CHAPTER XI

THE MEASURE OF THE WASHINGTON CONFERENCE

How are we to measure the Washington Conference? There are people who think it should be by the things that it did not undertake to do. The Conference was indicted in Washington in January by a league of people of considerable ability who declared that it had not lessened the chance of war by a fraction of one per cent. The reason they gave for this verdict was that it had not taken up the causes of India, Korea, the Far Eastern Republic, Persia, the Philippines, Haiti, the “Republic of Mt. Lebanon.”

It is certain that the world is going to have no quiet until these troubled countries are satisfied. But they are not the only problems to be solved. Mr. Hughes named a considerable number on his agenda. Is an international conference to be declared a farce because it selects one set of problems instead of another, and believes it more practical to give exclusive attention to one side of the globe than to the entire surface? You could not persuade Mr. Hughes and his colleagues that any other policy than that of one thing at a time would contribute a “fraction of one per cent.” to the peace of the earth. They believe the block system is the only practical one for setting the world aright. They lay it out something like this:

“Let us clean up the Pacific, then we can disarm. Having disarmed, we can lend a hand in the next most distressed and troublesome block—France, Central Europe, Russia. Having helped set them straight, one at a time, then possibly we may consider an association of nations—but not now.” So convinced was Mr. Hughes of the soundness of his system that he threw out one of the chief subjects on his agenda—the limitation of land armament—when he discovered he must leave his block—the Pacific—and pass into Europe if it was considered.

The only system a man can successfully handle is that in which he has faith,—the only fair way to judge what he does is by what he undertakes to do—not what you would like him to undertake. Measured by the method it adopted and the limitations it set for itself, how does the Conference come out?

I began my observations on the Conference with a quarrel with the agenda. Putting the problem of the limitation of armament before the settlement of the difficulties or threats of difficulties in the Pacific, which were keeping the countries concerned in arms, looked illogical. It proved good psychology. The naval program stirred the imagination of the country, became at once something tremendously desirable—a real move toward peace. When England and Japan at once agreed it became possible and practical. If they agreed, why, then—it must be—the difficulties could be settled which many had doubted. The Conference thus at the start gained what it needed most, popular faith that it meant to do a concrete, tangible thing. The proposition that England, the United States, Japan, France and Italy should adopt a naval ratio of 5–5–3, 1.75—1.25 and agree not to build for ten years was a big, substantial, stirring fact. To have them accept, as they did, strengthened the faith of the world. It was the first time big powers had ever said “scrap,” had ever been actually eager for a naval holiday.

The fact that neither the submarine nor the auxiliary craft are to be limited in tonnage, as the original program proposed, if disappointing, still does not upset the achievement. The submarine comes out of the Conference unlimited in number but crippled in its field of action. Merchant ships are forbidden it on penalty of piracy. That will not in the thick of war prevent merchant ships being destroyed but it will take the heart out of the business. Outlawry helps if it does not prohibit. There is compensation also in the failure in regard to the tonnage of auxiliary craft, for at least their size is limited—to 10,000 tons—and their guns to 8 inches, and that is a fairly satisfactory substitute for the original proposal.

In spite of the changes, cutting and trimming, the naval program remains something which the country wants, something which it feels to be a blow at war as well as a relief to its tax burdens.

If the naval program could stand on its own feet, it alone would make the Conference a brilliant success, but it cannot. It was no sooner raised to its feet than its makers had to rush in with props. The first was a policy in regard to China. The reason was clear enough. Unless the nations at the Conference could agree among themselves on a method of assisting in the development of China which would prevent any one of them taking an unfair advantage of the others, there were sure to be quarrels sooner or later and they would need their ships. Unless they could fix on a policy under which not only they each had a fair chance but nations outside—not at the Conference, but likely in the future to desire to invest in China—were not discriminated against, they would need their ships. They would surely need them, too, one of these days, if they did not satisfy China that what they agreed upon was as good for her as for them.

Mr. Root hurried in with his four principles. Mr. Hughes outlined his Nine Power Pact, which was to assent to the principles and the practical applications of them which were to be worked out.

But the naval program had to have another prop before it could proceed. It was not worth the paper it was written on unless England and Japan agreed to it. They agreed in principle at the start, but in practice they could and would not until they were sure that the nation that was asking them to disarm wanted peace in the Pacific badly enough to join them in a league to assure it by coöperation. Before they scrapped their ships they wanted to know whether their present boundaries and rights were to be respected by their colleagues—whether if one of them suffered aggression from without the others were to remain indifferent or were willing to pledge at least moral support. The Four Power Pact was the prop desired. England, the United States, France and Japan agree in it to face the future in the Pacific together. Pull out this prop and your program for scrapping ships and a naval holiday falls flat—as flat as the disarmament of France has fallen and for the same reason. If this Conference for the Limitation of Armament does nothing more than to make the American public understand better what has been at the bottom of the conduct of France since the Armistice, it will have been worth all it cost.

France has held up the peace of Europe, delayed its reconstruction, lessened her own chances of reparation, alienated her best friends by her persistent militarism. Go back to the peace treaty of 1919 when disarmament was one of the fundamental principles adopted by the allied nations. From the start France’s argument in regard to disarmament was that for her it was impossible unless England and the United States would guarantee her against aggression from Germany—if they would do that she would disarm. In order to get disarmament, Mr. Wilson and Lloyd George agreed to protect France against _unprovoked_ attacks. Our Senate refused to ratify the agreement.

Having no guarantees, France kept her arms. Keeping her arms, the military spirit spread, the military group grew stronger. How strong recent events have shown.

One-third of the agenda of the Washington Conference—that in regard to land disarmament—had to be scrapped ten days after the opening because a reduction of land armament still meant to France a guarantee, the same kind of a guarantee in principle that a little later we gave to Japan in order to make it possible for her to agree with Great Britain and ourselves on the naval program. Perhaps the greatest achievement of the Conference on the Limitation of Armament is its demonstration that disarmament means a union of the nations that disarm, that in no other way, the world being what it is, can it be accomplished.

Along with this demonstration has gone another, frequently repeated, that this union to which you are to pin your faith instead of ships and armies, if it is to be permanent, must be all inclusive.

Again and again the Conference ran up against the difficulty that although all the nations represented in Washington might make agreements to cut down their capital ships, limit their auxiliary craft to 10,000 tons and their guns to 8 inches, put the mark of pirate on a submarine that attacked a merchant vessel, forbid chemical warfare, limit the number of air-craft ships—any one or all of these restrictions might overnight be frustrated by one nation or a group of nations outside of the alliance, entering on an ambitious and aggressive campaign of naval construction. That is, this fine program for the limitation of armament—almost certain to be carried out if the Four Power Pact in regard to the waters of the Pacific and the Nine Power Pact in regard to the protection of China are ratified by the different governments—still may be destroyed overnight by some part of the world not included in this union for peace. So obvious is this that the naval pact includes an agreement that in case any one of the signing nations finds itself in a dangerous position in regard to an aggressive neighbor, it shall have the right to withdraw. Every step that has been taken in the Washington Conference leads inevitably to the conclusion that it is all or none—if the work is to stand.

The difficulty in the way of most people and most nations accepting this conclusion is that they do not believe any such union of all nations practical. They cannot see men of all races working together, settling only by agreement the misunderstandings that inevitably come up.

If the Conference on the Limitation of Armament has demonstrated the necessity of world coöperation if we are to have peace, it has also demonstrated its practicability. Mr. Hughes started off by calling on the two nations which the people of this country have for a long time regarded with the most suspicion—the two nations against which we have conducted a persistent campaign of ill will—England and Japan. Yet for three months the delegations of these two nations worked with ours in the utmost friendliness. Again and again I heard Mr. Hughes declare that nobody could have been more coöperative, as he expressed it, than the delegates from England and Japan. It was obvious that those countries were quite as eager as ourselves to work out agreements that would enable them to declare a naval holiday. All those initial suspicions that we had of England and Japan and that England and Japan had of us did not prevent the delegates of the three countries from coming to conclusions on matters on which they had differed. What it seems to prove is that you can get peace by friendly negotiation, that a coöperation of nations is not a dream, that it is a reality.

What more amazing and convincing proof of this than the fact that China and Japan did, by conference, agree on Shantung? Who would have believed it possible? What made it possible was the faith and the wisdom of Mr. Hughes and Mr. Balfour, their determination that the Chinese and Japanese should learn to work together. “Talk it over” was their instruction. “The Shantung question can only be settled peaceably by yourselves.” It was one of the wisest, one of the most significant decisions of the Washington Conference. Day after day the Chinese and Japanese held conversations—not conferences. They talked, they quarreled. Day after day they went home in wrath and disgust, refusing suggested compromises, pleading the danger of losing their heads if they consented. If the Chinese delegates offered Peking anything less than an immediate and completely free Shantung, they could never again pass the border of China. If the Japanese gave up even what they had promised to give up, their lives would not be worth a song in Tokyo. Yet, day by day, Japan was giving in a little, China becoming a little more coöperative. Mr. Harding, Mr. Hughes and Mr. Balfour stayed on the outside, genial but determined friends—determined that these two Eastern neighbors should begin now to settle their disagreements. More than once, China came to them: “Make Japan be good, great friends. You know Shantung is ours. Make her be good.”

Patience won the day. It took thirty-eight “conversations,” interminable cables, breaks, returns, the constant counsel of Mr. Balfour and Mr. Hughes—“Steady now, steady. Don’t give it up. You must do it yourselves”—to bring a final agreement between the two nations. But in the end they did settle the Shantung difficulty. It was a tremendous victory for the new international method of handling quarrels.

How reasonable it is that it should be so. It is a direct attack on a difficulty not a roundabout one by correspondence through ambassadors. Face to face, you examine the basis of suspicion. You ask, Is this true or not? Are you doing so-and-so or not? Do you aim to do so-and-so? Thus the actual situation, not the imagined one, is arrived at. It becomes the actual property of a group of negotiators sitting at the same table; and when the actuality is before them all, being turned over and examined by them all, adjustment is almost certain _if there is good will_. And here you come to the crux of the whole matter—you get no adjustment unless the negotiators are working in a spirit of good will.

When I first set out to observe the Washington Conference I looked up a man unusually wise and experienced in international affairs, one who for many years has been collecting, arranging and explaining the diplomatic adventures of men and of nations so that each coming generation might have, if it would, the materials from which to find out what men had already done in making peace and, if it were wise enough, why they so often had failed. I was in search of just the material of which he of all men knew most. “What shall I read first?” I asked him. His instant reply was, “Æsop’s Fables. That should be the textbook of the Conference. Read Æsop,” he said, “to see what they can do, and follow with Don Quixote to see what they cannot do.

“But there is one book more important than all for the Conference—the Gospels. But not King James’ version. That is a great and wonderful translation, but it has done some harm in the world by not always giving true values to great truths. It promises peace on earth and good will to men. But that is not what was promised. Peace was promised to men of good will. The success of the Conference will depend upon the degree to which men of good will are able to prevail over those of ill will.”

This is the way it turned out in Washington. At every stage it was good will which carried the undertaking forward. What will happen now in the various countries to which the pacts of the Conference go will depend upon the spirit of the peoples to which they are submitted, whether it be malicious or charitable. Will there be good will enough in Japan to make such rearrangements of her claims in China that Chinese bitterness and suspicion will be removed? Will there be enough good will in China to coöperate when these rearrangements are made? Will there be enough in the United States to accept the pledges of mutual support which must be made if the nations concerned are to limit their armaments? Have we enough faith in men to accept the only possible alternative in the present world to unlimited armament, and that is, a union of peoples pledged to face misunderstandings at their beginning, to separate them into their elements, and to bring all the force of collective judgment and intelligence to adjustment?

It may be that the United States does not yet sufficiently understand that the principle of unionism which is its strength is a world principle, that one primary cause of wars in this world is isolation, with its necessity of being suspicious, on guard, ready to strike—like a rattlesnake. Æsop is a guide here, with his fable of the bundle of sticks—sticks easy to break if separated, unbreakable when bound together.

It may be that the Senate of the United States will refuse to back this pact of good will which is just as essential to carrying out the program of limitation of naval armament as a guarantee to France against unprovoked aggression was two years ago (and is still) to European disarmament. But, refuse it or not, the day will come—and nothing has ever demonstrated it more clearly than the Washington Conference,—when we are going to understand that the world can only remain in peace through a union which is a practical application of the brotherhood of man, not a limited brotherhood of man, such as Mr. Wells preached in his final comment on the Arms Parley, but one including all men.

Mr. Wells’ idea of a brotherhood of nations is—or was!—one that includes not every state of the world but “the peoples who speak English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Japanese, with such states as Holland and Norway and Bohemia, great in quality if not great in power—sympathetic in training and tradition.” He would admit only people of like ideals, exclude Russia, India, China. Could there be a surer way to throw Russia and India and China into an alliance against this so-called “Brotherhood of Man”? Is there a surer way to awaken an ambition for liberty, to spread ideals than to share what you have with those that seem to you—and yet never in all respects are—backward nations? Is there any brotherhood of man worthy the name which does not include all men?

However we may feel about it as a nation to-day, though we may ruin the present program for limitation of armament by rejection of its underlying pacts, the day will surely come when we shall realize and admit the fullest international association and coöperation. It is the one real asset humanity has carried from this war—the sense of the oneness of the world, the impossibility of order and progress and peace except as each is allowed to develop its individuality, in a free continuing union of all.

Eventually the Washington Conference for the Limitation of Armament will be judged by what it contributes to this union of nations, exactly as all its predecessors will be judged. The Washington Conference is but one in a long chain of international undertakings looking to peace. It is built on the experience of many different men, of many different countries, running back literally for centuries. Its immediate predecessor was the Hague Conferences and tribunal and the Paris Conference with its resultant League of Nations. So far the League of Nations is at once the most idealistic and the most practical scheme men have yet framed, the broadest in its scope and the most democratic in its spirit. It may prove that humanity is as yet too backward to grasp and realize its intent and its possibilities. It may make too great a demand on their faith, their charity, their love; but nothing can destroy the great fact that it has been undertaken by fifty-one nations, that it is alive and at work. That fact will stand as a hope and a guide to the future.

The present Conference has boldly and nobly attempted to do in a limited field something of what the Paris Conference attempted to do for the whole world. The limitation of armament it proposes rests, like world disarmament, on unionism, standing together. Unionism requires faith; have we enough of it? It requires, too, men of good will. Have we enough of them? In the final analysis, it is with them that “peace on earth” rests.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Changed ‘one or twice’ to ‘once or twice’ on p. 99. 2. Silently corrected typographical errors. 3. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed. 4. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.