Evening star., 1945-10-07
Stage Is Still! Held
BY Secret Diplomacy
Food Conference Opened But
Foreign Ministers Lock Doors
Bu John Fl. Cline.

Foreign Ministers Lock Doors
By John II. Cline.
Every effort is being made to pub
licize the meeting of the Food and Agri-
cultural Organization<of the United Ma
tions, which opens a week from Tuesday
in Quebec. This is good thing, for II
the work of this important organization,
which will play vital role in feeding
hungry world, is to meet with sub
stantial success it must have the sup
port of an enlightened and insistent
public opinion. And the way to obtain
this support is not through the medium
of secret meetings followed by vague
and often misleading con nuniques, but
by making available to representatives
of the press and radio accurate, COM
plete and daily reports of the work OF
the conferees. The participants in the
FAC meeting at Quebec, having had @
very unhappy experience with foolish
secrecy at the Hot Springs Food Con-
ference some two years ago. have learned
their lesson. Far from attempting to
bar reporters, they are urging them to
come to Quebec and are making excel
lent facilities available to them. But
this remains the exception, not the rule,
and the dismal experience Of the for
eign ministers in London can be cited
as the most recent case in support of
this contention.
There has never been any really sat-
isfactory explanation of the f1asco at
Hot Springs. Although they were dis
cuSSing nothing more secret than ways
and means of feeding hungry people,
the delegates from the A nations met
behind closed doors at the Homestead
Hotel with armed guards on hand to
prevent reporters from so much as en-
tering the building. Later, these re-
strictions were relaxed bit as a grudg-
ing concession to an indignant public
opinion, but the original error was not
forthrightly confessed. and the net re-
suit of the relaXationS was TO reduce
the attempt at secrecy-apparently de-
creed in a capricious moment by the
late President Roosevelt-to the level os
farce. The arrangements currently
being made at Quebec indicate that
something has been learned from the
experience at Hot Springs. But it is a
lamentable fact that, while the worlds
top-fight policy makers may profit from
past mistakes, the process of learning is
painfully slow
One might think, for instance, that
the Wilsonian concept of open cove
nants openly arrived at to which so
much lip service has been paid, would
have attracted some genuine converts
in high places by this time. Unfortu-
nately, there is little evidence that this
is so.
For hundreds of years statesmen have
been going their secret way, telling the
people no more than was considered
good for them to know, and patching
up wars with makeshift treaties which
would preserve peace of a sort for a few
years, only to have the shooting start
all over again. Certainly, on its record.
secret diplomacy has been a sorry fail
ure. And from time to time this has
been recognized. Thus, as the Paris
Peace Conference (another failure) was
nearing its end, the late Robert Lans-
ing, President Wilson'S Secretary of
State, declared: L am convinced that
the method of personal interviews and
private conclaves is a failure, 1t has
given every opportunity for intrigue,
plotting, bargaining and combining
The result of the present method
has been to destroy their (Small nations>
faith and arouse their resentment -"
Everywhere there are developing Bit
ternesS and resentment against a Sc
cretlVeness which is interpreted to mean
failure. -" Secret diplomacy, the bane
OF the past, is menace from which man
believed himself to be rid"
But however glib the assurances, we
were not rid of secret diplomacy when
Lansing spoke in 1919, and we.are not
rid of it today. Within 20 years after the
+ Paris Conference, which was supposed
to patch up the war to end war, an
other and even greater conflict had
| broken out. During those intervening
years the statesmen either couldn't per-
ceive the truth for themselves, or, per-
celving it, lacked the courage and the
wisdom to tell their people what they
saw. For two decades, with the people
kept largely in ignorance of what was
going on, they bargained and traded
and broke faith, and all they were able
to produce was the Second World War.
When that conflict engulfed mankind
we were told that, this time, it was to be
different This was peoples war, and
| from it was to emerge the century of
the common man-an age in which
there would be freedom from want and
freedom from fear, and in which the
plain people, called upon to die by the
millions for the blunders of their lead
erS, were to have an informed and eff
fective voice in shaping the peace.
r y
Perhaps the intentions were good.