Professionals to London

Professionals to London

One midnight last week the S. S. Aquitania put out from New York carrying three oldsters tucked away securely in three of her best bunks. The gentlemen were London-bound with no time to spare, for they were the U. S. delegates to the 1935 Naval Limitation Conference opening Dec. 9. Only fortnight ago President Roosevelt appointed them. Ambassador-at-Large Norman Hezekiah Davis, chief of the delegation, was named to go because attending conferences is his job. Admiral William Harrison Standley, Chief of Naval Operations, went along because it was Navy business. Undersecretary of State William Phillips was selected because of special circumstances.

In the British Foreign Office's "Locarno Room" (the great red-&-gold, frescoed hall where the famed treaties negotiated at Locarno were formally signed just ten years ago), Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin will open the Conference. The chiefs of the French, Italian, Japanese and U. S. delegations will reply to his address and many brave words of hope will be spoken. But when the gentlemen adjourn to begin their real work in Clarence House, a handsome Georgian edifice resembling a U. S. college dormitory, there will be little bravery in their hearts.

The U. S. In Washington in 1922 the five powers agreed to limit the capital ships of their fleets. In London in 1930 three of these powers grudgingly agreed to limit their cruisers and smaller vessels (TIME, April 28, 1930, et ante). This week's London Conference is necessitated by the fact that the 1922 and 1930 agreements are about to expire. Few of those attending it have any hope of winning even a grudging agreement. The three U. S. delegates, backed up by 17 technical experts, sailed with two aims: 1) to secure a treaty which will entail no further naval construction: 2) to maintain the present naval tonnage ratio of five for the U. S. to Britain's five and Japan's three. Last week they could already hear in their minds' ears the words of their London conferees and in none of them was encouragement.

Italy, The names of Benito Mussolini's mouthpieces at the Conference were not yet revealed but his "needs" were no secret. In the past he has demanded naval equality with France. He wants to dominate the Mediterranean so that his ventures in Africa cannot be interfered with. Whatever form his demands may take they will boil down to one thing: A bigger Italian Navy. France. Minister of Marine Franc, Pietri and Minister of Colonies Louis Rollin will be present to assert France's need, which is a Navy competent to match those of Italy and Germany. Since Italy wants a bigger Navy and only last summer Britain by a unilateral agreement gave Germany the right to build up to 35% of British fleet strength. France's demands boil down to one thing: A bigger French Navy. Britain. Sir Samuel Hoare, British Foreign Secretary, reluctantly putting aside his Ethiopian problems, will join with Sir Bolton Eyres-Monsell, First Lord of the Admiralty, to press Britain's needs: a modest increase of 20 light cruisers (70 instead of 50) to defend her trade routes. Since the Conservative Party was recently re-elected chiefly on the issue of Better-Armament-for-England, His Majesty's Government will not agree to bigger navies for others without enlarging its own demands. Therefore Britain is, willy-nilly, on the bigger navy side. Japan. Admiral Osami Nagano and Matsuzo Nagai, onetime Japanese Ambassador to Berlin, both Big Navy men, will represent the imperialist clique which rules Japan. Year ago at a futile preliminary conference in London, Ambassador Davis heard Japan voice her demand for parity with the U. S. and Britain. When the demand was rejected Japan denounced the Treaty of 1922, which meant its withdrawal from their provisions a year hence. Its current excuse for this attitude, repeated only last week in Tokyo by Minister of the Navy Osumi, is "America's naval expansion,'' meaning that Franklin Roosevelt, one of the few Big Navy Presidents in U. S. history, has actually been laying down enough fighting craft to bring the U. S. fleet up to its authorized strength under the naval treaties. Thus Japan has for a year been on record as demanding not only a bigger navy but full equality with the U. S. In London, therefore, the U. S. delegation this week faces four nations, all of them opposed to its first object of no naval increases and at least one, Japan, making claims irreconcilable with its second object of maintenance of the 5-5-3 ratio. Fearful 1935. Still the Conference might be a success if the year were 1922 instead of 1935. In 1922 Japan and Italy were not afraid that others would interfere with their "manifest destiny" because the dreams of such destiny had not yet ripened. In 1922 France was not afraid because her two neighbors, Italy and Germany, were not yet destiny-bent. In 1922 England was not yet afraid of Germany's airfleets and therefore had not begun to encourage Germany to rebuild her navy--a method of using up German funds and energy less dangerous to Britain than airplane building. In 1922 the five powers were recent victors in a great war and hence were not afraid to lay down some of their arms.

As Admiral Standley boarded the Aquitania last week he told the Press: "There will be no surprises in the Conference, probably because we all understand what each nation wants. ... Of course we don't have to agree at this Conference." Then his official conscience pressed upon him and he added: "But it might serve as a stepping stone to a later agreement." With deadlock already achieved, the U. S. State Department resigned itself months ago to the fact that no new treaty would come from this year's Conference. The British accepted the fact but were not resigned to complete failure. Omitting bigwig statesmen, whose presence would only steer the meeting into the dangerous waters of international contention, they planned to have a nice quiet conference by a few naval experts with the hope that these specialists in the business of killing each other at sea could work out some sort of gentlemen's agreement in restraint of their trade. The British thought that something might be done: 1) to limit the size and armament, but not the number, of various classes of naval vessels, 2) to have each nation privately inform the others of the tonnage it intends to build so that no one need overbuild out of fear of being caught napping in the naval race. Exit Bigwigs? Though the British plan will be presented to the Conference, the Conference itself will not be the kind for which the British hoped. Japan started things off wrong by picking as delegates two such distinguished figures as Admiral Nagano and ex-Ambassador Nagai and backing them up with a technical staff of 18 experts. Thereupon the U. S., not to be outdone, added Undersecretary of State William Phillips and backed up its delegation with 17 experts. France followed suit by appointing two Cabinet Ministers to her delegation. Thus all hope of an intimate gathering in London was washed out to sea. Only apparent reason for Japan's sending a pompous delegation was that she had been bluffing after all, that she still hoped to negotiate a treaty, if not on the basis of parity at least better than 5-5-3. If so, few doubted that she was mistaken in her guile. The U. S. delegates were not blind to the fact that the U. S., capable of building about seven battleships to Japan's one on the basis of national wealth, will gain relatively little economically and lose relatively much in naval power by yielding further to Japan, whereas Japan may lose much both economically and in naval power by competitive building. Whatever Japan's reason for sending a big delegation to London, it did not decrease the chances of the Conference's failure. In fact, it brewed in both British and U. S. delegations the fear that the meeting might be worse than a failure. The British frankly expressed the hope that the Conference could be made to do its failing quickly and adjourn before Christmas so that political bigwigs could be packed off the field which would then be left to the naval experts. With Cabinet Ministers making fiery speeches for home consumption, with France publicly turning thumbs down on Italy's demands for naval equality, with the U. S. doing the same to Japan, and others offending each other in various ways, there was every likelihood that international hatred would be stirred up rather than allayed. As Ambassador Davis boarded the Aquitania last week, a newshawk popped a demand at him: Would the U. S. yield to Japan's demand for parity? "We never have," replied Mr. Davis. Then with a diplomat's sense of the danger of saying "No," he hastily added: "But I'd rather you did not ask that." Jarless. The third member of the U. S. delegation, being a professional diplomat, said not a word as he boarded the Aquitania. He was the least important member of the delegation, because Mr. Davis was its diplomatic head, Admiral Standley its naval head and he merely a third wheel. His appointment to the delegation is officially to last for only "a few weeks"-i. e., until the troublesome top men of other nations can be persuaded to go home and leave the Conference in peace. But Undersecretary of State William Phillips was also the most significant member of the delegation because his presence in London is tacit recognition of U. S. fear that this conference to limit armaments may turn into a conference for enlarging animosities. Ten years ago an interviewer asked a question to which William Phillips made the perfect diplomatic answer: "There are jarring notes only when there are jarring personalities." Rarely before has U. S. diplomacy had a less jarring personality than the present Undersecretary of State. Everything that the late Henry James could have hoped for in a U. S. diplomat has been the property of "Billy" Phillips from birth. His family arrived in New England in the person of the Rev. George Phillips in 1630, founded Phillips Andover and Phillips Exeter Academies. The first mayor of the city of Boston was his great-grandfather.* The Phillips family fortune, made in shipping and real estate and preserved in the best New England tradition, stands behind him. His shapely head, long nose and aristocratically petulant mouth were born to him. He went to Harvard in the same class (1900) with, three other young men who grew up to be eminent U. S. diplomats by profession, William R. Castle Jr., Robert Woods Bliss, Peter Augustus Jay. Billy Phillips' career matched his endowments. After college a classmate and a fellow Porcellian, Bayard Cutting, elder brother of the late Senator from New Mexico, went to London as private secretary to U. S. Ambassador Joseph H. Choate. Tiring of diplomacy, Cutting in 1903 suggested Phillips as his successor. Two years later William Woodville Rockhill, U. S. Minister to China, met the suave and elegant young Phillips in London, took him to Peking as second secretary at the U. S. legation. Because China was so far away, Billy Phillips resigned that job, gave up his seniority, returned to Washington, started over again at the bottom with an office boy's salary as an assistant to the Third Assistant Secretary of State. That was in 1907. Within two years he had won such esteem in the Department that he was sent to London as first Secretary of the Embassy, a doubly important post because Ambassador Whitelaw Reid was in very poor health. It was during that period that he married Caroline Astor Drayton. Mrs. Phillips is a descendant of the Draytons whose name means as much in the history of Charleston, S. C. as her husband's does in Boston. In 1912 at the ripe age of 34, William Phillips retired to become regent of the college and Secretary of the Corporation of Harvard. Short-Sighted Hostess. In marrying Caroline Drayton, Mr. Phillips not only married more family and more money, but also more tact and more charm which was to stand him in good stead when his diplomatic career began again. Nowadays Mrs. Phillips is rated rather snobbish, but obstinate would be a better word for it. She refuses to wear glasses although she is so shortsighted that she cannot recognize her best friends across a room. As his hostess in Washington when Woodrow Wilson called him back to the State Department just before the War, as his hostess at The Hague when he was appointed Minister to The Netherlands (1920), in Brussels when he became Ambassador to Belgium (1924) and at Ottawa when he was appointed first U. S. Minister to Canada (1927), she played a notable part in her husband's career. The wealth of the Phillipses which has opened to him posts which were closed to other career diplomats has also been a drawback, for they have ever found difficulty in securing adequate living quarters. In Brussels they lived for some time in the two front rooms of a pension. When Secretary of State and Mrs. Hughes arrived to visit them they had to give up their own beds and find others at the back of the house. Later they rented the palatial Hotel d'Assche which had been the home of King Albert and Queen Elisabeth before their elevation to the throne. There old Cardinal Mercier used to drop in to play with the five Phillips children and there the King & Queen called often. Crown Prince (now King) Leopold attended all their better parties, and the Socialist leader Emile Vandervelde went there to discuss with his friend Phillips the social problems of the underprivileged. Recall. After Brussels, Ottawa was a comedown in rank, accepted deliberately, when Calvin Coolidge offered it, so that the Phillips children could attend school in the U. S. In Canada Mr. & Mrs. Phillips never found a house large enough to suit them. After two years, therefore, Mr. Phillips, aged 51, resigned and retired once more to Beverly, Mass. There he headed the Massachusetts drive of Herbert Hoover's private Committee on Unemployment until in 1933 Franklin Roosevelt, one of his old Wartime friends, called him back to be Undersecretary of State. Such is William Phillips' career, a career which never put him in a tight place, diplomatic or otherwise. But capable is the diplomat whose career is uncheckered. No one has ever alleged that the present Undersecretary of State is an eagle of intellect, but he has done many a job competently and quietly. Among them was the distribution of $1,000,000, willed by a Sharon, Pa. millionaire, Frank H. Buhl, to improve the lot of Belgian orphans. The fund was so well administered by an unpaid staff that it has only recently been exhausted, all the orphans having grown up. Today Mr. & Mrs. Phillips live in a commodious house on upper Massachusetts Ave., sharing a garden with their next-door neighbor, Hungary's Count Laszlo Szechenyi. There they dine the diplomats whom it is their job to dine, but otherwise do not entertain inordinately. Aloof and polished William Phillips has many friends but few close ones. In spite of a good sense of humor, he is so cautious and deliberate in his choice of words that he supplies his small world with few bons mots. Iron Man. Occasionally on a sunny afternoon passersby before Woodley, the Washington estate of onetime Secretary of State Henry Lewis Stimson, see a curious sight. On the lawn Host Stimson, the well-born Manhattan lawyer, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, the white-haired politician from Tennessee's hills, and Undersecretary Phillips, the Boston blueblood, are engaged in a threesome of croquet, the elder gentlemen generally deep in a discussion of high U. S. policy, and Phillips leaning on his mallet in graceful attention. In the political scene William Phillips plays no part. During his retirement in 1932 he did declare that as an Independent he favored Franklin Roosevelt for President, but that was all. His job at the State Department is not to put new irons into the international fire but to tend those already in, seeing to it that none gets too hot to handle. He is the professional manager of the Department, the top-notch careerist who knows how to deal deftly with the other careerists in the foreign service, the diplomatic pinch hitter who can always go to bat for Secretary Hull and never strike out. Wellington proclaimed that the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing field of Eton. So far as Undersecretary Phillips is concerned, the battles of diplomacy are won on the platform of Waterloo. For during the first, two years of his career, as private secretary to Ambassador Choate, he spent much time waiting on the platforms of London's railway stations to greet U. S. diplomats passing through London on their way to & from their posts. There he learned patience, tact and the ability to absorb jars. This week when he steps off the boat train in Waterloo Station, what he learned there in other years will be called as never before into the service of his country.

*Although Boston was founded in 1630, it was governed by town meeting until 1822. In that year it adopted a city charter, elected its first mayor, John Phillips, one of whose sons was the famed Abolitionist Wendell Phillips.

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