Class rn 7^ ^ Book *^^7 DISPATCHES, 1919-1921 BY Harold Phelps Stokes r GREENWICH, CONNECTICUT PRIVATELY PRINTED 1922 4 COPYRIGHT, I9I9, 1920, 1921 NEW YORK EVENING POST, INC. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION Tranjftrrw frem CONDE NAST PRESS GREENWICH, CONN. I CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. The Balance Sheet of the Peace 5 II. President Wilson on a Picnic ... 14 III. In the Hall of Mirrors 21 IV. New Year's Eve, 1919 26 V. Al Smith at San Francisco .... ^6 VI. President Harding's Inaugural . . 43 VII. Hughes at the Arms Conference . 53 VIII. France at the Arms Conference . 60 I THE BALANCE SHEET OF THE PEACE ( The draft treaty was handed to the Germans on May 7, /p/p) Paris, May 26. — The reaction to the terms of the Peace Treaty with Germany among the inter- nationally minded here doubtless follows much the same lines as in America. Politico-Social Second Adventists who climbed up on the housetops ready to jump off into the millennium the moment peace was signed naturally are chagrined to discover that they put on their white robes in vain. A larger group, having held no such high hopes, finds itself embittered by no such disillusionment. Like the hymn writer, they do not ask to see the distant scene — one step is enough for them. They welcome the peace, not as bringing perfection at all, or even all they had hoped for, but at least as bringing progress, and promise of further progress under a growing League of Nations. Millenniumists of the type of Bullitt, head of the much-discussed mission to Lenine, whose letter of resignation from the staff of the American commis- sion has been published, decry the peace as a patchwork, imperialistic affair; a ''peace without security. " Such complaints have been made famil- 5 6 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 921 lar enough to all in attendance at the Peace Conference the past fortnight in the comments of the British Labor Party, the diatribes of the French Socialists, the resolutions adopted by the Women's Congress in Zurich, and the laments of such liberal organs as the London Nation. The League is a union of governments, not of peoples, they say; and while a punitive peace is being arranged a dozen wars are going on in different parts of the world. It was to all these folks, I fancy, and not merely to a dinner-tableful of listening lawyers that President Wilson spoke, the night after the peace terms were published, when he declared at a meeting of the Paris International Law Society: "One of the things that have disturbed me most in recent months is the unqualified hope men enter- tain everywhere of immediate emancipation from the things that have hampered and oppressed them. You cannot in human experience rush into the light. You have to go through the twilight into the broadening day before noon comes, and the full sun shines upon the landscape. We must set out to see that those who hope are not disappointed by showing them the processes by which hope must be realized, the processes of law, the processes of slow disentanglement from many things that bound us in the past. You cannot throw off the habits of the individual immediately. They must THE BALANCE SHEET OF THE PEACE 7 be slowly got rid of, or, rather, they must be slowly altered. They must be slowly adapted. They must be slowly shaped to new ends for which we would use them.'* To counsel patience is one way of dealing with these millenniumists. Another is to set down in black and white a balance sheet of accomplish- ments. Each individual and every newspaper editor must, of course, make his own balance sheet of this peace, and doubtless many readers of the Evening Post will radically dissent from the one that follows, which has been made up after two weeks of listening to the debate pro and con — in the public press of Great Britain and the Conti- nent, in the Clemenceau and Rantzau notes, and in the lobby of the Hotel Crillon: Assets Peace in the West. The League of Nations. Disarmament of Germany now; reduction of ar- maments for the rest of the world eventually. All international disputes to be submitted to ar- bitration or inquiry. Three months' breathing spell before nations resort to war. Secret treaties abolished. The German military power crushed. 8 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 921 Alsace-Lorraine returned to France. The restoration of Belgium contracted for. Justice for France assured. Reparation for the Allies. Poland set up as an independent state. Jugo-Slavia and Czecho-Slovakia established as new nations. The principle of internationalization recognized in the case of Danzig. Protection of American interests. The mandatory system for the colonies. Labor given its due: labor conferences, the eight- hour day. Under the League of Nations, the peace becomes a dynamic settlement, differing from all the static settlements of the past. Liabilities A dozen wars in the East. A heritage of hate for Germany. A heritage of jealousies and rivalries for the Allies. The League of Nations weak. The League at the outset more a union of gov- ernments than of peoples. The Anglo-American agreement to come to the aid of France in case of an attack by Germany is contrary to President Wilson's declaration that " there can be no leagues or alliances or special cov- THE BALANCE SHEET OF THE PEACE 9 enants and understandings within the general and common family of the League of Nations." The peace has not yet relieved the world of the burden of armaments, of the willingness to resort recklessly to the arbitrament of the sword, or of the doctrine of the divine right of kultur. Open covenants of peace have not been openly arrived at. The principle of self-determination of peoples is violated, in fact if not in form, by the Saar Settle- ment and by the provision for forced Austrian independence. The peace has not solved the Russian problem or dealt with Bolshevism. The Monroe Doctrine clause in the covenant is likely to be a prolific trouble-maker for the League, in so far as it sanctions such ''regional understandings" generally. The economic and reparation terms of the treaty are severe to the point where they may prove impracticable. The colonies have been handled arbitrarily. Neither conference nor treaty has given much evidence that Clemenceau, Pichon, Orlando, and the rest of the ruling statesmen of Europe are gen- uinely converted to the new order in international affairs heralded by Wilson. Everybody here has cast up some sort of a bal- lO DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 921 ance like the above, and nobody has found the result absolutely to his liking; often, in the case of different groups or individuals, for diametrically opposite reasons. The French Socialists consider the economic terms too severe. The French Depu- ties think they are not severe enough. Frank Si- monds sees in the Danzig settlement "the seed of future war,*' because the city is not given outright to the Poles. The radicals see in the Danzig settle- ment the very same seed, because the city was taken away from the Germans. To most of the newspaper correspondents here the terms came as a good deal of a surprise. *'Even the most bloodthirsty of us were stag- gered when we read them," said one of them to Mr. White at a morning conference a week ago. The remark appears worth quoting as coming from one of the best informed correspondents here, who represents what the man in the street might name as the most reactionary New York newspaper. It is certain that, especially in the mat- ter of economics and reparations. President Wil- son had a hard fight to persuade some of the rest of the Allies that, to put the matter on the ground of enlightened self-interest alone, dead geese find it hard to lay golden eggs. The question whether justice or vindictiveness dominates the resulting economic settlement is much debated. Clemenceau came forcefully to the defence of THE BALANCE SHEET OF THE PEACE 1 1 the terms in the recent note, which points out that the shortage of raw materials and shipping and the economic crisis which Germany faces are hardships which "arise not from the conditions of peace, but from the acts of those who provoked and prolonged the war." One other consideration not mentioned in the note, although there is rea- son to believe it was included in its original draft, is the fact that great discretion in the mat- ter of reparation payments is left in the hands of the proposed Inter-Allied Reparations Commis- sion, which will be in a position constantly to feel the pulse of Germany's economic life. The cynics point at the Poles trusting still to the arbitrament of the sword in Galicia, at the Jugo-Slavs and Austrians sniping at each other, at a dozen or more wars going on in various parts of the world in defiance of the conference, and ask, ''Where is the peace?" The answer is: ''In west- ern Europe and America." With the settlement announced, and with the United States, Great Britain, and France settling down to the ways of peace, statesmen now gathered in Paris believe that the rest of the world must gradually follow suit. A like answer may be made to those who com- plain that the conference has not done away with the nationalistic rivalries of the Allies, has not been able to prevent the controversy over Fiume 12 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 92 1 from becoming acute, has not availed to wipe cov- etousness from the eyes of foreign ministers gaz- ing lustfully upon the dismembered Turkish Em- pire. With the final settlement once effected, the various countries will no longer have their atten- tion fixed so exclusively on rival ** revindications." There will be less squabbling, it is hoped, when the loot is all divided up. Yet it is generally conceded here that this failure of the international spirit to prevail at the Peace Conference is the most lamentable item on the whole debit side of the ledger. Only those in daily attendance at the conference can fully appreciate how little reliance the present-day ruling states- men and diplomats of Europe really place on the League of Nations, how cynical most of them are at the prospect of introducing any genuine new order into international affairs, how bound up they are in such principles of international conduct as were enunciated in the secret treaty of London. If there be any who believe that the doctrine of the divine right of kultur was killed November 1 1 last, let them ponder these words of Signor Luz- zatti, ex-Premier of Italy, in speaking recently to an Associated Press correspondent: "It is true that there are in Dalmatia some places where Jugo-Slavs and Italians are mixed, but it is evident that the most ancient and higher civilization should prevail." THE BALANCE SHEET OF THE PEACE 13 And that in a country where ''the most ancient and higher civihzation" represents less than 5 per cent of the total population! Yet in spite of all these grounds for disappoint- ment there are only a few internationally minded people about the Conference today who, faced with some such balance sheet as that given above, are hardy enough to cry out that the peace is wholly a hollow peace, or that President Wilson com- pletely failed in peace to realize those ideals for which he plunged the country into war. The rest hold that at least he has given expression and leadership to the international spirit, and has provided a mechanism through which those who come after can make that spirit prevail. II PRESIDENT WILSON ON A PICNIC {While waiting for the Germans to sign, President Wilson took a trip to Belgium with King Albert) Brussels, June 19. — I have just come back from a tour of Belgium with the President, and this is going to be a story of the trip — but mostly it will be about kings and queens and picnics and pirates. Kisses are even going to figure in it mildly, but, let me hasten to add, entirely decorously, and even such irrelevant matters may be discussed as the influence of Parisian taxicab drivers on inter- national relations. It was the hottest sort of a day when the Presi- dent and Mrs. Wilson set out on their tour of Bel- gium. King Albert and Queen Elizabeth motored over to Adinkerke from La Panne to meet them. La Panne is the little place on the seashore where Belgian headquarters was during the war. The Queen kept house for the King in a cottage there in those days. They were frequently bombed, especially at meal times, and when the bombs landed too near the royal piazza the Queen would pick up the plates on a tray and carry them across the street to another cottage where they could 14 PRESIDENT WILSON ON A PICNIC 15 finish their fish in peace. At least that's what Commander Baker tells me, and he was up there with Hoover and ought to know. This time the royal pair flew down to La Panne from Brussels in an aeroplane the night before — just casually, like that. The King enjoys travelling around that way in an aeroplane and pouncing down somewhere, all unexpected. It gives him a chance to dodge secret service men and autograph hunters and journalists. On the station platform a little girl came up and offered a bouquet of flowers to the Queen. The Queen motioned her graciously to Mrs. Wilson. Mrs. Wilson took the fiowers and kissed the little girl. To-night, when Brand Whitlock came down to the station to say good-by to the President, he kissed the Queen's hand. I mention these two incidents because they were the only expressions I happened to see throughout the trip of that habit of constant public osculation which forms so nota- ble a part of Continental life, but which with us, so far as public life is concerned, is so largely limited to the intercourse between candidates and babies. Around the station platform — to go back to Adinkerke — clustered local inhabitants and school children with Belgian flags to wave at the illus- trious visitors. When the King and Queen and the President appeared the children ** pushed little l6 DISPATCHES, 1919-1921 cries of joy/' and the old folks, again to trans- literate the Brussels newspapers, which carried yards about all this last night, ''raised discreet vivats/' Before climbing into the automobile the President "disembarrasses himself promptly of his official tunic, coifs himself with a casket gray, envelops himself in a dust-hider of brown duck/' No wonder the ''casket gray" dumfounded the local journalists. How Admiral Grayson ever came to pick out such a monstrosity for his chief as that cap fairly staggers credulity. It was a vast affair, topheavy, floppy, falling down about the Presidential ears like Harry Lauder's tam o'Shan- ter. It seems very hard to get the President started, at least in this yarn, but he did finally get away, and motored through miles of ruined villages, winding trenches and discreet vivats to Zeebrugge. But that's getting way ahead of the story. The first stop was Nieuport, where the Belgians held the sluices at all costs so that they could keep the Germans flooded and miserable. Here the Burgo- master, or town councillor or whatever his title is, being ninety-four years of age, was too old to be out in the sun, so a couple of young fellows about seventy-five did the honors in his place. Also Queen Elizabeth jumped up on a sand dune and took a snapshot of the King pointing out the sights to the President. Of course all the more PRESIDENT WILSON ON A PICNIC 17 official but less majestic photographers made a bee-line for the next sand dune to get a snapshot of the Queen taking a snapshot of the King point- ing out the sights to the President. That picture ought to be worth a million dollars to some camera firm. The Queen was all the time doing things like that. She's the most queenly queen, and at the same time the least queeniferous queen, that I ever saw — "perfectly genuine, perfectly delight- ful," as the President put it in drinking a toast to the royal pair at lunch to-day. Just as you usually think of a king as a bored individual interminably sending congratulatory telegrams to equally bored fellow monarchs on their birthdays, and diverting himself in the interim by tickling court ladies with a billiard cue, so you invariably think of a queen as continuously opening puffy bazaars, and taking a morbid delight in it. Queen Elizabeth may open a bazaar once in a while, but I'm sure she doesn't enjoy it. She isn't the bazaar-and-garden-party type. She's just a simple, democratic, queenly, charming person to whom the whole Presidential party, including Vance McCormick, completely lost their heart. It is said that a much beloved sovereign once attended a charity bazaar and asked a very emi- nent lady, until that time a court favorite, for a cup of tea. "How much do I owe you?" or words 1 8 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 92 1 to that effect the King inquired as the lady poured out a cup for him. ''It's ordinarily a shilling,'' she replied, and, touching the cup to her lips, added: "Now it's a guinea." Without a word the King took out his purse, handed over a sovereign and a shilling, and then said quietly, "Now please give me a clean cup." King Albert never would have thought of that. If he had he probably never would have said it. Nor has he probably ever poked a lady in the ribs with a billiard cue. He might have laughed heartily, however, if he saw some other monarch do it, say on a house party. But he himself isn't built along just those lines. He's just a fine, frank upstanding King, who tow- ered way above President Wilson and his ridiculous cap, who must have looked to the down-glancing kingly eye for all the world like Artemus Ward's "Great Panjandrum Himself, with the Little Round Button at Top." Between them the King and Queen had fixed up a picnic party for the President in the woods of Houthulst. I don't ever remember hearing of the President going on a picnic party before, and I doubt if they're just his style. But like a good sport he went into this one plainly determined to enjoy it at all costs, let the crumbs fall where they may. Being a man of great stubbornness, he doubtless succeeded. The table was spread alluringly in the cool of PRESIDENT WILSON ON A PICNIC 19 what was left of the shell-swept forest and there arose from various stewing and steaming forest cookeries an aroma enticing in the extreme to a gaunt circle of American newspaper correspond- ents, who hovered about looking hungry like little nations at the Peace Conference. Driven to desperation by watching all this eating going on and not being able to do any ot it themselves, the correspondents hied them to an utterly ruined village where there was a ramshackle hut con- taining a Flander or two, a couple of Walloons, some picture postcards and a big bowl of soup. One of the Flanders, or whatever you call the inhabit- ants of these parts, spoke English like a native and dug out some strawberries. The President seemed to be a lot impressed with Zeebrugge, as well he might be, for how the men of the Vindictive ever swarmed up over the top of that mole in their famous landing party is a marvel. Capt. Carpenter of the Vindictive was on hand to tell all about it, while the President, lis- tening, gazed out over the ocean toward America and Congress with an air of rapt but dreamy defi- ance. I wonder what he was thinking about. Some said he was probably dreaming of some great sea fight of old, some boarding party in pirate days. It he was, I have a notion that at the head of 20 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 921 the boarding party, In the President's dream, a red bandanna around his neck, pistols in his belt, one leg astride the concrete ledge, hatred and lust of battle in his eye, there came surging and clamber- ing over that mole at the President that rare old buccaneer, Henry Cabot Lodge, with a cutlass in his teeth. Ill IN THE HALL OF MIRRORS {The Treaty of Peace with Germany was signed at Versailles on June 2Sy igip) Paris, June 28. — Two red seals, covered care- fully with cotton batting, repose in a safe in the French Foreign Office to-night, technical proofs that the war is over, and that peace with Ger- many has been signed. They are the seals of the two German plenipotentiaries, Hermann Miiller and Johann Bell. Future antiquarians, turning over the pages of the Treaty of Versailles, will find them at the very close of that huge volume, also the seals and signa- tures of President Wilson, Premier Lloyd George, Premier Clemenceau and other Allied delegates. One of the two seals has some elaborate device, the other just plain initials, **J. B.,*' as though made with a small signet ring. There is nothing about them to show the reluctance with which they were affixed, nor is there anything in the sig- natures opposite to indicate the emotion under which they must have been written, unless it be the fact that the junior German plenipotentiary, evidently anxious to get it over as quickly as pos- 21 22 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 921 slble, omitted his Christian name or initial, and simply set himself down in heavy upright script, "Dr. Bell." After this fashion Germany signed the treaty ot Versailles in the Hall of Mirrors, swinging back the pendulum of history to France victorious. Until 1870 the hall had remained a mighty monument to the power and pride of France since the days of Louis XIV. In 1871 Bismarck chose it to crown William I as Emperor of Germany, after the Crown Prince had written in his diary, *'In con- templating this magnificent hall where so many sin- ister designs against Germany have taken form, and where the very paintings on the walls portray joy in her misfortune, I entertain the hope that it will be here they will celebrate the restoration of the Empire and Emperor." His hope was fulfilled on January 18, 1871, and to-day, not quite half a century later, by the irony of fate, the late empire and its emperor got their doom in the same spot. It was a very different setting, this of June 28, 1 91 9, symbolizing the transition from tradi- tions of imperialism to those of democracy. The frock coats of Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemen- ceau took the place of the resplendent uniforms of King W^illiam, Prince Charles, Prince Otto of Bavaria, Bismarck, Moltke, Blumenthal and Schleinitz." Where the Iron Chancellor towered above them IN THE HALL OF MIRRORS 23 all as he read the proclamation which marked the consummation of his ambitions, the Tiger of France to-day almost seemed to crouch as he sat watching with most dramatic in tenseness the German dele- gates putting their names to a treaty which marked the consummation of his desire. There was no official preacher on this occasion as there had been on that one. To-day's text lay across the face of Europe, and the sermon between the covers of the treaty. There was no military choir on hand to sing, as it did for Emperor Wil- liam, the 2ist Psalm, '*The King shall joy in thy strength, O Lord , . . Thou settest a crown of pure gold on his head." Yet had there been such a choir it might well have sung parts of that very same Psalm, strangely prophetic of to-day: ''Thine hand shall find out all thine enemies; thy right hand shall find out all those that hate thee. "Thou shalt make them as a fiery oven in the time of thine anger: the Lord shall swallow them up in his wrath, and the fire shall devour them. "Their fruit shalt thou destroy from the earth, and their seed from among the children of men. ""For they intended evil against thee: they imagined a mischievous device which they were not able to perform^ There was no applause at all at to-day's cere- mony. The clicking of cameras took the place of 24 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 92 1 the "Hochs" which, according to an eyewitness, Hatzfeldt, made the mirrors rattle when William was crowned. And there was almost as little color as there was sound — only the black, white and red full dress and the flashing sabres of the Re- publican Guard, the dun-colored turban of the Maharaja who signed for India, and the blue uniforms of the little group of wounded poilus, who, with fine sentiment, were given seats of honor. The ceremony itself didn't approach in melo- dramatic effect the handing of the treaty to the German delegates on May 7, when Rantzau's knees failed him. There was plenty of dramatic interest in to-day's ceremony, but it lay rather in fact than in form, rather in memories conjured up by those mirrors and in the meaning squeezed into those two small seals than in any outward series of events. The whole thing, contrary to every prediction, took only forty-five minutes from the time Clemenceau, flinging out his gloved right hand to indicate the table on which the treaty lay, said, *' I now have the honor to invite the delegates of Germany to sign," up to the moment when he arose again to declare the proceedings closed. There were no speeches except those of the French Premier. At times the whole thing took on almost a casual air. While they were waiting for the German delegates to arrive, the Big Four IN THE HALL OF MIRRORS 25 passed the time autographing each other's com- memorative programmes. As the last plenipotentiary put down his pen, cannons boomed outside and a great shouting arose in the gardens below and loud tooting of horns in the palace court. Then came the most spontaneous demonstration of the day, perhaps of the whole conference, since the President first arrived at Paris. Clemenceau, followed closely by the President and Lloyd George, walked down the great staircase and out on the terrace in the park below. A tremendous shout went up from the crowd in the park, who surged up close to the three chiefs of state and surrounded them with a dense mass of cheering men and women, for all the world like a crowd that breaks for a winning football team on the field. Rear-Admiral Grayson locked arms with secret service men and made a tiny ring around the three, barely large enough for them to walk in. Around this little ring the crowd sputtered and swirled like a spent pinwheel, and in the centre marched the three, arm in arm, Clemenceau in the middle, Wilson on his left and Lloyd George on his right. An automobile, some said it was Gen. Pershing's, finally came to their rescue. IV NEW YEAR'S EVE, 191 9 {On November 79, 19^9, the Senate had refused to ratify the treaty, the vote being SS to jp in favor, but not the necessary two thirds) Washington, December 31. — A year ago— just a year ago last night — Premier Clemenceau stood in the rostrum of the French Chamber of Depu- ties and said: ''There is an old system of alliances called the balance of power . . . This system of alliances ... I do not renounce." And President Wilson, speaking at Manches- ter, England, the very same day, flung across the Channel this challenge: "If the future had nothing for us but a new at- tempt to keep the world at a right poise by a bal- ance of power the United States would take no interest, because she will join in no combination of powers which is not a combination of all of us. She is not interested in the peace of Europe, but the peace of the world." Clemenceau went on to say that the President had expressed the hope that he might be able to persuade the French statesman to his point ot 26 NEW YEAR'S EVE, 1919 27 view. In a sense he did, but not just in the sense that the President probably had in mind. One of the most persistent bits of false legend that has sprung up about the Peace Conference is the idea that the League of Nations was woven into the fabric of the Peace Treaty to suit the sinister pride and purpose of the President in furtherance of his personal ambitions and Utopian dreams. Those who were there know and history will tell that there occurred during the Conference a most remarkable shift in the point of view of the Allied delegates toward the League, so that the League, at first a butt for cynics, came to be in the eyes of the conferees first a thing perhaps to be desired after all as an improvement on the old system, and then a matter of pressing necessity With Germany responsible to them for a genera- tion to come, they needed somebody to execute the terms of the Treaty, and with new nations added to the old, and all the old antipathies and hatreds ready to fiaie up again among themselves in every one of a thousand controversies over boundaries and finance and racial minorities and coal and ports, they needed an umpire, with power to penalize officials, if necessary, for offside plays. With the treaty signed at Versailles and Presi- dent Wilson off for home on the George Washing- ton, the scene shifted to the United States. The debate in Congress started in earnest when the 28 DISPATCHES, I919-I921 treaty was reported out of the Committee on For- eign Relations on September 11. Senator Lodge, driven on by a desire to avenge what he regarded as an affront to the prestige of Congress, by a reluctance to see this country get into foreign entanglements, by a deep-seated hatred of Mr. Wilson, and by the urgings of partisan politics, saddled on the treaty the set of reservations that all the world knows. Sworn to defeat the treaty, if they could, stood the irreconcilables — on the one side Johnson, with that note of impassioned ear- nestness in his voice, and on the other Reed, with the gift of making the tiniest mole-hill look like an insuperable mountain, and of twisting the most far-fetched and inconsequential contingency into an impending cataclysm. Against this combination the friends of the treaty have so far striven in vain. President Wil- son*s tour of the country in the interest of the League had great educational value to the coun- try, but little appreciable effect, it is now generally admitted, on the situation in the Senate, and even its educational value was to some extent marred by the fact that it came too late. The time when facts and information and inter- pretation are of supreme value is before people have made up their minds on a thing. By the time the Administration, which took no trouble to get the facts before the world at Paris, had made NEW YEAR'S EVE, 1 91 9 29 up its mind to dispense some of them, the public had already made up its mind pretty much where it stood, on the insufficient data at hand, and simply seized whatever additional facts came its way from the rival speakers to reinforce judgments already formed. The ''liberals" had long since rejected the treaty as dross where they had been promised pure gold. The spirit of idealism, as Mr. Taft found, had run its course. Washington watched almost with fascination the gradual shift of the most vocal support of the League from the idealists to the materialists. Just as the League at Paris was first hailed by the "dreamers" and ultimately hugged to the bosoms of the practical politicians, so in this country it was first championed by the liberals, only to find a resting place in these latter days of tribulation in the lap of Wall Street, clamoring with enlightened self-interest for those processes of order in Europe which peace alone can set to work. For six months nearly this fruitless controversy has continued. The people are sick and tired of reading about the treaty, the correspondents are sick and tired of writing about it; only the Senators seem not to tire of talking about it. We who have been writing about it now every day almost since last April go through the habitual motions day after day in a sort of dazed and slavish monotony. 30 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 921 We know that we are writing rubbish, utter and unconscionable rubbish, about the talk Lenroot is going to have with Lodge, or the ultimatum the mild reservationists are going to send to the majority leader; about the ''undercurrent of opti- mism" that crops up to the surface day after day; about compromise and no compromise, and so ad infinitum. It all signifies nothing, and we know that it signifies nothing, and we know that the country really doesn't give a whoop for all the controversy. What the country wants is that the Senate shall ratify the treaty and get it out of the way and quit turning the spotlight on Europe when there are so many dark spots over here to be illumined. Moreover, people here, outside of the stufi^y atmosphere of the Senate at least, are coming to realize that, totally apart from the country's apathy, further controversy over forms of reserva- tions is in the main futile in itself. They are com- ing to see that the evil has been done, and that no mere form of ratification now practicable can undo it, and that the good has yet to be done, and that no mere form of ratification now contemplated can in any large measure impair it. The harm has been done, on the higher plane as on the lower. The professors of Louvain spoke for a disillusioned Europe when they said, ''It is hard to understand how the great Power which NEW YEAR'S EVE, 1 91 9 3 1 has contributed so much to victory can think of compromising the great results that victory ob- tained." We may still ratify, in all probability we shall still ratify, but ratification or no ratification, reservations or no reservations, Europe knows that /America's mood is changed, for the time at least, and that she is not disposed now to enter into the concert of Powers with anything like that en- thusiasm which President Wilson promised, and which the Covenant in its unamended form em- bodied. Eventually she may, but not now, and no contemplated form of words for a reservation to Article X can replace that faith that has gone out of it. The harm has been done. William James had a theory that action must follow volition immedi- ately, or that the will would be dissipated and a man's moral force be by so much debilitated. Assuredly, that is as true of nations as it is of in- dividuals. Friends of the League through those long early weeks hoped against hope that rati- fication of the treaty by the great Powers, includ- ing the United States, would follow quickly the deliberations at Versailles, and that the League would spring into existence with the blood of the world's hot will for peace pulsing through its veins. But that did not happen. There happened in- stead exactly what William James would have 32 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 92 1 predicted and exactly what the friends of the League did predict. The energy was dissipated. The nations of Europe started at once to fall back into their old ways. The prestige of the Supreme Council at Paris sank rapidly and was openly defied by Rumania. D'Annunzio seized Fiume and as much as thumbed his nose at the world. Germany, seeing unity among the Allies at least on the surface seem to be ebbing, decided to defy them and to hold up her ratification of the treaty. Twenty or thirty armies go on fighting in different parts of Europe. The old intrigues start all over again and a sinister **big brother" movement threatens to sweep over Europe in the place of a family of nations. Most of this, at least so the friends of the League are faithful enough to be- lieve, could have been avoided had the League been under way six months ago. But if the harm has already been done — and numerous other examples could be adduced to prove it, notably in the economic field, where eminent authorities here at Washington hold that never again will there be such an opportunity to float European loans advantageously in this country as there would have been in the past months, had peace been declared — but if the harm has been done, it is no less true, as friends of the League, at least outside of Congress, see it to-day, that the good is yet to be done, and that no reason- NEW YEAR'S EVE, 1 91 9 ^^^ able form of reservations at this date can affect the result much one way or the other. If the League is to be born a somewhat sickly infant, as now appears inevitable, life must be breathed into the infant. But by no conceivable stretch of the imagination, or of medical or social science, can life be breathed into the League of Nations by providing for withdrawal from the League by joint resolution instead of concurrent resolution, or by changing the ''unless" to "until'* in the last clause of the Article X Reservation, as Senator Hitchcock wants, among other things. The only way to give the new-born infant a chance to live is to quit worrying, give him the traditional slap on the back, and send him out into the world. Ratification is what all but the stubborn folk on both sides of the house see is needed now, not merely because the country is sick and tired of the controversy, not even merely because Europe stands in dire need of it, but because unless this League gets started pretty soon it might just as well have been stillborn for all the use it will ever be. There are not many people here in Washing- ton who follow European affairs very closely these days, but some of them do, and five minutes' con- versation with any one of them will reveal their apprehension. Intrigue in Austria and Poland; burning hos- 34 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 92 1 tility along the Adriatic; Turkey in what Winston Churchill calls a state of "quasi-dissolution"; Vienna literally starving; Russia — I know it is taboo to speak of Russia — Russia cold and hungry and distraught; all Europe faced with an economic crisis — no wonder that the professors of Lou vain appeal to America and that Lloyd George follows suit and that the Temps hastens to assure us that Great Britain will accept all the reservations except the preamble, and France preamble and all. No wonder, either, that the friends of the Treaty one meets here are exasperated with the Democrats for their stubbornness, for it is becom- ing more clear every day that the way to benefit the League is to get the treaty ratified, and then to concentrate on the League. Give Article X and Article XI and A-rticle XII and every other article of the Covenant a chance to show what it means, to be construed in acts and not on paper. Get the League established at Geneva and build up about it all the processes of international rela- tions; not the spectacular ones merely, such as the machinery to prevent wars and settle disputes, but the every-day commonplace ones — the Red Cross, the Labor Bureau, the International Chamber of Commerce, the various other interna- tional agencies that are to be the real substance and life of the League from day to day, vigorous in the cultivation of that international goodwill NEW YEAR'S EVE, 1 91 9 35 on which alone any successful League must grow. That is why friends of the League feel such keen regret that the first Labor Conference under the League got such a shabby reception here in Wash- ington a few weeks ago. That probably did at least as much harm to the cause of world peace as many a truculent turn of speech in the Lodge reservations. So the New Year finds the Capital not antici- pating that the country is inclined just now to assume world responsibility in the widest sense. Eventually, friends of the League hope, with another set of leaders, and after we have had a rest from the war, the United States will see more clearly her obligations and opportunities. In the meanwhile, and as soon as the treaty is out of the way, the League's friends intend to work every- where to build it up, slowly, painstakingly, to the position they hoped it would hold from the start. In the A. E. F. officers used to have im- pressed upon them the importance of cultivating in the men under them "the will to use the bay- onet." Adapting that idea to the international situation, the job for the liberals everywhere during the coming years is to cultivate in the nations of the world the will to use the League. AL SMITH AT SAN FRANCISCO {At the Democratic National Convention of ig20^ Gov. Smith was New York's candidate for the presidency) San Francisco, July i. — Al Smith, Governor of New York, got a demonstration in the Democratic National Convention here to-night that would warm the cockles of the most hard-boiled heart. He was not there to see it, unfortunately. Deli- cacy kept him out of the convention hall while his name was being put in nomination. But his friends will tell him about it, and he will tell his children about it, and it will be something for them to treasure- — perhaps more than that, something that this country, when it worries about the gulf be- tween classes, will do well not to forget. It was altogether the most spontaneous demon- stration at this convention so far, or on the floor of the Chicago convention for that matter. There was no artifice about it, no stimulus of spotlight or cheer leaders. ** We have hired no bands, we have brought with us no shouters and no boosters," as Mrs. Sire said in her seconding speech, much to the satisfaction of a body of delegates wearied by trumpet blares 36 AL SMITH AT SAN FRANCISCO 37 and professional marching clubs and tooting through megaphones. It all started with Bourke Cockran's nominating speech. There are qualities which Cockran may lack, but among them is not the gift of oratory, and Al Smith's career is not unresponsive to the Ameri- can political orator. Here was a candidate for the Presidency whose background was not the pro- verbial log cabin, but the pushcart. It was a theme perhaps unique among nominating speeches, and Cockran made the most of it. He told how Al Smith had been born and brought up on the Bow- ery, or just around the corner from it; how he had been forced to leave school before his education was completed to work for a living, how he had gone to the State Assembly and ' become its Speaker, how he had been chosen to a constitu- tional convention where he had a chance to match wits against men like Root, Stimson and Wicker- sham, and how finally he had been elected Gov- ernor on a Democratic raft floating on a Republi- can tidal wave two years ago. **He has never lost a friend, and never ceased to make new ones," the speaker remarked. '*A11 of them, from his playmates on the sidewalks of the East Side to the statesmen he has moved among as Governor call him *A1 Smith.' ** I venture to say he is the only man who could be called by such a diminutive without in any way 38 DISPATCHES, 191 9-1 921 debasing the dignity of so high an office. Al Smith is in no way different from the rest of us, and that is why we love him." Cockran added this bit of significant comment on the Governor's career. He averred that the ** forces of anarchy" were stalking through the land and gave it as his judgment that they were to be met succesfully **not so much by clubbing as by conversion." The story of Al Smith's rise from the humblest to the most exalted station, he argued, would be "a living refutation of the Socialists' argument that the poor man, the under dog, has no chance in our regime." It was a timely argument in behalf of Smith as a candidate for the Presidency. Then came a masterly touch. As Cochran reached his perora- tion, with a wave of his hand toward the chromo of Woodrow Wilson behind him on the platform and a eulogy of the man he was nominating to succeed him, the band in the gallery struck up. And it struck up not the air of *' Tammany" that everybody had expected, but a tune whose com- plete and satisfying appropriateness the whole audience was quick to respond to, **The Side- walks of New York"; East Sidey West Side, All about the town. Boys and girls together — AL SMITH AT SAN FRANCISCO 39 Before the band had got through three lines of it the crowd caught the significance of the words, as embodying perfectly the Smith nomination, and caught the lilt of the music, and the demonstration began. Some of the Illinois and Pennsylvania dele- gates crossed the aisle to where Morgan J. O'Brien was sitting in the heart of the New York delega- tion with State Chairman Farley and Chief Mur- phy, and volunteered to get out their standards and parade. But there had been no demonstration planned, and the New Yorkers demurred. '*I told them I thought it would fall flat," Judge O'Brien said afterward. "We had no thought of any such demonstration.'* But what with Cockran's speech and the music and the appeal of Al Smith's personality there was no stopping it. The New York standard, survivor of the tussle two days ago between Roosevelt and Mahoney in the Wilson demonstration, was soon in the aisle, and before five minutes were up the Illinois and Pennsylvania standards were dipping down the aisle after it, and the Ohio standard, and then, one by one, almost all the rest, until the whole convention hall was a sea of tossing stand- ards, with only here and there a State holding aloof. Just what States joined or did not join and just how long the thing lasted your correspondent has no means of knowing. By the time the band had 40 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-192 1 swung through "Sweet Rosie O'Grady'* and ''The Bowery, the Bowery, You See Such Things and You Hear Such Things, on the Bowery, the Bowery," and back again into ''Boys and Girls Together," he had so far forgotten that judicial poise and judicious aloofness which, of course, should ever be the attributes of all good reporters that he had joined in the procession himself. There was no great volume of noise about it — that was left to the megaphone demonstrations of the other candidates. It was just a spontaneous generous tribute, men and women delegates swing- ing slowly down the aisles arm in arm, under such a tossing of standards as no other candidate brought forth, singing not "Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here" or "California" or the halting candi- date-songs of Pennsylvania or Ohio, but strains familiar to Fourteenth Street and below a genera- tion ago, "Sweet Rosie O'Grady," "The Bowery" and "After the Ball Is Over." It was not the mood of a political demonstration at all. Every- body there knew that Al Smith didn't have a Shantung chance of getting nominated. It was much more the atmosphere of a crowd on a Paris boulevard out to do honor to some local hero. Another unwitting touch of psychological genius came when Franklin Roosevelt took the rostrum to second the nomination of the Governor. Here was a man who, according to the ordinary stand- AL SMITH AT SAN FRANCISCO 4I ards of the world, was the very antithesis of A\ Smith — a man of wealth, a man of family, a man of social position and college breeding, a man who had succeeded in public life in spite of his riches where Al Smith had succeeded in spite of his poverty. ''Our own Al Smith" that he spoke about seemed an almost uncouth phrase on his lips. The dramatic contrast of the thing fairly leaped at the audience. Roosevelt has none of the oratorical arts of Cockran, but he has much, very much, that Cockran will never have if he attends conventions until he is a hundred, and the plain sincerity of his few remarks about his respect and admiration for the Governor was all that was needed to make his speech effective. The demonstration was perhaps not all for Smith. Some of the enthusiasm was doubtless due to the popularity of Cockran, a prodigal long absent from Democratic love feasts, whom his fellow delegates were glad to welcome home, and if there was any stimulation to the celebration at all it was that which might arise out of a desire on the part of other delegations with axes to grind to ingratiate themselves with Tammany, in the hope that the favor might be returned when the balloting begins. But these two factors plainly played but a comparatively inconspicuous part in the affair. In the main, it was a rare tribute to Al Smith himself, and to the kind of an American 42 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 921 career that he stands for, carrying with it a doubly rare and gratifying sense of atonement between classes supposed to be cleaving so wide apart in these latter days. There is much talk of ''Americanism." Un- fortunately the word is commonly so slimed about with cant and hypocrisy that it has fallen into low estate. Your correspondent has yet to encounter an event with a surer pulse of true Americanism than this demonstration for Al Smith to-night. VI PRESIDENT HARDING'S INAUGURAL {This is one of those dispatches which are sometimes scorned as '"Jakes'' The exigencies of the occasion required that it be written the night before^ with a paragraph or two inserted later) Washington, March 4. — ^Warren Gamaliel Harding of Ohio was sworn in at noon to-day as twenty-eighth President of the United States. A great crowd watched the ceremony in front of the Capitol and heard President Harding's inaugural address. Mr. Harding declared that the United States, under the new Administration, would be ready to associate itself with the nations of the world for conference and counsel, to relieve the burdens of armament, and to cooperate in all the judicial processes of peacemaking; but, he added, "a world super-government is contrary to everything we cherish and can have no sanction by our republic." As the incoming Administration sees it, the coun- try's "supreme task is the resumption of our onward, normal way." The speech was the pledge of a return to good, homey, old-fashioned peace, happiness, and pros- perity — the kind that mother used to make. Those 43 44 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 92 1 who listened to it with any hopes that it would reveal a detailed programme, or even anything more clarifying than the President's campaign and Marion utterances, went away in a measure disap- pointed. They discovered that the President still allowed his thought to be cloaked in a mantle of somewhat woolly words, and many must have felt that his plea for Americanism, sincere and heart- felt as were his words, tapped but the shoals of the country's aspirations. The weather man made good on his predictions and Inauguration Day broke clear and cold, with a wind whistling down Pennsylvania Avenue such as Utica or Albany might envy on a bright winter's day. It was such a day as would fulfil the heart's desire of any President bound to the Capitol to take the oath of office and speak his inaugural ad- dress. Down below the White House the Wash- ington monument stood up white and distinct, casting a clear shadow, for all the world like some giant sun-dial. The sky was clear blue, with a few puffy clouds in it, such as are most frequently to be seen on the picture post-cards of the capital which visitors send back to the home folks. W^hen President Harding turned toward the great crowd to read his inaugural address it was as PRESIDENT HARDING'S INAUGURAL 45 if with a surge of understanding there came to all within sight of the speaker and sound of his voice a sudden realization of the immense and in- scrutable destinies that hung over him. The elec- trical device which magnified his voice and carried the slowly delivered sentences of his address with a queer metallic ring clear across the broad espla- nade almost to the fringe of the crowd on the steps of the Congressional Library was but the emblem of a more compelling force, his hearers knew, which made his words reverberate around the world. They were visibly aware that what this man on this day pledged, and what he from this day forth does to carry out those pledges, might spell the history of the next generation. It was borne in upon his listeners even as Mr. Harding stepped forward to take the oath at the familiar hands of the Chief Justice, and before the crowd had had a chance to hear a word from, his lips, how immeasurable was the contrast between this occasion and that day eight years ago when Woodrow Wilson read from this same rostrum his first inaugural. This contrast lay not so much in the staging of the ceremony, noticeable as was the absence to-day of the vast platform which then occupied half the plaza and provided row after row of seats for diplomats, officials, and guests, as in the whole purport and significance of the event. Wilson in 1913 and Harding in 1921, side by side 46 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 92 1 though they drove to the Capitol to-day, were al- most the spokesmen of two different eras. Wilson in 19 13 voiced the aspirations of pro- tracted peace. When his countrymen thought of war they thought of the Civil War, and no longer of that war with any present purpose. The Spanish War had hardly swerved the set of the country's deeper tides, though it had added Roose- velt to the list of war-made or war-trained Presi- dents since Lincoln: Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Harrison, and McKinley. The issues of the Civil War and of the reconstruction davs had died with our fathers, and the new generation sought a new dispensation, which Roosevelt claimed for a new party, Wilson for the **new freedom." "No one can mistake the purpose for which the nation now seeks to use the Democratic party," Mr. Wilson declared from these very Capitol steps eight years ago. **It seeks to use it to interpret a change in its own plans and its own point of view. . . . We have been refreshed by a new insight into our own life." There was not a man or woman in all that as- sembled multitude to-day who had to wait for Harding's words to learn how different is the tem- per of the country and of its spokesman in 1921. They had good cause to know that the country had again, in the span of a single Administration, PRESIDENT HARDING'S INAUGURAL 47 been drenched in war. The headlines in this morning's newspapers telling the tale of the still unrealized ambitions of the Allies for a settlement were there to remind them that though hostilities ceased sixteen months ago there is no perfected peace yet in Europe, x^nd with the whole problem of reconstruction at home still awaiting a leader and a programme, no one present on this occasion could wonder that the new Administration should voice the desire of the people to be led safely to a sure and speedy peace which should, while recog- nizing our international obligations, permit this country to live its own life, as free as possible from the danger of ''involvement" in disputes with which it is not immediately concerned. Earlier in the course of the day's ceremonies this contrast between 1921 and 1913 had been drawn vividly. The hour was noon — by the Senate clock, which is obedient to the legislative will rather than to the sun — and the scene the Senate Chamber, where the two houses of Con- gress, the Justices of the Supreme Court, the mem- bers of the Diplomatic Corps, the retiring Cabinet and their guests had assembled to see the Vice- President sworn in. As the spectators in the galleries looked down on the packed hall it was as if the history of the past full year lay clear before them, as on the white table of a camera obscura — the "rival govern- 48 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 921 ments" in White House and Capitol, the long treaty fight, the waxing authority of the legislative branch, the nomination of one of these Senators for President. There, too, spread before your eyes, were the makings of history for a generation to come. You got an uncanny feeling that the actors in this stupendous drama had merely taken ad- vantage of an entr'acte to crowd around their new actor-manager. There were Johnson and Borah, the marplots; Reed, cast say for the leading role in "Paradise Lost"; Lodge, whose part had been, according to each spectator's own interpretation of that slim figure's consummate bit of acting, either to save America's soul or to blast the hope of the world. Watching the little group of men that followed the Diplomatic Corps into the chamber, it was but natural to speculate on another side of the same picture. Here was the Cabinet of the outgoing Administration, as roundly belabored a bodyguard as every surrounded a President. Who were to take their places? Houston there, the thickset man with the com- petent eye, had been President Wilson's latest Secretary of the Treasury, to be succeeded by Andrew W. Mellon. Would it have been con- ceivable eight years ago that any incoming Ad- ministration would have named for this post, no matter what his merits, one of the two or three PRESIDENT HARDING'S INAUGURAL 49 richest men in America, prominently identified with "big business"? Or take Alexander, the least known member of the outgoing Cabinet, head of a department which figures rarely in the news except in census years. Yet such is the emphasis these days on trade and the laying down of a broad economic programme, international as well as national, that Harding has named as that n- familiar figure's successor the best known man in public life the world over — Hoover. Colby headed the Cabinet delegation — a man whose nomination for the American Premiership was bitterly resented when first news of it reachtd this very Senate chamber. His policies as Secre- tary of State had since found unexpectedly wide acceptance there because of his vigorous assertion of American rights in Mexico, Mesopotamia, and Yap. It was impossible not to wonder what for- tune would befall his eminent successor, Mr. Hughes, when and if he crosses swords here in the Capitol with the intrenched determination of the Foreign Relations Committee. It was equally impossible to look down on those men gathered there in that Senate chamber with- out wondering what the next act of the drama would reveal. For months they had been divided into two rival camps. This impasse no longer blocks progress. There is harmony again, at least on the surface, between executive and legislative, 50 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 92 1 based on Mr. Harding's pledge that he will work hand in hand with his old friends here, with *'no surrender at either end of the avenue." But what of Penrose, sitting over there, with his remark about it not making much difference who was the next Secretary of State, in the light of the fact that the Senate would ** blaze the way" in the determination of foreign policy? And what of Borah, with the massive face and great head of hair, who declared only the other day that he would refuse to ** abdicate his judgment" to any man in or out of the White House? Some observ- ers, moreover, noted, as they sat in that gallery to-day through the closing hours of the session which ended at legislative noon, that this Congress had there and then failed to comply with the Presi- dent-elect's first and only behest: not only to get the appropriations bills through, but to make the session count for something constructive beside. All these were but comparatively trivial aspects of the larger question that must have swayed the subconscious wonderings of all those present: Will the Harding Administration fulfill the measure of faith, or at least hope, so generously reposed in it by the people at the polls on November 2? If so, what will be what the new President might call the programme of fulfilment? Here again no sharper contrast could be drawn than this between 1921 and 1913. Then all men knew, if not the PRESIDENT HARDING'S INAUGURAL 5 1 details of the programme, at least the definite thought and purpose of the new Administration. President Wilson had made them clear to the voters in the course of the campaign, and the only question in the minds of those who assembled for his inauguration was whether the party would hold fast to the pledges already given. But to-day the programme of the incoming Administration, as expressed in its underlying policies, domestic and foreign, is yet to be formu- lated. Even the prolonged consultation with the ''best minds*' failed to evolve a definite plan, and those who listened to President Harding's words to-day expecting to hear any specific and detailed commitment were doomed to disappointment. There have been such utterances in plenty as "America first," "A new association of nations," "No man ought to be greater than his party," and "The world and twentieth century civilization need nothing so much as understanding," which had given President Harding's hearers an indica- tion of what was in his mind even before he spoke his inaugural. But they will probably have to wait long weeks yet — until his first message to the new Congress at any rate — before that programme takes more definite shape. Those who stood patiently in the open plaza to-day listening to Mr. Harding got an impression of earnestness and sincerity which in a measure 52 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 921 dispelled the sense of unreality and automatism created by the stentorian tones and metallic, un- human resonance of the loud-speaking apparatus. But Harding, as he goes to spend his first night in the White House, remains in a larger measure unknown to his countrymen, at least so far as his programme is concerned and his ability to carry it through. They know he is honest, they know that he is earnest, they know that he is humble, they know that he is passionately a patriot, they know that he proposes to turn loose in this country and in international relationships all the forces of conciliation, appeasement, and reintegration that he can make himself master of. But beyond that he remains unrevealed. VII HUGHES AT THE ARMS CONFERENCE {JThe Conference on the Limitation of Armaments assembled in Washington Saturday^ November ii^ ig2i. This dispatch was written the previous Monday) Washington, November 5. — Three years have now rolled by since the armistice, and we are on the eve of another conference, with a new central figure. In Paris in the spring of 191 9 the central figure was Woodrow Wilson, then at the pinnacle of his fame. Now it is Charles Evans Hughes, not yet fully emerged perhaps, but destined to emerge from the coming conference, I profoundly believe, as one of the commanding figures of his time. Men speak of his exaltation of spirit these days. I believe it, though perhaps the Secretary of State himself would not care to have the report credited. He has chosen rather to clothe his purposes in the cloak of realism. But there is such a thing as ex- altation of spirit which can refresh the idealism of a leader's purposes without impairing in one whit the realism of his method, and it is that exalta- tion which I believe fills Mr, Hughes to-day. Mr. Hughes has a fancy for the homely meta- phors of the card table. He knows games where the 54 DISPATCHES, 191 9-1 921 players put all their cards on the table, and he knows games where you hold them close to your chin. He likes to talk of these two kinds and of their comparative merits, and you would think from his talk that he was an expert at them. I once heard him, in a most informal way — apropos of reparations or mandates or some other con- troversy in which the United States was involved at the time — characterize the general purpose of the United States as '*a fair deal all around, with the United States sitting in for what it is entitled to. That is not the way Woodrow Wilson would have expressed it. Perhaps it could not safely be left to history as a formal expression of the coun- try's purposes. It would, for instance, give the impression of a group of men dividing up the spoils — an impression which was far from Mr. Hughes's mind, I am sure. Then, too, while re- flecting his lawyer's sense of a client's rights, the quotation falls short of a full expression of Mr. Hughes's own exalted purposes, which he has chosen — consciously, I believe — to keep always in the background. But it will do well enough as a rough-and-ready slogan of the Administration's attitude, and one perhaps peculiarly responsive to what seems to be the country's mood. Wilson hitched his wagon to a star. Hughes has chosen rather to hitch his star to a wagon. HUGHES AT THE ARMS CONFERENCE 55 But the Star is there, I firmly believe. I believe while Mr, Hughes has chosen deliberately to talk about oil, and cables, and armaments, he has been thinking of international law, and international tribunals, and international cooperation, and international goodwill — yes, even of international association. Let those who will, smile at so ingen- uous a faith in the ulterior idealistic purposes of an avowed realist like Hughes. Only let the doubters remember what Lord NorthclifFe, who is no ingenu, wrote of Hughes when he was here: '*The failures of others may have taught him that the surest way to attain a lofty end is not al- ways to proclaim its loftiness in advance. He may have learned that the presence of a spice of self- interest, national or individual, is often helpful in persuading men of worth and of ethical principles. Hence, perchance, his insistence upon the interests of the United States as the main concern of Mr. Harding's Administration. When the full cata- logue of those 'interests' comes to be made up, there may be found among them such matters as the promotion of goodwill among nations, the assurance of peace on the Pacific and the elimina- tion of armaments among the powers chiefly 'in- terested.' " No man who sees Mr. Hughes from day to day, as the Washington correspondents do, can come away from those conferences without marvelling 56 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 921 at the vigor of the man. I wonder what it is in him that enables him to radiate such energy and assurance. Is it golf? Is it prayer? Is it a con- sciousness of the rectitude of his own purposes and the conviction of their assured success.^ I do not know. Perhaps it is all four — with just a dash of calculated policy thrown in. For confidence is contagious. Remember what he said in his address to the be- ginners in the consular service: ''The man who succeeds in this work in any position where there are a great many burdens and demands is the man who can keep quiet and placid when there is very severe pressure, who can keep his head and intel- ligence at the same time giving the impression of a man adequate to the exigency, ^^ It will be a shrewd correspondent who, if things ever go wrong in this conference, will be able to discern that fact in Hughes's face. Mr. Hughes goes into this conference a lone nov- ice among a score of the veteran diplomats of the world. "Veteran diplomats of the world" is a tame and hackneyed expression, and does not half do justice to the capacity and experience of some of the delegates. Men like Lloyd George and Briand can cut figure eights and grapevines all around any ordinary aggregation of "veteran dip- lomats." To drop Hughes down into the midst of that bunch would seem at first blush like throwing HUGHES AT THE ARMS CONFERENCE 57 a child to the lions. But Hughes has the armor and weapons that may well prevail, even in such an arena. For one thing he has a consciousness of the soundness and justice of the American point of view. Hughes is not the kind of a man who is given to overmuch talking about the particularly- unselfish purpose of his own nation. He admits that each nation has its own special interests, the United States no less than the rest. But he is profoundly convinced that the special interests of the United States at this particular juncture in the world's affairs represent in a very large degree the general interests of the world at large — the open door in China, the integrity of China, the elimina- tion of misunderstandings in the Pacific, the limitation of armament. Secondly, he has the weapon of his intellectual gifts. It is the habit here at the Capitol among some critics to deprecate the mental powers of the Secretary of State. They say his mentality only appears commanding because some of his associ- ates in the Administration are not men of outstand- ing brain power. I believe that is a fundamental misconception. For grasp, for analysis, for reason- ing power, and for facility and lucidity of expres- sion, I believe Mr. Hughes has not his peer in the public life of this country to-day. Lloyd George may be cleverer. Briand may be 58 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 921 subtler, but for forthright mentality and capacity, Hughes is unexcelled. I am not so sure about his ability at poker, in spite of his favorite metaphors, but if this is a chess game he is ** sitting in," he can beat them all to a frazzle, for his is the kind of an intellect which thinks every move out in ad- vance. He has a grasp of facts so dynamic that it is constantly projecting itself over into future con- tingencies in such a way as to enable him to deal with the most unexpected eventually as though it had been anticipated from the start. If he has any shortcoming, it is a lack of imag- ination. I remember writing last March, after watching him at work for only a couple of weeks, '*The new Administration in the State Depart- ment is perhaps more sure-footed than imagina- tive," and I think that judgment has come to be shared by many, even of Mr. Hughes's greatest admirers. Partly, this is a want of finesse, due to his lack of diplomatic training and experience. But I cannot help feeling that it is something more than that — the lack of some quality of intuition, a tend- ency to rely, perhaps too much, on the processes of abstract reasoning and too little on that intui- tion which is often a surer guide. His Mexican policy has been criticised, for in- stance, on the grounds that there was too much bald logic about it, and too little understanding. Other instances could be cited. It is my own per- HUGHES AT THE ARMS CONFERENCE 59 sonal judgment that the frame of mind in which the Administration seems to be greeting the incoming delegates — saying to them in effect, "you sit down and come to an agreement with us in this matter of armament or we will build a navy big enough to blow you out of the Seven Seas" — is realism gone mad. This may be a weakness, but it is not necessarily a vital one. It can be balanced by Mr. Hughes's strength of character, his extraordinary power of analysis, his broad tolerance of the other fellow's point of view, and his political talents, which, apart from this single angle, are of no mean order. With consummate skill he has steered the foreign policy of the United States in such a course that while the strongest partisans of the League of Nations, on the one hand, and the irreconcilables, on the other, may be alike dissatisfied, in the main he has the whole country behind him and the na- tions of the world ready to cooperate with him. VIII FRANCE AT THE ARMS CONFERENCE {Premier Briand made his great speech at a plenary session on Monday, November 21, 1921. This dispatch was written the following Saturday) Washington, November 26. — ^This has been France's week at the conference. A frank state- ment of the point of view of a country is always helpful to an ultimate understanding, as both Mr. Hughes and Mr. Balfour pointed out, and to that extent M. Briand's utterances have doubtless given the country a fresh view of the situation and policy of France, which was to be desired. But observers at Washington did not have to wait to read Lord Curzon's speech to realize that many misgivings had been aroused by all that Briand said and did while he was here, and perhaps still more by what he did not say and did not do. In fact, after all that has taken place, one may well wonder whether Secretary Hughes does not now wish that he had taken Senator Borah's advice and left land armaments out of the agenda and Briand at home. M. Briand's speech on Monday and subsequent outgivings have doubtless been a highly effective 60 FRANCE AT THE ARMS CONFERENCE 6 1 display advertisement for his country. More than that, they may have refreshed — indeed, they did refresh — the memories of the great sacrifices France made in the war for the cause of civiliza- tion. They may well have evoked genuine sympa- thy for France, truly beset as she is, and, beyond that, "haunted" — the word is Balfour's and sig- nificant as describing fears with a touch of un- reality about them — by terrors across the Rhine. Then, too, the speech may have helped Briand po- litically at home. It did not, however, in the judgment at least of those who agree with Lord Cui*?on, make more secure the position of France. Certainly it did not strengthen the entente cordiale between France and Great Britain. It did not enhance in prestige France's international position. And over and above all that, it most assuredly did not set the cause for which the nations are ga|:hered together here forward so much as by an i*rfes^. On the con- trary, it confused, and it will be- fortunate if it does not confound, the whole course of the present negotiations. "Why could not France have cooperated in this conference instead of making it a scene of special pleading?" asks H. G. Wells. In sb. doing he voices the prevailing criticism of IVt. Briand's utterances that is heard in the capital. In all that he said and did he virtually ignored the conference ^a 62 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 921 save as a rostrum for his defence of France and French policy. In his first brief speech answering Hughes there were only a few generalizations. In his great speech on Monday there was not a single reference to either of the two great purposes for which the conference had been called — limitation of naval armaments and a solution of the problems of the Far East. In his speech at the Lotos Club on Thursday he again appeared as a special pleader for France and made no reference to the major purposes of the conference in which he had been invited to participate. It was a week of special pleading. There was not so much as a "helpful hint" for the Hughes programme, much less any constructive contribution to the work of the conference. It is easy enough to list detailed criticisms of the speech which have been prevalent here at the capital during the past week — the mistake in emphasis which led the speaker to make little of the very definite curtailment of armament that France is busy effecting; the long quotations from Ludendorff which informed American opinion is far from believing represents the prevailing temper in Germany to-day; the poor taste of his casual sarcasm about the capital ships being designed, he supposed, to go fishing for sardines; the talk about the Russian military menace, regarded here as illusory; the folly of the policy of isola- FRANCE AT THE ARMS CONFERENCE Gl, tion, which Lord Curzon at least attributes to him. Such criticisms, however, do not touch upon the hurt he has done the conference itself, which is something far subtler. This conference was called in a spirit of amity and cooperation. Its atmos- phere is one of goodwill. Its purpose is reconcilia- tion among the nations. The faces of Hughes and Balfour and even of Kato are set forward and not back. Into this gathering Briand comes with a dis- cordant note. Recalling the war-time sacrifices of France and the story of Verdun, he at the same time revives all the old war hatreds and war ani- mosities. He speaks of harboring no hate for Germany — and indeed the Government of which he is the head has done something in the way of putting into effect a policy of moderation — and at the same time he draws a picture of Germany as full of the menace of militarism, and so fills out the picture as to leave his hearers in a mood the very opposite of that which would be characterized by the goodwill of which he spoke. He reads long quotations from Ludendorff, long discredited, and informally appears to hint that the British naval programme is being directed against France. All of this hardly makes for reconciliation. It is as though some one at a party had turned on the phonograph record of a dead man's voice. 64 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 92 1 Secretary Hughes, it will be conceded, is a mas- ter of analysis. Those who have heard him day by day explain the foreign policies of this country know that he is also a master of the English language, and that the words he wants lie always ready to his tongue. His reply to M. Briand, in the judgment of those who heard it, will be long remembered, especially the ringing phrase: ''There is no moral isolation for the defenders of liberty and justice." That speech of Mr. Hughes was notable for what it did not say as well as for what it did say, however, and perhaps particularly for his description of M. Briand's speech. "It would not do justice to my own sentiment or to that of my colleagues of the American delega- tion," he began, "if I did not take part in this expression of the sense of privilege which has been felt in listening to this brilliant, eloquent, compre- hensive, and instructive address stating the posi- tion and policy of France." Those adjectives describe the speech with the utmost precision . It was just that — " brilliant, elo- quent, comprehensive, and instructive" — and, from the point of view of the conference, not one atom more. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 013 900 829 7