CROCHET CONGRESSIONAL

A bill which smacks of the most reactionary type of obscurantism has recently been presented to Congress by Senator Caraway. It forbids ambassadors cabinet ministers, secretaries or confidential associates of Presidents from publishing information concerning their official service. under penalty of a $1000 fine. Evidently designed to prevent the recurrence of such revelations as the House Memoirs, now appearing in the Boston Globe and the New York Herald Tribune, the proposed law would not only handicap future historical research but would deprive the public of correct knowledge of events with which their welfare is intimately connected.

Doubtless the picture of an official capitalizing his knowledge of government secrets is unpleasant, but the right of a government to have secrets in which its citizens do not share is even more questionable. Nations have too often been decoyed into war by misunderstanding when a correctly informed public opinion might have saved the day. Bismark's meddling with the Eme telegram and similar incidents are already sufficiently notorious. Yet diplomacy still continues to wrap itself in the shroud of secrecy which it acquired in the poison dagger atmosphere of the renaissance. But despite its occasional Machiavellian characteristics, state craft, unlike necromancy, does not properly belong to the black arts, and should, therefore, be able to withstand the light of day.