Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-01-19
BY FRANK H. sIMONDS.

"\HE London naval conference,
which will hold its opening ses-
sion in the historic st. James
Palace on Tuesday, is the fourth
in the series of international
meetings in which the United States has
Participated. And 1t is at least sig
&aificant detail that all have been I'M
lucky. The peace conference at Paris,
Nhe disarmament conference at Wash
Ington. the Coolidge conference at
Eeneva, all failed to fulfill the hopes
bf the American people.
OF these three former conferences,
Shat Of Paris was certainly the most IA
nous and the most far-reaching in its
consequences. It was, too. the most
Spectacular and impressive because the
Background of the meeting was the still
untouched battlefields and indescribable
deserts of the devastated area. One
short hour in a motor car suficed to
take one to Belleau Wood or the even
nearer fields of the First Marine.
Again, at Paris, the statesmen who
conducted the discussion were known
throughout the world as no public men
had ever before been known. Wilson,
Clemenceau and Lloyd George had filled
the world with their words and deeds
for four long years. And in full view
behind the Big Three were the soldiers,
iFoch, Pershing Weygand. Less bril-
liant than the Congress of Vienna in
1914, less formal and stately in its man
ners than the more recent gathering
mt Berlin in 1878, Paris was, as conSe-
,nuerce of the multiplication of means
Hof transmitting both the news and the
picture of events, drama that was
played to the largest audience in all
human history.
On the American side, too, no one
who was in Paris, London or even Rome
during the first visit of Woodrow Wilson
Hcan forget the universal passion of hope
and enthusiasm which seized upon the
masses of people beholding for the first
time an American President upon Eu-
ropean soil. recall the story of dis
,tinguished French man OF letters de-
6cribing the experience OF his maid.
"She went away from the house in
the morning, stood in the crowd all day,
returned late at night exhausted but
triumphant. He has come, have seen
him come she said; now all will be
well, now we shall have peace"
For a moment, the briefest conceiv-
able span of time, Wilson seemed to
represent to the war-weary millions OF
Old Europe something far above ordi-
nary human stature. But from that
first hour onward, enthusiasm, hope,
faith died as the statesmen worked be-
hind closed doors.
! Wilson himself never knew but one
more really happy day in Paris and that
was when, in the first open session, he
read of the text of the Covenant of the
League of Nations, moved its adoption
and heard the asserting voices of all
his colleagues. That was just before he
set out upon his American journey from
which he was to return, already shaken,
to face the later conflicts which were
to prove fatal.
Washington Was Tame.
BY comparison with the Paris Con-
ference, the Washington disarmament
meeting was inevitably tame affair.
And yet the first great international
meeting on American shores had a
charm of novelty. The presence of
Balfour, BRAND, Viviani, Sarraut, the
distinguished delegations from Japan
and Italy, the sudden appearance in
the streets of Washington OF journalists
whose fame was hardly less than that
of the statesmen, editors like Wickham
Steed, authors like H. G. Wells, cru
saders like Henry w. Nevinson, lent an
unforgettable touch.
Moreover, the washington Conference
opened amidst the most perfect sun
shine, prefaced by general excursion
to the grave of the Unknown Soldier
Hughes "bombshell'' which resulted in
the destruction of more tall ships than
were sunk at Jutland.
In its after effects Washington was
almost as unfortunate as Paris. If, too.
there was the general charge that at
the Peace Conference Wilson had been
outwitted by his ADLER associates there
was the conviction that his errors had
been repaired by the action of the Sen
ate In rejecting the treaty Of Versailles
And there was the almost equally gen.
eral belief that at Washington Mr.
Hughes had been taken in by Lord Bal
four. And, just as there had been after
Paris recrudescence of traditional dis
trust of Europe, so after Washington
there began period of angry suspicion
of Britain, which was TO eliminate in a
general explosion after the failure Of
the Geneva Conference.
= This Geneva meeting was, by contrast
with the Paris and Washington affairs,
much less considerable. At Paris the
world had been in session. at Washing
ton all the naval powers, but beside
Lake Leman only delegates from Brit
ain, Japan and the United States as
sembled Geneva was the first open
clash between American and British
naval conceptions America came ask
ing as right that parity which it had
not acquired in Washington. Britain