OFFICIAL SECRECY.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5442, 5 September 1878, Page 3

OFFICIAL SECRECY.

(From the Spectator, July 6.)

In the old times, political secrecy was obtained by a free use of the tongue, in preference to the pen. Those were the days of “ understandings,” and to this, perhaps, may be traced the frequent occurrence of misunderstandings. Sovereigns and Ministers were very anxious to keep the arrangements they had entered into concealed from all who were not concerned in them, and still more from all whom they concerned, and they naturally dreaded the use of paper and ink. As long as their secret was not committed to writing, it had no objective existence. It could be carried about with them, without any risk of being Stolen. Once written, it became subject to all the vicissitudes that belong to locks and keys. Perhaps the fact that the feeling of politicians on this point has changed is a sign that the world is losing its faculty for diplomacy. ■Whether it be so or not, there can bo no doubt that there has been a change. Understandings are now dreaded. The first instinct of men who enter into an agreement, however secret, is to see how it looks on paper. That is what Lord Salisbury and Count Schouvaloff felt on May 29th. They had reduced their several demands and concessions to shape ; they had stated and restated them to one another; but instead of resting content with their labors, they burned to see them fairly written out. There was another reason, of course, on Lord Salisbury's side, which supplies a .further illustration of the difficulties with which modem diplomacy has to contend. In the last century, when a Sovereign and his Minister were cognisant of an arrangement, the conditions of the case were Now, at all events in England, a whole Cabinet has to bo consulted. Thirteen Ministers had to be made acquainted with the Anglo-Eussian memorandum, and it was probably felt that to pass it from one to.another by word of month would too much resemble a game at Russian scandal, andjleavo the last Minister told with a very different notion of what he was agreeing to from the notion with which the first Minister told had started. In one way or another writing, and even copying, has become inevitable. If secrecy is to be assured, it must be assured by some machinery which is compatible with both processes. The risks of writing, as opposed to speaking, come at two separate

stages,—while 'the'writing is going ;on, and after it : is finished. : / The latter stage is much the least dangerous of the two. The safe custody of a State paper, even of any moderate number of copies of a State paper, ought not to be unattainable. But how about the act of reducing it to writing, and of, multiplying tho copies of it when so reduced ? Who is to answer that no bint of what is being written or copied shall find its way to the newspapers, those sworn foes to seoresy ? Tho first expedient that suggest itself is of the mechanical order. What if the Minister himself should condescend to use a copying machine ? This is one of those suggestions that are only made to be at once rejected. There are certain sacrifices which the most devoted patriots will not make for their country, and to use a copying machine when you are not accustomed to it is one of these. Then, again, there are sacrifices which no body of men, however patriotic, will make for their country, and to read “ flimsy,” the horrible, thin paper on which mechanically copied papers are written, is one of these. Lord Salisbury might have brought himself to use the copying press, but how was he to bring his colleagues to read,, or even profess themselves willing to read, the results of his self-denying exertions ? Consequently, the mechanical solution must be dismissed, and the unaided human hand alone regarded. There are three conceivable ways in which copies of the Anglo-Russian memorandum might have beeu multiplied,—two ways which the authorities of the Foreign Office might have taken, and a third which they actually did take. Tho problem before them was how to get a certain amount of writing done in a given time. This evidently demanded the employment of additional hands, in the sense of hands not ordinarily employed in mere copying. One solution would be the distribution of the work over a sufficient number of the most trusted clerks in the office. The Foreign Office is necessarily an office of trust. It has always been accustomed to repose great confidence in its staff, and it would be impossible to carry on its business on any other system. There would have been no difficulty, therefore, in finding as many copyists as could be wanted for Lord Salisbury’s service. The only inconvenience that would follow on their employment would be that their usual work would remain undone. The remedy for this would be the employment of a larger staff than the office needs in ordinary times. If three men are kept to do work that can at a pinch be done by two, the services of the third man are always available for any special work that turns up. Had this been the case at the Foreign Office, the third man, or every third man, would have been set to copy the memorandum, and the other two would have had to supply his place, by extra energy and extra hours. Another plan would be to keep one or more confidential copying clerks—clerks, that is to say, of the same social and official standing as the rest of the clerks, but whose duty should be exclusively, or at all events, primarily, to copy important State papers. This would come to much the same thing as the first plan, so far as expense is concerned, because, as all State papers are not important, there would not always be work enough for these confidential copying clerks, and they would consequently have at times to remain idle. In both cases, therefore, the public would have to pay highly for the copying of confidential papers. Either the general staff of the Foreign Office would have to be increased, or a special class of clerks would have to be constantly maintained to do work which only occasionally presents itself to be done. It is probably on this ground that the Foreign Office has preferred to adopt the third alternative, aod to give State papers of a kind which, before almost all others, it was important to keep secret, to be copied by writers at XOd. an hour. In this way, not an hour nor a penny is wasted. There is no need to maintain a staff of writers, for their number can always be increased at a moment’s notice by applying to the Civil Service Commissioners. It is necessary, indeed, at times to keep down the supply of writers, lest it should altogether outgrow the demand,so that if there threatened to be any unusual spell of work at the Foreign Office, the Civil Service Commissioners would only have to open the sluices, and the tide would at once begin to flow. Thus the Government gets its extra work done for lOd. an hour, without being in any way bound to find or make employment for the writers employed on these terms. When there is extra copying to be done, there are always writers at hand to do it. When there is no extra copying to he done, the writers can ha sent back to the Civil Service Commissioners, by whom, in fact, they are hired out to the public offices. But though there is no fault to be found with this system on the score of economy, it is not quite so satisfactory when regarded from the point of view of secrecy. We have nothing to say against these writers, who may, for anything we know to the contrary, he very worthy young men. All that we urge is that they are necessarily poor men, or they would not seek employment in this capacity; and that being poor they are necessarily subject to temptations from which richer men are exempt. We do not say that a clerk holding a higher position will not sometimes be under temptation to make an improper use of the confidential information which he may have gained in the course of his work. But the inducement will take a different form. He may buy or sell stock, because he knows something which the rest of the world does not know, but he will not be likely to hawk about a copy of a confidential paper, with the view of selling it either to the highest bidder or to the most regular customer. The fact that he is on the permanent staff of the office is in itself a guarantee that he will not betray it inasmuch as he has something to lose. The writer at lOd. an hour has nothing to, lose by dismissal —putting aside what will always appear the improbable contingency of criminal proceedings—which can be set against the possible gains to be made by a betrayal of confidence. The best chance of his resisting these temptations will perhaps lie in his ignorance of the character of the papers entrusted to him, but the Foreign Office has contrived to reduce this chance to a minimum, by employing the same writer continuously, instead of having one in by the job. Its chief? have, to all appearance, weighed the risk of occasional disclosures against the certainty of having only lOd. an hour to pay, and thought the assured economy worth having, at tho price of a contingent violation of secrecy.