Press communique : 50th meeting of the Chairman's Sub-Committee

              Mr Bolton.
INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR THE APPLICATION OF THE AGREEMENT REGARDING NON-INTERVENTION IN SPAIN.
Press communiqué, 7th May, 1937.
The fiftieth meeting of the Chairman's Sub-Committee was held at the Foreign Office this afternoon at 4.30 p.m. 
2.     Lord Plymouth said that he felt constrained as the result of what had occurred after the last meeting of the Sub-Committee, to place on the Agenda the question of the unauthorised publication in the press of information regarding the proceedings in the Sub-Committee.    He wished to put the position as clearly and as emphatically as possible.     What occurred at the meetings of the International Committee and of the Chairman's Sub-Committee was by general consent strictly confidential.     At the end of each meeting, there was issued an official communiqué which was the only authoritative account of what had occurred at that meeting.      The whole principle underlying these meetings - particularly those of the Chairman's Sub-Committee - was that they should be informal and that Representatives should be able to speak with greater freedom than would otherwise be possible.    In these circumstances it was clear to him that, if the Sub-Committee were made to feel that any single phrase or sentence used by any Representative was liable to be quoted in the press, and furthermore completely distorted for propaganda purposes, deliberations in the Sub-Committee would become quite impossible, would be bereft of all their value, and might become positively dangerous.     He was anxious, in common with all the other Representatives on the Sub-Committee,  that the Non-Intervention body should be an organ