Page:Paul Samuel Reinsch - Secret Diplomacy, How Far Can It Be Eliminated? - 1922.djvu/154

 l in diplo- macy. Mr. Balfour is on sounder ground when lie says, "In private, in conversations which need not go beyond the walls of the room in which you are, both parties may put their case as strongly as they like and no soreness remains," but "di- rectly a controversy becomes public, all that fair give-and-take becomes difficult or impossible. " This, of course, implies a somewhat low estimate of public intelligence and self-control, of which more later.

The greatest vice of a secret diplomatic policy, working in the dark and concealing international undertakings, lies in the inevitable generating of mutual suspicion and the total destruction of pub- lic confidence among the different countries which compose the family of nations. No nation is so bad as imagination, confused and poisoned by secrecy and by the suggestion of dire plottings, would paint it. Agreements and understandings which do not exist at all are imagined, the nature of those which actually have been made is mis- judged, and animosities are exaggerated; thus the public is quite naturally put in that mood of sus- picion and excitement which renders it incapable of judging calmly when apparently startling facts suddenly emerge.

Secret diplomacy destroys public confidence.