Page:Paul Samuel Reinsch - Secret Diplomacy, How Far Can It Be Eliminated? - 1922.djvu/95



and French foreign offices. The text of the se- cret treaty between France and Spain had, how- ever, now been secured by the Paris papers Le Temps and Le Matin. This revelation led to party attacks on secret diplomacy in the British House of Commons and in the French Parlia- ment. Baron d'Estournelles de Constant, in February, 1912, said:

. . . "Why was the French Parliament told only half the truth when it was asked to pass its opinion upon our arrangement with England? Why was it allowed to suspect that this arrangement had as its complement and corrective some secret clauses and other secret treaties? It is this, it is this double game towards Par- liament and towards the world which becomes morally an abuse of trust. . . . Now the whole effort of the ar- rangement of 1904 appears to-day in its truth and in its vanity. It was a treaty of friendship with England recognizing the freedom of our political action in Mo- rocco and also proclaiming our will to respect the integ- rity of that country; that was what the public knew and approved. But the public was ignorant that at the same time, by other Treaties and by contradictory clauses hidden from it, the partition of Morocco between Spain and France was prepared, of that Morocco of which we guaranteed the integrity. ' '

In the House of Commons, Mr. John Dillon charged that "the Foreign Office policy has be-