TH

I. RETROSPECT

HE four weeks which have passed since closed my last article with the report of the dramatic effect of Mr. Hughes' opening speech supply in retrospect a fairly clear and definite picture. Events have flowed not always evenly, but still unmistakably toward that logical conclusion which is registered in the draft of the Four-Party Treaty which was read at the plenary session of Saturday, December 10. Behind this actual achievement lies the promise of ultimate and probably prompt agreement upon the matter of the restriction of naval armament, which has supplied the most conspicuous but in no sense the most important circumstance of the memorable international gathering.

But before taking up in detail the four weeks of history made at the American capital, I shall undertake briefly to restate the problem which has been faced and in a very large measure answered by the present conference. At the bottom of the whole question lay the unmistakable fact that the United States and Japan had been and were visibly drifting toward a clash of policy in the Pacific. American views of the Chinese policy of Japan, American disapproval, rather flamboyantly expressed, over the Shantung detail of the Treaty of Paristhese had excited natural resentment in Japan. Europe was beginning to talk openly of a coming collision in the Far East.

Now this is the actual obstacle, the real danger which the Washington Conference had to remove, if it were to succeed. There was, in addition, the growing wish of the mass of the American people to see the vast expenditures upon naval constructions reduced and the almost unanimous conviction that a competition in naval strength between Great Britain, Japan and ourselves would not only be folly but would amount to crime. This sentiment had found expression in the Borah resolution in the Senate and was, on the surface, the dominating force in dictat

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ing the summoning of the Conference itself. There was a second circumstance which attracted less public attention but dominated the whole situation from the point of view of the statesmen and was destined to prove the most important single detail of the Conference, namely, the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. While Britain and Japan were united in alliance it was the belief of American statesmen and naval authorities that no real reduction of sea strength was wise or even thinkable. There was, moreover, the similar conviction that while these nations were bound together, no viable adjustment of Far Eastern questions generally was possible.

Thus the elimination of the AngloJapanese Alliance became from the first days of the Conference, was indeed in the pourparlers which preceded the Conference, the most important factor, although this circumstance found no general public expression. The mass of the people had been led to believe that the Conference itself was to be occupied with the question of disarmament. When Mr. Hughes proposed his naval ratio and his naval holiday the public of the United States fixed its interest and its attention upon the rival views of Tokio and Washington over this point.

Yet the real as contrasted with the apparent task of the statesmen at the national capital for the first four weeks was almost exclusively confined to finding that substitute for the Anglo-Japanese Alliance which would remove the one real obstacle to the agreement upon naval ratio and upon naval disarmament. When the secret history of this month is written the public will be surprised to see how small was the part of the naval issue in the whole matter, as it will presently be apparent how simple was the solution of the naval problem, once the alliance debate had been terminated.

There remained a third subject of negotiation, namely, China. In all the discussions which preceded the Conference the Chinese

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