A Decision

There were many comings and goings about the White House. Charles E. Hughes dropped in for luncheon. His beard looked familiar. Elihu Root came for luncheon the day after. His statesmanlike features were just as familiar there a few years ago. Secretary Kellogg lunched there the same day. Next day Senator Borah, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Moses and Senator Lenroot came to call. Newspaper men came and went in small flocks. It was plain that something was brewing, and that it was not beef tea.

The President obligingly made known what was going on. An invitation had been received the week before to have the U. S. represented at a conference of 18 nations at Geneva on Feb. 15. This conference is to fix the place, the date and the matter for consideration, etc., of a later conference which is to deal with disarmament by land and sea.

For several years all factions in Congress have been strongly urging another disarmament conference. Naturally the President would have made haste to accept the present invitation if it had not been that this invitation was issued by the League of Nations. To many members of Congress the name of the League of Nations is still anathema--to Borah, to Hiram W. Johnson, to Moses--but in general the "irreconcilables" none the less favor disarmament.

At any rate the President let it be known that the U. S. would be represented-officially, not unofficially--at the preliminary meeting. With Senator Borah he formulated three prerequisites for U. S. participation in a disarmament conference:

1) That the U. S. would participate in such a conference only as regards limitation on naval armament, but not as regards reduction of armies, since the U. S. Army is already reduced to a skeleton.

2) That the U. S. would not become a party to any security pact guaranteeing the boundaries or rights of any European country.

3) That any treaties arising out of the conference must be so far as the U. S. is concerned, purely mutual obligations, not statutes to be enforced or interpreted by the League of Nations.

On these terms Senator Borah capitulated on behalf of the irreconcilables, and the President announced acceptance of the invitation to the preliminary meeting. The three reservations really apply not to the preliminary conference, but to the real disarmament conference which is to follow; but by presenting them to the preliminary conference, the agenda there drawn up may be such as to facilitate U. S. participation in the succeeding conference--a matter which still remains undecided.

Meanwhile journalistic conjecture cast about for the most likely representatives at the conferences. The consensus of opinion for the preliminary conference seemed to be Hugh Gibson, U. S. Minister to Switzerland; for the disarmament conference (if attended): Elihu Root, Charles E. Hughes, Oscar W. Underwood, Frank B. Kellogg, William E. Borah, Herbert C. Hoover.