Dark Palace

by Frank Moorhouse

  Sweetser and she took their seats off to the side of President Briand.

  Briand declared the Council meeting open.

  At the very beginning, in direct contradiction of yesterday’s agreement, the Japanese delegate Yoshizawa, rose on a point of order and began, in painfully slow English, to reargue the case against allowing the US into the Council meeting.

  ‘This was all settled yesterday,’ Sweetser said to her in a fierce whisper.

  Damn. She’d told Gilbert that there’d be no debate about this. Damn them.

  The Japanese went on with their public objections to the presence of the Americans.

  She sat there bemoaning the diplomatic breach. Things could always go wrong beyond all the expectations of the most experienced diplomats. Or as Bartou once said, nothing ever happened the same way twice which, he said, made ‘experience’ of limited value. Experience was useful as a lesson in one way only: you were not then immobilised by surprise when a situation went contrary to expectation. She’d been through this with Germany’s admission to the League back in ’26. Brazil had vetoed it at the last minute, creating international consternation.

  She was, therefore, disappointed but not thrown off balance that the Japanese had taken the opportunity of putting their position in front of two hundred of the world’s journalists.

  Who could blame them?

  She could.

  Yoshizawa argued that allowing a nation such as the US into the Council deliberations who was not formally a member of Council, who was not even a member of the League, was a dangerous precedent, and an illegal act.

  He was, of course, correct. Damn him all the same.

  He said that the admission of a non-member state into deliberations was such an important matter that he wished for it to be referred to the International Court at The Hague for a ruling.

  Failing this, he felt that, given that it was a matter of substance, League practice required the admission of the US to deliberations to be not just a majority decision, but a unanimous vote.

  Which would give the Japanese a right of veto.

  She whispered to Sweetser, ‘This is a disaster—there’ll be a walk-out by Japan if they are not given their way. Or the Americans will walk out. I’ll talk to Harada.’

  She spotted the Japanese Under-Secretary Harada listening to the debate in the crowded diplomatic gallery and she left the Council room, found a huissier and sent him to bring Harada to her in the delegates’ lounge.

  In the empty delegates’ lounge, she told Harada of her fears and he agreed. He would go in to the Japanese delegation, find out their intentions, and curb them if necessary.

  She watched while Harada scribbled a note in Japanese and then through the peephole she watched him make his way to the Japanese delegation where he discreetly handed them his note. The note was handed to Yoshizawa who paused in his speech, asked President Briand for his indulgence and read the note. He turned, shook his head, and whispered to Harada.

  She saw Harada bow and then make his way back to the lounge. ‘There will be no diplomatic incident,’ he said. ‘I have the assurances of the Japanese delegation.’

  She thanked him and he left her. She still did not trust the situation.

  She locked the door from the Council room to the delegates’ lounge. Their route of departure would be through the lounge and that was now blocked. What would be their reaction if they did walk out and found they couldn’t? Would they return to their table? She reasoned that they would retire to the diplomatic section of the gallery. At least they would then still be in the Council room, could be appealed to. They might calm down and perhaps return to the table. It made for more possibility. She decided to stay at the delegates’ door and watch the proceedings through the peephole.

  Yoshizawa finished speaking, and slowly resumed his place.

  All eyes turned to President Aristide Briand.

  He stood like a great lion.

  Her palms were sweating.

  Edith could almost see Briand’s French diplomatic mind sharpening away at the solution. She was becoming as bad as Jeanne with her mind reading.

  He called for silence and then said in plain French, ‘It would be deeply wrong for the future of this League of Nations, the first international organisation, and deeply wrong for the greater future of a civilised world, for us to now be seen to be worrying about matters of procedure when bombs are dropping and armies advancing.’

  He paused and it seemed that he looked into the eyes of everyone in the room.

  ‘We would be seen by history as a body without soul, without a humane sense of urgence. Without the imagination to overlook simple forms and to see the larger crying demands of our office.’

  He rested his hands, knuckles down on the table, leaning forward, and his eyes went from delegate to delegate, challenging them to make their decision.

  ‘At the end of all our diplomatic proceedings, all our tedious speeches, and of all our communiqués to the world,’ he said, ‘there are people in anguish.’

  He paused and then spoke with vehemence, ‘It would be une obscénité.’ The word gained immense gravity from the stature of Briand and it reverberated around the room. ‘Une obscénité.’

  There was no demur, no rustling, no coughing, no movement.

  ‘As President, and as President alone, I therefore refuse the Japanese request for further legal opinion. We ourselves are a legal body. We appoint the Court. We are the final judges of the human predicament. We have an authority beyond that of any court. We have the authority of the only Council on this planet which speaks for the world. And on matters of procedure, I, as President of this court, overrule the Japanese request.’

  He lifted the gavel and gave it a light but resounding tap and then sat down.

  It was for Briand an act of personal will.

  Edith struggled to assess his decision according to the League’s Rules of Procedure but she found that her emotional allegiance to Briand had closed her mind. She did not care if it breached the Rules of Procedure.

  Then there was a slight applause from the crowd in the gallery.

  She frowned—applause was not permitted.

  Well, maybe today. Maybe for Briand.

  All eyes were watching for the reaction of the Japanese delegation.

  They sat silently, motionless, but did not rise to leave.

  There was no challenge to his ruling from any Council member.

  The Council then voted to invite the United States to join the discussion with the Japanese abstaining.

  The Council adjourned briefly to allow for the formalities to be carried out.

  She unlocked the door, and went in to rejoin Sweetser. ‘I’ll go now to the American Consulate,’ said Sweetser, who had the invitation pre-typed in an envelope.

  ‘I’m coming too.’

  ‘We don’t both have to go.’

  She ignored him and went with him from the Council room as he walked urgently out to his car.

  ‘Australia has to be there,’ she said.

  ‘Why?!’

  ‘We’re closer to Japan than the US—geographically.’

  He laughed. ‘I don’t think that’s true. And you are not “Australia”—you are an international civil servant. You corrected me yesterday on the same matter.’

  She stayed beside him as they ran for the car. ‘Arthur, you’ve forgotten your hat.’

  He stopped.

  ‘Oh, never mind,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘I can’t very well turn up at the Consulate without a hat.’

  ‘Arthur, affairs of state may proceed without a hat.’

  He still hesitated. ‘Come on, Arthur—empty time invites mischief.’

  He let her get into the car.

  At the Consulate they were shown straight through. The place was jammed with people and with excitement as if it were a consular party. Mr and Mrs Green from Berne were there as well. They seemed to be everywhere. Diplomatic socialites.


  Gilbert was almost out of control from nervousness.

  In the signals room of the Consulate, the formalities proceeded: the handing of the invitation to the US government, represented in Geneva by the office of the Consul-General, the telegraphing of this immediately to the American State Department whose officers were standing by at the other end, the acceptance by the American end, and then Gilbert handing Sweetser the acceptance of the invitation, already pre-typed by Sweetser and sent around earlier to Gilbert.

  That afternoon she heard Briand speak the historic words, ‘I invite the representative of the United States of America to come to the table of the Council of the League of Nations.’

  Gilbert went in confidently, followed by Everett and Riddelberger, his advisers.

  Gilbert spoke first.

  The afternoon was taken up with formalities but at least the US was there, seated at last at the great horseshoe table of the world, even if only as a visitor.

  When she arrived at the Bavaria that evening, there was an incredibly boisterous atmosphere among the press corps and junior diplomats. There was much congratulating of Sweetser for having got the US to the table, a generous fiction by his journalist mates.

  She heard Sweetser say pompously, ‘The mood has changed. The US sees that there is only one world and they are now in it. And the Americans will, I assure you, guarantee the national integrity of China.’

  ‘Can we quote you, Arthur?’ someone joked.

  ‘Feel free, feel free.’

  She laughed. It was Sweetser’s finest hour. All he had worked for and dreamed of—the United States symbolically seated at the League.

  She went over to Robert.

  They touched hands. Robert said, ‘I was interested to see that the League would dispense with legal niceties when it wants to.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Robert, we know that legalities are the weapon of last resort in the negotiating room,’ she said. ‘I would like a drink. Vermouth and soda.’

  Robert said, ‘Briand’s performance was outrageous.’

  ‘These are the days of machtpolitik, Robert.’

  She heard her voice and realised how throaty and worldly it sounded from the strain of the day and from trying to be heard in the noise of the Club. As usual, there were only about half a dozen women—McGeachy, a couple of woman journalists from Scandinavia, and a few overscented and over-dressed secretaries looking for fun.

  An inexplicable thought crossed her mind—she wouldn’t mind being at the Molly Club, one of the more unconventional and rather risqué nightclubs of Geneva. She wanted to be out of this crowd for a night. She had not been there since the days before her marriage, in the old days with her unusual friend, Ambrose. Well, former lover. Unusual former lover.

  But she couldn’t see Robert relaxing at the Molly Club. Robert and she had never been there. She doubted if Robert had ever been there. And, anyhow, her bohemian days were over.

  And, it had to be said, the Molly Club was more than bohemian. It was positively decadent.

  Her decadent days were over, also. And, looking back, she marvelled that she had ever involved herself in that almost unbelievable part of her life.

  The wish to be there now was probably a passing urge to be out of all this for a while. And maybe also the less admirable urge to hear the more salacious Molly Club gossip behind the night’s excitement.

  Sweetser came over to them and without any discretion at all nearly shouted at Robert, ‘Stimson’s been talking with Sir Eric on the Trans-Atlantic telephone—Stimson wants the Kellogg-Briand Pact invoked so the US can come into the dispute fully. And that means with the Marines.’

  ‘The Kellogg-Briand Pact has no procedures for military engagement. It is a sail without wind,’ Robert said, but without confidence.

  ‘Ah,’ said Sweetser, waggling a finger at him. ‘Link the Kellogg-Briand Pact with Article XVI—“… Members of the League shall contribute to the armed forces to be used to protect the Covenant of the League”, then you have a military power the like of which the world has never seen.’

  Robert ushered both of them over away from the other journalists at the bar. ‘When did this happen? This call from Stimson?’

  ‘Just now—twenty minutes ago. I was there. Sir Eric took the call—the first call ever directly from the United States government to the League—first ever.’

  Sweetser had an eye for Historic Firsts.

  Sweetser went on, ‘I can remember—and so can you, Robert—when the American officials came to the League through the basement to avoid unintentional “recognition” of the League.’

  As Sweetser elaborated on the remarkable telephone call, Edith wondered precisely on what political grounds the Secretary of State of the United States and the Secretary-General could communicate. Was it communication of information or was it joint negotiation? Was all passing of information a negotiation?’

  ‘It’s all theoretical,’ Robert said. ‘No one has enough ships and men over there to reach Japan in any strength.’

  ‘There’s the American Pacific Fleet, the British Far East Fleet. They could blockade. They could bombard Tokyo,’ Sweetser said.

  She’d always argued for the deterring effect simply of the threat of collective security. The hard facts of the military side of it were another question.

  ‘It won’t happen,’ Robert said. ‘It just won’t happen. A place too far. The modernised Japanese army will go ahead and rout the Chinese. It will be a bloodbath.’

  She had a creeping, chilling realisation, as she stood there listening to Robert.

  He did not want collective security to work—the idea of all League members gathering their military power together to intimidate any warlike nation was not to his taste.

  He wanted to wish it away for some deeper reason of his nature, and it was not just curiosity and analysis which drove Robert as a reporter.

  His nature was blindingly clear to her now—it was because he itched for chaos and human horror. He was a connoisseur of calamity.

  He had no appetite for an ordered world. He was in love with the earthquakes and the uprisings and marching armies, and with the sinister.

  Maybe most of the world loved calamity.

  She listened with dread to his intransigent scepticism. ‘The British want to share China with the Japanese. And—this will interest you, Edith …’ Robert turned his sardonic, intransigent face to her, but it no longer agitated her, ‘—the British also think that it’s better that the Japanese satisfy themselves with Manchuria and China than for them to look further south—to, say, Australia. Ah, but they won’t stop!’

  His sceptical analysis was always really a yearning for the disintegration of order. A disintegration he could watch from a safe distance.

  He had never believed in the League. She supposed that he had never really pretended to.

  She was the one who had pretended that he believed.

  She had needed to pretend this.

  Over the last couple of years, she had willed that he would be committed to the League. Maybe she’d caused him to make false noises of commitment but they were, she sensed in retrospect, to placate her. To placate her as a wife.

  Or false noises he’d made in the courting days, to win her.

  Why? What sort of prize had she been to ‘win’?

  She contemplated herself in the mirror behind the bar. Am I a prize? A comely girl from Australia? No, more than comely but not really glamorous either. Somewhere in between. If she made an effort. And with a veneer of Europe, perhaps. Had he thought of her as a carnal prize? She did not think of herself as, say, voluptuous. Or more precisely, she tried at times to think of herself as voluptuous but was never sure she ever was. Did she do enough in bed, for instance? Did French women like Jeanne really know more of the arts of the bed? Yet, arts or no, he certainly still desired her. She’d been somewhat adventurous in these matters, she supposed, when she first arrived in Europe, although she’d never been really bad and she’d
pulled back from all that by the time Robert had begun to court her. And all that had been during the time with Ambrose whom she’d fancied as being decadent and suave. And she’d been rather eager to learn. As odd as it seemed, if she had any bedroom arts, she’d learned them from Ambrose. Ambrose and his strange nature. For instance, she’d learned that, in bed, curiously, the right small unexpected actions and surprising words could mean and achieve a lot.

  What, then, had Robert seen in her and desired?

  He had not known of her money, it couldn’t have been that.

  She was now prepared to sacrifice Robert, in some sense. She would, if necessary, sacrifice him for her vocation. There, she’d said it. Her vocation was her very nature. And, she supposed, in some small details, she had already sacrificed him.

  But because of her sense of integrity, she would not sacrifice the marriage. She would stick with that.

  The admission of these extraordinary thoughts did not flood her with consternation but more with a sense of exemption. She was exempting herself from most of the demands of marriage but not from the marriage itself.

  Her commitment to the League, now seemingly revitalised, once again placed everything in a moral order for her. The League was going to win and to prevail: that which served the League had priority in her life again and that which did not serve the League, well, she would treat as she chose.

  Yet her sense of exemption was a very solitary possession, it was a truth that could not be shared with Robert. It left her standing alone.

  It was a line drawn between them—by her—unknown to him.

  Curiously, there was nothing to be discussed with Robert. There was nothing to be said about it.

  She would need to love him in a different way, perhaps as a formal social partner, to enter silently and imperceptibly into a love-free marriage, something she had heard discussed among her friends, none of whom had ever known it. Perhaps a love-free marriage was a more suave form of relationship.

  To harbour such a private exemption could mean that she would be living forthwith in a lonely apartment within their shared daily life called home.

  She watched Robert gesturing with his drink, his face full of the night’s bombast, and she thought: it is not because he has an appetite for calamity. It is more: I do not love him because of his style as a man.