Lord Cromer also deals faithfully with the cognate fallacy in
regard to the democratio control of diplomacy. Speaking as one who for a quarter of a century was behind the scenes of the diplomatic stage, he asserts that " there have never been any important 'secrete' in British diplomacy
which, from the point of view of public morality or policy, could not nnohjectionably have been proclaimed on the house- tops, and, moreover, that the efforts of that diplomacy have been steadfastly, and often very successfully, directed in order to ensure the maintenance of peace." For twenty years he was "skating on very thin ice," and now often asks himself what would have been the result if instead of having to deal with statesmen such as Lords Salisbury, Rosebery, and Lansdowne, he had been more immediately under the orders of a Committee of the House of Commons. His conjectural answer is that we should either have been driven to a premature evacuation of Egypt, or else that the democratic controllers would have adopted some heroic and violently provocative policy towards the French.
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