February 14, 19 18 
Land & Water 
15 
New Secret Diplomacy : By G. K. Chesterton 
THERE is in England a body of opinion called the 
Union of Democratic Control, to which I have 
not myself the honour to belong, but the title 
and aims of which embody very lucidly and 
thoroughly almost all that I think about the 
problems of the war. The very name is a fine and sufficient 
summary of nearly everything which I shall attempt to say 
here. If there is one thing in which I have always essentially 
and literally believed, it is democratic control ; which is (it 
should be noted) something much more extreme and drastic 
than democratic consent. 
I believe that the people can rule, and that when it does 
rule, it does so better than any of its rulers. Even where 
it is unjustly forbidden to rule, and appears only to dissolve 
and destroy, I am disposed to defend it ; I believe that no 
human institution in history has really so little to be ashamed 
of as the mob. And when the Union of Democratic Control 
passes to its more particular object, it satisfies me even more 
fully. It aims chiefly at eradicating that evil craft of secret 
diplomacy by which princes and privileged men cynically 
make and unmake kingdoms and republics as they roll and 
unroll cigarettes ; and no more think of consulting the citizens 
of the State than of consulting all the blades of grass before 
bargaining for the sale of a field. This detestable detachment, 
inherited from the heartless dynastic ambitions of the seven- 
teenth and eighteenth centuries, has been covered in my own 
time and my own society by the large and optimistic adver- 
tisements of what is called Imperialism. I can say without 
fear or penitence that I have always hated and always done 
my hardest to extirpate Imperialism, as an ambition of any 
countrj^ and above all as an ambition of my own. 
It is indeed true that the members of the Union of Demo- 
cratic Control do not agree with any of these principles, with 
which I myself agree so ardently, when I read them in their 
official literature. If it be counted some sort of reflection 
on a society that its mere individual membership does not 
happen to include any person who assents to its printed 
formulfe, the U.D.C. may be held to suffer from such a 
disadvantage. 
Of the most eminent member, Mr. E. D. " Morel," I can 
only say that his warm admirers, while agreeing as to the 
thoroughness of his enthusiasm, are apparently doubtful only 
about its object ; and that in any case the mere evisceration 
of secret diplomacy can hardly be supposed to satisfy or 
explain it. He is himself so eminently secret a diplomatist 
that there is a doubt, not merely about what it is that he 
does for his country, but about what country it is that he 
does it for. The other members are mostly widely respected 
and well-informed men, famous in almost every branch of 
culture, and for almost. every type of conviction — with the 
exception of those special and peculiar doctrines with which 
they are accidentally connected by the formularies of their 
membership. Probably the chief influence on the society 
comes from a group of aristocrats, representing the great 
governing class families of Trevelyan, Ponsonby, Buxton or 
Hobhouse, whose tradition naturally it is to perpetuate Burke's 
antagonism to the theory of the French Revolution. And 
indeed one of them only recently refused to submit himself 
to any popular vote in his constituency, for the explicit 
reason that the great anti-Jacobin, who lies buried at Beacons- 
field, would not have approved of a representative paying 
any attention to anything which he is alleged to represent. 
But in the plain appeal I am now writing, I am concerned 
with the principles of the Union of Democratic Control ; 
and I am therefore in no way concerned with any of its 
members. 
To those principles, which condemn an undemocratic 
diplomacy, it is now necessary to make a new and very 
urgent appeal. For undemocratic diplomacy has returned in 
a new and even more undemocratic form. It is not merely 
that the popular opinion has never been expressed, but that 
it is censored and silenced when it has been expressed. The 
acts of a meb can be hidden like the acts of a man. Silence 
does not rest merely on the momentary negotiation of two or 
three officials ; silence can be spread over the desires of whole 
, populations and the destiny of whole provinces. It is not 
one diplomatist who wears a mask, but a million democrats 
who are all required to wear muzzles. The chief example 
of this new secret diplomacy is the earnest exhortation 
addressed to the English and French, that they should qualify 
the vehemence of their anti-German feeling, out of considera- 
tion for the international idealism either of Petrograd or of 
Stockholm. Sometimes this modification is recommended as 
a way of securing peace for the world. Sometimes it is only 
recommended as a way of securing peace within the Alliance. 
But upon one point all the Stockholni-Petrograd school of 
democrats is agreed ; and that is the need of intxposing silence 
upon the democracies of the West. 
Now while I agree with the Internationalists as to the evil of 
private understandings, I think it the reverse of an improve- 
ment to take refuge in public misunderstandings. I think 
it a bad thing that diplomatists should secretly arrange the 
transference of the French people to the power of the Emperor 
of China. But I think it worse to declare that all Frenchmen 
really desire to be Chinamen, lest any hint of the reverse 
should ruffle the serenity of the Chinese. I think it bad 
that white men should be despotically driven into an alliance 
or a war with black men ; but I think it worse that white 
men should be made to black their faces, for fear of disturbing 
the solidarity of the human race. It is an evil thing that 
the people should not choose for themselves, but should be 
tricked beforehand into having something whether they like 
it or not. But it is a worse thing that we should not even 
know what they do like, what they would really choose, 
or perhaps have already chosen. 
It is the case against secret diplomacy that the masses are 
never consulted until it is too late ; but it seems to be the 
upshot of the new pacifist diplomacy that the masses are 
never consulted at all. For it is idle to talk of consulting 
the people, if all their most primary passions and bitterest 
experiences are to be concealed in the interests of a theoretic 
humanitarianism. And that, and nothing else, is really the 
claim of those who insist on the anti-German feeling in 
England being qualified by concern for less exasperated feeling 
in Russia. 
• 
Popular View of Germans. 
Now it is simply a fact, like death or daylight, that the 
English people, and especially the English poor, regard, the 
German of this war exactly as they regarded the Whitechapel 
murderer who ripped up poor girls with a knife. Seeing that 
the German also, as it happens, has ripped up poor girls with 
a knife, the parallelism of the sentiment is not perhaps so 
surprising. The English poor desired to find the Whitechapel 
murderer and punish him ; the English poor also desire to 
find the Germans who commanded these German atrocities 
and punish them. This is the will of the people, if the will 
of the people ever existed in "this world. 
It is now necessary to insert here a most emphatic warning 
against people being misled upon this point by any such 
sectional incident as a vote in favour of Stockholm, tempo- 
rarily upheld by certain representatives of certain English 
Trade Unions. Such votes are variable and, as a basis of 
argument, quite unreliable. They are unreliable for three 
successive and decisive reasons, each final without the other. 
First, it is admitted, because it cannot be denied, that such 
schemes of representation are so wildly illogical as to be simply 
meaningless. We should not think much of a scientific 
assembly in which the men who believe that the earth is flat 
had as many representatives as those who cling to the more 
common opinion that it is round. We should not accept 
as authoritative a Congress of Religions in which the Scotch 
sect of the Upstanding Glassites (now, alas, nearly extinct) 
was represented by serried rows of delegates, covering as 
many benches as all the Catholics or all the Mahommedans 
put together. We should not bow down to a representative 
system which brought out the remarkable result that as many 
Englishmen wear sandals as wear boots ; or that the earnest 
students of scripture who think it wicked to have their hair 
cut are as numerous as those who observe the rite at more 
or less reasonable intervals. Yet this was strictly, literally 
and indeed admittedly, the composition of the so-called 
Labour Conference now in question ; in which enormous 
over-representation was given to tiny Pacifist groups holding 
opinions rather rarer than the opinion that the earth is flat. 
Even this dispropwrtionate and absurd assembly admittedly 
voted under a complete misapprehension about the most 
decisive question of fact. 
Secondly, therefore, even if the meeting had been represen- 
tative, it would have voted on a misrepresentation. And 
thirdly, even if the fact had not been entirely misrepresented, 
and if the Trade Unions had been formally and legally 
represented, there is an obstacle more absolute and unanswer- 
able than all the rest. It is the fact that no sane man denies 
the sight of his own eyes and the testimony of his own ears ; 
it is the fact that we deal to-day with deadly realities and 
have no patience for political fictions ; it is the fact of the 
nature of fact. 
I know that most Englishmen, and especially most poor 
Englishmen, are furious with the Germans, exactly as I 
know that most of them think it desirable to wear clothes 
