Foreign News: Homeward Bound

The choicest modern achievements of U. S. statecraft and of French art were blended, last week, in the great liner Ile de France, homeward bound from the U. S. toward France.

One year ago, on her maiden voyage, this same ship brought from France to the U. S. a proposal that the two nations should solemnly renounce war between themselves. The French note was carried personally by tall, grizzled, beloved Myron Timothy Herrick, who is still U. S. Ambassador at Paris and was then a co-hero of the hour with Charles Augustus Lindbergh. Furthermore, the interior decorations and furnishings of the Ile de France brought to U. S. citizens the first great, coordinated example of what is called in France L’Art Moderne and in the U. S. “Modernistic Art.” Some like it, and some do not; but within the past twelvemonth it has swept all other schools of decoration out of smartest U. S. shopwindows and has become at least a “craze” among the rich.*

Unquestionably art-conscious and peace-conscious U. S. citizens were stimulated by the maiden voyage of the Ile de France. Last week they viewed her homeward voyage with interest, for she carried U. S. Secretary of State Frank Billings Kellogg, who was en route to sign at Paris the Multilateral Treaty to Renounce War as an Instrument of National Policy, which he created by expanding the original French proposal, brought last year on the Ile de France (TIME, July 11, 1927).

Vicissitudes. Both the Treaty and the ship have had to weather grueling vicissitudes during the past twelvemonth. The tribulations of Mr. Kellogg are well known; but only keenest observers realize that a crafty and at times successful “whispering campaign” has been waged against the Ile de France—the sixth-largest ship in the world.

The cause of this “whispering” begins to appear when one realizes that the five ships larger than the Ile de France are all old (pre-War)—and that in the shipping business “newness” sells cabins. Therefore enthusiasts for the “Biggest Five” were quick to whisper against the new Ile de France, when four of her sailings had to be cancelled, in order that her machinery might be tinkered with.

The cancellations made it possible to insinuate that French ship mechanisms are not the best, whatever may be thought of French ship art. (The five liners larger than the Ile de France are, of course, of German and British construction.)

Such whispering continued until the French Line, goaded beyond endurance, finally issued a pamphlet entitled “Two Hundred and Forty Thousand Reasons for the Laying Up of the Ile De France.” The figure 240,000 is an allusion to the number of tiny blades on the rotors of a steamship turbine. Indeed one of these giant power plants may be likened to a series of steam-driven windmills, all on the same shaft, all spinning at high speed, and with a clearance of only a few thousandths of an inch between windmill blades and steam ducts. Obviously, if a single one of the thousands of blades breaks off, the terrific steam pressure hurtles it against other blades, breaking them, and causing them to break others. Thus, within a few seconds, the great 59,000-h.p. mechanism strips its blades, jams, and cannot be repaired without months of skilled work.

Such an accident disabled two of the four turbines of the Ile de France, in the harbor of Havre last Fall; and she did not sail again until Spring. But, in the words of the goaded French Line: “Various giant liners, of various lines, have suffered this unavoidable misfortune. … It is to be hoped that there will soon be an end to the unauthentic . . . unwarranted . . . utterly false . . . rumors . . . now coming, we presume, from sources interested in undermining the position of our new flagship. . . . The turbines of the Ile de France were built in England by the most famous manufacturers of these intricate machines.”

Final vindication of the Ile de France as a safe ship came, last week, when she was boarded by U. S. Secretary of State Kellogg, whose famed nickname is “Nervous Nelly.” At the pier, he exhibited a nervous indecision between taking an elevator to the embarking platform or climbing up the stairs. Finally he climbed. Both Secretary & Mrs. Kellogg not only admonished their porters to be careful but kept a watchful eye upon them, lest they jerk off a worn trunk handle or dent a new suitcase. But Mr. & Mrs. Kellogg did board the Ile de France, and settled down on B-deck in the St. Germaine suite: an apartment decorated in cool, restrained Art Moderne.

When “Nervous Nelly” noted that the passenger’s namecard outside his door read “Secretary of State of the United States of America,” he rang for the steward, expostulated, had card changed to read “Frank B. Kellogg,” even insisted on omission of his rightful prefix, “The Hon.”

Fellow passengers included three statesmen who will sign the Kellogg Treaty, respectively, for Canada, Rumania and Czechoslovakia. The Canadian was suave, jovial Dominion Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. The others were Rumanian Minister at Washington George Cretziano and his Czechoslovakian colleague, Minister Zdenĕk Fierlinger.

Throughout the voyage Mr. King and Mr. Kellogg chummed over demitasses in one or two of the five Art Moderne bar rooms, dined in one another’s suites, paced the broad sun deck, and appeared to share a taste for those thin little pancakes blazed with spirits in a chafing dish, which are so favorably known as crêpes Suzettes.

Other fellow passengers of Secretary Kellogg were: Stockmarketeer W. C. Durant; President Charles Edwin Mitchell of the National City Bank; Mr. & Mrs. W. K. Vanderbilt; Cinemactress Dolores del Rio; Cinema director Edwin Carewe (attended by nurses for his nervous breakdown) ; and one Miss Agnes Boone, “dancing bathing beauty,” soi disant descendant of Pioneer Daniel Boone.

Europeans, interestedly awaiting the Peace Argosy, were titillated by three announcements. They learned that the Treaty will be signed in the ornate “Clock Room” of the French Foreign Office—where Georges Clemenceau opened the Peace Conference, with Woodrow Wilson present. Secondly, they heard that President William T. Cosgrave of the Irish Free State will sign the Treaty in Paris and then take Secretary Kellogg home to Dublin for a State visit. Thirdly, it was known that just before the Secretary sailed he proposed to the Egyptian Government that it sign the routine form of arbitration treaty, which the U. S. has concluded with many a country. That Mr. Kellogg should make this move just before setting out to sign his major treaty with representatives of the British Empire was regarded as peculiar, since Egypt is Britain’s de facto vassal, and is not ordinarily encouraged to conclude international treaties as though she were a truly sovereign Nation. However, British Foreign Secretary Sir Austen Chamberlain took no offense. Sir Austen will not be Great Britain’s signatory to the Treaty, “because of ill health.” He will send Baron Cushendun to sign instead. He will sail from England on a recuperative sea voyage: through the Panama Canal, to California, then homeward—probably across the U. S., possibly around the world if his health seems to demand as much sea voyaging as possible.

*Alert cosmopolitans, of course, received their Art Moderne baptism not later than the Paris Exposition des Arts Décoratifs in 1925-