The Washington herald. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1906-1939, 1922-01-08
ARMS CONFERENCE
TO ALTER WORLD
Sullivan Calls Farley Great
Success Despite Final
Let Down.
By MARK SULLIVAN.

The public generally. distan,
from Washington. must be more
than a little dismayed to find some
writer's and others casting a bal.
ance. so TO speak. on the arms con.
ference, and coming to a tepidly
comfortable conclusion that on the
whole it has been a success. The
contrast between the spirit of the
opening day and the spirit of these
closing days is undoubtedly real
but II you look into it closely vou
Will find that mere psychola.,y
plays a larger part in it than the
fundamental facts do. Thoughtful
persons foresaw the dramatic anti
climax which is the chief cause OF
the present rather fattencd-out
Keeling. suspect that Hughes
himself foresaw it and calmly
counted it in the cost as again Il
the advantages he gained by max
ing his sensational opening speech
The day that speech was n,aG.
there was d famous American hui
morist in Washington. who re-
marked. with the Intentional exag-
Seration Of his role, I'm going
back home. This is going to be a
bum show. They've pulled off the
big murder scene in the first act"
p Broke Dramas Rules.
Now that sounds merely frivoI-
Gus, but it tells the whole storv,
II is not for nothing that genera
tons and centuries of dramatists
have learned that there is a law oi
the human mind when it is in the
role of spectator which requires
that you muSt have the big scene
in the third act or otherwise have
yonr show fatten out in an anti
climax. Hughes and the American
delegates violated this rule. and ,lld
it with their eyes open, and they
are now quite serene in facing the
foreseen result Of an anticlimaX as
far as the spectators are con-
cerned.
The conference as SHOW" is
one thing, but as a mechanism for
achieving certain results 1t is quite
another thing. 1t is the confer
ence as a show that the less
thoughtful public now sees and
finds a bit disappointing. II the
whole thing had been reversed. II
We had had all the disputes and
disagreements in the opening
weeks. and If, on one of the closing
days, Hughes should have come out
with an unexpected announcement,
such as that Great Britain, Japan
and America had agreed to stop
naval competition and take a ten
year naval holiday, then the sanse
persons who now see the confer
ence as a dramatic anti-climax
would be seeing it as what it in
trinsically is, a sensational and un-
precedented succesS
Farley OppoJtion Ineffective.
Further than this, it is an un-
happy fact that with some of those
who now proclaim the conference
a failure it Is a case either of
temperamental pessimism or some
other form of lack of kinship with
the atmosphere of enthusiasm and
success. The truth is that the ec-
fective opposition to success in this
conference, measured in terms Of
population and other values. is not
more than 20 per cent. IL the con-
ference were an ordinary parlia-
mentary gathering this 20 per cent
minority would be bowled over un-
tremendously.
But the conference is case
where decisions must be unanimous.
When this Limitation is remember
ed. the wonder is not the relatively
small failures of the gathering but
its great sui hess.
(C~---i-h. Ic~7i