The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1928. SECRET DIPLOMACY.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 229, 27 September 1928, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1928. SECRET DIPLOMACY.

For <7mj cause <Aa* lacks assistance, tor the wrong that needs resistance, tor the future in the distance, And the good that we can do.

Wβ have already commented at some length on the difficulties that have arisen over the Anglo-French naval agreement, and we have attributed the trouble chiefly to the air of secreey and mystery in which the negotiations have been shrouded. This view of the case is confirmed strongly by an article which has just appeared in the "Daily Telegraph." According to this well-informed and influential paper, which is not likely to be accused of attacking the Baldwin Government for partisan purposes, the effects produced by the agreement so far have been "deplorable," and it ascribes these unfortunate consequences to the "incomprehensible bungling" of British diplomacy. It is true that the details of the agreement have been ofiicially submitted to the governments of the Great Powers. But the complete particulars have not yet been given to the world at large, and the "Daily Telegraph" hints broadly that there are some sinister features in the agreement which have hitherto been carefully concealed. It is possible there is nothing open to serious objection in the arrangements that are reported to have been made, but it must be admitted that the attempt to hide from the general public the full knowledge of any such far-reaching compact is strangely out of keeping with the principle of unreserved and open negotiations which the Powers are supposed to have adopted since the war. 1

On the other hand, nothing of all this can lessen the responsibility thrown upon the American Government by its failure to enlighten public opinion in the United States as to the true nature of the Anglo-French compromise so far as it affects naval armaments. To describe this agreement as an attempt to work up strong navies for the European Powers by surreptitious means, and thus to threaten America's naval ascendancy, is a crude misrepresentation of the facts that can only be attributed to a desire to make political .capital out of the matter. The fact that the chairman of the Naval Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives has just condemned the Anglo-French compromise as detrimental to Anglo-American friendship suggests very forcibly that the agreement is being exploited by the "big navy" party in the United States. And the prolonged delays at Washington over the formal acknowledgment of communications received from Britain and France have certainly helped ta intensify the distrust and bad feeling that may have been due in the first instance to bad diplomacy.