Page:Paul Samuel Reinsch - Secret Diplomacy, How Far Can It Be Eliminated? - 1922.djvu/172



cuss a matter so vital and so far-reaching as that which the House of Commons has before it to-day to consider, and with so absolute a lack of information. . . . The House was summoned for this discussion to-day without any papers whatsoever. . . . We ought at all events to have had an account of diplomatic correspondence be- tween the four great Powers intimately interested in the question of Morocco, as is customary to be given to the House of Commons on such an occasion. This would have enabled members of the House before the debate commenced, to form a really well-grounded judgment upon the whole matter. We have heard a good deal to- night of the secrecy of the Foreign policy of this coun- try. It is no use attempting to deny it. Those of us who have been a long time in this House, and can re- member the methods of the Foreign Office twenty-five years ago, know as a matter of fact, which cannot be successfully denied, that the Foreign Office policy has become during the last ten years progressively more secret every year. Until this present year this has gone on, when the intense pressure of Foreign Affairs and the danger of war has forced the hands of the Minister to give some time for the discussion of Foreign Office af- fairs. For ten years the Foreign policy of this coun- try has been conducted behind an elaborate screen of secrecy. Some of us pointed out years ago that the se- crecy of Foreign Affairs was the inevitable and logical result of that new departure which was heralded about ten years ago, and which we heard praised once more on the floor of this House to-night. I refer to what is known as the policy of the continuity of the Foreign policy of this country; of the withdrawal of the For- eign policy of this country from the sphere of party