We shall have to leave November 12, 1921, the opening day of the Conference on the Limitation of Armament, to History for a final appraisement. Arthur Balfour told Mr. Hughes after he had had time to gather himself together from the shock of the American program that in his judgment a new anniversary had been added to the Reconstruction Movement. “If the 11th of November,” said Mr. Balfour, “in the minds of the allied and associated powers, in the minds perhaps not less of all the neutrals—if that is a date imprinted on grateful hearts, I think November 12 will also prove to be an anniversary welcomed and thought of in a grateful spirit by those who in the future shall look back upon the arduous struggle now being made by the civilized nations of the world, not merely to restore pre-war conditions, but to see that war conditions shall never again exist.”

Whatever place it may turn out that November 12 shall hold on the calendar of great national days, this thing is sure; it will always be remembered for the shock it gave Old School Diplomacy. That institution really received a heavier bombardment than War, the real objective of the Conference. The shelling reached its very vitals, while it only touched the surface of War’s armor.

Diplomacy has always had her vested interests. They have seemed permanent, impregnable. What made November 12, 1921, portentous was its invasion of these vested interests. Take that first and most important one—Secrecy. When Secretary Hughes followed the opening speech of welcome and of idealism made by President Harding, not with another speech of more welcome and more idealism, as diplomacy prescribes for such occasions, but with the boldest and most detailed program of what the United States had in mind for the meeting, Diplomacy’s most sacred interest was for the moment overthrown. To be sure, what Secretary Hughes did was made possible by John Hay’s long struggle to educate his own countrymen to the idea of open diplomacy; by what President Wilson tried to do at the Paris conference. Mr. Wilson won the people of the world to his principle, but his colleagues contrived to block him in the second stage of the Paris game. Mr. Hughes, building on that experience, did not wait for consultation with his colleagues. On his own, in a fashion so unexpected that it was almost brutal, he threw not only the program of the United States on the table, but that which the United States expected of two—two only, please notice—of the eight nations she had invited in, Great Britain and Japan.

His proposals came one after another exactly like shells from a Big Bertha!—“It is now proposed that for a period of ten years there should be no further construction of capital ships.” One after another the program of destruction followed.

The United States:—to scrap all capital ships now under construction along with fifteen old battleships, in all a tonnage of 845,740 tons;

Great Britain:—to stop her four new Hoods and scrap nineteen capital ships, a tonnage of 583,375 tons;

Japan:—abandon her program of ships not laid down, and scrap enough of existing ones, new and old, to make a tonnage of 448,928 tons.

I once saw a huge bull felled by a sledge hammer in the hands of a powerful Czecho-Slovac farm hand. When Mr. Hughes began hurling one after another his revolutionary propositions the scene kept flashing before my eyes, the heavy thud of the blow on the beast’s head falling on my ears. I felt almost as if I were being hit myself, and I confess to no little feeling of regret that Mr. Hughes should be putting his proposals so bluntly. “It is proposed that Great Britain shall,” etc. “It is proposed that Japan shall,” etc. Would it have been less effective as a proposal and would it not have been really more acceptable as a form if he had said—“We shall propose to Great Britain to consider so and so.” But, after all, when you are firing Big Berthas it is not the amenities that you consider.

Mr. Balfour and Sir Auckland Geddes, sitting where I could look them full in the face, had just the faintest expression of “seeing things.” I would not have been surprised if they had raised their hands in that instinctive gesture one makes when he does “see things” that are not there. The Japanese took it without a flicker of an eyelash—neither the delegates at the table nor the rows of attachÉs and secretaries moved, glanced at one another, changed expression. So far as their faces were concerned Mr. Hughes might have been continuing the Harding welcome—instead of calling publicly on them for a sacrifice unprecedented and undreamed of.

The program was so big—its presentation was so impressive (Mr. Hughes looked seven feet tall that day and his voice was the voice of the man who years ago arraigned the Insurance Companies) that one regretted that there were omissions so obvious as to force attention. There was a singular one in the otherwise admirable historical introduction Mr. Hughes made to his program. He reviewed there the efforts of the first and second Hague Conferences to bring about disarmament—explained the failure—and jumped from 1907 to 1921 as if in 1919, at the Paris Peace Conference, man’s most valiant effort to bring about disarmament had not been made. He failed to notice the fact that to this effort scores of peoples had subscribed, including all of the nations represented at the council table; that these nations had been working for two years in the League of Nations, under circumstances of indescribable world confusion and disorganization, to gather the information and prepare a practical plan not only to limit the world’s arms but to regulate for good and all private traffic in armaments. Before Mr. Hughes sat M. Viviani of France who had been serving on the Commission charged with this business. Before him, too, was man after man fresh from the discussions of the second annual Assembly of the League. Disarmament and many other matters pertaining to world peace had been before them. They came confident that they had done something of value at Geneva however small it might be compared with the immense work still to be done. Arthur Balfour of England, Viviani of France, Wellington Koo of China, Senator Schanzer of Italy, Sastri of India, Van Karnebeck of Holland—were among those that heard Mr. Hughes jump their honest efforts, beginning in 1919, to bring the armaments of the world to a police basis. It must have bewildered them a little—but they are gentlemen who are forced by their profession to take hints quickly—they understood that as far as the American Conference on Limitation of Armament was concerned, the League of Nations was not to exist. From that day, if you wanted information on the League from any one of them you had to catch him in private, and he usually made sure nobody was listening before he enlightened you as to his opinions, which invariably were “not for publication.”

One could not but wonder if Mr. Balfour had this omission in mind when at a later session he said in speaking of Mr. Hughes’ review of past disarmament efforts that “some fragments” had been laid before the Conference. What Mr. Hughes really did in ignoring the work for disarmament carried on at Paris and Geneva in the last three years was to call attention to it.

After all, was it not petty to be irritated when something so bold and real had been initiated? Was it not yielding to the desire to “rub in” the omission as bad—or worse—than the omission? As a matter of fact, the thing going on at the moment was so staggering that one had no time for more than a momentary irritation. Mr. Hughes swept his house on November 12—swept it off its feet. If secret diplomacy was given by him such a blow as it never had received before, diplomatic etiquette was torn to pieces by the Senate and the House of the United States, each of which had a section of the gallery to itself. Possibly their action was due to a little jealousy. They are accustomed to holding the center of the deliberative stage in Washington, and they always have, possibly always will resent a little the coming of an outside deliberative body which for the time being the public regards as more interesting than themselves. They made it plain from the start that they were not awed. The House of Representatives particularly was a joy to see if it did make a shocking exhibition of itself. It looked as if it were at a ball game and conducted itself in the same way. It hung over the gallery, lolled in its seats, and when the President struck his great note, the words which ought to become a slogan of the country—“Less of Armament and None of War”—it rose to its feet and cheered as if there had been a home run.

Having once broke out in unrestrained cheers, they gave again and again what William Allen White called “the yelp of democracy.” Even after the program was over and the remaining formalities customary on such occasions were about at an end, they took things into their own hands and finished their attack on diplomatic etiquette by calling for Briand as they might have called for Babe Ruth. “It isn’t done, you know,” I heard one young Britisher say after it was over. But it had been done, and the chances are that there will be more of it in the future.

If this day does work out to be portentous in history, as it possibly may, the time will come when every country will hang great historical pictures of the scene in its public galleries. We should have one, whatever its fate. And I hope the artist that does it will not fail to give full value to the Congress that cracked the proprieties. Let him take his picture from the further left side of the auditorium. In this way he can bring in the House of Representatives. He can afford to leave out the diplomatic gallery, as he would have to do from this position. The diplomatic gallery counted less than any other group in the gathering.

Secrecy and etiquette were not the only vested interests attacked on November 12, 1921. There was a third that received a blow—lighter to be sure, but a blow all the same and a significant one. The exclusive vested right of man to the field of diplomacy was challenged. Not by giving a woman a seat at the table, but by introducing her on the floor, in an official capacity, a new official capacity, rather problematical as yet as to its outcome—a capacity which if it ranks lower than that of delegate is still counted higher than that of expert, since it brings the privilege of the floor.

Behind the American delegation facing the hall and inside the sacred space devoted to the principals of the Congress, sat a group of some twenty-one persons, the representatives of a new experiment in diplomacy—a slice of the public brought in to act as a link between the American delegates and the public. Four of these delegates were women—well-chosen women. They are the diplomatic pioneers of the United States.

Who were those people, why were they there? I heard more than one puzzled foreign attachÉ ask. When you explained that this was an advisory body, openly recognized by the government, they continued, “But why are women included?” They understood the women in the diplomatic gallery, the women in the boxes. It was a great ceremony. It was quite within established diplomatic procedure that the ladies of the official world should smile upon such an occasion.

They understood the few women scattered among the scores of men in the press galleries—but women on the floor as part of the Conference? What did that mean? It meant, dear sirs, simply this, that man’s exclusive, vested interest in diplomacy had been invaded—its masculinity attacked like its secrecy and propriety. What would come of the invasion no one could tell.

It is doubtful if ever a program has received heartier acclaim from this country than that of Mr. Hughes. It stirred by its boldness, its breadth. “Scrap!” Whoever had said that word seriously in all the long discussion of disarmament. Ten years!—the longest the most sanguine had suggested was five. It caught the imagination—had the ring of possibility in it. It might be putting the cart before the horse, as I had been complaining, but it made it practically certain that the horse would be acquired even if you had to pay a good round sum for him, so desirable had the cart been made.

And then the way the nations addressed picked it up! Three days later their formal acceptances were made. For England, Arthur Balfour accepted in principle, declaring as he did so:

“It is easy to estimate in dollars or in pounds, shillings and pence the saving to the taxpayer of each of the nations concerned which the adoption of this scheme will give. It is easy to show that the relief is great. It is easy to show that indirectly it will, as I hope and believe, greatly stimulate industry, national and international, and do much to diminish the difficulties under which every civilized government is at this time laboring. All that can be weighed, measured, counted; all that is a matter of figures. But there is something in this scheme which is above and beyond numerical calculation. There is something which goes to the root, which is concerned with the highest international morality.

“This scheme, after all—what does it do? It makes idealism a practical proposition. It takes hold of the dream which reformers, poets, publicists, even potentates, as we heard the other day, have from time to time put before mankind as the goal to which human endeavor should aspire.”

“Japan,” declared Admiral Baron Kato, “deeply appreciates the sincerity of purpose evident in the plan of the American Government for the limitation of armaments. She is satisfied that the proposed plan will materially relieve the nations of wasteful expenditures and cannot fail to make for the peace of the world.

“She cannot remain unmoved by the high aims which have actuated the American project. Gladly accepting, therefore, the proposal in principle, Japan is ready to proceed with determination to a sweeping reduction in her naval armament.”

Italy, through Senator Schanzer, greeted the proposal as “The first effective step toward giving the world a release of such nature as to enable it to start the work of its economic reconstruction.”

France—her Premier, Briand, spoke for her—slid over the naval program. France, he said, had already entered on the right way—the way Mr. Hughes had indicated; her real interest was elsewhere. “I rather turn,” said M. Briand, “to another side of the problem to which Mr. Balfour has alluded, and I thank him for this. Is it only a question here of economy? Is it only a question of estimates and budgets? If it were so, if that were the only purpose you have in view, it will be really unworthy of the great nation that has called us here.

“So the main question, the crucial question, which is to be discussed here, is to know if the peoples of the world will be at last able to come to an understanding in order to avoid the atrocities of war. And then, gentlemen, when it comes on the agenda, as it will inevitably come, to the question of land armament, a question particularly delicate for France, as you are all aware, we have no intention to eschew this. We shall answer your appeal, fully conscious that this is a question of grave and serious nature for us.”

What more was there to do? England, Japan and the United States had accepted “in principle” a program for the limitation of navies, much more drastic than the majority of people had dreamed possible. To be sure the details were still to be worked out, but that seemed easy. Had not the Conference finished its work? There were people that said so. No. Mr. Hughes had simply awakened the country to what was possible if the reasons for armament could be removed.

So far as we, the United States, were concerned, these reasons were fourfold:

(1) Our Pacific possessions. Until we felt reasonably sure that they were safe from possible attack by Japan, we must keep our navy and strengthen our fortifications.

(2) The England-Japan pact. We suspected it. It might be a threat. So long as it existed could we wisely limit our navy?

(3) Our Open Door policy in China. We meant to stand by that. It had been invaded by Japan in the Great War; could we reaffirm it now and secure assurances we trusted that there would be no further encroachments? If not, could we limit our armament?

(4) Our policy of the integrity of nations—China and Russia. We had announced a “moral trusteeship” over both. No more carving up. Let them work it out for themselves. How were we going to back up that policy?

That is, we had possessions and policies for which we were responsible. Could we protect them without armament? That depended, in our judgment, upon England and Japan. Would they be willing to make agreements and concessions which would convince us that they were willing to respect our possessions and accept our policies in the Pacific?

If so, what assurances could we give them in return that would convince them that we meant to respect their possessions and policies? How could we prove to them that they need not fear us?

It was within the first month of the Conference that the answers to these questions were worked out “in principle” again.