Personal Peace

Very cross was everyone with French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou last week. Fortnight ago he did his level best to bring the dying Disarmament Conference to a quick and painless end by refusing to consider any plan that would allow Germany even partial disarmament, by refusing to admit Germany's reentrance to the Conference until French security had been guaranteed. The President of the Conference, "Uncle Arthur" Henderson, mildest of men, looked straight at France's chief spokesman last week and snapped:

"The conference situation is desperate. It holds the lives of the young men of the world in its hands and public opinion despairs of its deliberations. Yesterday I offered M. Barthou a place on the committee to redraft the disarmament plan. M. Barthou declined. Today I attempted a draft resolution myself. M. Barthou rejects it. Either M. Barthou must submit a program of work or the general commission will be summoned and will be informed that the bureau has failed. This means that the conference closes down."

All this time small, sharp Norman Davis, U. S. Ambassador-at-Large, went bustling from group to group trying to patch the quarrel between M. Barthou and the British. Sir John Simon, British Foreign Secretary with whom M. Barthou came to verbal blows fortnight ago, had gone back to London, leaving at Geneva Captain Anthony Eden, the Empire's young, adroit conciliator and "Traveling Salesman of Peace."

Suddenly the clouds broke and M. Barthou, his beard bright with smiles, gave a dinner which turned out to be a love feast. Haggard old "Uncle Arthur" Henderson was shoved into obscurity, his plan dropped. Agreement was then reached on three points: 1) The Disarmament Conference will not act on Soviet Commissar Maxim Litvinoffs proposal that it turn itself into the Permanent Conference for Promotion of Peace but will submit this idea to all governments; 2) the main Disarmament Conference will adjourn this week until autumn but several committees will bask along in Geneva all summer; 3) the work of the Conference shall proceed "without prejudice to private conversations on which the governments will desire to enter in order to facilitate the attainment of final success by the return of Germany to the Conference."

That meant Europe had decided to scrap public conferences for the summer in favor of private conferences. Two of sensational interest were immediately announced. In Chancellor Adolf Hitler's entourage at Berlin it was authoritatively said that he would soon confer with Premier Benito Mussolini; and Prime Minister James Ramsay McDonald announced that M. Barthou had accepted an invitation to confer with him. The Italians also invited M. Barthou to confer with Senor Mussolini.

Suddenly injected into Europe's new interest in "personal conferences" was a report from Washington that President

Roosevelt on his summer trip to Hawaii would confer with Japanese bigwigs who would meet him half way across the Pacific at Honolulu. Efforts to check these reports found the White House noncommittal, but Ambassador Saito hotly told Washington correspondents, "It must be imagination."

Mr. Saito had just escorted to the White House the President of Japan's House of Peers, tall, fortyish Prince Fumimaro Konoye. who is in the U. S. as a "Goodwill Ambassador." Snapped Ambassador Saito: "The only thing I can imagine is that the President voluntarily told us he was going to Hawaii and expressed the wish to go to Japan. However, he said that would be impossible. That was every word that was said."

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