Arms, Men & A Woman

President Hoover went boldly forward last week with his plans for U. S. participation in the League of Nations' general disarmament conference at Geneva Feb. 2. He refused to let world rumors to the effect that the meeting was predestined to failure daunt his hopes. Diplomatic talk of the parley's postponement, in view of general economic conditions and the forthcoming Hague Conference on War Debts & Reparations (see p. 13), was given a frigid reception at the Department of State. Congress was asked to appropriate $450,000 expense money. Even a ship --S. S. President Harding--and a sailing date--Jan. 20--were announced for the departure of the U. S. delegation.

But the selection of the delegates continued to cause President Hoover a good deal of trouble. Circumstances severely limited his choice of members. The Geneva conference would last seven or eight months; Secretary of State Stimson did not wish to be away from his office so long. Dwight Whitney Morrow, ablest of U. S. conference negotiators, was dead. Elder Statesman Elihu Root was too old and fragile for the job. Charles Evans Hughes was out of reach on the Supreme Court. Henry Prather Fletcher, shrewd diplomat, refused to serve unless, it was reported, he was made chairman of the delegation. No less unwilling were Republican Senators to absent themselves from their legislative duties to go on a diplomatic mission on the eve of an important political campaign. The President's inability to round up a top-notch delegation was in some quarters ascribed to a general foreboding that the conference would not succeed.

Fortnight ago President Hoover picked his first Geneva delegate--Senator Claude Augustus Swanson of Virginia, ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee. A neophyte at international conferences, a Big Navy advocate, Senator Swanson, with his stringy mustache, corded eyeglasses and rather pompous airs, accepted because he does not have to work for re-election until 1934. Thus starting at the bottom of his delegation, President Hoover last week worked backwards to the top, appointed three more members.

Named chief-of-delegation was Charles Gates Dawes, U. S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's. His official position would have made it hard for him to say no to his President whether he liked the job or not. A brusque and belligerent veteran of the London Naval Conference, Ambassador Dawes was no expert on the matter of land disarmament, would have to lean heavily on technical advisers. Only the most niggling of Mr. Hoover's critics would suggest that he had shunted the Ambassador to Geneva to nip a nascent Dawes-for-President boom. Last week Ambassador Dawes prepared for a rush trip to the U. S. for instructions.

Hugh Simons Gibson, Ambassador to Belgium and another delegate appointed last week, has helped to nurture Disarmament since it--and he--were in diplomatic swaddling clothes.

President Hoover tossed tradition to the winds and reaped a loud round of public applause when he named a woman to the delegation. She was Miss Mary Emma ("May") Woolley, 68-year-old president of Mount Holyoke College. The President chose her because "the whole question of disarmament is and has been of profound interest to the women of the United States." Aside from her academic attainments, Miss Woolley seemed to qualify for her high post by membership in the League of Nations Association, the League of Women Voters, the National Committee of One Hundred for Law Enforcement, the American Society for Judicial Settlement of International Disputes, the League for Permanent Peace and the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship Throughout the Churches. A Republican. Miss Woolley supported the Democrats in 1920 because they were pledged to the League of Nations. As a "theoretical pacifist," she was blacklisted by several chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Daughter of a Congregational minister. Mary Emma Woolley was the first of her sex to be graduated by Brown University (1894). At Wellesley she taught Bible history before her call to the presidency of Mount Holyoke 32 years ago. A large, florid woman, she dresses in sombre clothes, wears low-heeled shoes, believes "no lady would smoke." Once she sharply-contradicted a newshawk who dared ask about a "startling statement" she had made: "Young man. I never say startling things." In her yellow stucco house at South Hadley, Mass, she lives with Jeannette Marks, professor of English Literature, surrounded by big collies called such names as "Lord Wellesley" and "Ladybird Holyoke." Her motto for her students is "Poise, Purpose & Perseverance"--corrupted behind her back into "Poise, Poipose & Poiseverance." To this last week the first woman in the world to sit officially in a major international conference could add Peace. Declared Delegate Woolley:

"I've long been interested in the substitution of international understanding for international brute force. . . . There are many reasons why women are on the side of world understanding. One is what may be called the biological argument . . 'Only a woman knows what a man costs.' "

President Hoover hoped to complete his delegation by drafting at least one Republican Senator to go to Geneva. Last week he thumbed down through the list of the Foreign Relations Committee, paused near the bottom at the name of Michigan's Vandenberg.

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