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 mutual advantage. Both are desirous of passing it. One nation says, "It is against our interest that this treaty should be made public at present". The other says, "We do not like being committed to any treaty the terms of which we cannot make public at once". Which is going to prevail? Hon. Gentlemen talk as if it rested with the British Foreign Office to decide in every case whether a particular treaty shall be treated publicly or confidentially. It does not rest with any single Foreign Office, British or other. It is always an arrangement between two, possibly three or four, Foreign Offices. You cannot lay down, and I do not think you would be wise to lay down, an absolute rule that under no circumstances, and for no object, could you so far concede the point as to say that a treaty is to be made which is not to become public property. I am perfectly ready to admit that that is not a process which, to me, is a very agreeable one. To reduce secret treaties to the narrowest possible limits should, I think, be the object of every responsible statesman who has the control of foreign affairs. Beyond that I do not feel inclined to go. I do not see any signs of a grasp of the true realities of life in the Motion before us, I do not stand here to defend ancient forms and worn-out ceremonies. I stand here to defend the common-sense carrying out of great international objects, and those objects, so far as this country is concerned, are, first, to obtain peace, and then to maintain peace. I do not see that there can be, or ought to be, any collision between the Government and any section of this House upon the general aims of British policy; still less can I see anything in our system that can be described as antagonistic, inconsistent with or opposed to the true principles of democracy, interpreted in the light of the actual facts of national life as we see them artes us. I, therefore, shall resist the Motion.'—Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, Tuesday, 19th March, 1918, Vol. 104, 865, 867–8, 872–6.