Of Shooing Ships and Phosgene Gas

Sarinback Saturday takes us back in history once more, even before Abbott met Costello, to the beginning of the new year a century ago.

"Go Back" by John Cassel in New York World, Jan. 9, 1922

As January 1922 dawned, negotiations in Washington D.C. among the major Entente powers toward the Washington Naval Treaty were nearing a successful completion.

"The Process of Elimination" by Clifford Berryman in Washington (DC) Evening Star, Jan. 8, 1922

Most U.S. cartoonists (but not all, as we shall see in a bit) greeted the news of progress with enthusiasm. Cartoonists were most impressed with the Conference's moves to ban the use of poison gas and attacks against merchant and passenger shipping by submarines, seen as heinous tactics of the German military.

In fact, France and the U.S. also used chemical weapons against the Germans; and even after the Washington Naval Treaty was signed, Great Britain, France, Spain, and Italy employed poison gas against independence fighters in their various colonial possessions. Well after the Geneva Convention of 1925, Japan still used poison gas in China. Consider also that the U.S. made extensive use of Agent Orange in Vietnam; an herbicide, it is nevertheless a chemical weapon and had deleterious health effects on the soldiers and civilians exposed to it.

"Making a New Book..." by J.N. "Ding" Darling in New York Tribune, Jan. 14, 1922

Elihu Root, formerly a Republican Senator, Secretary of War and Secretary of State, was a member of the U.S. delegation, along with Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and Democratic Senator Oscar Underwood. I am not sure why Darling chose to feature Root in this cartoon rather than then-Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes, who was head of the delegation and very actively involved in it, but there was some pushback over Hughes's proposed ten-year "naval holiday." 

"Oh, What a Pal Is Sammy" by Frederick Opper in Washington (D.C.) Times, Jan. 5, 1922

"Beware of the Wiles of Foreign Diplomacy" by Winsor McCay in Washington (D.C.) Times, Jan. 6, 1922

That pushback was pressed daily in William Randolph Hearst's newspapers, whose editorialists and cartoonists charged that the other nations at the Conference, especially Japan and Great Britain, were playing the U.S. for fools. In its opposition to the "naval holiday" proposal, the Hearst press brooked no distinction between Hughes and the rest of the U.S. delegation; Frederick Opper depicted all four of them as witless suckers five or six days a week for the entire month of January in his "Oh, What a Pal Is Sammy" series.

"Auf der Hinterfront des Abrüstungskomödienhauses" by Arthur Johnson in Kladderadatsch, Jan. 8, 1922

Darling's having brought up Kaiser Wilhelm in his cartoon begs us to consider the German take on all of this, so here's a cartoon about the conference by Berlin cartoonist Arthur Johnson, skeptical of the negotiators' intentions. The Entente allies (clockwise from top: U.S., Japan, Great Britain, and France) point Mars toward the back door, under the inscription "Vorbehalte" (mental reservations), of their establishment.

Outside of the Germans and the Hearst cartoonists, however, rejoicing and congratulations were the rule of the day.

"Time for Them to Go Home" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. Jan. 12, 1922

The Europeans, to take up Freddy Opper's point, were not the only ones engaging in "intrigue and chicanery." Unbeknownst to the other parties to the conference, the host country was spying on the communications with their governments back home. The "Black Chamber" in the U.S. Cypher Bureau was able to determine exactly how little the Japanese were willing to settle for — the short end of a 5:5:3 ratio of battleships with the U.S. and Great Britain — and got it.

"Back to Your Master..." by Elmer Bushnell for Central Press Assn., ca. Jan. 12, 1922

Top brass in the Japanese Imperial Navy were, naturally, upset with those terms. But Japanese negotiator Isaruku Yamamoto had seen American industrial facilities in Detroit and Texas, and believed that absent the treaty, the U.S. could easily outpace Japan in any all-out arms race.

"Not Exactly Our Idea of the Dove..." by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Jan. 5, 1922

France and Italy settled for even smaller submarine fleets than did Japan, although you would never know that from Nelson Harding's cartoon about the Briand government's dissatisfaction therewith. (Prime Minister Aristide Briand and his cabinet resigned in January, but that was over his failure to reach agreement with Germany on reparations.)

"The Doxology" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. Jan. 17, 1922

The Five-Power Naval Limitation Treaty was signed on February 6, 1922, mandating that 26 American, 24 British, and 16 Japanese warships that were either already built or under construction be scrapped. The U.S., Great Britain, Japan, France and Italy also agreed to Hughes's ten-year "naval holiday," abandoning previous capital-ship building programs with some specified exceptions. Under another article in the treaty, the United States, Great Britain, and Japan agreed to maintain the status quo with regard to their fortifications and naval bases in the eastern Pacific.