DIPLOMACY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19865, 13 June 1927, Page 2

DIPLOMACY

MUST BE SECRET PUBLISH THE CONSEQUENCES Sir Austin Chamberlain, the Foreign Secretary, was the guest of honour and proposed the principal toast at the 87tn annual dinner of the Newspaper Society at the Savoy Hotel, London, last month. Mr. Robert J. Webber, the president of the Society, presided. “Have you ever known a politician who said all he thought about the press io a gathering of pressmen,’’ asked Sir Austen Chamberlain amidst laughter when he proposed the toast of “The Newspaper Society.” “A distinguished foreign statesman whom I have often met at Geneva in an outburst of emotion said to me once: ‘ They talk about the great men who were our predecessors, but what great men you and I would be if there were no newspapers.’ (Laughter). “Wheth/r if wo ran the papers and i you ran the Government, England on ' ihe whole would be better served, is a j question which may remain in doubt | between us. But we serve the same i country. We have behind us the same : history. We care, broadly viewed, for j the same things, and we are collaborat- . ing in the same work. I wonder sometimes if the press of the world realises | the influence it has on international relations, and whether, if ever, an editor visualises the effect which might be produced in the relations of his 'own State with another, he would publish all that appears in the columns of .he newspapers of the world. “In the Foreign Office I feel every moment the backwash of the storm which has been brought into a troubled world through some irresponsible utterance by an imprudent or irresponsible politician, or some equally and irresponsible journalist, the publication of which has, when wo thought we were advancing, thrown us back into an atmosphere from which we thought we were getting free. “Wo hear some good sense and a great deal of nonsense about secret diplomacy. Diplomacy must be secret, out its consequences should be published. The British Government can undertake no engagements and fulfil no treaties which are not disclosed to the House of Commons, and, therefore, to all the world. “But the idea that you can carry on negotiations in the presence of the crowd is surely the folly of follies. In no human relations other than foreign affairs would it be thought that such procedure was conducive to a friendly and reasonable altitude and to an ultimate solution- “I appeal to you to be what alone you can be—namely, the great interpreter of nation to nation, making clear our own case to the world, but at the same time helping to make clear to our people why it is sometimes natural, almost inevitable, and in any case excusable that another nation with different traditions and history should take a different view from our own.’’ (Cheers).