And there were the sacrifices. Were we going to accept beforehand that if we were to have the limitation of armament which we desired—we, the United States might have to sacrifice some definite thing—a piece of soil, a concession, a naval base in the Pacific—and that nothing more fatal to the success of the Conference could be than for us to set our teeth and say: “We must have this”—quite as fatal as setting our teeth and saying: “This or that nation must do this.”
But my chief irritation in these pre-Conference days lay with the agenda. It was illogical to place limitation of armament at the head of the program. That was an effect—not a cause. It looked like an attempt to make reduction of taxes more important than settlement of difficulties. Was the Conference to be merely a kind of glorified international committee on tax reduction? Not that I meant to underestimate the relief that would bring.
Suppose the Conference should say: We will reduce at once—by the simplest, most direct method—cut down fifty per cent. of our appropriations—for five years and before the term is ended meet again and make a new contract.
What a restoration of the world’s hope would follow! How quickly the mind sprang to what such a decision would bring to wretched, jobless peoples—the useful work, the schools, the money for more bread, better shelter, leisure for play. How much of the resentment at the huge sums now going into warships, cannon, naval bases, war colleges, would evaporate.
The mere announcement would soothe and revive. Labor bitterly resents the thought that it may be again asked to spend its energies in the creation of that which destroys men instead of that which makes for their health and happiness.
“Get them to plowing again, to popping corn by their own firesides, and you can’t get them to shoulder a musket again for fifty years,” Lincoln said of the soldiers that the approaching end of the Civil War would release. As a matter of fact—suppression of the Indians aside—it was only thirty-three years when they were at it again, but there was no great heart in the enterprise; they still preferred their “plows and popcorn,” and the experience of the Great War had only intensified that feeling.