ONUS OF SECRECY ON COMMONS

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 27, 31 July 1940, Page 6

ONUS OF SECRECY ON COMMONS

Having fully proved himself to be a man of decision, Mr. Churchill can afford to refuse to decide the question whether another secret session of the House of Commons shall or shall not be held. If his Government could be accused of a long record of paltering with vital questions, then he, as Prime Minister, might possibly be charged with shirking responsibility when he asks the House of Commons to decide for itself whether or not to again hold secret conclave. But neither he nor his Labour colleagues in the British National Government —the only really National Government in the Empire—can be accused of refusing to look facts in the face, or of failing to act with vigour. The House of Commons, finding itself thus saddled with the onus of accepting or rejecting the secret session, decided to accept by 200 votes to 109. Colonel Wedgwood (Labour) is reported to have said that such secrecy would be regarded as weakness, and Lord Winterton (Conservative) was also among its opponents;, while some of the British newspapers objected to secret sessions as being undemocratic. But democracy in peacetime and democracy in wartime are not the same thing. No system of government can survive in war unless it is adaptable to the needs of war. If personal liberty has to be temporarily surrendered in order to retain national liberty, the price (temporary surrender) must be paid, lest a still greater deprivation, by enemy hands, may close the democratic chapter altogether.