Evening star., 1932-01-24

H ME- dppIOdIl Va L4lC unCC AAACN
for the opening of the Geneva
Arms Conference naturally re-
wives memories of the earlier
international meetings in the
postwar period at which the United
States has been present. OF these,
four have been Of first Importance as
contrasted with the innumerable smaller
gatherings at which we have been rep
resented by unofficial observers or in
which we have taken only minor
part. These four are the Paris Peace
Conference, the Washington Confer
ence, the Coolidge Conference at
Geneva and the London Naval Confer
ence
1t Is. moreover, worthy Of at least
passing attention today, on the eve OF
still another meeting, that all four
failed and the consequences OF the
several failures have been disclosed in
the unhappy details of international
history ever since the termination of
the World War. Not less interesting is
the fact that in each case the Ameri-
can people were prepared in advance
by their Government for success and
long after the manifest failure were
still confronted by claims Of achieve
ment coming from official sources.
Failure of Paris.
To take these four conferences in
order: woodrow Wilson went to Paris
informing the people Of the United
States in advance that a peace OF un-
derstanding and the creation Of an in
ternational organization for the mainte-
nance Of peace were only possible as
American idealism was directly repre-
sented by the American Chief Execu-
tive at Paris The bases of this achieve
ment were to be the Fourteen Points
insuring a just peace settlement and
the League of Nations guaranteeing the
maintenance of order in a world made
safe for democracy.
A dozen years after the event it is
no longer to be claimed for the Treaty
of Versailles that it was peace of un-
derstanding while recent events alike
in Manchuria and in Europe have dis
closed how far the League of Nations
is from fulfilling any Of the major
hopes Wilson had for 1t. Moreover,
the rejection of the Treaty OF versailles
by the United States Senate and the
continued absence of the United States
from the League permanently testify to
the failure of this first conference in its
American detail.
The second of the conferences. that
of washington in 1922. has steadily
presented a less definite picture to the
IIo uCbuhA dOl1lCfCIl1Cl1b
was limited to the fixing of a ratio in
and the limitation of the number Of
capital ships possessed by great powers
and to the making of long series of
complicated political agreements in the
Pacific. Viewed in the light Of the ex-
pectations Of the American people,
Washington was, too, hardly less
cause for disillusionment than Paris.
For. on the one side Of international
understanding, so far from marking an
end to Anglo American naval compe-
tition 1t opened eight years of bitter
ness and recrimination. Possessing po-
tential supremacy In the capital ship
the United States proposed parity in
all categories with the British. But al
though the United States resigned its
prospect Of supremacy in capital ships
1t did not obtain from Britain similar
concession in cruisers and such parity
was not obtained even in principle un-
til the London conference eight years
later, and it has never been translated
into fact.
Japan Supreme in Asia"
AS to the Pacific treaties, in order
TO persuade Japan to accept ratio
of 1915 in capital ships, both America
and Great Britain were compelled to
agree not to fortify their own posses
sions extending in a wide circle from
the Aleutian Islands to Malaysia and
including the Philippines, Guam and
Hongkong. In effect, Britain retired
behind Singapore and the United States
behind Hawaii, leaving to Japan COM
plete supremacy in all Asiatic waters.
The Anglo-Saxon nations thus re-
signed to Japan the power to exploit
China as it chose, and what is hap
IN Monpbl1ria fnHaU ic a Nlnar
consequence of the agreements signed
at Washington. The effort to guard
against such aggression as is now
taking place in Manchuria, expressed
in the nine-poWer treaty, with its con-
sultative pact has been demonstrated
to have been futile and the nine-power
treaty, like the Kellogg pact and the
Covenant of the League, has been
exposed in their contemporary USE
leSsneSs.
The other effect of the Washington
Conference little observed in the
United States, was the eXacerbation of
the relations between Britain and
France, which led Immediately to the
fall Of BRAND and the arrival of
Poincare and, following the inevitable
failure of the Genoa Conference, from
which we were absent, to the occupa-
ton of the Ruhr. 1t is interesting to
note, too. that these three conferences,
Paris, Washington and Genoa, had
been in turn fatal for various states
men. Wilson and Clemenceau were
both destroyed politically by Paris,
BRAND by Washington and Lloyd
George by Genoa.
After Washington there began long
period of Anglo American recrimina-
ton. While the Harding administration
assured Congress and the public that
Washington had been great triumph,
both little by little came 10 perceive the
fact that, although the United States
had sacrificed supremacy in the battle
line, it had not acquired parity in
cruisers. In fact, the eventual judg-
ment was that we had obtained parity
only in an obsolete category, while re-
naming hopelessly inferior in the more
important classes.
To meet the rising tide Of popular