874 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
(48)
INTERNATIONAL SITUATION
- Dr. B. R. Ambedkar (Bombay) : Mr. Chairman in this debate on foreign policy what one can do, at the most, is to discuss the principles on which the foreign policy of the Government is based. There is hardly time for doing anything more. Principles are undoubtedly very valuable, but I take it politicians have a great dislike for principles, particularly politicians who are dealing with foreign policy. They like to deal with things ad hoc, each transaction by itself, without any underlying principle.
I remember, that when after the first World War, Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Clemenceau met in a hotel in Paris before the Versailles Treaty in order to settle, among themselves, where to draw the line of partition between certain territories belonging to Germany in order to hand them over to France for satisfying the strategic fears of France, they had a long map spread in a room which covered the whole of the room and Lloyd George and Mr. Clemenceau had fallen on their tummy to examine exactly; where the line should be drawn. After a long search they drew the line which was of course, most suitable to France. Afterwards Mr. Lloyd George called Mr. Nicholson, who had accompanied him as the expert from his Foreign Office and asked him to express his opinion about the line which they had drawn. Mr. Nicholson explained in horror saying, “Oh! this is too bad, too bad. Morally quite indefensible”. Both these statesmen immediately turned on their back and raised their legs in the air and said, “Well, Mr. Nicholson, can’t you give us a better reason ?”
I remember also about 1924 or so. Mr. Low, the great cartoonist, having drawn a cartoon in the Evening Standard in London showing the various Foreign Ministers of
- P. D., Vol. 7A (Council of States), 26th August 1954, pp. 469-83.