countries must have it somehow. Across the board Germany can make some
tempting bids in that respect. Or take another question: Have the
British arrived at common views with France, Belgium, Portugal, and
South Africa about the administration of Central Africa? Suppose Germany
makes sudden proposals affecting native labour that win over the
Portuguese and the Boers? There are a score of such points upon which we
shall find the Allied representatives haggling with each other in the
presence of the enemy if they have not been settled beforehand.

It is the plainest common sense that we should be fixing up all such
matters with our Allies now, and knitting together a common front for
the final deal with German Imperialism. And these things are not to be
done effectively and bindingly nowadays by official gentlemen in
discreet undertones. They need to be done with the full knowledge and
authority of the participating peoples.

The Russian example has taught the world the instability of diplomatic
bargains in a time of such fundamental issues as the present. There is
little hope and little strength in hole-and-corner bargainings between
the officials or politicians who happen to be at the head of this or
that nation for the time being. Our Labour people will not stand this
sort of thing and they will not be bound by it. There will be the plain
danger of repudiation for all arrangements made in that fashion. A
gathering of somebody or other approved by the British Foreign Office
and of somebody or other approved by the French Foreign Office, of
somebody with vague powers from America, and so on and so on, will be an
entirely ineffective gathering. But that is the sort of gathering of the
Allies we have been having hitherto, and that is the sort of gathering
that is likely to continue unless there is a considerable expression of
opinion in favour of something more representative and responsible.