6 - The conference opens

Summary

The Genoa Conference began its formal proceedings on 10 April 1922. Some thirty-four nations were present at its opening session, five of them representing the British empire (which sat as a single delegation). No fewer than 42 prime ministers were in attendance, and a total of 216 other delegates or experts were listed in the official directory of delegations. The ‘Inviting powers’, Britain, Belgium, France, Italy and Japan, as well as Russia and Germany, were allowed to nominate five principal delegates each; all the other powers were permitted two delegates each, apart from Luxemburg, which was limited to one. These norms of representation had been agreed at Cannes. Apart from the diplomats, more than 800 journalists were present including Ernest Hemingway for the Toronto Star, Max Eastman for the New York World, J. L. Garvin for The Observer, Wickham Steed for The Times, Pietro Nenni for Avanti, and Edgar Mowrer for the Chicago Daily News. Frank Harris, then aged seventyfive, the literary critic and celebrated diarist, was present in a private capacity, and Maynard Keynes attended as a special correspondent for the Manchester Guardian. All in all, more than 5,000 people with some relationship to the conference were in Genoa. It was, recalled the US ambassador to Italy, Richard Child, the ‘largest international conference ever held in point of nations represented’, larger even than the peace conference itself.