Brussels Conference

The Chicago speech of President Roosevelt, with its use of the word "quarantine" in speaking against "world lawlessness" (TIME, Oct. 18), brought together around green tables in the Palais des Academies in Brussels last week representatives of the U. S., Britain, France, Russia, China, Italy, Portugal, The Netherlands and Belgium, with moon-faced Belgian Foreign Minister Paul Henri Spaak holding the gavel.

Just before leaving London for Brussels, willowy, young British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden told the House of Commons that the United Kingdom will "go as far as the United States, in full agreement with them--not rushing ahead and not being left behind ... in this dangerous and difficult Far East situation."

"In order to get the full cooperation, on an equal basis, of the United States Government in an international conflict," added Mr. Eden, "I would travel not only from Geneva to Brussels but from Melbourne to Alaska!" To this speech the House responded with the loudest cheers it has ever given Secretary Eden.

At Brussels, President Roosevelt's perennial Ambassador-at-Large, grey & graceful Norman Hezekiah Davis, was encouraged by all to make the first speech at the Conference. He did so. If the President and Mr. Davis had cared to take Mr. Eden at his solemn word, they could have proposed vigorous action to "quarantine world lawlessness," and the United Kingdom would have been bound to follow in giving the Conference a shove in that direction. Instead, the keynote struck by Ambassador Davis was: "We come to this Conference to study with our colleagues the problems which concern us

"Unfortunately, Japan and China have come into conflict and have resorted to hostilities. These hostilities have steadily increased in scope and intensity. Not only have they destroyed many Chinese and Japanese lives and much Chinese and Japanese property, but they have at some places taken and at many places endangered lives of nationals of other countries; they have destroyed property of nationals of other countries; they have disrupted communications; they have disturbed and interfered with the commerce of practically all nations that are engaged in international trade; and they have shocked and aroused the peoples of all nations."

Summing up. President Roosevelt's envoy told the Brussels Conference:

"We expect to join with other nations in urging upon Japan and China that they resort to peaceful processes."

Hitler to Mediate? After Ambassador Davis had thus told the World how far President Roosevelt wanted to go last week. European disgust at what was taken to be the foredoomed failure of the Brussels Conference to accomplish anything concrete was so electric that rumors detonated by spontaneous combustion until the New York Times gravely printed this four-column headline: "HITLER TO MEDIATE IN FAR EAST WAR: BOTH SIDES ACCEPT: ARMISTICE LIKELY." Other reputable newsorgans, no less misled than the Times by certain influential Nazis in Berlin who seemed to wish the story might be true, joined in making things lively for Tokyo and Nanking correspondents. These finally secured flat, official denials that either Japan or China had accepted mediation by the Fuhrer. Particularly significant, because Japan, Germany and Italy signed a pact and were on the best of terms last week (see p. 23), was this official statement on Hitler mediation by the Japanese Foreign Office: "It is unthinkable at the present stage of the situation that Adolf Hitler should have committed himself to such an act."

At Nanking Chinese Premier and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek commented: "We do not need to worry about mediation now for we intend to win the war and stop Japanese seizures of Chinese territory once and for all."

Davis to Mediate? Other statesmen at the Brussels Conference had meanwhile urged Ambassador Davis to accept appointment as a Committee of One to achieve the goal he had set, that is, "urging upon Japan and China that they resort to peaceful processes," beginning with Japan since she fortnight ago refused to attend the Conference, as did Germany. Mr. Davis declined to become a Committee of One, proposed a Committee of Three. If the Committee was going to be of more than one. however, it became a matter of "prestige" to get on it last week and Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Maximovich Litvinoff led all the rest in vigor amid general scrambling for places. Meanwhile, the Japanese and German press complained that the Soviet Union was not a signatory to the Washington Nine-Power Treaty under which the Brussels Conference is meeting, declared that Litvinoff had no business to be at Brussels, stormed that Japan -- having just entered a pact against the Communist International -- could not accept mediation by a group of powers of which Russia is one.

Anybody to Mediate? Next Conference move was to have Chairman Spaak start searching the note in which Japan refused to attend the Conference for "constructive elements" which might be referred to by the Conference in a note back to Japan asking her to exchange her views regarding China with "a small number of powers to be chosen for that purpose."

The Conference dared not risk breaking up on the question of which powers would form the "small number," left that open-that is, left it to Japan to nominate any "small number" with which she would be willing to deal. In drafting the Conference's note for transmission to Tokyo, the Brussels statesmen were urged, then beseeched by Ambassador Davis to include in it somewhere the words "no dispute has ever been satisfactorily solved by armed force."

Italian Delegate Luigi Aldrovandi-Marescotti, Count of Viano, opposed this, citing Italy's conquest of Ethiopia as an example of satisfactorily settling a dispute by armed force (TIME, May 18, 1936 et ante), and claimed that the words the U. S. (Ambassador wished to insert are "historically incorrect." Grey & graceful Norman Hezekiah Davis then subsided; the note was sent off to Tokyo; the Conference rose until Japan should see fit to reply, and its chief European delegates departed to their own capitals, leaving underlings to act in Brussels. Members of the U. S. delegation said that Ambassador Davis was "digging in at Brussels," prepared to stay as long as President Roosevelt thinks necessary.

Without exception every Tokyo paper reported that the Japanese Government would reject the Brussels Conference's proposals, Nichi Nichi adding that the Conference had better advise China to approach Japan directly and sue for peace. Adolf Hitler, having kept completely mum and kept Germany out of the Conference, was conceded by European observers to be building up a position of technical aloofness to which Japanese and Chinese might ultimately turn, should they decide that One Man can mediate better than a Conference.

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