Gravity of the Grave

With a great scraping of chairs and clearing of throats delegates to the League of Nations Disarmament Conference moved into their bleak hall in Geneva last week after seven months of recess. They and the world knew that they were mourners at a wake, that, with Germany absent and rampant on rearmament, the last chance of doing anything practical about engines of death went glimmering months ago. But they and the world expected a few fine fireworks before the corpse was laid finally to rest. That they got.

First speaker of importance was nasal, white-haired Norman Hezekiah Davis, U. S. Ambassador-at-large. His contribution to a world that already seemed twitching for another war:

"President Roosevelt has authorized me to summarize the attitude and policy of the United States as follows:

''We are prepared to cooperate in every practicable way in efforts to secure a general disarmament agreement. . . . We are furthermore willing to negotiate a universal pact of non-aggression and to join with other nations in conferring on international problems growing out of any treaties to which we are a party.

"The United States will not, however, participate in European political negotiations and settlements, and will not make any commitment whatever to use its armed forces for the settlement of any dispute anywhere. In effect the policy of the United States is to keep out of war, and to help in every possible way to discourage war. We have no new cures to offer."

Respectful applause followed Mr. Davis back to his seat. As far as the U. S. was concerned. Disarmament was evidently already in the grave.

Roly-poly Maxim Litvinoff, Soviet Foreign Commissar, next climbed the rostrum. In all previous Disarmament sessions, Comrade Litvinoff's tactics have been to demand 100% disarmament at once, to pledge Russia to anything the other powers would agree to, and then to sit back and chuckle hugely as red waves of embarrassment flushed his capitalist friends' cheeks. But things have changed in the past year. The growth of Hitlerism, formal recognition of U. S. S. R. by the U. S. and the possibility that Russia may soon take out a full League membership have left the capitalist world more sympathetic to Soviet officialdom than at any time in the past 15 years. Shrewd Comrade Litvinoff realized that this time it was necessary for him to do more than embarrass his disarmament colleagues for the benefit of the Moscow Press. He presented, therefore, two concrete proposals to jerk the delegates upright in their seats.

First he announced that, after years of dodging all responsibility for enforcing peace, Soviet Russia was now willing and waiting to join some system of enforced sanctions such as France has always cried for. Always eager to help, Comrade Litvinoff suggested that the sanctions be so graded that nations like France could be as forceful as they liked while others, like the U. S., could be relieved of all military action. Comrade Litvinoff's second suggestion was that the Disarmament Conference, already over two years old, be reorganized as a permanent body.

"Hitherto," said the Red Foreign Commissar, "peace conferences have been called mostly on the termination of wars, and have had as their object the division of the spoils of war. . . . But the conference I have in mind would sit for the prevention of war and its terrible consequences. It should work out, extend and perfect measures for strengthening security. It should give a timely response to warnings of impending danger of war and to S. O. S. calls for aid from threatened States. It should afford the latter all timely aid within its power, whether moral, economic, financial or otherwise."

Here was a pleasant dream, but the thought uppermost in every delegate's mind was that disarmament now is impossible because France will not have it. All through these speeches eyes kept turning to a seat directly below the rostrum where sat France's spokesman, alert, bearded Louis Barthou.

Foreign Minister Barthou is an excellent example of the best type of French machine politician. A Basque from the foothills of the Pyrenees, he has been in politics for 44 of his 71 years. Because it is as traditional for French politicians to be intellectual as for U. S. politicians to play golf and poker he collects bric-a-brac, first editions, and has written a well received biography of Richard Wagner with the title of The Prodigious Lover. Like every French politician of distinction, he has been Prime Minister (1913). He tried, without success, to form another government in 1930 on the fall of Tardieu's second ministry. Louis Barthou is a complete realist, an ardent nationalist.

Mounting the rostrum to deliver a genteel rebuke to France and her intransigent attitude toward German rearmament came suave, lanky Sir John Simon. British Foreign Secretary. M. Barthou listened to him quietly for a minute or two, then scowled, reddened, and scrawled viciously on a sheet of note paper while Sir John's elegant courtroom voice droned on.

"The only thing that matters now is an agreement," said Britain's Foreign Secretary, "and the only thing that is essential to an agreement from the British point of view is German participation in it, and that can only be attained by a measure of rearmament since Germany insists on it. The conference must therefore choose between either limited but real reduction of armaments, side by side with moderate rearmament, or pure and simple limitation at the status quo accompanied by rearmament on a larger scale."

His white beard bristling, Louis Barthou bustled up to make a scorchingly sarcastic reply that lasted 45 minutes:

"No one denies to Germany its equality in the economic and social life of the world. But what we do protest against is that spirit of war, the spirit which has been called the Prussian spirit. Indeed, Mirabeau said that war is the national industry of Prussia.

"I therefore feel that, in the light of these facts, there is no need for me to attempt any justification of my own country. . . . And so we must renounce now everything that does not immediately and absolutely please Germany? So we have arrived at a point where a single power, because she has brutally quit the Disarmament Conference, can impose her will on us who represent nearly all the world? For my part I refuse!"

Against the Simon plan of partial rearmament for Germany and disarmament for the rest of the world, Louis Barthou held out vigorously for Benito Mussolini's plan to freeze armaments at the status' quo.*

"I can well understand," cried the peppery little Frenchman, "that paternity has its illusions. My honorable colleague, Simon"--and whether he added "who is already my friend," or "who is almost my friend" Geneva papers could not agree-- "conceived this plan and his paternity has so many illusions that he tells us there has been only one concrete project submitted to the conference. My eminent colleague, Mussolini, who certainly is not a man incapable of paternity, also has his child!"

As he stepped down from the rostrum, perspiration dripped from the intelligent nose of Louis Barthou.

"At my age," he snapped to correspondents, "I didn't come here to talk twaddle."

Lounging in his seat, Sir John Simon remained refrigerator-cool. With no intention of replying to M. Barthou's personal remarks, he soothed:

"We must remember, gentlemen, that M. Barthou is an old man. accustomed to the ways of debate in his parliament at home, but not previously accustomed to our quiet way of talking here."

Nevertheless Sir John Simon packed up and went back to London. Next to leave Geneva was Belgium's chief delegate. Foreign Minister Paul Hymans. Worried "Uncle Arthur" Henderson, President of the Conference, adjourned it for a few days to let tempers cool.

"The present position of the conference," he mourned, "is more extremely grave than at any time since we opened in February 1932."

*M. Barthou dodged the fact that the original Mussolini plan also allowed a measure of rearmament to Germany.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.