The strongest argument against the holding of a secret session
of the House of Commons is the impossibility of ensuring secrecy. Secrets may be kept by a gathering of four men, and conceivably by one of forty, but in an assembly of anything from four hundred upwards (the figure makes allowance for 3o per cent. of absentees) leakages are inevitable which in their aggregate will not come short of a full account of everything that happened. Mr. Lloyd George said on Tuesday that in the last war there were three secret sessions of the House, and he never heard of a word leaking out. Whether he heard it or not, it did. After one secret session I was myself one of a circle in a certain London club listening with interest to an M.P. who had come straight from a secret session and was eloquently expansive on what had taken place there. Whether there was anything he did not tell I have no means of knowing, but there was plenty that he did. In a body of several hundred there will always be a few who are incapable of resisting the pleasure of imparting information. If Mr. Lloyd George means that nothing about the secret session got into the newspapers he is no doubt right. But leakages which reach British journalists have a way before long of reaching foreign journalists in London, and secret disclosures once so started may travel far.
* * * *
Previous page
