So tired that they had mostly ceased to curse, 400 disgusted correspondents from 30 countries waited morosely, one chill midnight last week, in the dank stone courtyard of the Palace of the Counts of Holland. They had had only sandwiches for dinner. So had Chancellor of the British Exchequer Philip Snowden and the other august delegates to The Hague Conference who were squabbling in the old Dutch Senate Building, the medieval Binnenhof. About 10 p. m. the shivering correspondents in the courtyard had tried to make a bonfire of newspapers. Scandalized Dutch firemen had rushed to put out the cheerful blaze, then tidily swept up the mess. After that it was just dogged waiting.
Through a lighted window shaggy old Prime Minister Aristide Briand of France could be seen in his celebrated fighting attitude, slumped and seemingly dozing in a great arm chair, while the onus of battle was borne by his dynamic lieutenant, Louis Loucheur, famed walrus-moustached industrialist and "Richest Man in France." Came a rumor that Germany's bald, flabby-fleshed Foreign Minister Dr. Gustav Stresemann had suddenly collapsed in the midst of an impassioned speech, smitten by his old kidney trouble. The rumor was corrected; Dr. Stresemann had merely gone very pale and turned over the task of talking for the Reich to Germany's Minister for Occupied Regions, Dr. Josef K. Wirth, stodgy onetime German Chancellor.
Tense with expectation, the correspondents in the courtyard began to sense that the bitter, three-week fight of crippled Chancellor Snowden to get for Britain a larger slice of the German Reparations "spongecake" (TIME, Aug. 19 et seq.) was all but won. From midnight on the Continental powers steadily though stubbornly yielded. Soon after the ancient Binnenhof clock clanged one it was known that Mr. Snowden had received and accepted an offer satisfying 82% of his demands. After a month of false rumors of agreement correspondents would believe the welcome truth only if uttered by drawn-faced, cripple Snowden himself. As he passed through the gates of the Binnenhof at two a. m., hobbling wearily on two rubber-tipped canes, they surged about him shouting, "Is everything all right?"
"Yes, I believe so," answered the little Chancellor in a voice curiously meek and soft, "I do believe so!" and twitching himself painfully into his limousine he rode away, whistling pensively. Later, when the whole British press had begun to roar unanimous approval, the little lame Yorkshireman said: "If England is pleased, so am I. I set myself a task and it was not an easy one. Without the help of my wife I could never have achieved it."
A deft nurse, an adoring confidante, a —staunch political helpmate is Mrs. Philip Snowden. From the first she told correspondents at The Hague that her husband would get his way. When they doubted she said simply, "I guess you just don't know how strong and stubborn a Yorkshireman can be."
Hague Settlement. Two days more were needed to whip the Midnight agreement into formal shape. A third day saw it signed by all the delegations at a final plenary session, after which the Conference contentedly adjourned. Basically the settlement thus reached is twofold financial and political.