Peace: Now & Then

As the Italian liner Rex hove to last week off Gibraltar, a tall, icy-eyed man leaned on the rail, watched impassively as British censor officers came alongside. While seamen removed from the Rex's hold 334 bags of U. S. mail addressed to Germany and Poland, Sumner Welles, U. S. Under Secretary of State, left his post at the rail, joined the British officers at tea on the veranda deck. Presumably as a compliment to him, the Rex was cleared in the record time of three hours and 40 minutes. Then the British officers politely said good-by to polite Mr. Welles, and went off with the U. S. property they had come to seize.

Next day, the man whom President Roosevelt had dispatched to Europe as his envoy extraordinary if not plenipotentiary landed at Naples with his shipmate, Myron Taylor, President Roosevelt's personal representative to the Vatican, and headed for Rome. Next day sombre Mr. Taylor called on the Papal Secretary of State. Mr. Welles spent 90 minutes with Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano, spent 60 minutes with a cordial II Duce. On the following day he caught a midnight train to Berlin to see Hitler. Italian newspapers that had almost ignored the envoys' arrival blossomed out about the length and cordiality of Welles-Ciano, Welles-Mussolini talks. And the radio announced officially that Sumner Welles had handed Benito Mussolini a signed message from President Roosevelt--contents unknown.

Neither Washington nor Rome could say what Mr. Welles was trying to do; and Mr. Welles said nothing. But because of the Welles mission, unusual interest was attached last week to two sidelights on the U. S. in the last war.

The shadow of World War I lies heavily over World War II; the shadow of the Peace of 1918 lies heavily over thought of the next, unknown Peace. Throwing a little light into both shadows, the U. S. State Department last week published two volumes of the papers of the late Robert Lansing, wartime Secretary of State.

These revealed that the U. S. stake in the peace worried Lansing as early as February 1915. He saw the ideal U. S. position as being a friend of both parties, able to open the eventual negotiations for peace, and restraining oppressive demands of either side. His conclusion that the U. S. had best join up with the Allies was based on two arguments: 1) if the Allies won, the U. S. could insist on a settlement generous to Germany; 2) if the Allies crumbled despite the U. S. joining up, then Germany would still have to reckon with the U. S. when talk came of peace terms, would therefore make a more generous settlement -- and would be less free to turn on the U. S. after her European victory. Months before the Armistice, Secretary Lansing prophesied that unless all dictatorial governments were swept out of existence "some future generation will have to complete the work we left unfinished."

In his home at the edge of the Arizona desert near Tucson, 79-year-old General "Black Jack" Pershing, straight as a guardsman and looking like John Barrymore in his prime, read the revelations of Secretary Lansing, called in reporters to make some of his own. Said he: on Oct. 30, 1918, twelve days before the Armistice, he had argued against it, had told the Allied Supreme War Council that they might lose the chance to make a permanent peace on secure principles if they let Germany negotiate then. He had wanted Germany to be forced to lay down arms unconditionally. Foch had supported him. Said the General: the Armistice permitted the Germans to march back "with colors flying and bands playing and posing as the victims of political conditions."

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