The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1922-02-22
SECRET
NEGOTIATION
OF TREATIES
Democrats to War on Four
Power Pact = Hughes to
Come in for Criticism Of
Methods.
WANT OPEN PARLEYS
BY MARK SULLIVAN


some of the price of secret diplomacy
in the emotion it must have cost him
to tell the senate he had no informa-
tion to give about the negotiations
leading up to the four-power treaty.
When the presidents letter was CIV
en- to the senate one of the senators
remarked, with a sarcasm of which
the country will hear more later;
surely there Is some mistake here;
that letter isn't from President Hard
ing; that must be one of those old
letters that President Wilson sent to
the senate in 1919"
This is the sort of thing with which
the Democrats are going to be-devil
Harding. Hughes and Lodge, especial
~ Lodge.
The negotiation of this four-power
pact, was just as secret as anything
Wilson did at Paris; and the Demo
Gratis are going to dig up some of the
preserved horror with which the Re-
publicans filled the congressional rec
ord during the League of Nations de-
bate.
Stirs Up Suspicion
There is no denying that this sort
of thing may stir up some popular
suspicion: and while at present the
great probability is that this as we'll
as the other treaties will be ratified.
II is also probably fact that the four
power pact is at the height of its pop
ularity now and that, as in the case
OF the league OF nations, all the de-
velopments that come out from now
on will tend unhappily to undermine
the present popular confidence
If 1t were not for a sense of inter-
national responsibility for a hesitancy
to give the world for second time the
spectacle of the United States senate
upsetting the work of a great confer
ence, the present Democratic sullen-
ness. would express itself in thorough
going opposition.
Embarrassing for Hughes
II is going to be embarrassing for
Hughes to explain, when he is sum-
moned before the senate foreign rela-
tions committee, on his return from
Bermuda, just why this part of the
conference was so secret, when the
rest was SO open.
1t will be hard to explain why his
negotiations with Mr.. Balfour and
Baron Kato could not have been re-
ported as promptly and completely as
were, for example, those extremely
acrimonious passages between the
British and the French about the sub
marines.
1t will be hard to give good rea-
son why the speech Mr.. Balfour made
after the treaty was written, in which
he explained frankly that it's purpose
was to placate japan for the termina-
tion of the Anglo-Japanese alliance
could not just as well have been made
in advance of the adoption of the
treaty.
Partial Explanation
There is one partial explanation
that may be made which is of a tech
nical nature, and not likely to be very
persuasive. 1t is to the effect that
his four-power pact was not the busi-
ness Of the conference as whole, but
of a group within the conference.
Also, there is just a possibility that
Mr.. Hughes might be able to say, If he
chose to, that he wanted these nego-
tiations open, but was overruled.
One fundamental fact about the con
ference which must be remembered in
respect to everything that was done
is that this was not an ordinary parlia
mentary body in which the majority
rules In the conference every deci
sion had to be unanimous. An objec
ton from any one power was sufficient
10 dictate.
Want Open ParIeys
Harding, as well as some Other
statesmen, seem to think that secre
diplomacy means only secret bargains
not made public until the occasion fol
heir operation arises. They thinl
that if the results of negotiations are
given TO the public promptly that is
D sufficiently open diplomacy.
But the more inodeIn public opinion
insists that not only the results o
negotiations themselves shall be made
known to the public from day to day
SO that if there is popular disapprova
for a course that disapproval can ex
press itself in time to change th'
course.
This whole embarrassment ought Il
be the final lesson to convince states
men that secrecy of negotiations mus
90 into the scrap heap along with BIZ
navies and good many other of th'
older institutions of international re
lations.
Here was a conference that had th
good will of the world to an enormou
degree, and its results are jeopardiZe,
by an undermining of popular conf
dence and the arousing of suspicion
against not necessarily the merits 0
treaty, but merely the method b
which it was arrived at
POSTAL EXAMINATION
hTlIRERTY MARCH II