The Press WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1947. Diplomacy in 1948

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25380, 31 December 1947, Page 4

The Press WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1947. Diplomacy in 1948

One of the most interesting ques- : tions suggested by the failure of the Council of Foreign Ministers in ; London, this month, is whether a I European settlement will again be • pursued by the same method or I whether it will be abandoned for • another. By common and tacit coni sent, nothing was said about the j time and place of another meeting, i In the circumstances, nothing could j have been usefully said. But cer- • tain questions about the Austrian I treaty, raised by Mr Bevin, were 1 referred to the Ministers’ deputies Ito be discussed. It might seem that i this pointed, however vaguely, to a i future meeting of the council at which the old tasks woui’d be taken up again in the old way. It need not mean that. More probably, all that was implied in this decision—again, by tacit consent—was that the Ministers recognised that the failure of their conference did not sweep the table clean. The issues upon it would have to be worked on at top level yet, by what ultimate means it was not time to decide or timely to discuss. Meanwhile, there was this that could be done, without prejudice to any later decision about procedure, and the continuing function of diplomacy could be to this extent acknowledged. So, also, Mr Bevin in the House of Commons was at 1 pains to say that the British Govi ernment had closed no doors and intended to go on using what “ con- “ tacts ” were available. The “ contacts ” of the council have been so harsh, unhappy, and damaging that Britain, the United States, and France, at least, will not be willing to renew them* unless it is on very different conditions. One of these is obvious. If the council is ever again to set up as a peace-making agency, it will have to work privately. Before peacemaking began, Lord Hankey in the “ Sunday Times ”, drawing on his long and rich experience, insisted on the need for private discussions. If statesmen discussed the issues of peace and war in public, they talked too loud, they said too much, they did not address their colleagues but prejudiced and passionate sections, groups, minorities, majorities, and masses; and they could not retreat, they could not even compromise, without appearing to these audiences to have been defeated. Lord Hankey might have been prophesying the failure of the London conference. If he did not fully and accurately prophesy it, it was because he had not yet had the chance to see how swiftly Russian policy would be adapted to the open stage, as when Mr Molotov, for example, addressed his “ imperialist ” charges against Britain and the United States of America and his protestations in favour of German unity, not to his three colleagues, but straight at the Germans. But the Russians are not to be blamed for establishing the system they exploit. The Council of Foreign Ministers originated at Yalta, where the three Foreign Ministers, besides meeting daily with Churchill. Roosevelt, and Stalin, also met separately. Mr Byrnes took to Potsdam the idea that the Foreign Ministers should continue to act, though less as a body assisting the heads of State, as at Yalta, than as a council charged with the responsibility of preparing peace treaties. The plan was accepted; and at first the Ministers met privately, issuing agreed communiques later. In that, at least, they were wise; but the American correspondents protested heavily, they soon drew full and detailed reports of these closed sessions from the American delegates, and the Russians, though they first objected, were not slow to follow the same practice and take advantage of it; and Britain and France adopted it too. Mr Bevin, months ago, in the House of Commons, said emphatically that the difficulty of carrying on the council’s negotiations when “ every word was reported ” was intense and intolerable. In Paris, the deputies at least could work quietly; but publicity had invaded room after room, “ down to the subcommittees and even to the depu- “ ties ”. Somebody’s sharp phrase about “open disagreements openly “ arrived at ” now condemns the London failure and, more than the failure, one fatal cause. An enormously important distinction has been too long obscured, the distinction between secret diplomacy, which produces secret agreements, and private diplomacy, which produces open agreements. It is time to insist again on the essential difference and to pursue it in the diplomacy of 1948. Whether it is conducted by the old machinery solely or whether the Council of Foreign Ministers plays a part in it, it will have to recover its proper character, shedding that which has been forced upon it as the mischievous instrument of propaganda at the highest level.