THE MOODS OF AN INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
If we are to succeed in repairing this battered world through the medium
of the International Conference, then plainly it is the business of us
all to try to understand the methods, the conduct and particularly the
moods of this instrument of peace. It is as temperamental as a stock
exchange. The Washington Conference began with a period of tremendous
exultation. Mr. Hughes’ great naval program lifted the world. For ten
days this mood prevailed. Then came the French in the person of their
Prime Minister, Briand, and in an hour he had the temple of peace
rocking on its base.
It was very interesting to see how the men who made up the Conference
went steadily ahead from ten to six every day—and sometimes longer—in
spite of the excitement M. Briand had stirred up. It was a fine example
of the stabilizing effect of a daily task regularly followed. They went
on for four weeks and then again stirred the world to enthusiasm by
their Four Power Pact; their removal of the Yap irritation; their
consent to the Japanese mandate in the Pacific; their acceptance of the
Five-Five-Three naval ratio. At one swoop the war with Japan that a part
of the American public has so sedulously cultivated for a good term of
years was wiped off the map—unless the United States Senate prefer to
restore it to its position.
However, the naval program was not a fact accomplished until France and
Italy had consented to a ratio. That was the next step, and Mr. Hughes
seemed to have turned to it with the utmost confidence—1.75 was the
ratio he had fixed on as proper; then suddenly, without any warning, the
soaring stock of the Conference dropped way below par. A British
journalist, with more love of sensation than the honor of his
profession, announced that the French had told the naval committee that
France wanted to build ten 35,000 ton ships. The effect of those numbers
suddenly thrown on a table where the figuring for weeks had been down,
not up, was more nearly to throw the Conference delegates off their feet
than anything that had happened to date. There was no questioning their
dismay, for while Mr. Balfour and Mr. Hughes refused, as it was proper
for them to do, to discuss the matter, while the French likewise kept
their mouths shut, and complained that they had been betrayed, Mr.
Hughes showed his excitement by a long cablegram, appealing to M.
Briand, over the head of the then acting chief of the French delegation,
M. Sarraut. Outside the Conference an excited world declared the whole
thing was wrecked and that France had wrecked it.
Could this unhappy incident have been avoided? If the Conference had
shown a more sympathetic understanding of the way France is feeling
to-day, if there had been the realization which we certainly should
expect of the effect of calling her into a gathering of this kind and
then letting her Premier sit for a week with practically no attention,
it probably would have been. When M. Briand was leaving the Conference
on the opening day an American journalist asked him what he thought of
it. The American way, he said, “à la Américaine.” And then he went on to
remark that when the time came France would do like Mr. Hughes and talk
in the American way. Weeks went on and France had no chance to talk in
anybody’s way about her naval ratio. Everybody else but herself seems to
have taken it for granted that 1.75 was to be her proportion. When her
turn finally came, however, she began to hurl capital ships at Mr.
Hughes’ program—ten of them, 35,000 tons each. The figures looked
appalling, preposterous—they produced, as I have said, almost a panic.
Now, obviously, the panic would have been avoided, as far as the public
is concerned, if the matter had been kept in committee where it belonged
and where the French intended to keep it. Given to the public, it
stirred up anger on both sides of the water, whipped up suspicion, set
all the busybodies at inventing far-fetched explanations and reading
sinister meanings into the French proposal.
There was little trouble when Mr. Hughes appealed to M. Briand in
getting the capital-ship ratio dropped back to the 1.75 first suggested.
But along with this concession in the matter of capital ships went the
decision that France would not limit her submarines and auxiliary craft.
She wanted unlimited submarines for defense—defense against whom? It
must be us, said England. She wanted auxiliary craft for the protection
of scattered colonies. Here she took her position and here she remained.
Mr. Hughes’ naval program leaves the number of submarines and light
craft a nation builds at its discretion. Too bad—could it have been
avoided?
One thing seems quite certain, that Mr. Hughes missed a tremendous
opportunity in not boldly declaring in his original program that as for
the United States, it was done with submarines. We did that at Paris in
1919. The head of our delegation, President Wilson, and his naval
advisers agreed that in the disarmament pledged by the League of Nations
the submarine was one weapon which could and should be put entirely out
of existence. Its record of cowardice and plain murder no one could
defend. The treaty of Versailles forbade the Germans to construct
submarines for any purpose, and it certainly was the farthest from the
thought of the majority of those who made that treaty that they were
laying down one rule for Germany and another for themselves. The idea
there was to disarm and to begin with Germany.
Why the American delegation should not have followed that policy here in
regard to the submarine is not clear. But when it was not done in the
opening program, it is still less understandable why they did not seize
the British suggestion when it was made by Mr. Balfour. The British had
the American program for naval reduction flung into their faces without
warning, and they picked it up like wonderful sports, as did the
Japanese. But when Mr. Balfour notified the Conference that he should
propose complete abolition of the submarine, there was no such response.
There were not a few of us who had an uncomfortable chill over the
Washington Conference when our government failed promptly to follow the
British in this policy, failed to say, “Yes, we are with you, it’s
beastly business this submarine warfare—one thing we can do away with.
We will join you in outlawing it.” But this was not done, and because it
was not done, coupled with France’s determination to seize every chance
that came along to secure recognition for herself, to enforce her
argument that she must be prepared to defend herself, since nobody in
the world seemed prepared to give her the guarantees which she thought
necessary, if she were to disarm, the submarine came in to trouble Mr.
Hughes’ program, and, incidentally, to spoil the Conference’s holiday
week.
The regret was the greater because the arguments that Lord Lee and Mr.
Balfour had put up for the abolition of the submarine were so weighty
and conclusive that if they could have been presented at the start, or
at least earlier in the negotiations, there seems to be little doubt
that they would not have won over the Conference. These arguments have
the backing of Great Britain’s experience with submarines, the most
serious and extensive experience that any nation has yet had with this
particular weapon. Lord Lee and Mr. Balfour had the facts to show that
the German submarine fleet was able to accomplish relatively little in
the Great War in the way of legitimate naval warfare. It left the
British Grand Fleet untouched. In spite of all its efforts, it did not
prevent the British taking fifteen million troops across the English
Channel, and the Americans two million across the Atlantic. It was of
little use to the British in guarding their coast line, which, as Lord
Lee pointed out, was almost as great as the combined coast line of the
four other powers in the discussion. What the German submarine fleet did
do, however, was to destroy some twelve million tons of mercantile
shipping and murder twenty thousand non-combatants—men, women and
children. The counter defense against the submarine has been so
developed, Lord Lee claimed, that an attacking fleet could be equipped
to resist any number of them. That is, the methods of detecting,
locating and destroying submarines have greatly outstripped their
offensive power.
One of the strong arguments for the abolition of the submarine is the
fact that it is possible to abolish it by general consent. Its case is
very different from that of poison gas, which is a by-product of
essential industries. You do not need to set out to find poison gasses;
they come to you in the natural course of chemical research, and they do
not have to be manufactured until you are forced to do it for defense.
Moreover, they have the enormous advantage of not looking like war. They
are disgusting, hateful things against which man instinctively revolts.
They do not tempt the adventurous, as the submarine does.
Although the French particularly, through Admiral le Bon and M. Sarraut,
did their utmost to combat the British position, their arguments had
little weight in comparison with the British. The entire discussion
which ran more than a week and which was given out day by day
practically in full to the press only emphasized my feeling that the
French, in insisting on a fleet of submarines all out of proportion to
that contemplated in the original American program, were actuated more
by a desire to assert themselves in this council of nations, to
demonstrate that it is not safe to overlook their susceptibilities, than
from any desire to have submarines for defense. If the representatives
of the United States are to work successfully with other nations in
international conferences, they must learn that diplomats can no more
afford to overlook the feelings of other nations than an engineer can
afford to overlook the susceptibilities of the iron and steel which he
employs. France’s acute sensitiveness, her black imaginations, may
irritate Americans who know nothing of invaded and devastated territory,
who have not had to sit through five long years with the sound of
bursting shells continually in their ears; but if they have not the
imagination and the sympathy to tell them what the results of such an
experience are, then let them accept the judgment of physicians and
realize that in whatever negotiations they have with the French people
at this time, their shell-shocked minds and souls must be taken into
account.
Mr. Hughes lost a second great opportunity in the submarine matter. A
few days before Christmas, when it became obvious that the submarine was
in danger of destroying the American delegation’s plans for a glorious
Christmas present to the nation, Mr. Balfour asked for an open session
in which to discuss the matter. For some reason not at all clear, Mr.
Hughes did not consent. Our Secretary of State proved himself a superior
dramatist at the Conference, but in this instance a poor psychologist!
If there was to be no holiday, as had become clear, then an open session
with a chance to hear Mr. Balfour, Lord Lee, M. Sarraut, Admiral le Bon,
Senator Schanzer, in the free discussion of a matter in which the whole
country was tremendously interested—such an open session would have been
a Christmas present in itself, and it would have done much to have
cleared up the thick atmosphere.
In these conferences the atmosphere easily becomes heavy with suspicion.
The sight of a group of eminent gentlemen of various nationalities
shutting themselves up morning after morning, for hours, considering
matters which concern the peace and happiness of the world, if too long
continued, stirs up resentment in the best of us. If you are an
impersonal, detached, philosophical, fairly well-informed person, it is
not difficult for you to visualize what those gentlemen are doing; if
you take the trouble you can even build up in your mind what they are
saying. Suppose it is a question of the ratio of capital ships. You know
that they are listening to disputes over tonnage and the way it has been
computed, are studying long arrays of figures, matters dull in
themselves and requiring the closest attention. Most of us would not
remain a half hour, unless we were compelled to when such discussions
were going on. But if you are a suspicious person, if you have been
trained in the cynical school of sensational journalism, to look for
mischief and intrigue—and often it must be confessed finding it—you have
dark thoughts about the gentlemen.
The only way in which such suspicions can be cleared up—or better,
prevented,—is by frequent open sessions and much freer discussion at
those sessions than we had at the Conference for Limitation of Armament.
Some of the Americans prominent in the Conference have in the last two
years frequently criticized the secrecy with which the Paris Conference
was conducted but there was very little difference in the procedure from
that in Paris. The work there as here was done in committees. There as
here there were daily communications to the press. They were more
satisfactory here, fuller, but that was made possible by the fact that
the situation here was far less complicated and by the rigor with which
Mr. Hughes kept one thing at a time on the table. As for the press
conferences, in Paris as here they were held daily by the Americans and
frequently by all of the other delegations. Nobody in Paris, of course,
was so satisfactory to the press as Mr. Hughes. His candor, his good
humor, his out-and-out, man-to-man conduct of his daily meeting cannot
be too highly praised. He has set a pace for this sort of thing very
hard to follow. There was no American in Paris in a position to do for
the press what Mr. Hughes did in Washington. President Wilson had not
the time. The other members of the delegation were not in Mr. Hughes’
position. Nobody else in our delegation here would have had the
authority, even if he had had the ability, to do what Mr. Hughes did.
The difference here and in Paris was mainly a difference of
situation—the difference between an infinitely difficult and complicated
situation and a comparatively well defined and definite one.
Mr. Hughes himself was partly responsible for the resentment that the
press felt at the failure to follow Mr. Balfour’s suggestion and conduct
the submarine discussion in the open. Any one who took the pains to read
the text of these discussions as they were printed in the leading
journals of the country, can see how well adapted they were to a public
meeting. There was nothing in them that would jeopardize any nation;
there was much in them that would have been illuminated, its impression
intensified, if it could have been heard instead of read. Mr. Hughes in
his talk of these discussions to the correspondents was actually
tantalizing. When he walked briskly into his press conference at the end
of a long committee discussion and told a hundred and more men and women
gathered around him what an intellectual treat it had been, of how Mr.
Balfour had been in his best form, of how lively the exchange had been
between French and English, his snapping eyes, his appreciative voice,
his glow of enthusiasm, were actually antagonizing. He overlooked
entirely the fact that he was making more than one in the assembly say:
Selfish man, don’t you suppose that we would have enjoyed seeing and
hearing Mr. Balfour in his best form? Is there anything at this
Conference that we would have liked so much, except of course hearing
you? Do you think we are going to be satisfied with your promise that we
shall have full reports of all that was said?
I know very well that it is not considered good form to use the words
League of Nations in connection with the Conference on the Limitation of
Armament, and no offense is intended—but if one is really interested in
trying to decide just how much publicity is wise in such a conference as
this, any experience of other similar bodies should be considered, and
after all it cannot be denied that the assembly of the League of Nations
is a similar body to this, the chief difference being that it includes
some fifty nations instead of nine. At the second meeting of the
assembly of the League last fall, lasting four and a half weeks, there
were 33 plenary conferences. One cannot say that the matters under
consideration there were less delicate and dangerous than in Washington.
They were even more inflamed at the moment, including such open
irruptions as the boundary dispute between Jugo-Slavia and Albania.
It was not only Mr. Hughes’ naval program that was seeing heavy weather;
the Four Power Pact was in trouble. The President did not agree with the
American delegation that the mainland of Japan was covered by the
treaty. For my part I had never questioned that when this Four Power
Pact talked about insular dominions as well as insular possessions it
meant what it said, and that Nippon as well as Australia and New Zealand
was included. Moreover, Mr. Hughes had repeatedly told the press that
was the intention. There seems, however, to have been doubts in some
minds, and when finally twelve days after the Pact itself was submitted
and accepted by the full Conference, an insistent journalist presented
Mr. Harding at his biweekly press meeting with a written question. (The
President was now requiring all questions at these gatherings to be
submitted in writing.) He remarked in his casual manner, “No, the Japan
mainland is not included in the treaty.” To be sure he took it back that
night in a public document, but here was food for the trouble makers—a
disagreement in the cabinet! All of those who, while loudly declaring
themselves advocates of peace, were doing their utmost to belittle the
efforts of the responsible, to magnify differences in interpretation, to
fan partisan jealousies, to read in intrigue and deceit and concealment
where there was usually nothing worse than blundering or stupidity,
declared with satisfaction or despair that the Conference was now surely
wrecked. Joined to the cry of anguish that was rising over the failure
to limit the submarine and auxiliary craft, the chorus was dismal
enough.
Little by little, however, events shut off the pessimists. For instance,
one of the “intrigues” that had been brought to light was that Japan and
France had combined on the submarine issue, and were lining up in the
Conference against England and America. But Japan destroyed that fine
morsel, declaring formally that she felt it would be a misfortune if the
Conference failed to come to an agreement on limitation; that she
supported the original American proposal of November 12 in regard to
auxiliary craft and hoped that agreement would be reached on that basis.
She followed this quieting information by an announcement that she did
not consider it consistent with her dignity as one of the four powers to
accept any special protection, and that she therefore asked that the
Four Power treaty be amended so as to exclude her mainland.
Even the submarine became less threatening as the discussion went on. If
it was not to be limited in number, it was in field of action—so far as
a rule of war could limit. If auxiliary craft were to be built according
to the “needs” of each nation, their tonnage was not to run over 10,000
tons each and their guns were to be but eight inch. Add this to the
ratio in capital ships now fixed—5–5–3—1.75—1.75—and to a ten years’
naval holiday, and you had a solid something.
One grew philosophical again and reflected how childish it was to
suppose that a Conference of this importance could be carried on without
sharp differences of opinion, without those periods which we call
“deadlocks,” without the flaring up at times of century-old feuds, such
as that between Great Britain and France. All of these things, we told
ourselves, were part of the problem of working out new understandings,
and to overemphasize them or willfully to exploit them in order to
increase ill will and obstruct a progress which was necessarily slow and
difficult, was work fit only for the irresponsible and the malicious.
The naval program was certain of adoption. There were details still
unsettled, but it seemed safe to assume that if the patience and good
will of the delegates stood the strain, these details would be
satisfactorily arranged; but, as from the start, the final success of
the Conference depended upon removing the fears that England, Japan and
the United States had of one another, of our securing reasonable
assurance that our policies of the open door in China and of moral
trusteeship for Russia and China were adopted. We had proposed a pact
and it had been accepted; principles regarding China and they had been
accepted; but this was by no means all of the Far Eastern problem. By
Christmas we were at the heart of it—the hostile relations of China and
Japan, and whether it was possible to help them to peacefully adjust
these relations.