FOREIGN POLICY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 October 1939, Page 5

FOREIGN POLICY

SECRET OR OPEN DIPLOMACY. Discussing the problem of secret or open diplomacy, Mr Harold Nicolson, M.P., himself an ex-professional diplomat, says that if you adopt the methods of open diplomacy, then public passions are aroused and there is little chance of arriving at any agreement. If, however, you adopt the methods of secret diplomacy, you may be committing your country to undertakings of which they do not approve and which they will, when the time 1 comes, be unwilling to honour. How are we to get round this essential difficulty? I would suggest, Mr Nicolson says, that the whole issue is far sim- ’ pier than we often realise. The confusion which has arisen in men’s minds is largely due to a careless use of this word “diplomacy.” That word is used untidily to mean at one moment foreign policy, and at the next moment negotiation. If we could abolish the word “diplomacy” from our language; if we could say “foreign policy” when we mean foreign policy; and “negotiation” whgn we mean negotiation, then we should have gone a long way to solve the problem which we are now considering. It would then dawn upon us that whereas negotiation must always be secret, policy should never be secret. In a democratic country the mqp and women composing the electorate should never under any circumstances be committed to promises of which they have not had full knowledge beforehand and of which they have not, through their representatives in Parliament, been able to approve. In other words, there must never again in this world be secret treaties, engagements or understandings. On the other hand the stages by which these covenants are reached must always be confidential stages. Even a committee of a golf club does not describe to all its members the exact reasons for which some candidate was blackballed. Even the simplest negotiation must be conducted in secret.