A PERSONAL STATEMENT. (Hansard, 17 July 1918)

§ THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON)
I ask your Lordships' permission, before the commencement of public business, to make a brief personal statement with regard to an incident which happened yesterday afternoon. There was a discussion here on a Motion that had been placed upon the Paper by my noble friend Lord Wimborne, and I was unfortunately prevented by illness from being present on that occasion; nor ought I to be here this afternoon. But I felt compelled to come to the House without delay in order to correct the misapprehensions—serious misapprehensions—under which your Lordships must have been left by certain statements that were made by my noble friend. In the course of his remarks Lord Wimborne three times stated to your Lordships' House that his Motion had been postponed at my instigation. That, my Lords, is not the case. I never asked the noble Lord to postpone his Motion. What I did—more than once—was to ask him not to pursue it, in the public interest, and to that appeal from me he turned a deaf ear.
The second point is this. In the course of the speech, in reply, that was made by my noble friend the Lord Privy Seal, I read in the OFFICIAL REPORT the following passage— The EARL of CRAWFORD: Lord Curzon invited the noble Lord to withdraw his Motion, and he had tried on several occasions to see the noble Lord in this House. LORD WIMBORNE: That is not true. My noble friend is at liberty to pronounce in your Lordships' House upon his own actions and his own movements, but he is not at liberty to pronounce on mine. What 918 the noble Earl, Lord Crawford, said was true in every particular. On two separate occasions I came down to your Lordships' House with the desire to have a conversation with my noble friend on the matter. My duty commonly keeps me closely seated on this Bench, and I am not as free to leave it as other members of your Lordships' House may be; but on two occasions, after my duties here were discharged, I sought the noble Lord, unfortunately without success.
The third point is this. The noble Lord, in his remarks, made a great point of his willingness to tell me what he proposed to say. I acknowledge his courtesy in that respect, and I was much obliged for it. But I was not concerned with what the noble Lord proposed to say; I was concerned with his not saying anything at all. I had consulted the representatives of the Foreign Office, and been told by them that a discussion upon the matter raised by the noble Lord's Questions—the subject of Herr von Kühlmann's speech, and the question of peace terms, and so on—would be singularly inappropriate at the present time. In these circumstances I was not the least likely to ask the noble Lord the details of a speech which more than once I had asked him in the public interest not to deliver.
To sum up, the facts of the case are these. The noble Lord, in the first place, put his Motion upon the Paper without consulting me in advance as to its terms—a course which, in the case of Foreign Office questions of a very delicate character, particularly during the course of the war and at a peculiarly critical moment of the war, is most unusual. Secondly, I intimated to the noble Lord that in the view of the Foreign Office it was undesirable that a discussion of his Motion should take place. Thirdly, I told him that if he persisted in making his Motion I should not be in a position to reply. And, lastly, I appealed to him, in these circumstances, to take his Motion off the Paper. Nevertheless my noble friend felt it consistent with his duty to keep his Motion on the Paper, and to make the speech which he did yesterday afternoon. He made no communication to me or to the Foreign Office of the points that he proposed to raise, and when my noble friend Lord Crawford, in my absence, entered the House to speak on my behalf he knew no more of what the noble Lord proposed to say than I did.
919 Finally, Lord Wimborne concluded his remarks by reading a Resolution, the terms of which he had not placed on the Paper, and which he only divulged at the close of his observations. I do not suppose for a moment that my noble friend Lord Wimborne, in the series of incidents to which I have referred, meant to be either discourteous to me or unfair to the Foreign Office, which for the moment I represent in your Lordships' House; but I am bound to say that he adopted a most unusual procedure, and one for which I can find no precedent in my own experience of your Lordships' House.

§ LORD WIMBORNE
My Lords, perhaps I may be allowed to offer one or two observations on the speech of the noble Earl the Leader of the House. The points that he has raised seem to me to vary considerably in importance. Some are almost of microscopic interest—for instance, the question of postponement as against total withdrawal. The noble Earl says that he never asked me to postpone my Motion. May I refresh his memory to this extent? On the day that I put down the Motion I wrote in the morning and told the noble Earl of my intention to do so. He sent me a message, by what I am sure he will regard as a peculiarly trustworthy messenger, asking me to postpone the Motion, on the ground that he had a great many speeches to make, was overburdened with public work, and could not possibly, at short notice, deal with a subject of magnitude and importance. I came down to your Lordships' House and I saw my noble friend Lord Colebrooke, and told him that I was quite willing to meet the noble Earl with regard to dates. I left the House, but I understand that the noble Earl subsequently saw Lord Colebrooke, and, after conversation, Lord Colebrooke went to the Table and took my Motion off the Paper. I do not complain of that; I am sure the noble Lord wished to act in the interests of all parties. But it proves that I was asked to postpone the Motion.

§ EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON
I am loth to interrupt my noble friend. But surely what he alleges now in itself disproves his argument that he was asked to postpone the Motion. When Lord Colebrooke spoke to me on the matter he said he had been invited by the noble Lord, Lord Wimborne, to act as he thought best. I agreed with him, and accepted the re- 920 sponsibility of removing the Motion instead of postponing it.

§ LORD WIMBORNE
If the noble Earl will permit me to read a letter which he sent to me privately, I think I could show him that this was the point I made. It is a very small point whether the Motion was to be postponed or definitely withdrawn. With regard to the other matter, I understand that the noble Earl does not complain of lack of courtesy; indeed, he knows that I was only too anxious to give him the substance of the speech I wished to make, so as to equip him with all that I could for any reply he desired to make, and that I placed myself entirely at his disposal. I suggested a conversation as the quickest way of dealing with the business, and I came up to London, waited here entirely at his disposal, but never heard from him. It is true that I met the noble Earl quite accidentally walking into your Lordships' House, and he pressed me again to withdraw the Motion altogether, as he took no interest in the matter that I proposed to raise. He said that he was not concerned with what I was going to say, because he was totally opposed to my saying anything at all. It is on this point that I think I am entitled to make some observation.
It is certainly the first time I have ever heard that any Minister of the Crown takes upon himself, and claims the right, to dictate what subjects may or may not be discussed in your Lordships' House. That is a doctrine to which I certainly find it impossible to subscribe. It seems to me to be totally subversive of the theory and practice of free Parliaments. There is a method by which this House can protect itself, and, if necessary, the alleged public interest, from indiscreet observations. That method is well known to your Lordships' House, and it is to move "that the noble Lord be no longer heard." There is another method to which also recourse can be had, and I think was adopted in this case—to maintain a total silence on the points raised in the Motion. The noble Earl, Lord Crawford, admitted that he was totally unable to make any reply to the not very recondite subject which I ventured to bring to your Lordships' notice. That, surely, ought to satisfy the noble Earl who leads the House. In so far as in his view my observations were indiscreet, he has, by the silence he imposed on his colleague, protected the public interest. I think, on the point of the right of members 921 to speak on any matter, subject to the views that your Lordships as a body take upon it, that this right is one with which we cannot part.

§ LORD LAMINGTON
May I say that the noble Lord is incorrect in saying that, at the request of members of the Government, a Question is not always put off. For months I have asked the noble Earl the Leader of the House for permission to raise a question about Persia, and I have not yet been allowed to obtain information upon it.

§ EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON
My Lords, I should be the last to wish to pursue the question with my noble friend Lord Wimborne, who has not in substance denied the greater part of what I said in my remarks; but I must repudiate the doctrine that he has just laid down. No one is, I hope, more vigilant than I am in the defence and guardianship of the rights of your Lordships' House, and noble Lords will bear me out when I say that it is very seldom, indeed, that I shirk an encounter. There is scarcely any question which noble Lords raise—and they raise a good many from day to day and week to week—in which I do not to the best of my ability give them an answer; but that is a different thing from the proposition that any member of your Lordships' House is to be at liberty on any subject whatever to compel the Government to reply. That is a position which I dispute.

§ LORD WIMBORNE
You did not reply to me.

§ EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON
I dare say, but I extended as much courtesy as I possibly could to the noble Lord. I did not want him to submit the matter and then be subjected to the indignity of not receiving a reply to his remarks. Having the honour of the friendship of the noble Lord, I appealed to him, in advance, not to pursue the course that he desired to pursue. That appeal he rejected. As regards the practice in these matters, may I point out to the noble Lord that foreign affairs are questions in which I have been much interested in your Lordships' House, and when I sat in the past on the benches opposite I have often proposed to put down Motions on the Paper relating to critical matters of foreign policy, and on no occasion that I can recall, when I have been 922 appealed to by the spokesman of the Foreign Office sitting upon this Bench to refrain from dealing with a subject, have I refused to postpone or withdraw my Motion or Question. It is an understood law, which every one of your Lordships observes. I have nothing more to say about the matter.

THE MARQUESS OF CREWE
My Lords, I hope that the discussion may be regarded as closed. I was not able to be in the House during the progress of the discussion yesterday on the Motion of my noble friend opposite. I had not been aware of his intention to raise the question further than from seeing his Notice on the Paper. The noble Earl who leads the House considers, I gather from his remarks now, that a breach of the ordinary comity of the House was committed by my noble friend in persisting in his Motion. I should hesitate to lay down any general rule on a subject of this kind. There may be cases in which a man feels it his duty to pursue the discussion of a subject even though His Majesty's Government may desire, for good reasons or bad—in this case, I fully admit, good reasons—that the subject should not be discussed, and I cannot help feeling that in a matter of this kind it is a misfortune for the credit and reputation of your Lordships' House that any discussion of this sort should take place in public. My experience in these affairs, which is not altogether short, has led me to believe that a difficulty of this kind can almost always be removed by a frank interchange of views outside the House; that it is possible for free and sometimes quite intimate revelations of facts and policy to be made privately, and by an honourable understanding with His Majesty's Government, which can convinces any noble Lord who has put down a Motion on the Paper that it is not in the public interest that the Motion should be proceeded with. Whether any attempt was made in this instance to conclude the matter in that way, I do not know; but, if not, I sincerely wish that it had, because we must all feel, I think, that a discussion such as has taken place is not advantageous to your Lordships' House, and does not in fact add to the dignity of our debates.