One of the world's most famous surgeons, who is now in America treating the crippled children of this country in order to do his part to repay America for the work of feeding Austria's starving children At the convention of the Investment Bankers Association held recently in New Orleans, Mr. Beebe, one of the younger investment bankers, was elected President. Mr. Beebe is with Harris, Forbes and Company of New York, and has, for several years, been active in the management of the Investment Bankers Association T The President's Influence HE nature of President Harding's influence upon the Conference has no where been better expressed than in a characterization of him by Postmaster General Hays, in a speech delivered in New York a few weeks ago. Mr. Hays said, in part: If you, throughout the country, have been able to "sense" the curing and restorative qualities of President Harding's personality, much more vividly do we, who serve in contact with him, appreciate him as one whose greatest concern is justice and good faith, who cures excitement with serenity, who meets passion with gentleness, who conquers anger with tolerance, who overcomes violence with patience, who shames greed with unselfishness, whose test for every decision is: "What does good faith call on us to do?", whose approach to every problem is "Which of these alternatives is just?" It is these qualities of President Harding's personality, flowing out from him steadily day by day, that have had the largest part in bringing America to that equability which is his own. The outstanding characteristics of the Conference have been its urbanity, its serenity, its patience. Its work has been hard and steady, but without haste. These things reflect the qualities of the President. A personal impression of him is of a Middle Western farmer boy who has grown into a kindly man of the world who has acquired dignity without loss of a still boyish unaffectedness and charm, and whose mind is serene both because his vigorous body is healthy and comfortable and because his conscience is untroubled. He is so obviously honest, direct, and human that he inspires trust in all who meet him. This is not merely a negative lack of suspicion: on the contrary, he radiates a positive and active quality of the spirit that generates in others a motor inspiration to good works. Mr. Hughes's Contribution really magnificent state in the art of negotiation. Veiled language is a favorite device of the old diplomacy, and veiled language usually means either that the purposes for which it is employed will not stand the light of open day or that the men who employ it have not really thought out their problems and must resort to the sort of bargaining methods that are common in the second-hand clothing trade. Mr. Hughes's intellectual powers were never more brilliantly utilized nor his skill as an advocate displayed to better advantage. But in his case, as in Mr. Harding's, the finest part of the performance was its exhibition of a sound character and of the profound influence which character in one man wields over the actions of other men. Repeated efforts were made at the Conference, by advisers to several of the delegations, including our own, to inject into the programme objections to the main principles, that were based upon the old devious ideas of "advantage" at somebody else's expense. But the principles had been too honestly and too clearly thought out to be weakened by such attacks, and they emerged from the discussions without substantial al teration. T The Future of Navies HE theory of the naval holiday is two-fold: that it will lift the burden for those years, and that it will lift the fever of taxation off an impoverished world of competitive preparation for war out of the councils of a distracted world. The second part of the theory, if it works, will be the more valuable. Even the most pacific statesman has enough nerve-racking interruptions to his efforts to keep peace with the neighbors, without having naval experts at his elbow every moment whispering in his ear some bloodcurdling report about a new move by other naval experts of another nation which must be met by some new move by us. Mment of America's position upon naval "A distressed correspondent at Washington gave the opening session of the Conference an electrical impulse that carried on through later meetings with almost unabated power. It had three elements of greatness: simplicity of design, soundness of principle, and the courage which is born of "honor and faith and a fair intent.” The address was a triumph of straightthinking and plain speaking over subtlety complained that the Conference was simply agreeing that the world should hereafter use bare fists instead of brass knuckles, and that therefore the Conference, so far as peace was concerned, was a failure. concerned, was a failure. He overlooked the idea that a several-year's surcease from arguments over the relative merits of weapons might leave the nations more time to think about other things than war preparations. And that with such a holiday might come a gradual conviction that weapons were poor things anyhow. And especially as the end of the holiday approached, and the peoples of the earth saw looming up before them the enormous costs of replacing these now somewhat foolish looking fleets, that they might balk at the price and insist upon further reductions. This last point received especial emphasis from the American delegation. The British proposal, that the naval holiday should be followed by a "staggered" replacement of obsolete ships (say, one every two years), was in direct opposition to a cardinal principle of the American plan. This British proposal looked toward maintaining forever, not merely the relative strength of existing navies after one reduction, but their absolute strength as well. It sought to do this by making it easy in a financial sense to do so, by spreading the cost of replacement out over a term of years. the American plan. That plan is intended to encourage a gradual movement toward successive reductions until all nations are content to have navies that amount to nothing more than coast defences and a police force to prevent piracy on the high seas. Under such a plan, British maritime communications would still be as safe as they are to-day. The safety of British sea lines rests, not on the absolute strength of her naval force, but on its relative strength. If Britain had a thousand superdreadnaughts and we had two thousand, she would be more helpless than if we each had only one destroyer. Indeed, she would be much safer if we had one destroyer apiece than if we had a thousand battleships apiece, for in the former case we should not have any offensive power worth Britain's worrying about, whereas in the latter case, one defeat in battle might suddenly put her at the mercy of an overwhelming offensive force. If mere reduction of taxes for ten years had been the only gain to be got from limitation of armaments, America would not have bothered to call the Conference. Much as we complain of high taxes, we are not really suffering under them. Naval armament lays three times as heavy a burden on each Briton as the same amount of armament does on each American, and probably eight times as heavy a burden on each Japanese. We don't like taxes, but we can stand a lot more of them if we have to. But we called the Conference to get rid of the curse of navies, not their cost. We don't like to be a gun-toter; we don't like to have the atmosphere that hangs around a gun-toting community hang over our dealings with our neighbors. We are sick and tired of the folly of war, its stupidity, its futility, and the human misery that goes with it. We have proposed a plan that looks toward getting rid of it. We firmly believe that that plan is going to work. We are pretty sure that it's going to be tried-in good faith. The American plan, on the contrary, looked to the end of the naval holiday as an opportunity for everybody (if, as may be hoped, they have been satisfied with one dose of limitation) to try another dose of the same remedy and still further reduce their absolute strength in the same proportions. Consequently, the Americans wished to make replacements look just as costly as possible, and thereby make further limitation of navies look as attractive as possible to the taxpayers of all nations, at the end of the holiday. This could best be done by arranging that all replacements should come in a heap. If the American Congress, after, say, nine years of naval budgets averaging 200 million dollars a year should be asked at the beginning of the tenth year to provide 1,000 million dollars to replace an obsolete fleet, they would be inclined to say that they would do no such thing certainly not if they could persuade Great Britain and Japan to join in the refusal, as they, probably, by that time and under the same psychology, would be only too glad to do. What they would probably all agree to would be an extension of the holiday for One Good Conference Deserves Another another ten years, and then, if all went well, to replace only half of the existing fleets and junk the rest. Thus what may be called the "kangaroo leap" method of alternate holiday and replacement (as opposed to the scheme of one holiday followed by continuous, even though decelerated, replacement) is the very heart of T HE best thing about the Washington Conference is that it has called for another. This fact distinguishes it, and reveals as well the principle that animated it. The distinction is, that former international conferences tried to tie the hands of the future by grappling iron bands of agree ment around the status quo and resolving that it should continue static. The old diplomacy-the diplomacy of the Congress of Vienna and of the Congress of Berlin-said in effect, "At last, by the verdict of war, we have got the nations into the postures in which they ought to sit, and, by Heaven, henceforth they shall continue so to sit." That has been the theory of treaty-making since the dawn of history, and, despite an endless succession of new wars which demonstrated ever anew the folly of the thought, it has continued to be the theory of treaty-making down to this present. That theory rested on two false assumptions, namely, that a nation defeated in war would permanently accept the verdict of defeat, and that the course of future events could be controlled by agreements regarding present conditions. The whole thing left out of reckoning both human nature and the ceaseless activity of life. Hence human history presents a picture of statesmen time after time building a dam of treaties across the roaring torrent of human progress, only to witness an inevitable recurrence of a veritable Johnstown flood of war, breaking down this artificial barrier and allowing human aspirations to find natural channels for their onward march. Herein lies the new principle exemplified at the Washington Conference. The Americans who called it recognized the fluid character of events. They did not hope to congeal human relationships into permanent shapes. They did not try to fix a line across the stream of human events and say, "Beyond this point, cease flowing." Their theory was rather something like this: "This vast stream of human energy will flow on forever, without pause or rest. The most we can hope to do is to improve the channel here, to divert some of its waters there to the benign uses of irrigation, to harness some of its now destructive powers to dynamos of beneficent purpose. If we accomplish a little here to-day and a little there to-morrow, a few centuries may see the stream cleared of its sand-bars and snags, its excess of waters diverted to useful purposes, its spring freshets drained away into settling basins, all its destructiveness gone and all its powers brought into the service of man.” The Washington Conference, then, was limited to an attempt to build two settling basins. Thousands are needed, but the Con ference was not attempting to reorganize the Mississippi River all at once. Its plan was to build just two settling basins, and then to call the workmen together to start work on another. The two settling basins that Washington has been building are a limitation of navies and an approach to the settlement of Far Eastern problems by discussion instead of by preparation for war. Neither basin is finishedthe exact shape and size of neither is fixed. That is to be expected. The important thing is, that everybody concerned has agreed that they shall be built. And that everybody has agreed that settling basins are better than dams, and is willing to build some more of them. All this sounds absurdly simple, but it is really a revolution in human conduct. It has been thought before, but it has never been done before-certainly not on a world-wide scale. Intellectually, it is as revolutionary as the acceptance of the doctrine of free will, as opposed to the doctrine of fatalism. In practice, it is as revolutionary as the adoption of preventive medicine; in addition to the older habit of not treating the patient until after he had got sick. Preventive medicine has not eradicated all diseases. But the method is right, as is attested by its victories: it has already nearly wiped out one of the worst scourges (yellow fever), and has greatly curtailed many others, such as smallpox, tuberculosis, and hookworm. Similarly, the Washington Conference has not stopped all future wars, but it will doubtless prevent several; and the method it has so auspiciously inaugurated will doubtless be found the right one to stop many more. That method is the method of preventive negotiation. This will probably come to mean practically continuous negotiation. Its weapons are foresight, to see trouble coming before it arrives; frankness, to agree that troubles are inevitable in human relationship; goodwill, to provide a proper atmosphere in which troubles may be discussed without passion; and publicity, to let in the antiseptic sunlight of public opinion upon the conversations. It is too soon to discuss whether this is or is not a better method than the device of a League of Nations. It is the method to which our Government is committed, and apparently the rest of the world is willing to help us try it out. |