§ THE EARL OF OXFORD AND ASQUITH rose to ask His Majesty's Government if they can fix a date for the publication in whole or in summary of the Report of the Inter-Allied Military Commission of Control. The noble Earl said: My Lords, I am aware of the generous laxity of your Lordships' procedure in the matter of question and answer, which is differentiated from the comparative rigour—not always successfully enforced—which prevails in a place with which I am more familiar. I will therefore, with your Lordships' indulgence, take advantage of the freer atmosphere which I now breathe to make one or two prefatory observations before I ask the Question of which I have given Notice, in order to make clear its meaning and its purpose.
§ Let me at once disclaim any intention to make it the starting point for anything in the nature of a roving expedition over the wide and scattered field of foreign policy. Still less do I desire that it should be regarded as calculated in any way to cause embarrassment to His Majesty's Government, or to appear to force them to a premature disclosure of matters which, in their view of the general interest ought, for the time being at any rate, to be kept in reserve or even in silence. It is very difficult, indeed I think it is impossible, in the times in which we live to isolate the various problems which disturb the serenity of statesmen and cloud the horizon, not only of Europe but of the whole world, by endeavouring to put them into distinct and independent compartments. Even if you take by way of illustration two such questions as those of Allied Indebtedness and European Security, logically quite separable, you will find at once that they have reactions and inter-actions which would make it an unprofitable task to attempt to solve or even to discuss the one without reference to the other.
§ I have purposely confined myself, in the inquiry which I propose to address to His Majesty's Government, to a matter which it seems to me can be and ought to be discussed as standing upon a footing of its own. It arises under Articles 42-i and 429 of the Treaty of Versailles which are to be found in Part XIV of that Treaty under the general heading of "Guarantees." They provide, as your Lordships are aware, 350 for the temporary occupation of German territory lying "to the west of the Rhine together with the bridgeheads." As is clear from the terms of these Articles, the occupation was not intended to last for more than fifteen years unless at that date—that is to say, after the expiration of that term—in the language of one of the subsections, the guarantees against unprovoked aggression by Germany were not then considered sufficient by the Allied and Associated Governments. In the meantime, during these fifteen years of provisional occupation, what was contemplated was a progressive evacuation of specified areas at the end of each term, subject to the general proviso that "the conditions of the present Treaty are faithfully carried out by Germany." The first term of five years came to an end, at any rate as we in this country hold, on January 10 last. Thereupon the bridgehead of Cologne and the adjacent territory, which has been held I think during the whole of those five years under the Treaty by British troops, were due to be evacuated subject to the proviso which I have just quoted. And it is in consequence of alleged defaults on the part of Germany which amount in the language of the clause to failure faithfully to carry out the conditions of the Treaty, that evacuation has been, at any rate for the moment, postponed.
§
Before I proceed to say a few words about the actual facts, I should like to make a general observation. Though the provisions of Articles 428 and 429 come under the heading of what are called "Guarantees" they are, on the face of them, temporary measures. They form no part of, and they have no organic connection with, the provisions which were contemplated by the negotiators of the Treaty of Versailles for the permanent security of France. The permanent security of France was considered to be provided for in another way, in a twofold fashion: first of all, to some extent and by very material and stringent provisions, in the Treaty itself. I mean by those Articles of the Treaty, Article 42 and Article 43, which deal with the left bank of the Rhine and, indeed, with more than the left bank of the Rhine. Article 42 provides, as your Lordships will no doubt remember, that—
Germany is forbidden to maintain or construct any fortifications either on the
351
left bank of the Rhine or on the right bank to the west of a line drawn 50 kilometres to the East of the Rhine.
§
And Article 43 provides that—
In the area defined above the maintenance and the assembly of armed forces, either permanently or temporarily, and military manœuvres of any kind, as well as the upkeep of all permanent works for mobilisation, are in the same way forbidden"—
a very stringent and, as was then regarded and I think ought to be regarded now, an effective safeguard, so far as it goes, against German invasion.
§ But quite apart from those provsions of the Treaty, and outside the Treaty altogether, there can be no doubt that France counted upon, and may, indeed, to some considerable extent have been induced to modify the position which her Government originally set up in this matter by the tripartite pact between France herself, ourselves, and the United States of America which, at that time, there was reason to believe-might be, and indeed would be, ratified, but which, as we know now, for reasons it is not necessary to go into on this occasion, never came into effective existence, or, indeed, into existence at all.
§ I have always thought that the feeling not only of soreness but of insecurity which the lapse of that arrangement has undoubtedly left in the minds of the French people, was a perfectly natural and legitimate consequence; and I know my friend Lord Grey has on more than one occasion, both in this House and outside, given expression to the same view; and I believe it is very widely shared in all parts of this country. But legitimate. natural, genuine, deeply seated as that feeling is, it has no real relevance to the present question. It may well afford, and I think it does afford ground, and ample ground, for devising—as I hope the statesmanship of Europe and the world will soon prove its capacity to devise in the interests not only of French but of European and of worldwide security—a substitute and a more comprehensive pact. That, in my judgment, is at this moment the primary and the most urgent need of the international world.
§ But the fact that that need has not yet been met can afford no reason whatever for attempting to re-write these Articles 352 of the Treaty and to convert the strictly limited and temporary measures for which they provide into an indefinite occupation by the Allies of the left bank of the Rhine. If that were so, if that contention were really well founded, there would be no point or object in going into the question of German default. The real question, therefore, as it appears to me is this, and it is a question of fact: Has there been such unfaithfulness (I use the language of Article 429 of the Treaty) on the part of Germany in fulfilling the conditions of the Treaty as to justify the Allies in the non-performance of their prima facie obligation to evacuate the Cologne area at the specified date in January last?
§
This is not the first time, let me remind you, that the question of the failure of Germany to carry out the very important, and, I will add, the very necessary, disarmament provisions of the Treaty, has arisen. As far back as March, 1921, an allegation of such default was one of the heads of the ultimatum which was then presented to Germany by the Allied Powers. Two years later—I am not sure that everyone remembers this—in the early part of 1923, curiously enough immediately after the French occupation of the Ruhr, the question was again raised; and interrogatories were addressed to the Government of that day (Mr. Bonar Law, I think, was then Prime Minister) in the House of Commons, with regard to the whole matter of German disarmament. The War Office was questioned upon the matter, and the Under-Secretary of State for War, Colonel Guinness—the exact date is March 22, 1923—said in the House of Commons:—
The British representative is satisfied that the reductions in the German Army contemplated by the Treaty, both in respect of men and material, have been so carried out as to constitute effective disarmament.
§ Some six weeks or two months later, a further Question was addressed to the Government upon the subject. The date is May 7, 1923.
§
The Question was addressed with particular reference to the German police, and the Under-Secretary of State for War, replying again, said:—
Our military advisers are satisfied that the provisions of the Treaty with regard to the surrender of arms and munitions have been carried out to such an extent as to ensure that at the present time Germany is effectively disarmed.
§
And he added:—
It is known that, just prior to the French occupation of the Ruhr, the authorised Army was considerably under establishment.
§ That is less than two years ago. There was, I believe, some interruption- some people say some obstruction—of the effective supervision by the Inter-Allied Commission on German armaments in the months that followed; but we now understand that in September of last year they resumed active inquiries. The result is, first of all, a preliminary Report, and now, as we understand, a final Report, upon which the Allied Governments are asked to take action.
§ I should like to make perfectly clear, what indeed it ought not to be necessary to have to make clear, that no one, I will not say in this House but anywhere in this country, so far as I am aware, has any motive or desire to screen or to minimise German default. If the provisions of the Treaty as to disarmament can be shown to have been so infringed as to amount, to use the words of the Treaty itself, to unfaithfulness in carrying out its provisions, the contingency upon which the Allies agreed to evacuate has not arisen. As I said a moment ago, that is a question of fact; it is a question of the weight of evidence,. and I confess that it is much to be regretted, very much to be regretted, that the Treaty did not provide some adequate and trustworthy machinery, an instrument of inquiry, for deciding such matters as this. It has done so in some cases; it, has not done so in this.
§ There are two considerations—I will only mention two—among many which are obvious and which ought, I think, to be kept in view, and which I have no doubt are being kept in view, by His Majesty's Government. In the first place, the kind of default which would justify a postponement of the prima facie obligation to evacuate must, as everyone-will agree, be a default not trivial or casual but substantial and deliberate. Another consideration is this: that you must make a distinction—I am not suggesting for a moment that that distinction will not be made, for it is a vital one—between measures which may be legitimately taken in a country subject to the existing economic and political conditions which prevail in Germany, to strengthen the 354 safeguards against internal and domestic disorder, and measures which can only be legitimately and adequately interpreted as preparing the way and providing the means for external aggression. No fair-minded man will deny that this is a consideration which ought always to be kept in view.
§ That being so, I want to submit to your Lordships, and in particular to the noble Marquess who represents the Government, that it is of the utmost importance that the evidence, upon which for the moment only a provisional decision has been taken—as I understand the case the full and final Report of the Commission had not then been produced or considered—should be produced, and that if need be Germany, the German Government and those who speak for it, should have an opportunity of stating, if they have one, their counter-case. I ask this, not in the interests of Germany but in order that our fair dealing in the matter, our desire and determination to act in such a case, when we are alleging that we are, excused from an obligation which, prima facie, we have undertaken, should be free from all question and even free of suspicion.
§ We have no want of respect, any of us, for the Inter-Allied Commission, no want of respect for the military and expert judgment of such a great authority as Marshal Foch, no want of respect, let me add, for that distinguished body which has recently apparently become part of the international polity of Europe, with a mysterious attribution of curiously sporadic vitality, the Ambassadors' Conference. I shall be glad to learn from the noble Marquess what are the precise functions and the exact authority of that Conference; whether it is merely an international clearing-house, whether it is a factory for provisional decisions, whether it has any independent authority of its own, or whether, as would seem to be the case and ought to be the case, it is both in initiation and determination subject to the great States of whom its constituent members are the representatives and the delegates. If that is the case, as I think and believe it is. I am not at all sure that it may not in the long run turn out to be an instrument not for accelerating but for procrastinating decision.
355§ Be that as it may, it appears to many of us, and to most people in this country, unless His Majesty's Government have overwhelming reasons to the contrary, that in the general interest—it is a matter of almost imperious necessity—the evidence, I do not say necessarily in complete detail, but the substance of the evidence, which the International Commission has collected and which has been submitted to these various authorities, and which must ultimately be weighed and decided upon by the Governments concerned, should be evidence of value and weight which the whole world can judge. Let me add, if it is necessary to add, that in making such an appeal we are not showing, certainly none of us have any desire to show, any lack of regard for the opinions or the susceptibilities of our friends and Allies. I may claim, speaking perhaps without presumption as an old friend of France, at any rate as one who during many responsible years did everything in his power to cultivate and develop the Entente so providently brought into being by my noble friend whom I see opposite, by the wisdom and statesmanship of Lord Lansdowne—that Entente which, when the testing moments came, was one of the main agents, I would go so far as to say the main agent, for saving Europe and the world from irretrievable calamity—that the request which I make to the Government, which they will, of course, answer or not, fully or with such materials as they think proper, is made, as my noble friend, I am sure, well knows, in a spirit of loyalty to that which I conceive, and I believe most people in this country conceive, to be the best interests of honour and peace. The country will be glad to know, and I think your Lordships' House will be glad to know, in this matter, where exactly at this moment we are, and whither, so far as the noble Marquess can foresee, we are going.
§ THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (THE MARQUESS CURZON OF KEDLESTON)My Lords, the noble Earl, in addressing your Lordships' House for the first time, could hardly have selected a topic of greater interest or importance than this, or one upon which he was better entitled to speak with full authority. We did not need the reminder which was addressed to us in the penultimate passage of that speech to recall the great part which the noble Earl himself 356 played in the earlier history of these events and his supreme right to address your Lordships and to advise the country upon their sequel. The noble Earl spoke to us with that admirable conciseness and lucidity which have always characterised his utterances in another place, which it is now many years since I heard from a position opposite to him on the floor of that House, but with which I am sure your Lordships will rest dissatisfied if he does not frequently favour us in the course of our proceedings here.
In the opening sentences of his speech my noble friend said that he would take a passing advantage of the generous laxity which characterises our proceedings. As he went on I am bound to say that he did not transgress the strict limitations of his Question anything like so widely as nine-tenths of your Lordships are in the habit of doing from day to day. It is true that at one moment he diverged into an expression of his views upon the question of the claim of France to have her frontiers guaranteed by some pact or other, and the question of security as a whole, but he did not pursue the matter beyond a few sentences, and no one will recognise, I am sure, more readily than he that this is and must be a subject of independent debate upon which we shall have many opportunities, in all probability, of speaking at later periods of the Session. By far the greater part of the noble Earl's speech seemed to me to be directly connected with and arising out of the Question upon the Paper, although that Question itself is somewhat circumscribed in character. I do not know that there was a single observation or group of observations in his speech with which I or, I think, any member of His Majesty's Government would venture to disagree, and I shall be somewhat disappointed if at the close of my observations I do not succeed in claiming a similar measure of assent from him and those who sit with him.
The noble Earl began by referring to those clauses in the Treaty which relate to the progressive evacuation of the Rhine by the Allied Powers who at present have troops stationed there, and he referred to the quinquennial periods through which, one succeeding the other, that evacuation, so long as the conditions of the Treaty are fulfilled, ought to take 357 place. I need not recapitulate anything that he said upon that point. I will merely take up the case at the point in history to which he referred as having arisen in September last. He mentioned that in the preceding year and a half there had occurred a practical suspension of the visits in Germany of the Inter-Allied Commission of Military Control. That was one of the consequences of the French occupation of the Ruhr. In September last—I think the date was September 8—these visits of inspection were resumed, and towards the end of December the Allies were called upon to come to at any rate some preliminary decision as to what action they would take with regard to evacuation when the first quinquennium expired, as it was about to do, on January TO of the present year.
I made a speech in your Lordships' House just about that time in response to a Question addressed to me from the opposite Benches in which I explained that it was impossible for the Allies, and inferentially, therefore, for our own Government, to come to a decision upon the matter until the Inter-Allied Commission, which had resumed its work only three months before, was in a position to report. At the beginning of January an Interim Report was issued by the Military Committee under the presidency of Marshal Foch, which sits at Versailles, and in fairness to the German Government it was thought desirable and propel' to send to them a summary of the reasons which had justified the Allies in arriving at a provisional decision to suspend the evacuation of the Cologne zone after the date of January 10. The main causes of alleged default were stated in that note addressed to Berlin, and I think they were six in number. The German Government made a general reply without entering into details.
Meanwhile the Inter-Allied Commission pursued its labours, and it was on February 15 that the Report drawn up by them was signed at Berlin. It was transmitted from Berlin to Paris, where it passed into the hands of the Versailles Committee on February 18. During the little more than ten days that have elapsed since then, the committee under Marshal Foch have been carefully scrutinising and examining that Report, as to the nature of which I shall have a 358 word to say in a moment, and only to-day, I believe, their Report has passed from their hands into that of the Ambassadors' Conference at Paris. Now, on this point, in his speech the noble Earl did indulge in one slight divagation, because he put to me the constitutional conundrum what exactly the Ambassadors' Conference is, what are its powers, and what it either does or is expected to do.
The situation, although it may be difficult to sum up in a sentence, is one which it is perfectly possible to apprehend. The Ambassadors' Conference was first constituted after the war as a convenient machinery for dealing with all the minor issues arising out of the fulfilment, or non-fulfilment, of the Treaties signed at the conclusion of the war. It was felt desirable to utilise a body representing all the great Powers, which already existed at Paris, for the purpose of consultation and advice, and only in minor cases of independent decision. The Ambassadors' Conference has no executive authority beyond that which it derives from the Governments represented upon it. All its substantial recommendations are referred to the Governments, and common as are the charges brought against it that it is sometimes dilatory in its proceedings, I think it is only fair to say that it does an amount of business which nobody else could usefully discharge, and that it is very useful to the Foreign Offices and Governments concerned.
This Report passed into their hands, I believe, this morning. It will be considered by them without delay, and I have no doubt that in a few days' time the Report will be passed on by them to the various Allied Powers. It will then be the duty of the Powers, either by personal consultation or otherwise, to consider very carefully the nature of the Report, the recommendations that it makes, and the character of the demands that it may be necessary to make upon the German Government. Certainly, in the course of those proceedings, I should hope that the German Government may be given a fair opportunity of being heard, because I myself hold strongly to the view, which I shall express again later, that it is only by common consultation and co-operation in this matter that this great question 359 can satisfactorily or speedily be brought to a conclusion.
Now as to the Report. The noble Earl's Question upon the Paper is as to whether His Majesty's Government can fix a date for the publication in whole or in summary of the Report of the Inter-Allied Military Commission of Control. I think that there has been, not indeed in the speech of the noble Earl but in some organs of public opinion, some misconception upon this point. There seems to have been a sort of idea that His Majesty's Government, or the Allies in general, were anxious either to cover up their provisional decision not to evacuate, or to be obscure and secretive about the reasons which have led to it. There is no foundation for any such misconception. The Report itself is a document of about 160 closely-printed pages, filled with a mass of technical details which I am sure your Lordships will believe are hardly suitable for publication in their entirety.
There is, however, another point of greater importance still, which I will ask your Lordships to remember. It is this: It was no part of the duties of the Inter-Allied Military Commission of Control at Berlin to sift the matters of outstanding importance from those which are only of minor consequence. The noble Earl himself drew a marked distinction between the two. The task of the Berlin Commission was to establish the facts. It is for the Governments to form a due appreciation of those facts. Consequently the Report itself is an exhaustive rèsumè of all the points, great and small, in which the German Government have been found, during the course of the general inspection, to be in default in respect of their disarmament obligations.
Now His Majesty's Government are of opinion that a decision of so grave a nature as the retention of their troops in the Cologne zone for a further period, if it has to be taken at all, should be taken only on matters of real importance. It therefore appears to us that considerable embarrassment might be caused if we were to publish to the world a voluminous list of minor infractions, to which the Allied Government may not be disposed to attach a decisive importance when coming to a decision on the question 360 of evacuation. Such a course would not, in our judgment, be calculated to facilitate the conclusion which we have in view, and indeed, if I may express a strong personal opinion, it would be that the publication of the entire document would render a pacific solution much less likely and much less feasible than I hope myself it may turn out to be. It is for this reason that His Majesty's Government could not very well propose to their Allies—and your Lordships must remember that one party cannot publish it by itself—that it must be an Allied decision—that the Report should be published.
On the other hand, I am glad to take this opportunity of assuring your Lordships, rather on the lines of the suggestion in the second part of the Question of the noble Earl, that no decision will be taken on a matter of such importance to this country as the retention of British troops in the Cologne area, without making public the whole grounds and the facts upon which such a decision is reached. Subject to the concurrence of our Allies, we have every intention of making public the detailed list of defaults to be communicated to the German Government, which must be made good in order that the evacuation of the Cologne zone may be proceeded with. That is the answer, and I hope the House will agree that it is a satisfactory answer to the Question addressed to us by my noble friend.
May I before I resume my seat, inasmuch as he indulged in some general remarks upon the situation as a whole—may I, without following him in that respect, add a word as to the general principles by which His Majesty's Government are actuated in this matter. It is our first duty, and our main desire, to see that the Treaty of Versailles is carried out in all essential principles, and when I say carried out I mean by both parties, and further that the decision on evacuation must not be made to depend upon considerations which do not arise out of the military clauses of the Treaty. It must be treated on its own merits and in strict relation to the conditions laid down in the Articles which were read out by the noble Earl. Consistently with that we desire that the occupation of Cologne should terminate as soon as possible. No one can regard without alarm an indefinite occupation of those regions. 361 But, following a remark that I made a little earlier, we feel very strongly that that evacuation is much more likely to be successfully and, if possible, speedily carried out by frank discussion, by mutual settlement, by the co-operation of all the parties concerned, than it is by any abrupt or violent measures in one direction or the other. I do not think I need add anything more to this general expression of the sentiments of His Majesty's present advisers, but I am grateful to the noble Earl for having given me an opportunity of stating them with such clearness to your Lordships' House.