WHEN PRINCIPALS NEGOTIATE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 May 1939, Page 6

WHEN PRINCIPALS NEGOTIATE

OBSERVATIONS BY THE MARQUESS OF CREWE. “I have always entirely mistrusted conversations at important moments between principals—between Prime Ministers-and those who are in a simi-* lar position,” said the Marquess of Crewe, speaking in the House of Lords. “Ambassadors on the Continent of Europe have their Ministries of Foreign Affairs, to whom they can appeal, and to whom questions have to be refered. Foreign Secretaries in the same way have their Government and the head of their Government, to whom in the last result they have to refer. But when a Prime Minister finds himself with his opponent, if that is the word, in the same position he has to come to some precise terms. To do that at short notice is very often very difficult. In following that quite modern custom —I am not, of course, referring to friendly interviews, but to that modern custom of chief figures in States meeting to confer on important occasions—l do not . believe that any of the Prime Minister’s predecessors—Mr Lloyd George, . Mr Bonar Law, or Mr Ramsay MacDonald—ever, profited by occasions of that kind or that the country profited by what 4 they did or said. Still more difficult is it when the two parties are not'speaking in the same language. Of course, I do not mean in the linguistic sense. What I do know is that such words as order and disorder, truth and falsehood, faith and unfaith have had entirely different connotations in the minds of the Prime Minister and of those with whom he was conferring. Therefore, no agreement, whether verbal or written, was worth anything because it did not indicate the same thoughts 'in the minds of those who drew it up.”