THE NAVAL CONFERENCE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21020, 8 May 1930, Page 6

THE NAVAL CONFERENCE.

. PROCEDURE OF THE MEETINGS. I FREE SPEECH IN PRIVATE. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, March IS. Not a great deal is heard of the activities of the Naval Conference just at present, but the delegates are being kept very busy. Mr Wilford showed me the programme of a nprmal day. Ther, was a meeting at St. James’s Palace at 2.45 another meeting at the House of Commons at 5.30, and a third meeting back a* the palace at 6 o’clock. When one considers the procedure of th conference it is easy to understand , why the army of newspaper representa--1 tivcs do not get much exciting news. The eight British delegates will meet together to thrash out a subject, while the representatives of each of the other four Powers will bo having their own individual conferences on the same Or a simii lar subject. , i At the British meeting there will be present the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs," the First Lord of the Admiralty, Mr Ramsay MacDonald (chairman of the British delegation), and the representatives of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, and the Irish Free StateFree speech is the order of the day at these meetings. No j,rcss reporters are present and there is no leakage of information. When a definite conclusion is reached bj e he delegates the heads of the delegate ns meet in private and the matters are Considered from the international point of view. Then at intervals occur the plenary meetings when the press is represeuted. But no subject is discussed that has not already been rehearsed iu private. Thus what is given to the press is the finished article, as it were. The public hears nothing of the clash and the clamour that has gone to the making of the completed article.