§ LORD COURTNEY OF PENWITHYour Lordships are aware that very important discussions and negotiations have been going on for some time between the Great Powers, France and Germany, with respect to Morocco, and in relation thereto we appear from time to time to have been very deeply interested. We are all glad that a settlement has been arrived at. I hope it has been arrived at definitely on all points connected with those negotiations between the two principal Powers; but I think it would be interesting and of use if your Lordships had an opportunity, with the information which probably could be given to us by His Majesty's Government, to consider, and perhaps to review, the transactions which have taken place, and especially our situation in regard to those negotiations. 6 I therefore wish to ask my noble friend the Leader of the House whether an opportunity will soon be offered—one understands it may not be immediately convenient to the House—to consider the relation of this country to those important transactions and the nature of the transactions themselves.
§ VISCOUNT MORLEYMy Lords, there is nothing in the least unreasonable in my noble friend's Question. Last night in another place the Prime Minister told the House that there would be an occasion for discussing the transactions in connection with the Franco-German Agreement, in the case of Morocco. It is to everybody a matter of enormous satisfaction that those discussions at Berlin, upon which the eye of the world has been fixed for some time, have now at last come to a conclusion which it is hoped by those in authority both in Berlin and in Paris will be acceptable to the public in each country. My noble friend spoke of having a debate or discussion—an examination of our share in those transactions—soon. I am not certain that such a discussion or examination can reasonably take, place soon, because I am sure that he will understand and the House will understand that it is not for us—it would hardly be courteous for us—to have a discussion of those momentous transactions in which our interests, though great and serious, are comparatively indirect, until two things have happened: first, until there has been a discussion in the Reichstag, and, second, until there has been a discussion in the French Parliament. The other day—I think I am right—in the Reichstag the German Chancellor declined to discuss these transactions until a conclusion of one kind or another had been reached, and promised that when it was reached there would be an opportunity of discussion. The French Parliament, I think, is not now sitting. At any rate the broad fact is that it would be inexpedient for us, whose interest, as I have said, is comparatively indirect, to examine these complex and difficult transactions, without Papers and so on, until we knew how they are viewed by the two great communities whose interests are most directly concerned.
§ LORD COURTNEY OF PENWITHMy noble friend does not add that, when those events have happened, he would favour our having an opportunity of discussion here.
§ VISCOUNT MORLEYUndoubtedly; my noble friend may take that for granted. As the Prime Minister said in the other House, so I will venture to say on behalf of the Government to your Lordships, that in view of the great importance of those transactions to Europe—transactions certainly not without importance to ourselves—we shall think it due not to lose any time whatever in giving an opportunity for examination and discussion.