Then, too, it was hard to be continuously violent and suspicious in Washington. The lovely days, the wide streets, the freedom from the turmoil of business and industry, the very absence of exciting night life—all tended to calm the spirit. How different from Paris in 1919! There one lived in a city encircled by vast hospitals where thousands upon thousands of shattered men tossed on their beds of pain. Soldiers of all nations swarmed everywhere. In many streets of the city the shops were still sealed up. On all sides one found great staring gaps—the wounds of the city made by the shells of Big Bertha or the nightly visits of airplanes. Everywhere you went you saw still the signs “_Abri_” (shelter), vividly recalling the long years in which no man safely went out without knowing that there was a refuge near by. The streets at night were still dark, and those within still tightened their shutters and drew close their curtains, unable to believe that light was no longer a danger.
You rode in battered taxicabs over streets that were rough from long inattention. In every house you entered the marks of war still remained. Nothing had been mended or repaired in Paris for five years. A heating apparatus out of order, it stayed out of order. A window broken, it stayed broken. A hinge off, it stayed off. Carpets and furniture went uncleaned. And in the homes of the rich where there had been beautiful pictures, empty frames hung on the wall, the canvas having been cut out and sent to some place of safety. There was no color. All Paris was in black. Even in the windows of the shops you saw nothing but black. Your dressmaker and milliner had no heart to work in colors, it still to them was bad taste. It was only the influx and the demand of the visiting foreigners, who multiplied as the Conference went on, that brought back colors to the shop windows.
What a contrast to all this was Washington in the fall of 1921, with its gayety and lavishness, its incessant round of lunches and teas and dinners, its over-weighted tables, unbelievable in their abundance to the visiting strangers, so long—and still—on stricter rations. You could not be tragic long in Washington.
Then there was Mr. Hughes’ steady hand. He laughed daily at his press conferences at the insinuations and solemnity of the questioning press correspondents. Everything was going on swimmingly, he asserted. “Excellent progress.” The naval committee was at work, the Far Eastern committee had begun its sessions, the agenda would be followed step by step, but one thing at a time would be attempted; when they had finished what they were at now they would take up the next step, and not before. It was certainly steadying, if not exciting. It gave confidence, if not headlines. All of this quieted the storm, but it was left to the President of the United States to sweep it entirely from the Conference sky, though whether he did it intentionally or accidentally is still, I think, an unanswered question.