Peace Passage

The statecraft and the art of France have scarcely produced two things more remarkable than a certain document and the ship on which it was en route last week to Manhattan. The document proposed in a few explicit sentences that the U. S. and France pledge themselves never to go to war.

In Paris, Foreign Minister Aristide Briand, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize* (TIME, Dec. 20), handed the proposal, which he had personally drafted to the U. S. Ambassador. In the usual course of events Ambassador Myron Timothy Herrick would simply have sent this communication on through ordinary channels to U. S. Secretary of State Frank Billings Kellogg. He did not do so. Instead, Mr. Herrick made a gesture worthy of France and the U. S. He ordered his bags packed, took the so vital document into his personal care, and embarked on the maiden voyage of the just completed flagship of the French Line, the Ile de France (sixth largest ship--41,000 tons). That Mr. Herrick had previously planned to come home, anyway, did not alter the effectiveness of his beau geste.

By so doing Mr. Herrick forcibly directed the attention of U. S. citizens to that great movement called L'Art Moderne--for the steamer Ile de France in her interior decor is the work of almost a dozen of the greatest French exponents of this new species of art--an art now available in the U. S. only through one or two of Manhattan's smartest decorators.

Upon the Ile de France have labored Pierre Patou, Lalique (perhaps the most brilliant living worker in glass), Sue et Mare (among the smartest decorators in Paris), the daring landscapist Jaulmes, the sculptor Pommier and other chief exponents of L'Art Moderne. What did Mr. Herrick find they had done upon the Ile de France?

He ate in the largest dining-room on any steamer, a vast salon, 1,000 square metres in area,* covered with a carpet which cost 1,000,000 francs, ventilated by 112 portholes.

Yet these statistics mattered little beside the fact that this Salon had been done by Pierre Patou in three shades of soft grey Pyrenees marble, with strange, geometric, golden glass lighting by Lalique. On Sunday Mr. Herrick found that he might worship in a chapel, two stories high, done with emboine panels upon lemonwood by Nelson et Simon, who had placed upon the altar an ultra-modern crucifix in molded glass, blazing from concealed lamps.

Mr. Herrick, no teetotaler, may have visited the 29-foot bar, danced in the 1,000 square foot ballroom by Sue et Mare, or shot at clay rabbits in the shooting gallery.

Meanwhile the Ile de France sped on, driven by four turbines, at 23 knots./- Although this is slower than the 28 knot Mauretania, "fastest ship in the world," the Ile de France will shortly be equipped with seaplanes from which hurried passengers may be shot from her deck two days before she lands.

The peace proposal, the ship and Mr. Herrick all constituted last week a combined gesture of amity, concord and art hard to equal.

*Half of the 1925 Peace Prize was awarded to U. S. Vice President Dawes; the rest of the 1925 prize and all of the 1926 prize were divided among Foreign Ministers Briand, Chamberlain and Stresemann.

*1,100 square yards.

/-26 miles per hour.