Visit https://ebookultra.

com to download the full version and

explore more ebooks

Flow based Programming A New Approach To

Application Development 2nd Edition J. Paul
Morrison

_____ Click the link below to download _____

https://ebookultra.com/download/flow-based-programming-
a-new-approach-to-application-development-2nd-edition-
j-paul-morrison/

Explore and download more ebooks at ebookultra.com

Here are some suggested products you might be interested in.
Click the link to download

Introduction to Computing and Programming in Python a

Multimedia Approach Mark J. Guzdial

https://ebookultra.com/download/introduction-to-computing-and-
programming-in-python-a-multimedia-approach-mark-j-guzdial/

The Craft of Piano Playing A New Approach to Piano

Technique Feldenkrais based 2nd Edition Edition Alan
Fraser
https://ebookultra.com/download/the-craft-of-piano-playing-a-new-
approach-to-piano-technique-feldenkrais-based-2nd-edition-edition-
alan-fraser/

The Compassionate Mind A New Approach to Life s Challenges

1st Edition Paul Gilbert

https://ebookultra.com/download/the-compassionate-mind-a-new-approach-
to-life-s-challenges-1st-edition-paul-gilbert/

Knowledge based Development F. J. Carrillo

https://ebookultra.com/download/knowledge-based-development-f-j-
carrillo/
OpenCV Computer Vision Application Programming Cookbook
2nd Edition Robert Laganiere

https://ebookultra.com/download/opencv-computer-vision-application-
programming-cookbook-2nd-edition-robert-laganiere/

Evidence based Teaching A Practical Approach 2nd Edition

Geoff Petty

https://ebookultra.com/download/evidence-based-teaching-a-practical-
approach-2nd-edition-geoff-petty/

Neuromuscular Disease A Case Based Approach 1st Edition

John H. J. Wokke

https://ebookultra.com/download/neuromuscular-disease-a-case-based-
approach-1st-edition-john-h-j-wokke/

Android Wireless Application Development 2nd Edition Shane

Conder

https://ebookultra.com/download/android-wireless-application-
development-2nd-edition-shane-conder/

A Complexity Approach to Sustainability Theory and

Application 1st Edition Angela Espinosa

https://ebookultra.com/download/a-complexity-approach-to-
sustainability-theory-and-application-1st-edition-angela-espinosa/
Flow based Programming A New Approach To
Application Development 2nd Edition J. Paul Morrison
Digital Instant Download
Author(s): J. Paul Morrison
ISBN(s): 9781451542325, 1451542321
Edition: 2
File Details: PDF, 3.67 MB
Year: 2010
Language: english
Flow-Based Programming,
2ND EDITION

[Page intentionally left blank]

Flow-Based Programming, 2ND EDITION:

A New Approach To
Application Development

J. Paul Morrison, 2011

 Copyright Page & Trademarks
Copyrights

Copyright © 2010, 2011 by J.P. Morrison Enterprises, Ltd.

Author: J. Paul Morrison

ISBN: 1451542321

EAN-13: 9781451542325

Printed by CreateSpace, DBA of On-Demand Publishing LLC, part of

the Amazon group of companies.

All rights reserved.

Information about 1st Edition (1994):

Copyright © 1994 by van Nostrand Reinhold

Author: J. Paul Morrison

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 94-1822

ISBN: 0-442-1771-5
 Trademarks

The following are trademarks or registered trademarks of

International Business Machines, Inc.:

BMS MFS
CICS, CICS/ESA MQSeries
CMS MVS, MVS/ESA
CMS Pipelines PDF
CP/CMS PGF
DB2 PL/I
DFDM REXX
DL/I RPG
GDDM System/370
GPSS VM/XA
IBM VS/COBOL II
IMS, IMS/ESA, IMS TM VTAM
ISPF

The following are products of their respective suppliers:

C, C++ Objective-C
C# Smalltalk V/PM
Java UNIX
Linda Phenom
Microsoft Works Pentium

If any of the other products mentioned below are trademarked,

hopefully it will be understood that there is no intent to infringe on the
trademark.
 Preface to 1st Edition (1994)

This book describes a highly productive approach to application

development, based on a new and significantly different
programming paradigm, referred to as “Flow-Based Programming”
(FBP). Although at least one very large application built using
software based on these concepts has been in continuous use for
about 20 years [as of 1994 – over 35 now, in 2010], it is not well
known to the programming community, so it will be novel to most of
the readers of this book. During the time it has been under
development and in use, it has been found to significantly enhance
both the productivity of the programmers who use it and the reliability
and maintainability of applications built with it.
The material described here has practical application to many of the
problems that beset today’s information technology industry. At the
same time it has solid theoretical underpinnings and also strong
affinities with a lot of other theoretical work going forward in
universities and research institutions worldwide. A number of
articles on this concept have appeared over the years in different
publications, but they have been widely scattered and I feel that no
single article has been able to do justice to the whole set of
concepts. Therefore, it seems timely to assemble this material into a
single book, thus allowing it to be presented as a coherent whole.
Flow-Based Programming provides a view of data processing that is
consistent from the largest scale (e.g. organizations talking to other
organizations) all the way down to the programming level, without
the sudden changes of viewpoint characteristic of conventional
programming. It can be used from early in the design stage all the
way through to implementation, in a seamless manner. It is a good
match with design techniques such as Structured Analysis, and with
a number of implementation approaches, such as prototyping and
incremental development. It is a natural reuse tool and strongly
supports good programming disciplines. It has many non-procedural
aspects, which give it many of the advantages of this type of code. It
should not be surprising, therefore, that it has caught the interest of
some of the most experienced people in our business. I feel
strongly, and hope to prove in this book, that these concepts have
the potential to save computer-using organizations significant
amounts of money and, perhaps more importantly, to lay the
foundations of a true software marketplace and programming
discipline in the broadest sense.
This book is aimed at systems architects, software and hardware
engineers, application developers and analysts, researchers – in
fact, everyone who is involved in computing or even just interested in
the field. Educators should find that this book places a number of
the advanced concepts of computing science into context in a
natural way and perhaps will find this book of assistance in passing
them on to their students.
This book is not intended to be a manual for any one piece of
software, but as a fairly general introduction to a new and powerful
set of concepts. Like object-oriented programming, FBP does
involve a new programming paradigm, which profoundly changes the
way programmers look at the process of constructing applications.
Although a number of its concepts seem very different from
conventional programming, there are many real-world analogies that
help the reader make the transition to this new way of thinking about
building systems. Also, once the basics have been mastered, most
of the remaining material will follow naturally. It is interesting to note
that, in the long run, FBP appears to be on a convergent path with
the more advanced work in object-oriented programming. I also
hope that this book might contribute somewhat towards bridging the
present divide in the area of computer programming between
business and academia.
Markham, ON, Canada, 1994
 Preface to 2nd Edition (2010)

Since it has been about 15 years since the publication of the 1994
edition, and the industry is very different from where it was in those
days, it seems timely to produce a new edition, which will try to
capture some of the effects of the drastically changed computing
environment on our thinking about Flow-Based Programming. Of
course, there is much that has not changed, and FBP is still far ahead
of the pack! One major difference, however, is that people all over
the world are discovering its advantages, and in fact there are now a
number of companies that have been explicitly set up to capitalize on
these concepts.
This edition keeps most of the original chapters, but I have dropped
quite a bit of material that I judge to be of little interest to 21st-century
readers. In particular, there will be less emphasis on mainframe
systems and software, as this does not seem to be an area where the
new concepts are taking root. However, as I feel that “number-
crunchers” will be around for quite a while longer, some of that
material will be retained. There has been such an explosion of new
material in the last few years that I hope my readers will forgive me if
a certain patchiness results! Of course, the 1994 edition still remains
available second-hand, and a PDF version of that edition is available
at http://www.jpaulmorrison.com/fbp/book.pdf. As we have moved
into an Internet world since my book was published, there is now a
web site describing the concepts behind FBP at
http://www.jpaulmorrison.com/fbp/, and a wiki with a lot of interesting
comments and feedback at http://www.jpaulmorrison.com/cgi-
bin/wiki.pl.
An article on FBP has been on Wikipedia for several years:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Flow-
based_programming&oldid=363964067. The latest version now
reflects the chapter numbers in the current edition of this book.
All references to OOP have been changed to OO, which seems to
have become the current usage.
In the previous edition there was an Appendix describing THREADS,
an early C implementation. I have now expanded it to add high-level
descriptions of two more recent ones, namely a Java implementation
(JavaFBP) (http://www.jpaulmorrison.com/fbp/#JavaFBP) and a C#
implementation (C#FBP)
(http://www.jpaulmorrison.com/fbp/#CsharpFBP), and have reduced
the amount of information on THREADS
(http://www.jpaulmorrison.com/fbp/#THREADS), as this can still be
found on the web site. THREADS is in process of being upgraded to
use Windows “fibres” (Windows spells it “fiber”, but I am going to stay
with the Canadian spelling in what follows), and there are some other
minor changes to take advantage of the Microsoft C++ compiler.
In addition to the above, I am including some information about
DrawFBP (http://www.jpaulmorrison.com/fbp/#DrawFBP), an FBP
diagramming tool written in Java.
There is also an additional chapter attempting to sketch out what I call
the “FBP explosion” that has taken place over the intervening 15
years (starting on page x). It is really impossible to do it justice as the
number of references grows even as I write this, but hopefully this will
give you some flavour of what has been happening! In particular, I
would like to direct your attention to two sections, contributed by
David Johnson and Dr. Ernesto Compatangelo, respectively, at the
end of this chapter, both very thought-provoking – in different ways.
Where web URLs are included in the text, I will be approximately
following the AMA Guidelines, as described in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citing_Wikipedia#AMA_style (retrieved
2009-12-06).
Note that, due to the changing nature of information media, this
edition places much more emphasis on electronic resources, rather
than on paper resources as in the first edition. Where I have links in
the text, I will not repeat them in the bibliography. When quoting from
Wikipedia, I will usually remove any hyperlinks. A number of the
quotes in this new edition are taken from blogs, including the FBP
wiki. As this book is intended for Print On Demand, any comments
where this is not the case, or the original authors have changed their
views, can be corrected along the way, so please let me know!
In the 1994 edition I used the term “process” for the basic unit of
concurrency – however, it has been pointed out that this term is
somewhat ambiguous, as it has different usages in different
environments. The term “unit of concurrency” seemed a bit
cumbersome, so I tried Googling “unit of concurrency”, and found the
following synonyms:
process (Erlang) vat (E language)
actor (actor theory) island (Tweak)
agent task (Ada)
transaction resource (Minuet)
thread stage (John Hartmann’s CMS
operator (MIT, Expressor, et al.) Pipelines)

We might add to that list:

coroutine (Conway)
All of the terms listed above have connotations which could cause
confusion for various groups of readers, so I have decided to stay
with the (in my opinion) most general term “process” (it is used by
Erlang), and take my chances!
Unionville, ON, Canada, 2011
 Acknowledgments

To my wife, for her loving support, encouragement, and sound

common sense, and for having helped to make the time available
that I needed to finish this process. I have always thought that a
programmer’s wife has to be a bit of a saint – and now I’m convinced
of it!
To the late Wayne Stevens, my friend and mentor, who died too
young, for his creativity and sense of fun, his openness to new ideas,
his wide-ranging knowledge and experience, and his perennial
optimism and enthusiasm. This book is intended to be in a small
way a tribute to his memory.
To my son – who, thanks to his education in computer science at the
University of Waterloo and at MIT, is at ease in esoteric areas that I
can hardly guess at – for his useful and always constructive input
and comments. Also to my daughter and the rest of my family,
including my highly intelligent grandson, for their support and
encouragement!
To Nate Edwards, Skip Folden, Harrison Tellier, Bob Kendall, Perry
Crawford, Bob Ballow, and many of the “old guard”, who understood
intuitively the ideas I talk about in this book, but retired before they
could get anyone to listen. I always enjoy your anecdotes, your
optimism, and your down-to-earth attitudes. There are also others
who have encouraged me over the years who are too many to
mention – you know who you are! Thank you all!
To the various teams I have worked with over the years at IBM,
several of whose personnel are mentioned in this book. In particular,
the last team I worked with at IBM – one of the best I have ever
worked with, and a number of whom have become personal friends.
 It was a pleasure and an essential part of my education working with
you all! Also to Robbie Kemeny, who very early on helped me to
develop some of the key ideas during after-work bus rides up the
side of Mount Royal in Montréal, and to our director, Doug Croth,
who was excited about the concept and promoted it strongly within
our organization.
Also to the team in Japan who succeeded in putting out the only
official IBM FBP product that has made it into the marketplace so far.
Although it was definitely a team effort, I would like to make special
mention of my friend Kenji Terao, who saw the potential years before
most other people and was key to getting the concept accepted by
IBM Japan.
I must also mention the people at the company that decided to use
an untried technology to help build one of the biggest business
systems every built in Canada, and the people from IBM Canada,
particularly John Jensen, and from the IBM Federal Systems
Division, particularly Kim Seward and Paul Weiler, who helped me to
first sell and then implement it.
Next I would like to thank IBM Canada for supporting this work over
some 20 years until my retirement in 1992, and for their kind
permission for me to talk about my experiences during this time. Of
course, it should be made clear to the reader that the views
expressed in this book are purely my own, not those of the company.
As I look back over my years with IBM in three different countries, I
realize that I have been more fortunate than most to have been able
to work on so many exciting things for a very large part of that time.
I would very much like to thank my editors – in particular Risa Cohen
– at van Nostrand Reinhold (sadly, no longer extant) and
Northeastern Graphic Services (the same, apparently – at least I
can’t find them on the Internet), who together helped to turn my book
from a dream into a reality. It was largely Risa’s vision and
enthusiasm that ensured that my book saw the light of day – sadly,
the company was not around long enough after the book’s
publication to assist in its promotion, or to benefit from its later
success. However, I feel that they did a fantastic job, and deserve
much credit for having supported me during the first few difficult
years.
Now, in a new century, I would like to thank the many people who
have supported me in my attempts to spread the word about Flow-
Based Programming – in particular, the brilliant systems designer
and architect, Denis Garneau, who was always willing to boost my
morale when I needed it! And also the distinguished pioneer in
software engineering methodology, Ed Yourdon, for supporting me,
and for including my book in his list of “Cool Books”
(http://www.yourdon.com/personal/books/gentech/index.html). There
are also a vast number of people who have suggested changes and
improvements to this book – you are really too many to list in one
place, but where I have quoted your suggestions, your names
appear in the text. I should however mention Michael Beckerle
(Mike) and Sebastian Ertel, as their projects constitute a major
extension to the fundamental FBP concepts. Mike Beckerle is a
computer scientist who has been advocating and using FBP
concepts across his career at Torrent Systems, Ascential Software,
and IBM. He is currently (April 2010) CTO at Oco, Inc. A recent
project, called “Ohua”, is open source, and is available on
SourceForge. I would also like to thank belatedly, with 20-20
hindsight (!), two of my managers at IBM Canada: Wayne Giroux,
who was one of the first to see the potential of FBP ( back in 1969),
and John Devereux, who “persuaded” me to transfer to Toronto,
Ontario – which turned out to be a far better move than I could have
expected, and without which my life would have followed a radically
different course.
 Disclaimers

1. I may at times inadvertently use the pronoun “he” to refer to

individuals in general. If I do, I wish to state that this is not to be
taken as implying any particular gender. Unfortunately, English
lacks a good pronoun meaning “he” or “she”.
2. Added for the 2nd edition: All website links were correct and
active at the time of publishing, but the author cannot claim any
responsibility for the validity or content of these websites at a
later date. However, Wikipedia references contain version
information, as that is recommended practice when citing
Wikipedia.
3. Anywhere I use the term “Wikipedia”, I am referring to
“Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia”. While I understand that
Wikipedia is a collaborative project, and that therefore Wikipedia
descriptions should not be taken as gospel truth, most of the
definitions and descriptions I cite are so generic that there can
be little doubt as to their accuracy. Where there is any doubt, I
have attempted to independently verify them. As Wikipedia
articles change over time, all Wikipedia URLs specify the exact
version of the article referenced. All Wikipedia text cited in this
book is released under CC-BY-SA – please refer to
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode.
4. Unless otherwise specified, the term “ports” will refer to Flow-
Based Programming ports: the point of attachment of a process
and a connection.
5. The page numbers that often follow chapter references usually
refer to the first page of that chapter, except where explicitly
stated.
6. After having lived in the UK, the US, and Canada, I am afraid
my spelling is now a mixture of all the different usages – what
Wikipedia user boxes refer to as “mixed English”. Apologies to
anyone who may be bothered by this!
7. Occasionally in the literature, one finds the word “data” being
treated as a plural, presumably that of the slightly archaic word
“datum”. It is high time to put this affectation to rest. For most
of the time I have worked in the computer industry, “data” has
been a collective noun, taking singular verbs and adjectives, just
like “information”, which means approximately the same thing. I
remember protesting against this particular piece of pedantry in
the early ’80s, but apparently the rulebook was never updated!
This is also allowed to be specified in Wikipedia user boxes:
“This user recognizes that ‘data’, ‘media’, and ‘agenda’, have
become incorporated into English as singular nouns.”
 Prologue

Some of my colleagues have suggested that I fill in some

background to what you are going to read about in this book. So let
me introduce myself.... I was born in London, England, just before
the start of World War II, received what is sometimes referred to as a
classical education, learned to speak several languages, including
the usual dead ones, and studied Anthropology at King’s College,
Cambridge. I have since discovered that Alan Turing had attended
my college, but while I was there I was learning to recognize
Neanderthal skulls, and hearing Edmund Leach lecture about the
Kachin, so I regret that I cannot claim to have programmed EDSAC,
the machine being developed at Cambridge, although I later took an
aptitude test for another marvelous machine, J. Lyons and Co.’s LEO
(Lyons Electronic Office), whose design was based on EDSAC’s. But
maybe computing was in the air at King’s!
In 1959 I joined IBM (UK) as an Electronic Data Processing
Machines Representative. I had come into computers by a circuitous
route: around the age of 12, I got bitten by the symbolic logic bug.
This so intrigued me that all during my school and university years I
read up on it, played with the concepts for myself, and looked
forward to the time when all the world’s problems would be solved by
the judicious rearrangement of little mathematical symbols. Having
also been fascinated by the diversity of human languages since
childhood, the idea of really getting to the root of what things meant
was very exciting. It wasn’t until later in life that I realized that many
great minds had tried this route without much success, and that,
while it is certainly a beguiling concept and there have been many
such attempts in earlier centuries, the universe of human experience
is too complex and dynamic, with too many interacting factors, to be
encoded in such a simple way. This does not mean that attempts to
convey knowledge to a computer will not work – it is just that there
seem to be certain built-in limitations. The human functions which we
tend to think of as being simple, almost trivial, such as vision, speech
comprehension or the ability to make one’s way along a busy street,
are often the hardest to explain to a computer. What we call common
sense turns out to be quite uncommon....
While symbolic logic has not delivered on its original promise of
making the world’s important decisions simpler, it is perfectly
adapted to the design of computers, and I became fascinated by the
idea of machines which could perform logical operations. This
fascination stayed with me during my 33 years with the IBM
Corporation in three different countries (by the way, this is why most
of the systems I will be mentioning will be IBM systems – I apologize
for this, but that’s my background!), but I’ve always been struck by
the apparent mismatch between the power of these machines and
the difficulty of getting them to do what we wanted. I gradually came
to concentrate on one basic problem: why should the process of
developing applications on computers be so difficult, when they can
obviously do anything we can figure out the rules for?
There is definitely an advantage to having cut my proverbial teeth in
this field at a time when very few people had even heard of
computers: over the intervening years I have had time to digest new
concepts and see which of them succeeded and which failed. Since
the ’60s, many concepts, techniques and fads have sprung up with
great attendant fanfare, and have either faded out or just become
part of the regular curriculum. Ideas which took a decade or two to
evolve are now familiar to kids fresh out of university. I got advance
notice of many of these concepts, and often had time to understand
them before they became widespread! A list of these wonders would
be too long to include here, and perhaps only of interest to
historians. Some of them fell by the wayside, but many of them are
still around – some good and some not so good! We who were
working in the field also certainly contributed our fair share of
techniques and fads, also some good and some not so good!
I think my first enthusiasm was compiler compilers. I first worked with
a fascinating system called BABEL – appropriate name – which was
going to make it far easier to write compilers. I still use some of its
ideas today, almost 50 years later. A high-level description can be
found on the FBP Wiki. We shall see later in this book that there are
interesting parallels between compiler theory and the subject matter
of this book, and there seems to be an important role for what are
sometimes called “mini-languages” (I will be talking some more
about them in Chapter 17 – page x). Certainly compiler compilers
comprise a piece of the answer, but they did not result in the
productivity improvement that we were looking for.
I have also always been taken with interpreters – I believe my first
exposure to these was BLIS (which stood for the Bell Laboratories
Interpretive System), which made the IBM 650 look like a sequential
machine. Probably the characteristic of interpreters which really
appeals to people is the ability to debug without having to change
languages. Of course, some of the recent debugging tools are
starting to bring this capability to the world of Higher Level
Languages (HLLs), but the ability to just slot in a TYPE or “say”
command and rerun a test is so impressive that the majority of
languages which became really popular have been interpreters, no
matter how awkward the syntax! In a survey of machine cycle usage
done some years ago at IBM’s Research Center at Yorktown
Heights, they found that the vast majority of cycles were being used
by CMS EXEC statements – strings of commands for the CMS
operating system glued together, using a really simple syntax, to do
specific jobs of work.
Another important concept for productivity improvement is that of a
reusable subroutine library. I also believe strongly that reuse is
another key piece of the solution, but not exactly in the form in which
we visualized it in those days. In company after company, I have
seen people start up shared subroutine libraries with a fine flurry of
enthusiasm, only to find the action slowing to a standstill after some
30 or 40 subroutines have been developed and made available.
Some companies are claiming much higher numbers, but I suspect
these are shops which measure progress, and reward their people,
based on how many subroutines are created and added to the
library, rather than on whether they are actually used. Although
organizational and economic changes are also required to really
capitalize on any form of reuse, I believe there is a more
fundamental reason why these libraries never really take off, and
that is the philosophy of the von Neumann machine. I will be going
into this in more detail in Chapter 1 (page x), but I found I was able
to predict which subroutines would land up in these libraries, and it
was always “one moment in time” functions, e.g. binary search, date
routines, various kinds of conversions. I tried to build an easy-to-use,
general purpose batch update (yes, I really tried), and I just couldn’t
do it (except for supporting a tiny subset of all the possible
variations)! This experience is what got me thinking about a radically
different approach to producing reusable code. I hope that, as you
read this book, you will agree that there is another approach, and
that it is completely complementary to the old one.
Rapid prototyping and the related idea of iterative development were
(and are still) another enthusiasm of mine. I view rapid prototyping
as a process of reducing the uncertainties in the development
process by trying things out. I believe that anything you are uncertain
about should be prototyped: complex algorithms, unfamiliar
hardware, database structures, human interfaces (especially!), and
so on. I believe this technique will become even more important in
the next few decades as we move into ever more complex
environments. Here again, we will have to modify or even abandon
the old methodologies. Dave Olson’s 1993 book, “ Exploiting Chaos:
Cashing in on the Realities of Software Development”, describes a
number of approaches to combining iterative development with
milestones (well-defined stages in the development of a project) to
get the best of both worlds, plus some fascinating digressions into
the new concepts of chaos and “strange attractors”. There are some
very strange attractors in our business!
I have also believed for some time that most prototypes should not
just be thrown away once they have served their purpose. A
prototype should be able to be “grown”, step by step, into a full-
fledged system. Since the importance of prototypes is that they
reduce uncertainty, rewriting applications in a different language is
liable to bring a lot of it back!
The pattern of all these innovations is always the same – from the
subroutine to object-oriented programming: someone finds a piece of
the answer and we get a small increment in productivity, but not the
big break-through we have been looking for, and eventually this
technique makes its way into the general bag of tricks that every
experienced programmer carries in his or her back pocket.
By the way, I should state at the outset that my focus is not on
mathematical applications, but on business applications – the former
is a different ball-game, and one happily played by academics all
over the world. Business applications are different, and much of my
work has been to try to determine exactly why they should be so
different, and what we can do to solve the problem of building and
maintaining them. These kinds of applications often have a direct
effect on the competitiveness of the companies that use them, and
being able to build and maintain this type of application more
effectively will be a win-win situation for those of us in the industry
and for those who use our services.
Before I start to talk about a set of concepts which I think really does
provide a quantum jump in improving application development
productivity, I would like to mention something which arises directly
out of my own personal background. Coming from an artistic
background (my mother was an artist), I find I tend to think about
things in visual terms. One of the influences in the work described in
this book was a feeling that one should be able to express
applications in a graphical notation which would take advantage of
people’s visualization abilities. This feeling may have been helped
along by exposure to a system called GPSS (General Purpose
Simulation System). This system can be highly graphical, and it
(along with other simulation systems) has another very interesting
characteristic, namely that its constructs tend to match objects in the
real world. It is not surprising that Simula (another language
originally designed for simulation) is viewed as one of the
forerunners of many of today’s advanced programming languages. I
believe that GPSS was one of the triggers that started me thinking
about application development from a very different direction – of
course it also helped that that my introduction to data processing
was through Unit Record, not computer logic, as would have been
the case if I had any computer science training in university (it didn’t
exist in those days!).
Another effect of my personal orientation is a desire, almost a
preoccupation, with beauty in programming. While I will stress many
times that programming should not be the production of unique
pieces of cabinetry, this does not mean that programs cannot exhibit
beauty. There are places and times in the world’s history where
people have invested great creativity in useful objects such as
spoons or drinking cups. Conversely, the needs of primitive mass-
production, supported by a naïve view of value, resulted in factories
turning out vast numbers of identical, artistically crude objects
(although obviously there were some exceptions), which in turn are
thought to have led to a deadening of the sensibilities of a whole
culture. I believe that modern technology therefore can do more than
just make our lives more comfortable – I believe it can actually help
to bring the aesthetic back into its proper place in our life experience.
One more comment about my personal biases (of which I have
many, so I’m told): it has always seemed to me that application
design and building is predominantly a creative activity, and creativity
is a uniquely human ability – one that (I believe) computers and
robots will never exhibit. On the other hand, any activity which bores
people should be done by computers, and will probably be done
better by them. So the trick is to split work appropriately between
humans and machines – it is the partnership between the two that
can lead to the most satisfying and productive era the world has ever
known (I also read a lot of science fiction!). One of the points often
missed by the purveyors of methodologies is that each stage of
refinement of a design is not simply an expansion of information
already in existence, but a creative act. We should absolutely avoid
reentering the same information over and over again – that’s boring!
– but, on the other hand, we should never imagine that any stage of
refinement of a design can somehow be magically done without
human input. Robots are great at remembering and following rules –
only humans create.
Corollary I: Do not use humans for jobs computers can do better –
this is a waste of human energy and creativity, the only real resource
on this planet, and demeans the human spirit.
Corollary II : Do not expect computers to provide that creative spark
that only humans can provide. If computers ever do become
creative, they won’t be computers any more – they will be people!
And I do not consider creativity the same as random number
generation....
The other personal slant I brought to this quest was the result of a
unique educational system which inculcated in its victims (sorry,
students) the idea that there is really no area of human endeavour
which one should be afraid to tackle, and that indeed we all could
realistically expect to contribute to any field of knowledge we
addressed. This perhaps outdated view may have led me to rush in
where angels fear to tread.... However, this pursuit has at the least
kept me entertained and given my professional life a certain direction
for several decades.
In past centuries, the dilettante or amateur has contributed a great
deal to the world’s store of knowledge and beauty. Remember, most
of the really big paradigm shifts were instigated by outsiders! The
word “amateur” comes from the idea of loving. One should be proud
to be called an computing amateur! “Dilettante” is another fine word
with a similar flavour – it comes from an Italian word meaning “to
delight in”. I therefore propose another theorem: if an activity isn’t
fun, humans probably shouldn’t be doing it. I feel people should use
the feeling of fun as a touchstone to see if they are on the right track.
Here is a quote from my colleague, P.R. Ewing, which also agrees
with my own experience: “The guys who turn out the most code are
the ones who are having fun!” Too many experts are deadly serious.
Play is not something we have to put away when we reach the state
of adulthood – it is a very important way for humans to expand their
understanding of the universe and all the interesting and delightful
beings and things that occupy it. This feeling that the subject matter
of this book is fun is one of the most common reactions we have
encountered, and is one of the main things which makes my
collaborators and myself believe that we have stumbled on
something important. In what follows I hope to convey some of this
feeling. Please forgive me if some whimsy sneaks in now and then!
 Table of Contents
Copyright Page & Trademarks
Preface to 1st Edition (1994)
Preface to 2nd Edition (2010)
Acknowledgments
Disclaimers
Prologue
Chap. I: Introduction
Chap. II: Higher-Level Languages, 4GLs and Source Code Reuse
Chap. III: Basic Concepts
Chap. IV: Reuse of Components
Chap. V: Parametrization of Reusable Components
Chap. VI: First Applications using Precoded Components
Chap. VII: Composite Components
Chap. VIII: Building Components & Some More Simple Applications
Chap. IX: Substreams and Control IPs
Chap. X: Some More Components and Simple Applications
Chap. XI: Data Descriptions and Descriptors
Chap. XII: Tree Structures
Chap. XIII: Scheduling Rules
Chap. XIV: Loop-Type Networks
Chap. XV: Implementation, Network Splitting and Client-Server
Chap. XVI: Deadlocks: Their Causes and Prevention
Chap. XVII: Problem-Oriented Mini-Languages
Chap. XVIII: A Business-Oriented Very High Level Language
Chap. XIX: Synchronization and Checkpoints
Chap. XX: General Framework for Interactive Applications
Chap. XXI: Performance Considerations
Chap. XXII: Defining Networks
Chap. XXIII: Related Compiler Theory Concepts
Chap. XXIV: Streams and Recursive Function Definitions
Chap. XXV: Comparison between FBP and Object-Oriented
Programming
Chap. XXVI: Related Concepts and Forerunners
Chap. XXVII: The FBP Explosion
Chap. XXVIII: Endings and Beginnings
Appendix: FBP Implementations and Diagramming Tool
Glossary of Terms
Bibliography
Index
 Chap. I: Introduction
Imagine that you have a large and complex application running in
your shop, and you discover that you need what looks like fairly
complex changes made to it in a hurry. You consult your
programmers and they tell you that the changes will probably take
several months, but they will take a look. A meeting is called of all
the people involved – not just programmers and analysts, but users
and operations personnel as well. The essential logic of the program
is put up on the wall, and the program designers walk through the
program structure with the group. During the ensuing discussion,
they realize that two new modules have to be written and some other
ones have to change places. Total time to make the changes – a
week!
Quite a few parts of this scenario sound unlikely, don’t they? Users,
operations people and programmers all talking the same language –
unthinkable! But it actually did happen just the way I described. The
factor that made this experience so different from most
programmers’ everyday experience is the truly revolutionary
technology I will be describing in this book.
While this technology has been in use for productive work for almost
40 years, it has also been waiting in the wings, so to speak, for its
right time to come on stage. Perhaps because there is a “paradigm
shift” involved, to use Kuhn’s phrase (Kuhn 1970), it has not been
widely known up to now, but I believe now is the time to open it up to
a wider public.
As the late Wayne Stevens, the noted writer on the subject of
application design methodologies, pointed out in several of his
books, this technology provides a consistent application view from
high level design all the way down to implementation. It allows
applications to be built using reusable “black boxes” and encourages
developers to construct such black boxes, which can then improve
the productivity of other developers. It forces developers to focus on
data and its transformations, rather than starting with procedural
code. It encourages rapid prototyping and results in more reliable,
more maintainable systems. It is compatible with distributed
systems, and appears to be on a convergent path with object-
oriented programming. In this book, I will describe the concepts
underlying this technology and give examples of experience gained
using it. Does it sound too good to be true? You be the judge! In the
following pages, we will be describing what I believe is a genuine
revolution in the process of creating application programs to support
the data processing requirements of companies around the world.
Today, in the early years of a new millennium, the bulk of all
business programming is done using techniques which have not
changed much in 50 years. Most of it is done using what are often
called Higher-Level Languages (HLLs), by far the most popular of
which is COBOL, the Common Business-Oriented Language,
originally developed in 1959 (coincidentally the year I joined IBM!). A
distant second is probably PL/I, not as widespread in terms of
number of customers, but in use at some of the biggest
organizations in North America. C, now C++, appears to be gaining
steadily in popularity, especially as it is often the first programming
language students encounter at university. It appears to be
especially convenient for writing system software, due to its powerful
and concise pointer manipulation facilities, but by the same token, it
may be less well adapted for writing business applications. Some
languages are used by particular sectors of the programming
community or for certain specialized purposes. There are also the
“4th generation languages”, which are higher level than the HLLs but
usually more specialized.
There are plenty of design methodologies and front-end tools to do
them with, but most of these do not really affect the mechanics of
creating programs. After the design has been done, the programmer
still has the job of converting his or her elegant design into strings of
commands in the chosen programming language. Although
generators have had some success, by and large most of today’s
programmers painstakingly create their programs by hand, like
skilled artisans hand-crafting individual pieces of cabinetry. One of
the “grand old men” of the computing fraternity, Nat Rochester, said
a number of years ago that programming probably absorbs more
creativity than any other professional pursuit, and most of it is
invisible to the outside world. Things really haven’t changed all that
much since those days. There are also what might be called
procedural or organizational approaches to improving the application
development process, e.g. “structured walk-throughs”, the “buddy”
system, “chief programmer teams”, third-party testing. My
experience is that the approaches of this type which have been
successful will still be valid whatever tool we eventually use for
producing applications. However, if all you do is take the existing
hand-crafting technology and add a massive bureaucracy to cross-
check every chisel stroke and hammer blow, I believe you will only
get minor improvements in your process, and in fact at a
considerable cost in productivity and morale. What is needed instead
is a fundamental change in the way we do things, after which we will
be able to see which procedures and organizations fit naturally into
the new world.
It is a truism that most businesses in the Western world would stop
functioning if it were not for the efforts of tens of thousands, if not
hundreds of thousands, of application programmers. These people
are practising a craft which most of the population does not
understand, and would not be willing to do if it did. The archetypal
programmer is viewed as a brilliant but impractical individual who
has a better rapport with computers than with people, slaving long
hours at a terminal which is at the very least damaging to his or her
eyesight. In fact, of course, the programmer is the key interface
between his clients, who speak the language of business, and the
computer and its systems, which speak the language of electrons.
The more effectively and reliably the programmer can bridge
between these worlds, the better will be the applications which he or
she builds, but this requires an unusual combination of talents. If you
have any of these paragons in your organization, guard them like the
treasures they are! In what follows, one of the recurring themes will
be that the problems with today’s programming technology arise
almost entirely from the continuing mismatch between the problem
area the programmer works in and the tools he or she has to work
with. Only if we can narrow the gap between the world of users and
that of application developers, can we produce applications which fit
the needs of users and do it in a timely and cost-effective manner.
The significant fact I have come to realize is that application
programming in its present form really is hard and in fact has not
progressed all that much since the days of the first computers. This
lack of progress is certainly not due to any shortage of advocates of
this or that shiny new tool, but very few of these wonder products
have delivered what was promised. When I started in the business in
1959, we already had higher-level languages, interpreters and
subroutine calls – these are still the basic tools of today’s
programming professionals. The kind of programming most of us do
has its roots in the procedural programming that arose during the
’40s and ’50s: this new invention called a computer filled a growing
need for repetitive, mainly mathematical calculations, such as tide
tables, ballistics and census calculations. In these areas, computers
were wildly successful. However, even then, some of the experts in
this new world of computing were starting to question whether
procedural application programming was really appropriate for
building business applications. The combination of more and more
complex systems, the sheer difficulty of the medium programmers
work in and the need for businesses to reduce overhead is resulting
in more and more pressure on today’s programming professionals.
Adding to the pressure on our programmers is the introduction of
multicore computers – it is generally accepted that, to properly take
advantage of the power of these new machines, programmers have
to write multithreaded code. Unfortunately, this is extremely difficult
to get right, and most such programs don’t scale up very well. Thus
it was a very pleasant surprise to find out that FBP allows
programmers to write multithreaded code, easily and safely – and in
fact they don’t even have to think of it as multithreaded code! Yes, it
does involve a paradigm change, but as I will try to show, it is a
change that brings programming more in line with other types of
industrial design.
In addition, as programmers build new systems, these add to the
amount of resources being expended on maintaining them, to the
point where the ability of many companies to develop new
applications is being seriously impacted by the burden of maintaining
old systems. This in turn adversely affects their ability to compete in
the highly competitive global market-place. Many writers have talked
about the programming backlog – the backlog of programming work
that DP departments are planning to do but can’t get to because of
lack of resources. I have also heard people use the phrase “hidden
backlog” – this is programming work that users would like to get
done but know there’s no point in even talking to their DP
department about, so it tends not to show up in the statistics!
At one time, it was predicted that more telephone switchboard
operators would be needed than the total number of available young
ladies. Of course, this problem was solved by the development of
automatic telephone switching systems. Similarly, many people
believe the present situation in computing can only be solved by a
quantum jump in technology, and of course each new software
technology claims to be the long-awaited solution. I and a number of
other people believe that the concepts described in what follows
really do have the potential to solve this problem, and I hope that, as
you read this book, you will come to agree with us. However, they
represent a true paradigm change which fundamentally changes the
way we look at the programming process. Like many important
discoveries, this new paradigm is basically quite simple, but far-
reaching in its implications.
Mention of a new paradigm makes one immediately think of another
new paradigm which is growing steadily in popularity, namely object-
oriented programming (usually abbreviated to OO). What I am about
to describe is not OO, but bears certain similarities to it, and
especially to the more advanced OO concepts, specifically the
concept of “active objects”. In the long run, these two paradigms
appear to be on a converging path, and, as I will be describing in
Chapter 25 (page x), I believe that the combination of these two sets
of concepts will achieve the best of both worlds. In most of this book,
however, I will be presenting our concepts and experience as they
evolved historically, using our own terminology, although I will be
using examples built using one such OO-based implementation,
JavaFBP (described in more detail in one of the appendices).
After a few years in the computer business, I found myself puzzling
over why application programming should be so hard. Its complexity
is certainly not the complexity of complex algorithms or logic. From
an arithmetic point of view, one seldom encounters a multiplication or
division in business programming, let alone anything as arcane as a
square root. The vast majority of business applications do such
things as transforming data from one format to another,
accumulating totals or looking up information in one file and
incorporating it into another file or a report. Given what seems like a
fairly simple problem space, I wondered why application
development should be so arduous and why, once built, a program
should be so hard to maintain. Over the last few years, I and a
number of other workers in the field have come to believe that the
main cause of the problem is in fact the same thing that powered the
computer revolution itself, namely the von Neumann computer
model.
This model is the traditional one that has been so productive over
the last five decades, designed around a single instruction counter
which walks sequentially through strings of codes that tell it what to
do at each step. These codes can be treated both as data (e.g. by
compilers) and as commands. This design is usually, but not
necessarily, combined with a uniform array of memory cells from
which the instructions take data, and into which they return it. As
described in a 1990 article by L. G. Valiant, the power of this model
derives from the fact that it has acted as a bridge between the twin
“diverse and chaotic” worlds (in his words) of hardware and software,
while allowing them to evolve separately. But, by the same token, its
very success convinced its practitioners that the problems we are
facing cannot possibly be due to any fundamental problems with this
set of concepts. Programmers are not bright enough, they don’t have
good enough tools, they don’t have enough mathematical education
or they don’t work hard enough – I’m sure you’ve run into all of these
explanations. I don’t believe any of these are valid – I believe there is
a far more fundamental problem – namely that, at a basic level, the
medium is simply inappropriate for the task at hand. In fact, when
you look at them objectively, the symptoms our business is
experiencing now are quite characteristic of what one would expect
when people try to do a complicated job using the wrong tools. Take
a second and really try to imagine building a functioning automobile
out of clay! It’s highly malleable when wet, so you should be able to
make anything, but after it has been fired it is very hard but very
brittle! In fact that’s quite a good analogy for the “feel” of most of our
applications today!
The time is now ripe for a new paradigm to replace the von
Neumann model as the bridging model between hardware and
software. The one we will be describing is similar to the one Valiant
proposes (I’ll talk about this in more detail in Chapter 26 – page x)
and in fact seems to be one of a family of related concepts which
have appeared over the last few years in the literature. The common
concept underlying much of this work is basically that, to solve these
problems, we have to relax the tight sequential programming style
characteristic of the von Neumann machine, and structure programs
as collections of communicating, asynchronous processes. If you
look at applications larger than a single program or go down inside
the machine, you will find many processes going on in parallel. It is
only within a single program (job step or transaction) that you still
find strict traditional, sequential logic. We have tended to believe that
the tight control of execution sequence imposed by this approach is
the only way to get predictable code, and that therefore it was
necessary for reliable systems. It turns out that machines (and
people) work more efficiently if you only retain the constraints that
matter and relax the ones that don’t, and you can do this without any
loss of reliability. The intent of this book is to try to describe a body of
experience which has been built up using a particular set of
implementations of this concept over the years, so I will not go into
more detail at this point. In this chapter, we will be talking more about
the history of this concept than about specific implementations or
experience gained using them.
Another factor which makes me think it is timely for this technology
to be made public is that we are facing a growing crisis in application
development. At the same time as new requirements are appearing,
the underlying technology is changing faster and faster. The set of
concepts I will be describing seems to fit well with current directions
for both software and hardware. Not only can it support in a natural
manner the requirements of distributed, heterogeneous applications,
but it also seems an appropriate programming technology for the
new multiprocessor machines being worked on by universities and
leading-edge computer manufacturers all over the world. As the
Wayne Stevens has pointed out in several of his articles (e.g.
Stevens 1985), the paradigm we will be describing provides a
consistent, natural way to view systems, from the workings of whole
companies all the way down to the smallest computer component.
Since you can describe manual applications with data-flow diagrams,
even the connection between manual and system procedures can be
shown seamlessly.
In what follows, I will be using the term “Flow-Based Programming”
(or FBP for short), suggested by Eric Lawton of IBM, to describe this
new set of concepts and the software needed to support it. We have
in the past used the term “Data Flow” as it conveys a number of the
more important aspects of this technology, but there is a sizable
body of published work on what is called “dataflow architectures” in
computer design and their associated software (for instance the very
exciting work coming out of MIT), so the term dataflow may cause
confusion in some academic circles. It was also pointed out to me
several years ago that, when control flow is needed explicitly, FBP
can provide it by the use of such mechanisms as triggers, so the
term Flow-Based Programming avoids the connotation that we
cannot do control flow. This is not to say that the two types of data
flow do not have many concepts in common – dataflow computer
architectures arise also from the perception that the von Neumann
machine design that has been so successful in the past must be
generalized if we are to move forward, whether we are trying to
perform truly huge amounts of computation such as weather
calculations or simply produce applications which are easier to build
and maintain.
One significant difference between the two schools, at least at this
time, is that most of the other data flow work has been
mathematically oriented, so it tends to work with numbers and arrays
of numbers. Although my early data flow work during the late 60s
also involved simple numeric values travelling through a network of
function blocks, my experience with simulation systems led me to the
realization that it would be more productive in business applications
to have the things which flow be structured objects, which I called
“entities”. This name reflected the idea that these structured objects
tended to represent entities in the outside world. (In our later work,
we realized that the name “entity” might cause confusion with the
idea of entities in data modelling, although there are points of
resemblance, so we decided to use a different word). Such a system
is also, not coincidentally, a natural design for simulating
applications, so the distinction between applications and their
simulations becomes much less significant than in conventional
programming. You can think of an entity as being like a record in
storage, but active (in that it triggers events), rather than passive
(just being read or written). Entities flow through a network of
processes, like cars in a city, or boats in a river system. They differ
from the mathematical tokens of dataflow computers or my early
work chiefly in that they have structure : each entity represents an
object with attributes, for example an employee will have attributes
such as salary, date of hire, manager, etc. As you read this book, it
should become clear why there has to be at least one layer of the
application where the entities move as individual units, although it
may very well be possible to integrate the various dataflow
approaches at lower levels.
At this point I am going to have to describe FBP briefly, to give the
reader something to visualize, but first a caveat: the brief description
that follows will probably not be enough to let you picture what FBP
is and how it does it. If we don’t do this at this point, however,
experience shows that readers find it hard to relate what I am
describing to their own knowledge. The reverse risk is that they may
jump to conclusions which may prevent them from seeing what is
truly new about the concepts I will be describing later. I call this the
“It’s just a...” syndrome.
In conventional programming, when you sit down to write a program,
you write code down the page – a linear string of statements
describing the series of actions you want the computer to execute.
Since we are of course all writing structured code now, we start with
a main line containing mostly subroutine calls, which can then be
given “meaning” later by coding up the named subroutines. A
number of people have speculated about the possibility of instead
building a program by just plugging prewritten pieces of logic
together. This has sometimes been called ‘Legoland’ programming.
Even though that is essentially what we do when we use utilities,
there has always been some doubt whether this approach has the
power to construct large scale applications, and, if it has, whether
such applications would perform. I now have the pleasure to
announce that the answer is “Yes” to both these questions!
The “glue” that FBP uses to connect the pieces together is an
example of what Yale’s Gelernter and Carriero (1992) have called a
“coordination language”. I feel the distinction between coordination
languages and procedural languages is a useful one, and helps to
clarify what is different about FBP. Conventional programming
languages instruct the machine what logic to execute; coordination
languages tell the machine how to coordinate multiple modules
written in one or several programming languages. There is quite a bit
of published material on various approaches to coordination, but
much of that work involves the use of special-purpose languages,
which reduces the applicability of these concepts to traditional
languages and environments. Along with Gelernter and Carriero, I
feel a better approach is to have a language-independent
coordination notation, which can coordinate modules written in a
variety of different procedural languages. The individual modules
have to have a common Application Programming Interface (API) to
let them talk to the coordination software, but this can be relatively
simple.
Coordination and modularity are two sides of the same coin, and
several years ago Raoul de Campo of IBM Research in Yorktown
Heights coined the term “configurable modularity” to denote an ability
to reuse independent components just by changing their
interconnections. Nate Edwards of the same organization expanded
on this idea (Edwards 1977), and stated that in his view this
characteristic is fundamental to all successful reuse systems, and
indeed to all systems which can be described as “engineered”.
While Nate Edwards’ work is fairly non-technical and pragmatic, his
background is mainly in hardware, rather than software, which may
be why his work has not received the attention it deserves in the
software domain. One of the important characteristics of a system
exhibiting configurable modularity, such as most modern hardware or
Flow-Based Programming, is that you can build systems out of
“black box” reusable modules, much like the chips which are used to
build logic in hardware. You also, of course, have to have something
to connect them together with, but they do not have to be modified in
any way to make this happen. Of course, this is characteristic of
almost all the things we attach to each other in real life – in fact,
almost everywhere except in conventional programming. In FBP,
these black boxes are the basic building blocks that a developer
uses to build an application. New black boxes can be written as
needed, but a developer tries to use what is available first, before
creating new components. In FBP, the emphasis shifts from building
everything new to connecting preexisting pieces and only building
new when building a new component is cost-justified. Nate Edwards
played a key role in getting the hardware people to follow this same
principle – and now of course, like all great discoveries, it seems that
we have always known this! We have to help software developers to
move through the same paradigm shift. If you look at the literature of
programming from this standpoint, you will be amazed at how few
writers write from the basis of reuse – in fact the very term seems to
suggest an element of surprise, as if reuse were a fortuitous
occurrence that happens seldom and usually by accident! In real
life, we use a knife or a fork – we don’t re use it!
We will be describing similarities between FBP and other similar
pieces of software in later chapters, but perhaps it would be useful at
this point to use Microsoft DOS or UNIX™ pipes to draw a simple
analogy. If you have used either of these systems you will know that
you can take separate programs and combine them using a vertical
bar (|), e.g.
A|B
This is a very simple form of what I have been calling coordination of
separate programs. It tells the system that you want to feed the
output of A into the input of B, but neither A nor B have to be
modified to make this happen. A and B have to have connection
points (“plugs” and “sockets”) which the system can use, and of
course there has to be some software which understands the vertical
bar notation and knows what to do with it. Based on this simple
mechanism, you can take components and combine them to do all
sorts of useful tasks as needed. This is described in more detail in
Chapter 26 (page x).
FBP broadens this concept in a number of directions which vastly
increase its power. It turns out that this generalization results in an
approach to building applications which is very different from the
conventional approach, and which results in systems which are both
more reliable and more maintainable.
Applications using FBP systems therefore basically all have the
following components:
a number of precoded, pretested functions, provided in object
code form, not source code form (“black boxes”) – this set is
 open-ended and (hopefully) constantly growing
a “scheduler” – a piece of software which coordinates the
different independent modules, and implements the API
(Application Programming Interface) which is used by the
components to communicate with each other and with the
scheduler
a notation for specifying how the components are connected
together into one or more networks (an FBP application
designer typically starts with pictures, and then converts them
into specifications to be executed by the scheduler)
this notation can be put into a file for execution by the scheduler
software. In the only implementation of FBP ever actually
marketed by IBM (DFDM – described in the next section of this
chapter), the network could either be compiled and link-edited to
produce an executable program, or it could be interpreted
directly (with of course greater initialization overhead). In the
interpreted mode, the components are loaded in dynamically, so
you can make changes and see the results many times in a few
minutes. As we said before, people found this mode extremely
productive. Later, when debugging was finished, you could
convert the interpretable form to the compilable form to provide
better performance for your production version.
procedures to enable you to convert, compile and package
individual modules and partial networks
documentation (reference and tutorial) for all of the above

In the above list I have not included education, but of course this is
probably the most important item of all. To get the user started, there
is a need for formal education – this may only take a few days or
weeks, and I hope that this book will get the reader started on
understanding many of the basic concepts. However, education also
includes the practical experience that comes from working with many
different applications, over a number of months or years. In this area
especially, we have found that FBP feels very different from
conventional programming. Unlike most other professions, in
programming we tend to underestimate the value of experience,
which may in fact be due to the nature of the present-day
programming medium. In other professions we do not recommend
giving a new practitioner a pile of books, and then telling him or her
to go out and do brain surgery, build a bridge, mine gold or sail
across the Atlantic. Instead it is expected that there will be a series
of progressive steps from student or apprentice to master.
Application development using FBP feels much more like an
engineering-style discipline: we are mostly assembling structures out
of preexisting components with well-defined specifications, rather
than building things from scratch using basic raw materials. In such a
medium, experience is key: it takes time to learn what components
are available, how they fit together and what trade-offs can be made.
However, unlike bridge-builders, application developers using FBP
can also get simple applications working very fast, so they can have
the satisfaction of seeing quite simple programs do non-trivial things
very early. Education in FBP is a hands-on affair, and it is really a
pleasure seeing people’s reactions when they get something working
without having to write a line of code!
Now that graphics hardware and software have become available at
reasonable cost and performance, we can build powerful graphical
front-ends for our FBP systems. Since FBP is a highly visual
notation, we believe that a graphical front-end is one of the keys to
its wider acceptance. In Chapter 27 (page x), you will see that
graphical front-ends and visual languages have started popping up
like mushrooms in the grass! In 2008 and 2009 we developed a
graphical tool called DrawFBP, written using Java AWT, Java Swing
and the Java 2D API – this tool captures connectivity information, as
well as the spatial positions of the blocks and arrows, so that it can
actually generate a running JavaFBP program. It also supports what
is sometimes called “stepwise decomposition”, allowing the system
to be built up a layer at a time. The majority of the diagrams in this
book were built using this tool.
Now I feel it would be useful to give you a bit of historical
background on FBP: the first implementation of this concept was
built by myself in 1969 and 1970 in Montréal, Québec. Its first
incarnation was called (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) Data-Oriented
Organization Running Multiple Asynchronous Tasks (DOORMAT). I
still think this is a wonderful acronym, but it was felt (probably
correctly!) that it would not command sufficient respect, so we
renamed it the Advanced Modular Processing System (AMPS), and
it was used for a number of customer applications at the IBM
Montréal Data Centre. This technology proved very productive – so
much so that it was taken into a major Canadian bank, where it was
used for all the batch programming of a major on-line system. This
system and the experience gained from it are described in a fair
amount of detail in an article I wrote a few years later for the IBM
Systems Journal (Morrison 1978).
Although the concepts are not well known, they have actually been
in the public domain for many years. The way this happened is as
follows: in late 1970 or early ’71 I approached IBM Canada’s
Intellectual Property department to see if we could take out a patent
on the basic idea. Their recommendation, which I feel was prescient,
was that this concept seemed to them more like a law of nature,
which is not patentable. They did recommend, however, that I write
up a Technical Disclosure Bulletin (TDB), which was duly published
and distributed to patent offices world-wide (Morrison 1971). A TDB
is a sort of inverse patent – while a patent protects the owner but
requires him or her to try to predict all possible variations on a
concept, a TDB puts a concept into the public domain, and thereby
protects the registering body from being restricted or impeded in the
future in any use they may wish to make of the concept. In the case
of a TDB, it places the onus on someone else who might be trying to
patent something based on your concept to prove that their variation
was not obvious to someone “skilled in the art”.
Towards the end of the ’80s, Wayne Stevens and I jointly developed
a new version of this software, called the Data Flow Development
Manager (DFDM). It is described in Appendix A of what I think was
Wayne’s last book (Stevens 1991) (which, by the way, contains a lot
of good material on application design techniques in general). What I
usually refer to in what follows as “processes” were called
“coroutines” in DFDM, after Conway (1963), who described an early
form of this concept in a paper back in the ’60s, and foresaw even
then some of its potential. “Coroutine” is formed from the word
“routine” together with the Latin prefix meaning “with”, as compared
with “subroutine”, which is formed with the prefix meaning “under”.
(Think of “ co operative” vs. “ sub ordinate”).
DFDM was used for a number of projects (between 40 and 50) of
various sizes within IBM Canada. A few years later, Kenji Terao got a
project started within IBM Japan to support us in developing an
improved version for the Japanese market. This version, marketed
under the name “Data Flow Programming Manager” (データ・フロ
ー・プログラミング 管理 ), is, at the time of writing, the only official
IBM FBP product which has been made available in the market-
place, and I believe enormous credit is due to Kenji and all the
dedicated and forward-looking people in IBM Japan who helped to
make this happen. While this version of DFDM was in many ways
more robust or “industrial strength” than the one which we had been
using within IBM Canada, much of the experience which I will be
describing in the following pages is based on what we learned using
the IBM Canada internal version of DFDM (roughly 1983 – 1990), or
on the still earlier AMPS system (1969 – 1976). Perhaps someone
will write a sequel to this book describing the Japanese experience
with DFDM...
After I retired from IBM, I wrote a C implementation, which attempted
to embody many of the best ideas of its ancestors, called THREADS
– THREads-based Application Development System (I love self-
referential names!). Like DFDM, it also has interpreted and compiled
versions, so applications can be developed iteratively, and then
compiled to produce a single EXE file, which eliminates the network
decoding phase. The first version of THREADS used C functions
longjmp and setjmp, plus some hardware-level code, to switch
between a number of separate stacks. However, the code was
somewhat hardware- and operating system-specific, so in 2009 I
started converting THREADS to use the new Windows “fibres”
facility. Although the revised code has survived some of its early
tests, it needs a lot more testing. The latest information can be
found on the FBP web site
(http://www.jpaulmorrison.com/fbp/threads.htm).
A few years later, Java and C# versions were implemented, called
(unimaginatively) JavaFBP and C#FBP. They can both be found on
the author’s FBP web site, and on SourceForge
(https://sourceforge.net/projects/flow-based-pgmg/).
The terminology used in this book is not exactly the same as that
used by AMPS and DFDM, as a number of these terms turned out to
cause confusion. For instance, the data chunks that travel between
the asynchronous processes were called “entities” in those systems,
but, as I said above, this caused confusion for people experienced in
data modelling. They do seem to correspond with the “entities” of
data modelling, but “entities” have other connotations which could be
misleading. “Objects” would present other problems, and we were
not comfortable with the idea of creating totally new words (although
some writers have used them effectively). The “tuples” of Carriero
and Gelernter’s Linda (1989) are very close, but this name also
presents a slightly different image from the FBP concept. We
therefore decided to use the rather neutral term “information packet”
(or “IP” for short) for this concept. This term was coined by Herman
Van Goolen, then with IBM Netherlands, as part of work that we did
after DFDM, in which we tied FBP concepts in with other work
appearing in the literature or being developed in other parts of IBM.
Some of the extensions to the basic AMPS and DFDM substructure
that I will be talking about later were also articulated during this
period. When I need to refer to ideas drawn from this work I will use
the name FPE (for Flow-Based Programming Environment),
although that is not the acronym used for that project. THREADS
and its successor implementations follow this revised terminology,
and include a number of ideas from FPE.
As I stated in the prologue, for most of my 50 years (I can’t believe
it!) in the computer business I have been almost exclusively involved
with business applications. Although business applications are often
more complex than scientific applications, the academic community
generally has not shown much interest in this area up until now. This
is a “catch 22” situation, as business would benefit from the work
done in academia, yet academia (with some noteworthy exceptions)
tends not to regard business programming as an interesting area to
work in. My hope is that FBP can act as a bridge between these two
worlds, and in later chapters I will be attempting to tie FBP to other
related theoretical work which working programmers probably
wouldn’t normally encounter. My reading in the field suggests that
FBP has sound theoretical foundations, and yet it can perform well
enough that you can run a company on it, and it is accessible to
trainee programmers (sometimes more easily than for experienced
ones!). AMPS has now been in production use for over 35 years,
supporting one of the biggest companies in North America.
Business systems have to evolve over time as the market
requirements change, so clearly their system has been able to grow
and adapt over the years as the need arose – this is a living system,
not some outdated curiosity which has become obsolete with the
advance of technology.
And now I would like to conclude this chapter with an unsolicited
testimonial from a DFDM user, which we found particularly satisfying:
“I have a requirement to merge 23 ... reports into one .... As
all reports are of different length and block size this is more
difficult in a conventional PLI environment. It would have
required 1 day of work to write the program and 1 day to test
it. Such a program would use repetitive code. While drinking
coffee 1 morning I wrote a DFDM network to do this. It was
complete before the coffee went cold [my italics]. Due to the
length of time from training to programming it took 1 day to
compile the code. Had it not been for the learning curve it
could have been done in 5 minutes. During testing a small
error was found which took 10 minutes to correct. As 3 off-
the-shelf coroutines [components] were used, PLI was not
required. 2 co-routines were used once, and 1 was used 23
times. Had it not been for DFDM, I would have told the user
 that his requirement was not cost justified. It took more time
to write this note than the DFDM network.”

Notice that in his note, Rej (short for Réjean), who, by the way, is a
visually impaired application developer with many years of
experience in business applications, mentioned all the points that
were significant to him as a developer – he zeroed right in on the
amount of reuse he was getting, because functions he could get right
off the shelf were ones he didn’t have to write, test and eventually
maintain! In DFDM, “coroutines” are the basic building blocks, which
programmers can hook together to build applications. They are
either already available (“on the shelf”), or the programmer can write
new ones, in which case he or she will naturally try to reuse them as
often as possible – to get the most bang for the proverbial buck.
Although it is not very hard to write new PL/I components, the
majority of application developers don’t want to write new code –
they just want to get their applications working for the client,
preferably using as little programming effort as will suffice to get a
quality job done. Of course there are always programmers who love
the process of programming and, as we shall see in the following
pages, there is an important role for them also in this new world
which is evolving.
Rej’s note was especially satisfying to us because he uses special
equipment which converts whatever is on his screen into spoken
words. Since FBP has always seemed to me a highly visual
technique, I had worried about whether visually impaired
programmers would have any trouble using it, and it was very
reassuring to find that Rej was able to make such productive use of
this technology. In later discussions with him, he has stressed the
need to keep application structures simple. In FBP, you can use
hierarchic decomposition to create multiple layers, each containing a
simple structure, rather than being required to create a single, flat,
highly complex structure. In fact, structures which are so complex
that he would have trouble with them are difficult for everyone.
Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
 CHAPTER VI
WHY DID HE DO IT?

But Washington was not to parallel Paris. The uproar caused by M.

Briand’s speech died away in an amazingly short time—so far as
Washington was concerned. The violence and indiscretions of the
press to which so much of the disturbance on the other side of the
Atlantic was due was not followed up. Those that had been
responsible were all of them, I think, a little ashamed, though Mr.
Wells obstinately came back once or twice to tell what he thought
of the French. Explanations quieted the Italians. M. Briand had
never used the offensive word attributed to him, it had been but a
mistake of the cables—and a serious mistake, it should be said,
too, of the journalist that had cabled it without verification. On all
sides lectures were read to the correspondents. Go on this way
and they could easily wreck the whole thing. Go on this way and
peace never at any time could be made in the world. Any effort of
man could be easily upset if passionate judgments and
unconfirmed suspicions were to be sent broadcast through the
newspapers. People believe what they read, unhappily, and have
little or no way of verifying. There was much of this reproving talk
going on and some of those who handled it most vigorously
belonged to the Washington press. It had its effect at once.
Then, too, it was hard to be continuously violent and suspicious in
Washington. The lovely days, the wide streets, the freedom from
the turmoil of business and industry, the very absence of exciting
night life—all tended to calm the spirit. How different from Paris in
1919! There one lived in a city encircled by vast hospitals where
thousands upon thousands of shattered men tossed on their beds
of pain. Soldiers of all nations swarmed everywhere. In many
streets of the city the shops were still sealed up. On all sides one
found great staring gaps—the wounds of the city made by the
shells of Big Bertha or the nightly visits of airplanes. Everywhere
you went you saw still the signs “Abri” (shelter), vividly recalling
the long years in which no man safely went out without knowing
that there was a refuge near by. The streets at night were still
dark, and those within still tightened their shutters and drew close
their curtains, unable to believe that light was no longer a danger.
You rode in battered taxicabs over streets that were rough from
long inattention. In every house you entered the marks of war still
remained. Nothing had been mended or repaired in Paris for five
years. A heating apparatus out of order, it stayed out of order. A
window broken, it stayed broken. A hinge off, it stayed off. Carpets
and furniture went uncleaned. And in the homes of the rich where
there had been beautiful pictures, empty frames hung on the wall,
the canvas having been cut out and sent to some place of safety.
There was no color. All Paris was in black. Even in the windows of
the shops you saw nothing but black. Your dressmaker and milliner
had no heart to work in colors, it still to them was bad taste. It
was only the influx and the demand of the visiting foreigners, who
multiplied as the Conference went on, that brought back colors to
the shop windows.
What a contrast to all this was Washington in the fall of 1921, with
its gayety and lavishness, its incessant round of lunches and teas
and dinners, its over-weighted tables, unbelievable in their
abundance to the visiting strangers, so long—and still—on stricter
rations. You could not be tragic long in Washington.
Then there was Mr. Hughes’ steady hand. He laughed daily at his
press conferences at the insinuations and solemnity of the
questioning press correspondents. Everything was going on
swimmingly, he asserted. “Excellent progress.” The naval
committee was at work, the Far Eastern committee had begun its
sessions, the agenda would be followed step by step, but one
thing at a time would be attempted; when they had finished what
they were at now they would take up the next step, and not
before. It was certainly steadying, if not exciting. It gave
confidence, if not headlines. All of this quieted the storm, but it
was left to the President of the United States to sweep it entirely
from the Conference sky, though whether he did it intentionally or
accidentally is still, I think, an unanswered question.
Why did President Harding, without warning, inject an Association
of Nations into the Conference on the Limitation of Armament, on
the last day of its second week of life? The Conference had a
definite agenda. Mr. Hughes, its chairman, was following it with
the rigor of a good schoolmaster. That agenda made no mention
of a conference, association or league of nations. So far as it was
concerned, the world war is made up of nine nations. And here
came the President of the United States and casually announced
that before the work was completed it should include an
association of all the nations of the earth.
Why did he do it? Did he want to divert public attention from the
dangerous irritations of the moment? We do not yet know enough
of the workings of Mr. Harding’s mind to be able to say whether he
would, like Napoleon III, gild a dome when there was squally
public weather. All we do really know about the President, so far, is
his genuinely beneficent intent. Is he canny enough to know that
the public is as easily diverted as a child and capable of attempting
the trick when things are getting a bit out of hand?
Whether this is true or not, he certainly put an end to the ticklish
situation in which the Conference found itself in Thanksgiving
week. Everybody fell to discussing the proposition. Was the
Conference really to end up in an Association of Nations? Did this
mean that the United States would suggest to the delegates
gathered at the Conference—all of them members of the League
of Nations—that they scrap that institution? There had been much
speculation in Geneva before the Washington Conference was
called as to whether the intention was to force the League out of
existence. So great was the anxiety of more than one European
country to be in any congregation in which the United States
figured, that it was pretty generally agreed that if such a
proposition should be made it would be assented to. Was this Mr.
Harding’s first feeler then toward substituting something of his
own for the League? But this was only a speculation. Nobody could
get from any official source any confirmation that Mr. Harding had
anything definite in mind. And yet they were not unwilling to
accept the notion that he had inadvertently thrown out so
important a suggestion.
There were those who had an unamiable explanation. We are all
human, they said. We must remember that this has ceased to be
Mr. Harding’s conference. His fine sentiments on Armistice Day on
the opening of the Conference had been greeted with loud acclaim
the world over. But after he had opened the Conference he left the
hall. Secretary Hughes appeared, and it was Secretary Hughes
who stirred the world. From that time on, the Secretary had been
the one man quoted. We have had great secretaries—Mr. Root, for
instance, who never allowed his shadow to fall across that of the
President of the United States. When Mr. Roosevelt was President,
Mr. Root prepared some very remarkable state papers, but they
always began “The President instructs me to say.” Mr. Hughes has
been speaking for himself. It is quite possible, said these
interpreters, that the President thinks the time has come to let the
public know that, after all, it is he who occupies the White House.
I am quite sure that if this had been true, we should have had
other evidence of it as time went on, but none came. Mr. Harding
knew well enough that a successful Conference was in the long
run his triumph. He knew well enough that the only man who
could give him this success was Secretary Hughes. Possibly the
wisest thing that Mr. Harding has yet done as President has been
to let the members of his cabinet do their own work. Jealousy is
not, I am sure, an explanation of Mr. Harding’s sudden introduction
of an Association of Nations into the Conference on the Limitation
of Armament. Was it to be found in M. Briand’s speech?
M. Briand did not convince his audience, as we have seen. That is,
he did not bring it to the point at which he was aiming. But one
thing that he did do was to bring into sharp relief the fact that land
and naval armaments cannot be handled separately. They dovetail
in the game of war, are mutually defensive and offensive; to cut
the navy of a nation whose main defense is ships, without
considering the relation of that cut to the size of the armies of
those nations in which armies are the chief defense, is to leave an
unbalanced situation.
A second realization went along with this, and that was that the
scrapping and cutting by nine nations must be done with an eye to
the actual or potential naval armaments of the other forty-five or
so nations of the earth. Senator Schanzer had already suggested
this in his speech made on November 15, accepting in principle for
Italy the naval program. “I think it rather difficult,” he said, “to
separate the question of Italian and French naval armament
limitation from the general question of naval armaments of the
world.”
M. Briand’s speech made one realize how France and Italy must
consider possible continental alliances of powers that were not
represented at this Conference; must consider a possible Russian
crusade to convert the world by force to its gospel. And if France
and Italy must, or thought they must, secure themselves against
these possibilities, could England weaken herself
disproportionately? When you began to consider the question of
armament in terms of the world and not simply of nine nations,
you could not if you were candid find any peaceful solution but by
bringing everybody in—Germany, Turkey, Russia. Now it may be,
though we do not know Mr. Harding well enough yet to say, that
the logic of the experiences that the Conference had been through
up to date laid hold of him and he said it like a man—“there is but
one way out, and that is by One Big Union.”
Of course there is another explanation of why he did it and I
rather think it may be the true one, after all. The President may
have been hearing from the country. One thing that we do know
about him is that he is a man who with almost religious care
listens to the voices that come up to him from the people. And it
was no secret that a multitude of them, strong and weak, had
been calling to him in the weeks preceding—“conference,”
“association,” “league,” “some method of carrying on in which
everybody can join,” “in no other way can we hope for permanent
peace.” It may be that Mr. Harding had heard so much of this that
he felt he must reply. And if this was true, he did wisely.
We may lay it down as one of the great facts of the present
international state of mind, that the world is intent on some sort of
an association of nations. It is not set, so far as one can
determine, on any particular covenant, though of course there is
one to which some fifty nations of the world have subscribed and
in which for some two years now they have been doing
increasingly practical work in adjusting difficulties between nations.
The very fact that the League of Nations lives—the divers ways in
which its adventures in world unionism come to us—only makes
the idea of association stronger in the minds of the peoples of the
earth.
The Conference might limit armaments, naval and land, in the nine
nations that were here gathered. It might make settlements of the
Far Eastern questions, but there still would remain the rest of the
world. It is a part of things. The world is one. It has come to a
consciousness of its oneness. Nothing can dull that consciousness,
stop the determination to realize it. Not Mr. Borah, not Mr. Lodge.
Somehow we have got to learn to come together and stay
together. Walt Whitman once said of Abraham Lincoln’s passion for
the Union that unionism had become “a new virtue” with him,—a
virtue like honesty, goodness, truthfulness. There is no manner of
doubt that in the minds of this world unionism is coming to be
regarded as a virtue; that the demand for its realization as the
only road to world peace is becoming more and more universal.
Mr. Harding may have seen this. He may have gone over in his
mind the steps that in the last twenty-five years—not to go back
farther—the world has taken toward this—the steps at the Hague,
the various peace conferences, the greatest of all experiments now
making at Geneva—and he may have seen that he could no longer
deny the demand of this people that he take another step toward
the realization of this great hope. Whatever the reason, however,
of his unexpected suggestion, it served the excellent purpose of
turning the mind of the public to the fact that however complete
the work of the Conference might be there would still be more to
do if the world was to remain at peace.
In the meantime the Conference itself was going steadily ahead.
Everybody seemed cheerful. Everybody was cheerful. If the
Conference had rocked on its base for a moment, it had come
back to its position; and it was obvious enough, too, from all that
one heard and saw, that there was going soon to be something
definite and important to announce as a result of the work that
was going on.
 CHAPTER VII
DRAMATIC DIPLOMACY

Who was the dramatist of the Conference on the Limitation of

Armament? Mr. Hughes? I would never have believed it. I could
never have conceived of his deliberately staging his diplomatic
achievements with an appreciation of the time, the place and the
world at large which was really amazing. It did not need Mr.
Balfour’s delicate and humorous understanding to point out to
those who were present at the opening on November 12 that the
dramatic quality of Mr. Hughes’ great speech rivaled, if it did not
outstrip, its splendid matter. But who would have believed that he
would repeat himself? Yet he did it. Just four weeks from his first
great coup he pulled off another that had every element of drama
which characterized the first—and it had more—strains of genuine
emotion and one scene of biting satire. (Not for a moment,
however, do I believe that Mr. Hughes intended that.)
The surprise of the opening day of the Conference, November 12,
lay in the unexpectedness of what Mr. Hughes had to say. The first
surprise, of December 10, lay in the fact that there was to be a full
session. It was not until nearly midnight of the 9th that it was
announced. A few diners lingering late heard of it. The press of
course was informed. But to most of us the news came when we
opened our morning paper over our coffee—a full headline across
the top of the page—

PLENARY SESSION TO-DAY

Of course we realized that it was going to be a big day. For days
there had been hidden in the mists about the Conference
something which those who were able to penetrate near to the
center of things declared to be a treaty. Watching this treaty
emerge was like watching a ship come out of a thick fog. There
were warning signals, faint at first, but growing more and more
distinct—the Anglo-Japanese pact was dying. If the United States
wished it, it should go; and it was certain that the United States
had for a long time wished it,—also Australia and other parts of
the British Empire. Then we began to hear more and more from
another direction—signals that had been sounded at intervals for
weeks before the Conference convened. Japan was uneasy about
the naval bases in the Pacific. She would like to have them
dismantled. As one listened one began to understand that Mr.
Hughes’ program of naval limitation would stay where it was until
something had been done about both the Anglo-Japanese Pact and
the Islands of the Pacific.
The logic of the situation began to be clear. The fair-minded began
to ask themselves, “Well, now, after all, how can we expect Japan
to strip herself of ships, if she must, as seems to be inevitable,
give up her understanding with England? How can we expect her
to weaken her defenses and take no exception to the fortifications
in the waters near her? She is the member of this Conference that
is being asked to sacrifice until it hurts, and the only one. Is it fair
to ask her to sacrifice without guarantees? Is there any way out
but a treaty—a treaty in which we join?”
Moreover, if you ask her to sacrifice without a guarantee, will she
do it? Not Japan. Thus it became more and more clear that the
success of the naval program depended on some kind of a pact
which would satisfy Japan that she could agree to what Mr.
Hughes had asked and still have no reason to feel herself in
danger.
The first definite black-faced, full-width-of-the-page headline
came, as I remember, on December 5—“Four Power Entente to
Replace Anglo-Japanese Alliance.” The morning after this bold
announcement it was not quite so sure. The newspapers were
keeping a line of retreat open. As they now put it: “Discussions of
the proposals have reached a well-advanced stage,” none of the
governments concerned had given final approval. There was
enough that was sure, however, to give the wicked a chance to
jeer at approaching “entangling alliances.”
By Friday, December 9, the most careful journals were saying, on
what they declared to be the best sort of authority, that the United
States was going into a pact with Japan and England and France,
guaranteeing various things. There was considerable diversity in
the assertions about what it guaranteed. Washington said nothing.
The news came from all of the capitals of the powers concerned,
except our own. It was evidently very hard for Washington to say
“treaty.”
There was much entertaining gossip running around as to how
Tokyo and London and Paris had been able to give the press the
news of what was going to be done, while Washington was silent.
One story was that a clever Japanese journalist had managed to
get a glimpse of the document in preparation and had cabled what
he had been able to make out of its contents to Tokyo; that from
there it had gone to Paris and London and finally came here. That
was one story. Another was a rather thin version of that old, old
device of writers of diplomatic fiction—a lively and lovely lady
lunches with an elderly diplomat, who, to win her favor, reveals the
secret that is in the air. That evening she dines with a young
journalist whom she naturally (and necessarily for the purpose of
the plot) much prefers, and to prove her devotion she tells him
what her elder suitor has revealed. Threadbare as the formula is, it
was honored the week that the treaty was coming out of the fog
by at least one important newspaper.
Mr. Hughes seems to have concluded by the end of Friday, the 9th,
that unless he acted quickly his reputation for dramatic diplomacy
might be shaken, and so the hasty summons, the thrill at the
breakfast table, the quick readjustments of plans, the rush to
make sure that your credentials were all right and your ticket
waiting you.
From the beginning of the Conference, sun and air were in league
with those who were staging it with such a sense of dramatic
values. Never was there a morning of lovelier tenderness than that
on which they carried the Unknown Soldier to his grave; Mr.
Hughes’ big gun was fired under a perfect morning sky—it was
only when we came out that things had grown stern and the
clouds were dark, as if to give us a sense that a serious thing had
been done that morning and it was well to get down to work, if it
was to be made good.
The morning of December 10 there was frost on all the
Washington roof tops, the sky was clear, there was an air that put
a spring in your heels and it was a joy to hurry down with the
crowd to get your ticket; it put you in mood for something
exciting, helped enormously the keen anticipation that stirred the
town.
The scene in the Conference was what it had been at the three
previous open sessions: each delegate in his place, the advisory
board banked behind them, the boxes overflowing with ladies, the
press in their usual seats, the House gallery even more amusing
than on the opening day. It was quite full, for somehow the House
had obtained permission to bring its family along, and there were
many ladies sprinkled through the gallery. They made it more
animated but not a whit more dignified in its behavior.
And then, on the tick of the hour, Mr. Hughes arose. What an
orderly mind! A mind that must know where it is headed, how it is
going to get there, the exact point it has reached at the given
moment! He must know himself, and he never fails, when he
presents his case, to make sure that you know. Again and again in
his talks to the press he would carefully point out to the
correspondents who were given to jumping to the future, running
back to the past, wanting to know this or that that was not on the
agenda by any stretch of the imagination, just what “the muttons”
were in this particular Conference. “The agenda is our chart, here
is where we have arrived to-day. We are moving in this or that
direction. I shall have nothing to say about what we find when we
arrive until we are there, then you shall know everything.” That is,
Mr. Hughes did his utmost to keep the mind of press and public
concentrated on the actual problem under his hand. He started the
Plenary Conference of December 10 in the same fashion.
The session, he said, was to be devoted to that part of the agenda
which concerned itself with the Pacific and Far Eastern questions.
The committee charged with these questions had taken up first a
consideration of China; certain conclusions in regard to China
already given out to the public had been reached. It was the
business of the full Conference, however, to assent to these
conclusions. In turn, Mr. Hughes reviewed them, and in turn the
Conference assented to them:
(1) The four resolutions which will go down in history as the Root resolutions;
they are, as Mr. Hughes pointed out eloquently, a charter given China by the
eight powers at this Conference, protecting her sovereignty and independence
and guaranteeing that no one hereafter shall seek within China special
advantages at the expense of the rights of others.
(2) The agreement between powers not to conclude between themselves any
treaty affecting China without previously notifying China and giving her an
opportunity to participate.
(3) A pledge given by all the members of the Conference not to enter into any
treaty or understanding either with one another or with any power which would
infringe the principles laid down in the Root resolutions.
This business done, Mr. Hughes sprang the second surprise of the
day:
“I shall now ask Senator Lodge to make a communication to the Conference
with respect to a matter which is not strictly within the agenda, but which
should be made known to the Conference at this first opportunity.”
It was the treaty that had been lurking so long behind the fog. A
simple enough treaty in form, brief, only 196 words, but how
portentous for us, the United States. Those few words bind us to
Great Britain, the French Republic, the Empire of Japan in a
contract to respect one another’s rights in relation to all insular
possessions and dominions in the region of the Pacific Ocean. We
agree to settle quarrels, if any there should be, by conference,
when it cannot be done by diplomacy. We agree also if the rights
of any one of the four associates are threatened from the outside
“to communicate with one another fully and frankly as to the most
efficient measures to be taken jointly and separately to meet the
exigencies of the particular situation.”
Article X of the League of Nations! I pinched myself to be sure I
was not asleep. Swift glances right and left reassured me, for I
could see sly little smiles—and some looks of disgust—on near-by
faces. And then I fixed my eyes on the American delegation. They
were taking it like gentlemen, though it did seem to me that Mr.
Hughes was not sitting quite so straight and looking quite so proud
as usual. Article X read by Henry Cabot Lodge! Was the dramatist
for the Conference for the Limitation of Armament also a great
satirist? Surely you must search far in American history to find
another scene so full of irony.
Mr. Lodge read the treaty through in his fine, clear voice; digested
it in a few simple words; followed it with a nice little literary talk on
the romance that hangs over the isles of the Pacific, which we
were protecting from all future aggressors; said some hard things
about war, quite justified—but I was incapacitated for appreciating
his eloquence, for all I could see was the United States climbing
into the League of Nations through the pantry window, while
Senator Lodge held up the sash.
But it was a fine climb for the United States!
In the week thus opened there followed more agreements, more
settlements,—all necessary to round out the Four Power Pact.
These were presented to the public not in open sessions of the
Conference but through the press in what might be called private
rehearsals. Standing at one end of the long audience room,
opening from his own office in the State Department, a hundred or
more newspaper folk of various nationalities, pressing close to
him, Secretary Hughes read on Monday afternoon, December 12,
the text of an arrangement with Japan concerning Yap, an
arrangement hanging since last June and now settled and settled
rightly by a fair give and take on both sides.
He followed this by reading the written consent of the United
States to another chunk of the League of Nations. What it
amounted to was that the United States agreed to the mandate
given Japan by the Versailles Treaty over the islands in the Pacific
north of the equator, late the property of Germany. The United
States also accepted all the terms of the mandate as laid down by
the League of Nations. Excellent terms they are, too. We are even
to get a copy of the annual report of her stewardship which Japan,
like all other League mandatories, is obliged to make, showing that
she is really developing and not exploiting the territory which she
is being allowed to administer. This was a good deal for one day!
What did it mean? Why, most important of all, that the delegates
of the United States had seen that limitation of armament means
sacrifice. It was unwillingness to sacrifice that had prevented the
disarmament proposed at Paris.
England must have her navy; her security required it.
France and Italy must have their armies; their security required it.
Each one of the little new nations that one would have supposed
to have been so fed up on war that they never again would have
been willing to spend a dollar on a soldier, must have their armies;
their security required it.
Japan must have her army, her navy, her war loot; her security
required it.
That is, no one of the allied nations was ready to make a sacrifice
to carry out the plank of disarmament they had adopted. They
insisted on applying the plank to the enemy they had beaten, but
not to themselves. This was not in any large degree because of
greed or revenge, it was because of fear—fear of the vanquished.
There was utter lack of confidence in the plan of peaceful
international coöperation which they had written into their
program. Force alone spelt security in their minds. They had no
sense of safety in a mere covenant, though all the nations of the
world did commit themselves to its provisions.
It has been our boast that we alone asked nothing at Paris. But
was this true? When it came to working out the code which the
world had acclaimed as the true path to permanent peace, we
refused to accept the one point on which all the rest hung; that for
an association of nations looking to the continuous peaceful
handling of international difficulties. Such an association we saw
would invade our isolation and that isolation we have come to
believe to be our chief security. That is, in essence, the United
States was no more willing to make a sacrifice for permanent
peace than were the distracted and disheveled nations of Europe.
We and they all held on to the particular device which we had
come by national experience to believe essential to safety—
England her navy, France her army, Japan her army and her navy,
we our freedom from entangling alliances.
The Four Power Pact proved that we were willing to sacrifice
something of our isolation—just how much the future would have
to show. But would we be willing to sacrifice anything of our naval
program? There had been rumors of changes asked by both
England and Japan. The ugliest gesture seen in Washington in the
early days of the Conference had greeted these rumors. We were
not going to tolerate tampering with the great work. It must be
accepted as it was laid down, and if it was not, we would build the
biggest navy on earth; we had the money; moreover we would call
our foreign loans and then we’d see!
Various rumors of objections to the naval program, now that it had
gone to the committee for detailed examination, were said to have
been made. There was a disturbing rumor that England wanted
the submarine banished from the navies of the world, and that we
flatly refused to consider a request which could not but be
welcome to the mass of the country, anxious to see not only
capital ships scrapped, as had been proposed on the opening day,
but auxiliary craft of all sorts. The chief irritation, however, had
been over Japan’s strenuous objection to doing away with the
greatest of her ships—indeed, the greatest ship afloat, the Mutsu.
It was just what we might have expected of Japan; her
acceptation of the program at the opening of the Conference was
a pretense. She was going to object at every point. What the
public was still not realizing in regard to the Mutsu was that to
Japan it had become a tremendous, almost sacred, symbol. It was
a ship designed entirely by the Japanese naval architects, built of
materials prepared by Japanese workmen, named for a beloved
emperor. The delegation feared to consent to her destruction. So
much national pride had been aroused by the great ship that to
consent to her destruction might ruin the whole naval program
with Japan.
It was hard for Americans to understand any such feeling as this.
We have little or no sentiment about any ship, big or little. They
mean nothing to us but taxes. We don’t depend upon battleships
for safety as an island nation does. There is Japan, a little land all
told, Formosa and Korea included, not as large as the state of
Texas, with a sea front of over 18,000 miles. Ships mean food,
contacts, security to her. When we asked her to sacrifice them we
must remember that we were asking much more of her than we
were of ourselves though our ratio might have been larger. We
must remember the world is not ruled simply by tons of material.
Symbols weigh more with nations than tonnage. We could give up
our ships without a sigh; but when Japan scrapped hers,
something of her heart went with the scrapping.
So far as the Mutsu was concerned, the answer came three days
after the agreement over Yap and the Caroline Islands had been
made public. On the 15th of December, at six o’clock in the
evening, Mr. Hughes staged one of his private rehearsals for the
press. It was the decision as to the capital-ship ratio which had
been so long expected and which had been settled on the basis
that had been proposed on November 12—5–5–3. But, while the
ratio had been kept, the details had been changed. Great Britain
and the United States had had the good will and the wisdom to
recognize that Japan’s feeling about the Mutsu was genuine.
One has only to read the revised agreement to understand what
pains the two countries took to readjust the calculations of the
United States in such a way that the desired ratio would be
preserved and Japan’s pride and sentiment saved. When nations
come to the point that they are willing to try to understand and to
consider one another’s feelings as well as one another’s force,
there is some hope for the peace of the world.
There was no gainsaying the fact that the great triumph of this
dramatic week was Japan’s. It was a legitimate triumph, honestly
won. She understood what she gained. As the session of
December 10 broke up, one of the ablest members of her
delegation—a bitter critic of what had been doing—came out from
the Conference hall with tears in his eyes, though they do say that
no Japanese knows how to shed tears. “It is the greatest day in
the history of the new world,” he said. And that was true,—if
Japan would now be as generous toward the rights and aspirations
of her great neighbor China as she had been tenacious of her own
safety and dignity. The world had recognized her power and her
diplomatic skill. Would she now win its confidence in her moral
integrity?
But if December 10 was the beginning of Japan’s week of triumph,
it was Mr. Balfour’s day. He made a little speech which will stick
long in the minds of those who heard it.
“It so happens,” said Mr. Balfour, “that I was at the head of the
British administration which twenty years ago brought the great
Anglo-Japanese Alliance into existence. It so happens that I was at
the head of the British Administration which brought into existence
an entente between the British Empire and France, and through all
my life I have been a constant, ardent and persistent advocate of
intimate and friendly relations between the two great branches of
the English-speaking race.
“You may well conceive, therefore, how deep is my satisfaction
when I see all these four powers putting their signatures to a
treaty which I believe will for all time insure perfect harmony of
coöperation between them in the great region with which the
treaty deals.”
That little speech gave one a clearer sense of what through all
these years Arthur Balfour has been doing than anything that ever
has before come to me. There is something supremely brave about
a man of such fine understanding, such humorous and
distinguished cynicism, standing by through all of the disillusions,
disgust, deceptions, forced evil choices of public life, never quitting
whatever the temptation. For forty years now Arthur Balfour has
stood by. He is, I believe, 73 years old. He has never had so much
reason in all his long political career to believe that the good will of
men can be mobilized for the world’s service.
It was a great week, noble in its undertaking, dramatic in its
planning, the just triumph of a people who know what they want
and are willing to wait to get it. And for us, America, it was a week
of brave deeds. We were coming to our senses, realizing that we
are of the world, and if we are to enjoy its fruits, we must bear our
share of its burdens; that if we would have peace, the surest way
is to use our strength and our good will to guarantee it.
 CHAPTER VIII
THE MOODS OF AN INTERNATIONAL
CONFERENCE

If we are to succeed in repairing this battered world through the

medium of the International Conference, then plainly it is the
business of us all to try to understand the methods, the conduct
and particularly the moods of this instrument of peace. It is as
temperamental as a stock exchange. The Washington Conference
began with a period of tremendous exultation. Mr. Hughes’ great
naval program lifted the world. For ten days this mood prevailed.
Then came the French in the person of their Prime Minister,
Briand, and in an hour he had the temple of peace rocking on its
base.
It was very interesting to see how the men who made up the
Conference went steadily ahead from ten to six every day—and
sometimes longer—in spite of the excitement M. Briand had stirred
up. It was a fine example of the stabilizing effect of a daily task
regularly followed. They went on for four weeks and then again
stirred the world to enthusiasm by their Four Power Pact; their
removal of the Yap irritation; their consent to the Japanese
mandate in the Pacific; their acceptance of the Five-Five-Three
naval ratio. At one swoop the war with Japan that a part of the
American public has so sedulously cultivated for a good term of
years was wiped off the map—unless the United States Senate
prefer to restore it to its position.
However, the naval program was not a fact accomplished until
France and Italy had consented to a ratio. That was the next step,
and Mr. Hughes seemed to have turned to it with the utmost
confidence—1.75 was the ratio he had fixed on as proper; then
suddenly, without any warning, the soaring stock of the
Conference dropped way below par. A British journalist, with more
love of sensation than the honor of his profession, announced that
the French had told the naval committee that France wanted to
build ten 35,000 ton ships. The effect of those numbers suddenly
thrown on a table where the figuring for weeks had been down,
not up, was more nearly to throw the Conference delegates off
their feet than anything that had happened to date. There was no
questioning their dismay, for while Mr. Balfour and Mr. Hughes
refused, as it was proper for them to do, to discuss the matter,
while the French likewise kept their mouths shut, and complained
that they had been betrayed, Mr. Hughes showed his excitement
by a long cablegram, appealing to M. Briand, over the head of the
then acting chief of the French delegation, M. Sarraut. Outside the
Conference an excited world declared the whole thing was
wrecked and that France had wrecked it.
Could this unhappy incident have been avoided? If the Conference
had shown a more sympathetic understanding of the way France is
feeling to-day, if there had been the realization which we certainly
should expect of the effect of calling her into a gathering of this
kind and then letting her Premier sit for a week with practically no
attention, it probably would have been. When M. Briand was
leaving the Conference on the opening day an American journalist
asked him what he thought of it. The American way, he said, “à la
Américaine.” And then he went on to remark that when the time
came France would do like Mr. Hughes and talk in the American
way. Weeks went on and France had no chance to talk in
anybody’s way about her naval ratio. Everybody else but herself
seems to have taken it for granted that 1.75 was to be her
proportion. When her turn finally came, however, she began to
hurl capital ships at Mr. Hughes’ program—ten of them, 35,000
tons each. The figures looked appalling, preposterous—they
produced, as I have said, almost a panic. Now, obviously, the panic
would have been avoided, as far as the public is concerned, if the
matter had been kept in committee where it belonged and where
the French intended to keep it. Given to the public, it stirred up
anger on both sides of the water, whipped up suspicion, set all the
busybodies at inventing far-fetched explanations and reading
sinister meanings into the French proposal.
There was little trouble when Mr. Hughes appealed to M. Briand in
getting the capital-ship ratio dropped back to the 1.75 first
suggested. But along with this concession in the matter of capital
ships went the decision that France would not limit her submarines
and auxiliary craft. She wanted unlimited submarines for defense—
defense against whom? It must be us, said England. She wanted
auxiliary craft for the protection of scattered colonies. Here she
took her position and here she remained. Mr. Hughes’ naval
program leaves the number of submarines and light craft a nation
builds at its discretion. Too bad—could it have been avoided?
One thing seems quite certain, that Mr. Hughes missed a
tremendous opportunity in not boldly declaring in his original
program that as for the United States, it was done with
submarines. We did that at Paris in 1919. The head of our
delegation, President Wilson, and his naval advisers agreed that in
the disarmament pledged by the League of Nations the submarine
was one weapon which could and should be put entirely out of
existence. Its record of cowardice and plain murder no one could
defend. The treaty of Versailles forbade the Germans to construct
submarines for any purpose, and it certainly was the farthest from
the thought of the majority of those who made that treaty that
they were laying down one rule for Germany and another for
themselves. The idea there was to disarm and to begin with
Germany.
Why the American delegation should not have followed that policy
here in regard to the submarine is not clear. But when it was not
done in the opening program, it is still less understandable why
they did not seize the British suggestion when it was made by Mr.
Balfour. The British had the American program for naval reduction
flung into their faces without warning, and they picked it up like
wonderful sports, as did the Japanese. But when Mr. Balfour
notified the Conference that he should propose complete abolition
of the submarine, there was no such response. There were not a
few of us who had an uncomfortable chill over the Washington
Conference when our government failed promptly to follow the
British in this policy, failed to say, “Yes, we are with you, it’s
beastly business this submarine warfare—one thing we can do
away with. We will join you in outlawing it.” But this was not done,
and because it was not done, coupled with France’s determination
to seize every chance that came along to secure recognition for
herself, to enforce her argument that she must be prepared to
defend herself, since nobody in the world seemed prepared to give
her the guarantees which she thought necessary, if she were to
disarm, the submarine came in to trouble Mr. Hughes’ program,
and, incidentally, to spoil the Conference’s holiday week.
The regret was the greater because the arguments that Lord Lee
and Mr. Balfour had put up for the abolition of the submarine were
so weighty and conclusive that if they could have been presented
at the start, or at least earlier in the negotiations, there seems to
be little doubt that they would not have won over the Conference.
These arguments have the backing of Great Britain’s experience
with submarines, the most serious and extensive experience that
any nation has yet had with this particular weapon. Lord Lee and
Mr. Balfour had the facts to show that the German submarine fleet
was able to accomplish relatively little in the Great War in the way
of legitimate naval warfare. It left the British Grand Fleet
untouched. In spite of all its efforts, it did not prevent the British
taking fifteen million troops across the English Channel, and the
Americans two million across the Atlantic. It was of little use to the
British in guarding their coast line, which, as Lord Lee pointed out,
was almost as great as the combined coast line of the four other
powers in the discussion. What the German submarine fleet did
do, however, was to destroy some twelve million tons of mercantile
shipping and murder twenty thousand non-combatants—men,
women and children. The counter defense against the submarine
has been so developed, Lord Lee claimed, that an attacking fleet
could be equipped to resist any number of them. That is, the
methods of detecting, locating and destroying submarines have
greatly outstripped their offensive power.
One of the strong arguments for the abolition of the submarine is
the fact that it is possible to abolish it by general consent. Its case
is very different from that of poison gas, which is a by-product of
essential industries. You do not need to set out to find poison
gasses; they come to you in the natural course of chemical
research, and they do not have to be manufactured until you are
forced to do it for defense. Moreover, they have the enormous
advantage of not looking like war. They are disgusting, hateful
things against which man instinctively revolts. They do not tempt
the adventurous, as the submarine does.
Although the French particularly, through Admiral le Bon and M.
Sarraut, did their utmost to combat the British position, their
arguments had little weight in comparison with the British. The
entire discussion which ran more than a week and which was
given out day by day practically in full to the press only
emphasized my feeling that the French, in insisting on a fleet of
submarines all out of proportion to that contemplated in the
original American program, were actuated more by a desire to
assert themselves in this council of nations, to demonstrate that it
is not safe to overlook their susceptibilities, than from any desire
to have submarines for defense. If the representatives of the
United States are to work successfully with other nations in
international conferences, they must learn that diplomats can no
more afford to overlook the feelings of other nations than an
engineer can afford to overlook the susceptibilities of the iron and
steel which he employs. France’s acute sensitiveness, her black
imaginations, may irritate Americans who know nothing of invaded
and devastated territory, who have not had to sit through five long
years with the sound of bursting shells continually in their ears;
but if they have not the imagination and the sympathy to tell them
what the results of such an experience are, then let them accept
the judgment of physicians and realize that in whatever
negotiations they have with the French people at this time, their
shell-shocked minds and souls must be taken into account.
Mr. Hughes lost a second great opportunity in the submarine
matter. A few days before Christmas, when it became obvious that
the submarine was in danger of destroying the American
delegation’s plans for a glorious Christmas present to the nation,
Mr. Balfour asked for an open session in which to discuss the
matter. For some reason not at all clear, Mr. Hughes did not
consent. Our Secretary of State proved himself a superior
dramatist at the Conference, but in this instance a poor
psychologist! If there was to be no holiday, as had become clear,
then an open session with a chance to hear Mr. Balfour, Lord Lee,
M. Sarraut, Admiral le Bon, Senator Schanzer, in the free
discussion of a matter in which the whole country was
tremendously interested—such an open session would have been a
Christmas present in itself, and it would have done much to have
cleared up the thick atmosphere.
In these conferences the atmosphere easily becomes heavy with
suspicion. The sight of a group of eminent gentlemen of various
nationalities shutting themselves up morning after morning, for
hours, considering matters which concern the peace and
happiness of the world, if too long continued, stirs up resentment
in the best of us. If you are an impersonal, detached,
philosophical, fairly well-informed person, it is not difficult for you
to visualize what those gentlemen are doing; if you take the
trouble you can even build up in your mind what they are saying.
Suppose it is a question of the ratio of capital ships. You know that
they are listening to disputes over tonnage and the way it has
been computed, are studying long arrays of figures, matters dull in
themselves and requiring the closest attention. Most of us would
not remain a half hour, unless we were compelled to when such
discussions were going on. But if you are a suspicious person, if
you have been trained in the cynical school of sensational
journalism, to look for mischief and intrigue—and often it must be
confessed finding it—you have dark thoughts about the
gentlemen.
The only way in which such suspicions can be cleared up—or
better, prevented,—is by frequent open sessions and much freer
discussion at those sessions than we had at the Conference for
Limitation of Armament. Some of the Americans prominent in the
Conference have in the last two years frequently criticized the
secrecy with which the Paris Conference was conducted but there
was very little difference in the procedure from that in Paris. The
work there as here was done in committees. There as here there
were daily communications to the press. They were more
satisfactory here, fuller, but that was made possible by the fact
that the situation here was far less complicated and by the rigor
with which Mr. Hughes kept one thing at a time on the table. As
for the press conferences, in Paris as here they were held daily by
the Americans and frequently by all of the other delegations.
Nobody in Paris, of course, was so satisfactory to the press as Mr.
Hughes. His candor, his good humor, his out-and-out, man-to-man
conduct of his daily meeting cannot be too highly praised. He has
set a pace for this sort of thing very hard to follow. There was no
American in Paris in a position to do for the press what Mr. Hughes
did in Washington. President Wilson had not the time. The other
members of the delegation were not in Mr. Hughes’ position.
Nobody else in our delegation here would have had the authority,
even if he had had the ability, to do what Mr. Hughes did. The
difference here and in Paris was mainly a difference of situation—
the difference between an infinitely difficult and complicated
situation and a comparatively well defined and definite one.
Mr. Hughes himself was partly responsible for the resentment that
the press felt at the failure to follow Mr. Balfour’s suggestion and
conduct the submarine discussion in the open. Any one who took
the pains to read the text of these discussions as they were
printed in the leading journals of the country, can see how well
adapted they were to a public meeting. There was nothing in them
that would jeopardize any nation; there was much in them that
would have been illuminated, its impression intensified, if it could
have been heard instead of read. Mr. Hughes in his talk of these
discussions to the correspondents was actually tantalizing. When
he walked briskly into his press conference at the end of a long
committee discussion and told a hundred and more men and
women gathered around him what an intellectual treat it had
been, of how Mr. Balfour had been in his best form, of how lively
the exchange had been between French and English, his snapping
eyes, his appreciative voice, his glow of enthusiasm, were actually
antagonizing. He overlooked entirely the fact that he was making
more than one in the assembly say: Selfish man, don’t you
suppose that we would have enjoyed seeing and hearing Mr.
Balfour in his best form? Is there anything at this Conference that
we would have liked so much, except of course hearing you? Do
you think we are going to be satisfied with your promise that we
shall have full reports of all that was said?
I know very well that it is not considered good form to use the
words League of Nations in connection with the Conference on the
Limitation of Armament, and no offense is intended—but if one is
really interested in trying to decide just how much publicity is wise
in such a conference as this, any experience of other similar bodies
should be considered, and after all it cannot be denied that the
assembly of the League of Nations is a similar body to this, the
chief difference being that it includes some fifty nations instead of
nine. At the second meeting of the assembly of the League last
fall, lasting four and a half weeks, there were 33 plenary
conferences. One cannot say that the matters under consideration
there were less delicate and dangerous than in Washington. They
were even more inflamed at the moment, including such open
irruptions as the boundary dispute between Jugo-Slavia and
Albania.
It was not only Mr. Hughes’ naval program that was seeing heavy
weather; the Four Power Pact was in trouble. The President did
not agree with the American delegation that the mainland of Japan
was covered by the treaty. For my part I had never questioned
that when this Four Power Pact talked about insular dominions as
well as insular possessions it meant what it said, and that Nippon
as well as Australia and New Zealand was included. Moreover, Mr.
Hughes had repeatedly told the press that was the intention.
There seems, however, to have been doubts in some minds, and
when finally twelve days after the Pact itself was submitted and
accepted by the full Conference, an insistent journalist presented
Mr. Harding at his biweekly press meeting with a written question.
(The President was now requiring all questions at these gatherings
to be submitted in writing.) He remarked in his casual manner,
“No, the Japan mainland is not included in the treaty.” To be sure
he took it back that night in a public document, but here was food
for the trouble makers—a disagreement in the cabinet! All of those
who, while loudly declaring themselves advocates of peace, were
doing their utmost to belittle the efforts of the responsible, to
magnify differences in interpretation, to fan partisan jealousies, to
read in intrigue and deceit and concealment where there was
usually nothing worse than blundering or stupidity, declared with
satisfaction or despair that the Conference was now surely
wrecked. Joined to the cry of anguish that was rising over the
failure to limit the submarine and auxiliary craft, the chorus was
dismal enough.
Little by little, however, events shut off the pessimists. For
instance, one of the “intrigues” that had been brought to light was
that Japan and France had combined on the submarine issue, and
were lining up in the Conference against England and America. But
Japan destroyed that fine morsel, declaring formally that she felt it
would be a misfortune if the Conference failed to come to an
agreement on limitation; that she supported the original American
proposal of November 12 in regard to auxiliary craft and hoped
that agreement would be reached on that basis.
She followed this quieting information by an announcement that
she did not consider it consistent with her dignity as one of the
four powers to accept any special protection, and that she
therefore asked that the Four Power treaty be amended so as to
exclude her mainland.
Even the submarine became less threatening as the discussion
went on. If it was not to be limited in number, it was in field of
action—so far as a rule of war could limit. If auxiliary craft were to
be built according to the “needs” of each nation, their tonnage was
not to run over 10,000 tons each and their guns were to be but
eight inch. Add this to the ratio in capital ships now fixed—5–5–3—
1.75—1.75—and to a ten years’ naval holiday, and you had a solid
something.
One grew philosophical again and reflected how childish it was to
suppose that a Conference of this importance could be carried on
without sharp differences of opinion, without those periods which
we call “deadlocks,” without the flaring up at times of century-old
feuds, such as that between Great Britain and France. All of these
things, we told ourselves, were part of the problem of working out
new understandings, and to overemphasize them or willfully to
exploit them in order to increase ill will and obstruct a progress
which was necessarily slow and difficult, was work fit only for the
irresponsible and the malicious.
The naval program was certain of adoption. There were details still
unsettled, but it seemed safe to assume that if the patience and
good will of the delegates stood the strain, these details would be
satisfactorily arranged; but, as from the start, the final success of
the Conference depended upon removing the fears that England,
Japan and the United States had of one another, of our securing
reasonable assurance that our policies of the open door in China
and of moral trusteeship for Russia and China were adopted. We
had proposed a pact and it had been accepted; principles
regarding China and they had been accepted; but this was by no
means all of the Far Eastern problem. By Christmas we were at the
heart of it—the hostile relations of China and Japan, and whether
it was possible to help them to peacefully adjust these relations.
 CHAPTER IX
PUT YOURSELF IN THEIR PLACES

A shrewd, reflective and cynical doorman with whom I sometimes

discussed affairs of state in Washington, confided to me on one of
the busy days just before the opening of the Conference on the
Limitation of Armament that in his judgment there was a peck of
trouble about to be turned loose on the American Government.
“Take them Japs and Chinamen,” he said, “they’re coming with
bags of problems, and they’re going to dump them on us to sort
and solve! And to think we brought it on ourselves!”
There were people nearer to the administration than this anxious
observer who said the same thing. “The Far East is a veritable
Pandora’s box, and why did we open it?”
I don’t remember ever to have seen in Washington, even in war
times, so many responsible people who gave me the impression of
wanting to hold their heads to keep them from splitting.
Of one thing there was no doubt—if the troubles that were to be
loosed on the Conference were as serious as these serious
observers feared, it was better that they be out than in the box,
for they were of a nature that, confined, would be sure to explode,
but give them time and they might dissolve under the healing
touch of light, sun and air.
But why were there people close to things in Washington aghast at
the program of the Conference, people who two months before
had looked forward to it with confidence and even exultation? No
doubt this was explained partly by the realization that cutting
down armaments did not necessarily mean long-continued peace;
that there must be settlements. When they looked over the
problems to be settled, attempted to put themselves in the place
of the people concerned, find solutions through agreements which
did not require force behind them, they were appalled at the
difficulties in the way.
Put the problems which disturbed them into their simplest terms:—
Japan could not get enough food on her six big and her 600 little
islands for her 60,000,000 people. She was spilling over into China
and its dependencies—not merely as a settler, content to till the
soil, to work the mines, to sell in the market place, but as an
aggressive conqueror, aspiring to military and political control as
well as economic opportunity.
China—that is, Young China, the founder of the Republic—said she
would not have it, that she must govern and administer her own,
and we, China’s friend, were backing the integrity she demanded.
But Japan was “in China”—“in” as was Great Britain and France.
She had an army and navy to back her pretensions and she could
very well say—and did—“Why should Great Britain and France be
allowed to hold their political and military control in Hongkong and
in Tonkin, raise and train troops, not of their own people but of
natives, collect taxes, run post offices, and we be forbidden? If
they do these things, and they do, why should Japan not have
equal privileges?”
Young China answered this pertinent inquiry: “It was Old China
that arranged those things. You are dealing now with a new China,
one that does not intend to barter its inheritance, that proposes to
rule its own; a China that will no longer submit to having a carving
knife applied to its heart.
“What Old China did we inherited and must make the best of, but
it is our duty to see that no nation on earth ever again takes from
us what we do not willingly give. You must abandon your effort to
direct our policies, administer our railroads, keep your troops on
our soil.”
What frightened my doorkeeper, who got his views from the press,
and the press that got its views from a hundred conflicting
sources, was how peacefully Japan’s right to food for her people
and China’s right to her own were to be squared. Could the one
inalienable right be fitted into the other inalienable right by other
means than force? Of course there were many places on the earth
beside China where Japan might expand, but search as they would
these anxious observers did not find any available spot except in
Asia.
One of the chief occupations of these friends of mine in
Washington as the peace conference opened was trying to find
some territory from which Japan could get her food; something
the Conference could “give” her; something that would satisfy her.
As things now are such a search must start with the provision that
there is nothing for Japan on the Western Hemisphere. Obviously
there is no place for her in Europe. Australia will not have her; we
will not have her.
“If it were a question of war or restricted immigration,” I asked a
Californian in the course of the Far Eastern discussion, “which
would you choose?” The look of surprise at the question answered
me—“War.” I received the same reply from a Canadian—from an
American labor leader—and they were all “pacifists”!
The narrower the confines were drawn around Japan, the more
hysterical observers grew in their search, the more they insisted
the Conference must “give” Japan something. “Give it Eastern
Siberia!” But what right did the Conference have to deal with any
part of Siberia? The United States had finally settled her attitude to
this suggestion by declaring that she would not consider any
partitioning of Russian territory. She refused to countenance the
carving up of Russia as she did the further carving up of China.
She refused even to recognize the government that was now
struggling to plant itself in Eastern Siberia. It was Russia’s problem
to take care of the Far Eastern Republic. She must be free, as
China must be free, to work out her own destiny.
Then “give” Japan Manchuria! She already had important
recognized rights in Southern Manchuria, rights that came from old
wars; the territory borders on Korea which Japan holds and
governs, and undoubtedly the Conference would not dispute her
claim to Korea, since that claim stands on about the same kind of
a bottom as England’s claim to Hongkong and France’s to Tonkin.
It was the fruit of the nation’s dealing with Old China. This being
so and Japan having her established hold in Southern Manchuria
and having made a remarkable record, give her the country.
But here came Young China again. “Manchuria is ours,” she said.
“We will not recognize the rights that Japan claims through her
treaty made in 1915. It really was a treaty with Old China, still
alive in our Republic. It was wrested from us by cunning and
bribery. There are twenty million Chinese in Manchuria. They have
made that province grow more rapidly in wealth in recent years
than any other part of the land. They are converting the
wilderness, raising such a crop of soy beans as no other part of
the earth has ever seen. We propose to stand by our people. We
cannot give Manchuria to Japan, nor can we give her Mongolia.
Here, too, our people are good, patient, hardy settlers, peacefully
converting the wilderness. True, there are great tracts still
untouched, but remember that we have surplus millions, and it is
here that we expect them to expand.”
What set my doorman and many serious onlookers to holding their
heads was that they could not find a place to put Japan; that is, a
place to which she would not have to fight her way.
But what are they doing in the search of the earth for something
to “give” her? Was it anything but following the old formula that
has always gone with wars? Was war anything but a necessary
corollary to this way of dealing with the earth’s surface? No nation
or group of nations ever has or will give away without its consent
the property of another nation without sowing trouble for the
future.
Races must settle their own destinies. Japan must settle her food
problem by war or by peace, and whether it was to be by the one
or by the other depended largely upon Young China. What did
Young China think about it? Not a hasty, violent Young China,
expecting to convert its great masses in an hour to the Republican
form of government that came into being ten years ago, but a
moderate Young China, that has stayed at home, that knows its
people, that is conscious of the length of time, the patience, the
sacrifices, the pain that adapting the mind of China to a new order
requires.
What did this moderate Young China think about the relation of
Japan to itself? I looked him up and asked.
He made it quite clear that the Republic had come to stay. He did
not attempt to minimize its difficulties. He did claim, however, that
whatever the surface indications, the whole Yangtze Valley, which
is the very heart of the country, is committed to the Republic, and
is coöperating with it. He gave a hundred indications of how from
this great central artery running east and west democratic
influences are surely and steadily spreading north and south. He
showed how in the northern provinces the progress was slowest,
most difficult, because here conservatism was strongest, most
corrupt. He pointed out how Old China is concentrating in the
Peking government all its cunning, its wisdom, its appeal to the old
thing, but he claimed, and unquestionably believed, that Young
China was going to be too much for it. He went over the southern
provinces and showed how in all of them, except Canton, there
was a steadily improving coöperation with the Peking government.
Moderate Young China thinks Canton is wrong in its haste. He does
not believe that the people can assimilate the new ideas as rapidly
as Canton claims. He believes that its hurry to make over a great
country is one of the most dangerous factors in the nation’s
present problem. To sustain, guard, and develop the struggling
Peking government is his program.
“We are quarreling, to be sure,” moderate Young China said, “but
it is our quarrel. We are like brothers who have fallen to beating
one another—let a neighbor interfere and both turn on him. China
will turn on any nation or nations that attempt to coerce her. She
alone can work out her difficulties. She can work out best her
disputes with Japan, and if let alone, will do so.”
“Of course,” continued Young China, “Japan must resign control of
Shantung, and particularly of the Shantung railroad. Look at the
map and you will understand why. If Japan controls the Shantung
railroad she can at any moment cut our main rail communication
between Peking and Shanghai, destroy the main artery of our
circulatory system. She can do more than that. By that control she
will be able to cut off the two arteries across the mainland, the
Yellow River and the Yangtze. No government in its senses could
permit that.
“Nor can we consent to her political and military control, either, in
Shantung or Manchuria. But that does not mean, as some people
pretend, that we want to drive Japan from our country. No
intelligent Chinaman does. We need the Japanese to help us open
and develop our resources, to buy our raw material; and Japan
needs our market in which to sell. We are willing she should have
the fullest economic privileges if she will cease to interfere with
our policies and will withdraw her troops.
“If she will coöperate with us on an economic basis purely and
simply Young China will welcome Japan and there are liberal
Japanese that will do that. It is only Military Japan, believing in
progress by force, that threatens us.”
“How are you going to carry out your program? How enforce it?”
“The economic boycott,” he said. “It has been successful so far.
We’ll neither buy of Japan nor sell to her until she gives up her
pretensions.”
There is something tremendous in the idea of that great passive
three hundred and twenty-five million or more, the greatest single
Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a
vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to
specialized publications, self-development books, and children's
literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding
knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade

Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and

personal growth!

ebookultra.com