The Press Friday, November 10, 1922. British Foreign Policy.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17608, 10 November 1922, Page 8

The Press Friday, November 10, 1922. British Foreign Policy.

A great deal of the disfavour into which secret diplomacy lias fallen since 1914 is thoroughly well deserved, but it is a great mi-stake to suppose that there Ls anything fundamentally wrong with the old method, &o far at least as Britain Ls concerned. Before the war, when people did not realise, or trouble themselves to think about, the vast direct effect which diplomacy might have iijxm their lives and fortunes--when there was no active and alert public opinion to check the courses of the diplomats—there were serious dangers in the theory that foreign policy was best left to the private labour of experts. But those dangers are now almost negligible, because- the experts know that they are at nil times aecnuntable to public opinion, and that the people are no longer children uho.se affairs must bo left wholly in the hands of omnipotent trustees. A condition of affair.* has been reached which is favourable lo the obtaining of tho best results from the traditional methods of diplomacy. The old tradition was lately described by "The "Times": "the fine tradition slowly '• built up by the sagacity of the t-.tates- " men of both the great British par- " ties and by the-uelf-restraiut of their " adherents and of the public in the "years that followed the Berlin Con- " gress—the tradition that there "should be a. national policy in foreign "affairs, and that this policy should '' be raised above the exaggeration:* " and the insincerities of party con- " flict." "The Times" was writing in the latter part of September, when a storm of opposition had been raised by Mr Lloyd George's warlike manifesto on tho Near East situation, and it waa urging the abandonment of the methods adopted by the Prime Minister. The new Government, as Ifr Bonar Law has made clear, and as Lord Curzon makea even more clear to-day, intends to revert to the old system, under which tho Foreign Office and its experts will conduct foreign policy, subject, of course, to the control of Cabinet. Anticipating the charge that he advocates the removal of foreign policy from the eyes of Parliament and the, people, Lord Gurzon denies that the Foreipfn Office claims any special degree of privilege or immunity for itself. All that it asked was that it should not be interfered with, by "irres- " ponsible amateurism, however; bril"liant it might be." This is a direct hit at Mr Lloyd George, who has eonducted foreign policy since the end of the war. It w 7 ould be grievously unfair to Mr Lloyd George not to recognise that tho Versailles Treaty obliged him to act as a British plenipotentiary, and to reduce the Foreign. Office to comparative impotence. Nor can it be fairly charged against him. that his moderating influence in the Councils of thfe AUr es has not on the whole been beneficial to Britain and Europe. That his Near East policy was as ! ruinous as it has been represented remains to be seen. But it is hardly to be doubted that a policy resting on the improvisations and intuitions of oven so brilliant a, man as theex-Prime Minister is more exposed.to...tho risk of mistakes a policy conducted according to fixed principlea by the experts of the Foreign Office. As in the past, cooperation, with France is to be the corner-stone of British policy. There is no reason to suppose that co-opera-tidn will be,sought at any cost to that policy, of moderation which Mr Lloyd George-found it far from easy to impose upon our ally. In any case, from the Dominion point of view, there is no cause for regret that the older diplomatic method is to be restored, for Mr Bonar Law has undertaken to secure that the Dominions' partnership in the Empire shall be practically recognised. ....'...**'