Part 7

It was difficult at first to imagine the conference as anything more than an admirably well managed social occasion.

Continental Hall is a quite charming building, not too big for intimacy, not too small for a sufficient gathering of people. The chief members of the delegations had still to assemble; they were to sit at green baize covered tables in the body of the hall. About this central arena sat the massed attaches, and under the galleries the press representatives. In the boxes clustered the ladies of the diplomatic world. Members of the House of Representatives, the Senators, their friends and a sprinkling of privileged people occupied the big galleries above.

There was a great chatter of conversation when I entered. Everybody was greeting friends, flitting from group to group. It was one of those gatherings where everybody seemed to know everybody. Socially, it was extraordinarily like a very smart first night in a prominent London theatre.

“Last time I came to America,” I found myself saying, “I brought a silk hat and morning coat, and never wore them once. Now everybody seems to be wearing a morning coat and a silk hat.” It was the sort of occasion one dresses for. And that was the tone of the conversation.

It was difficult to believe that this gathering could be the beginning of anything of supreme historical importance.

Came a slight hush in the conversation. The delegates appeared, all with tremendously familiar faces taken out of the illustrated papers. They disposed themselves in their seats in leisurely fashion. One seat remained vacant for a time—the seat of the President. Then appeared President Harding, and there was a great clapping of hands. It became more and more like a first night. Then a hushing of enthusiasm, and silence, and he spoke.

It was a fine speech, less ornate and more direct than the Arlington oration. And the galleries above, behaving more and more like a first night audience, interrupted with rounds of applause whenever there were definite allusions to disarmament. He finished and declared the conference open and departed. Mr. Balfour followed, echoing the President’s sentiments in a few well chosen words and proposing Secretary Hughes for the Chairman of the conference.

The Hall became aware of a check in the onward flow of the proceedings. An interpreter got up and repeated Mr. Balfour’s speech in French for the benefit of the French delegation. He had made a shorthand note as Mr. Balfour spoke. This, we learned, was to be the procedure throughout the conference. Every speech, question and interruption was to be dealt with in this interlinear manner. Fortunately, it was not necessary to do this in the case of the President’s address, nor was it necessary in the case of the address of Secretary Hughes, which was now impending because these had already been printed and distributed and a translation made of them.

Their linguistic isolation is likely to prove unfortunate for the French. The Belgian, the Dutch, the Chinese, Japanese and Portuguese delegations all speak in English and listen to the English speeches. Consequently, the French are in a position in which they seem to be the most foreign people present. This must be disconcerting to them now.

It will be much more disconcerting if, at a later stage, German delegates speaking English should appear upon some extension or side committee of the conference. But I do not see how it can be avoided. The French are a little out of touch in the conference because of this; they must be much more out of touch with the incessant conversation in clubs and at dinner tables and everywhere in Washington, which makes the atmosphere in which the conference is working.

This, however, is a note by the way. Secretary Hughes took the chair and delivered his address. It was a very carefully arranged surprise and its effect was really dramatical. It jumped the conference abruptly from the fine generalizations that had hitherto engaged it to immediately practical things. Secretary Hughes sketched out what was evidently a carefully worked out scheme, a most explicit scheme, for the complete cessation of naval armament competition.

America wanted at the very outset, he said, to convince the world that she meant business in the conference, and so she had taken this unexpected step of putting immediate practical proposals upon the table. She would scrap completely all the ships she had still under construction and all her older ships and she would discontinue all naval construction for ten years if Britain and Japan would do the same.

She proposed that the naval strength of the three powers concerned should remain for ten years in the ratio of: Britain, 22; America, 18, and Japan, 10. In other words, she proposed so to fix things that no two of these three powers can wage a conclusive naval war against each other, but with America and Britain in a position to do so jointly against Japan and with Japan at a great disadvantage against America, even if she were to risk an inconclusive war with America on the chance of Britain’s not coming in. And having unfolded this scheme, Secretary Hughes concluded.

We were a little stunned. We had expected the opening meeting to be preliminary, to stick to generalities. After Secretary Hughes had finished, there was a feeling that we wanted to go away and think. But the members of the House of Representatives were enjoying an unwonted sense of being in the gallery, quite irresponsibly in the gallery, with somebody else upon the floor. They burst in upon our statesmanlike thoughts below with loud cries for “Briand!”

The atmosphere of friendly festival was reestablished. M. Briand spoke eloquently—saying nothing whatever about the proposals of Secretary Hughes—and sat down, and his still quite abstract praises of peace were translated into English.

“Japan!” shouted the members of the House of Representatives, a theatre gallery now in full cry. Japan spoke in English and its sentiments were translated into French for the benefit of the foreigners. Japan expressed admirable sentiments and said nothing whatever about the proposals of Secretary Hughes.

Thereafter it would have been discourteous not to call for something from Italy, China, Belgium, Holland and Portugal. They all spoke in English, even Belgium spoke in English, and what they said was translated into French. Nobody said anything whatever about the proposals of Secretary Hughes. The gallery applauded each speech heartily and the atmosphere of a first night was completely restored. We dispersed to luncheons and tea parties and to talk before we wrote about it. And as we tried to get it into focus in our minds it became clear that much more than a ceremonial opening of the conference had occurred.

Secretary Hughes has made proposals that challenge the whole situation in the Pacific. For if Japan accepts them—I do not see how they could be otherwise than acceptable to the British—it puts Japan to so definite and permanent a disadvantage that it amounts to an abandonment on the part of Japan of the idea of fighting a war on the Pacific except as the last desperate defensive resort under the pressure of an unavoidable attack, and Japan can abandon that idea only if she can see her way clearly without a war to all that she believes to be vitally necessary to her.

It is possible to say that Secretary Hughes has narrowed down the work of the conference by this sudden focusing of attention upon naval warfare and Japan. But I do not think that is the case. The challenge he has made cannot be taken up until a number of associated issues are settled. Certainly his proposals have precipitated the work of the conference from the clouds and beautiful generalities to the earth and very concrete realities.

“You accept these proposals,” America says in effect. “If not, why not?”

Japan must accept or reply so and so. So from armaments we shall get to the aims behind armaments; for no battleship is launched except against a specific antagonist and for a specific end. And in the matter of aims also the conference will presently have to consider what each power must scrap for the common good and what it may be permitted to keep for its own satisfaction.

Since Secretary Hughes made it clear that the conference is to approach the inevitable general discussion of world peace by way of the sea and the Pacific, since for a time France and Europe generally will sit somewhat out of the limelight, it will be well, perhaps, if in my next article I discuss a few elementary considerations about Japan.

VII WHAT IS JAPAN?

Washington, Nov. 15.

Of all the national delegations assembled here in Washington, the most acutely scrutinized, the most discussed and probably the least understood is the Japanese. The limelight gravitates toward it, moved, one feels, not so much by an extreme respect as by an inordinate curiosity.

Of only one other people—I write as a spectator from overseas—does one feel the same sense of the possibility of dramatically unexpected things, and that is the Americans. The Japanese, we feel, we have not found out, and the Americans, we feel, have not found out themselves. Already the Americans have sprung one great surprise upon the conference. Britain, France, Italy and the other powers in attendance are comparatively calculable—so far as their representation goes. But Japan is different; it is not built upon the same lines, it follows different laws.

I went on Sunday night to the press reception at the Japanese headquarters. The Ambassador is a buoyant man of the world, speaking excellent English and thoroughly acclimatized to an American press gathering. But many of the Japanese faces about him set my imagination busy, putting them back into the voluminous robes and the sashes holding the double swords with which I had first met them long ago in Japanese prints, and which would have become them so much better.

Admiral Kato spoke in Japanese and Prince Tokugawa in English; they welcomed the Hughes proposals with warm generalities and hopes for peace—as we all hope for peace—with insufficient particulars. I got no conversation with any Japanese; they were not talking to us; they did not want to talk; it was a reception of hearty politeness and no exchanges. I found myself falling back upon an earlier impression.