is apt to accuse anybody who does not cover up disappointment,
resentment, of being a poor sport. France’s chief contempt for the
Anglo-Saxon is that he is not out and out with everything; that he has
reticences and reserves, conceals his dislikes, his vices, his emotions.
The French showed at Washington from the start that they were
disappointed. They did not mix freely; they did not use the ample
offices prepared for them in the Annex to the Pan-American Building,
where the delegates sat, although every other nation was making more or
less use of these quarters. They insisted on conducting all their press
meetings in French alone, although every other nation, when it put up
somebody who did not speak English, provided a translator. The result
was that the French press gatherings were sparsely attended.
And then came M. Briand’s speech, which caused the first Conference
crisis. For days after that speech was made, I listened to people remake
it, giving their idea of how he might have used the same matter and
carried his audience with him, giving them the impression of a
courageous people, as they really are, intent not only on the
restoration of their tormented and suffering land but willing to do
their part to restore the rest of the world. Instead, M. Briand gave an
impression of a land in panic, its mind centered on possible dangers
from a conquered enemy. It was _France Sanglante_ that he held in
upraised arms before the Conference, a bleeding France at whom ravening
German and Russian wolves were snapping and threatening. All his
powerful oratory, his wealth of emotional gesture, upraised arms, tossed
black locks, rolling head, tortured features—all these M. Briand brought
into play in his efforts to arouse the Conference to share the fears of
France. He could not do it. He was talking to people as well informed as
himself on the actual facts of Europe, but people who are not
interpreting those facts in the way that the French do. He was talking
to people who view the situation of the present world as one to be
corrected only by hard, steady sacrifice and work in a spirit of good
will and mercy. Unhappily he gave them the impression that France
thought only of herself and of what the world should do for her to pay
her for her terrible sacrifices. In his picture of bleeding France he
did not include bleeding Belgium, Italy, England, Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, all of whom sat at the table and all of whom had suffered
losses and are staggering under debts, if not equal, at least comparable
to those of France.
It was a mistake of emphasis, that brilliant journalist Simeon Strunsky
said. He pointed out that the thing really relevant in M. Briand’s
speech was practically concealed from the public, that France had
disarmament plans on hand which soon would reduce her army one half and
her term of military service from three years to eighteen months. M.
Briand’s tragic picture of the danger of France so obscured this
statement, so vitally important to the work of the Conference, that not
a few people contended that no such statement was ever made. One has
only to look at the text of the address to see that it was there, though
so out of proportion to the bulk of the speech that it failed of its
effect.
The speech was disastrous. “I was never so heartsick in my life,” I
heard one of the greatest and most important men in Washington say after
it was over. Mr. Wells, that ardent advocate of the brotherhood of man,
knocked his doctrine all to smithereens by accusing France of wanting
arms to turn against England. Lord Curzon, as militant as Mr. Wells,
made a most unguarded speech for a man in his position.
France, sore and sensitive, cried aloud that the United States and Great
Britain were trying to isolate her. Mr. Hughes and Mr. Balfour had, to
be sure, made consoling speeches after M. Briand’s outburst, but they
were rather the efforts of serene elderly friends trying to calm the
panic of a frightened child, and their effect was rather to aggravate
France’s determination to assert herself, to prove herself the equal, by
arms, if necessary, of any nation in the world, England included.
The irritation of that day spread over the world. The Conference was
“wrecked,” cried the lovers of gloom and chaos. Washington buzzed with
gossip of wrangling between even the heads of delegations. There was a
rumor spread of a sharp quarrel between Mr. Balfour and Mr. Hughes on
the way the discussions in the committees were to be handled. It was
said that Mr. Hughes wanted everything that was voiced put down; that
Mr. Balfour thought a digest of the discussions would be sufficient.
This rumor was followed by the story of an ugly scene in committee
between the French Premier, Briand, and the Italian Senator Schanzer
over the morals of the Italian army.
Now, luckily the Conference was admirably arranged to scotch vicious
rumors. There never has been a great international gathering in which
the press had as real an opportunity to learn what was going on. Every
morning there was given out at press headquarters a list of delegates
who at fixed hours would receive the press. This morning bulletin ran
something like this:
11:00 A.M. Lord Lee
11:30 Ambassador Schanzer
3:00 P.M. Lord Riddle
3:30 Secretary Hughes
4:00 The President of the United States (twice a week)
5:30 Admiral Kato
6:00 Mr. Balfour
and so on. Every day from six to eight opportunities were given to
correspondents to question principals of the Conference. How much they
got depended upon how much they carried—how able they were to ask
questions—how sound their judgment was of the answers they received—how
honest their intent in interpreting. When ugly rumors such as those
which disturbed the second week of the Conference’s life occurred, this
method of treating the press was of real advantage to the powers
concerned. It was a joy to see the way Secretary Hughes, for instance,
handled the rumors at this moment.
It was always a joy to see Mr. Hughes when he was righteously indignant,
and he certainly was so on the afternoon of November 25. He lunged at
once at the report of the break between himself and Mr. Balfour. The
statement had no basis but the imagination of the writer. It was unjust
to Mr. Balfour, who had been coöperative from the start. To put him of
all men at the Conference in a position of opposing the United States
was most unfair. There had been no clashes in committees, no quarrels.
There had, of course, been differences in points of view, candid
statements, free explanations, but any one with common sense knew that
such exchange of views must take place. It was a fine, generous,
convincing answer to the ugly rumors, and the beauty of it was that you
believed Mr. Hughes. You knew that he was not lying to you. I believe
this to have been the general conviction of the newspaper men. He
convinced them and they were all for him. This was a real achievement
for any man, for the press craft are hard to convince and quick to
suspect. Many of them have been for years in the thick of public
affairs, watching men go up and down; seeing heroes made and unmade; the
incorruptible prove corruptible. One wonders sometimes not that they
have so little faith, but that they have any. They believed Mr. Hughes.
When he denied the rumors his word was accepted. But the rumors were
out, and had been cabled abroad and were already doing their ugly work
there—fighting right and left like mad dogs. There was even riot and
bloodshed in Italy over the report that Briand had spoken lightly of
their army.
It looked for the moment as if an atmosphere was gathering around the
Washington Conference similar to that in which the Paris Conference had
done its work. Indeed, already the observer who had been in Paris in
1919, had been more than once startled with the way the two conferences
were beginning to parallel each other. Just what happened in Paris had
already happened here—a wonderful first stage in which a noble program
had been given out—a program to which all the world had responded with
joy and hope. Then came a second stage in which the delegates attempted
to make their noble ideas realities. It was in this transition period
that the first convulsions of public and press began. They saw that, as
a matter of fact, the Conference had no magic to practice, that it was
nothing but the same old hard effort to work out by conferring, by
bargaining, by compromise, the best that they could get. And they saw,
too, that most of this work was going on behind closed doors. The moment
that the Washington Conference attempted to get down to cases there was
the same burst of remonstrance, suspicion, accusation that we saw in
Paris. “Secret diplomacy.” Then came rumors of quarrels. If it was
secret, must it not have been because there were things that they did
not want known outside—breaks in their good will? The rumors of quarrels
were spread with relish, and often malice. Dislike of this or that
nation flared up, mistrust of this or that man. Washington air was
saturated with impatience, suspicion, intrigue. Was the Conference to
gather about it the same storm of wicked passions that had been so
strong in Paris, doing their best to wreck the work, and frustrating
some of the noblest attempts. That dreadful “outside” of the Paris
Conference, created by the unreason, hate, vanity and ambitions of men,
seemed about to be duplicated. I had never set down my impressions of
the Paris atmosphere at the time of the Peace Conference; I would do it
now, that I might have it to compare with what seemed to me was about to
develop in Washington.