CONDITIONS IN GERMANY.

HL Deb 06 November 1946 vol 143 cc1011-66

2.2 p.m.

LORD SALTOUN rose to ask His Majesty's Government what steps have been taken and what steps they propose to deal with the famine now prevalent in the larger cities of the British zone in Germany, and what is the policy of His Majesty's Government with regard to the future of the zone; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion which stands in my name on the Order Paper. When the successful outcome of the last war became apparent we all were saying to one another, "We must re-educate the Germans." I notice that that statement of policy appears in the Report of the Select Committee on Estimates. I remember it being used on what I think was called "Education Sunday" in a broadcast service, and I think I may take it that that is the policy of His Majesty's Government to-day. There are many kinds of education; there is the penetrating influence of a superior character on an undeveloped or inferior one, and that crude education expressed in the phrase, "I'll learn him."

The point is that any system we choose to adopt was open to us when we entered Germany, because everybody is agreed that in most places we were welcomed as deliverers. The task before us was colossal. I will not attempt to describe to your Lordships the shattered state of German cities. It would be a very good thing if representative British citizens, Londoners, could be taken to visit German cities, and representative Germans could be brought to visit London—of whose destruction they were so often been assured by their own Government—in order that a comparison might be made. It would do both parties a great deal of good. I have found in Hamburg people who were unable to take me to a street in the town in which they had lived all their lives because they could not recognize places or tell where they were in the shattered heaps of bricks that surrounded them. In Hanover a bare quarter of the normal accommodation was capable of giving any shelter at all. In town and country the average floor space for all the needs of life for an individual is only seventy-two square feet, and in that computation children only count as one half and babies not at all—very much the computation which is adopted by our own railways. All communications had broken down, and famine was obviously on the threshold. Famine follows every war. So far as that is concerned, I think that it is right to say that all the physical factors in the problem before us at the present moment were perfectly clear a year ago.

It is now three months since I visited Germany. I did not make speeches and I did not make sermons, but I went about and saw what I could. I am bound to admit that I find myself very easily irritated by conversations with Germans, and I only used my time to get all the information I could. I think it is right that I should lay that information before your Lordships to-day. At that time there was a grave shortage in Germany of all textiles. The children were clothed in weird brands of ticking. Probably the greater proportion of the German people had only one suit of clothes. Returned prisoners found it hard to get any at all, although sometimes the British Red Cross was able to help them. The shortage of footwear was quite critical, especially in view of the approaching winter and the very great severity of winter on the Continent. There is practically no domestic coal and very little fuel of any kind, and the soap ration is minute.

Time will not allow me to give your Lordships an adequate picture of the conditions so far as these things are concerned; but all these conditions are exacerbated by the hunger of the great cities. In the country, of course, people do get food because it is produced at their doors. I will give your Lordships a few facts which came under my own observation and what I was able to obtain by inquiries in Hamburg. In passing through the streets the lassitude of the population was so marked that anybody who was moving with any briskness immediately caught the eye. The older children showed sunken eyes, drawn faces, shrunken legs, sometimes with sores which were probably due to anemia. I saw young children with faces that I could have covered with the palm of my hand. It is true to say that I did not see many of these, but I did see such cases. In spite of the all-pervading limy dust and the lack of soap, the population was incredibly clean, and all the time I was conscious of a sweetish, sickly smell, which other people have also noticed. I do not know what the cause of it was, but I consulted a doctor and he said that it may come from a derangement of the liver which is caused by hunger.

I have lived in famine stricken populations and suffered to some extent in that way myself. It was perfectly clear to my observations that the people around me were suffering from an advanced stage of malnutrition, and I should have called it famine. I was informed that there had been a very considerable loss of weight amongst the population, and that was borne out by my own observation as far as I could see. The population was incapable of a full day's work and although men engaged in heavy occupations were given supplementary rations, yet I am told that there were cases where the men preferred not to work a full week because, they said, the supplementary ration did not compensate them for the energy the extra work would require. In addition to that, it was a very common thing for school-teachers to faint in afternoon classes. The teachers, of course, do not share in the midday meal which is distributed to the children. Hunger oedema is very prevalent, and it is just as great amongst the better-to-do as it is amongst the manual workers, so that it is not a question of its occurring only among the poorer classes or anything like that. It was thought very improbable that any mother could suckle her own children. Young children, of course, get preferential diet, and yet the infant mortality rate in Hamburg has trebled over the figure in 1938. They have even been, driven to having recourse to mineral oils as substitutes for the necessary fats. I do not know how they treat these oils or what the results of their use have been. It was merely told me as an example of the sort of experiments which they are trying.

Contrary to what one would expect in such conditions, infectious diseases do not show any very marked increase. That was attributed, in this Report, to the excellence of the British sanitary arrangements. I am very glad to think that that is so, but I would like to point out that probably it is also to a very considerable extent the result of the extreme cleanliness of the population, which, as I have said, is really remarkable in the conditions which exist. Against that, tuberculosis has made enormous strides—especially recently. For example, the rate in Hamburg for the first five months of this year was nearly three times the rate for 1945, and it was increasing. So your Lordships will realize that you must not take that as merely the measure; it is an increasing progression, and I should be very much surprised to find that tuberculosis has not made much greater strides in the interval which has elapsed since I left Hamburg. In fact, if I may trust what has appeared in the papers—and especially what has appeared in The Times today—all the fears which I then formed have been borne out very fully.

When I was there I was told that I could go where I liked, see what I liked and ask anybody any questions that occurred to me. I availed myself of that permission, and the results are what I have endeavoured to give your Lordships today. But I will say this; I have written to try to get some of the figures amplified, and I have been told that it was not permitted to give me certain figures for which I asked; the matter would have to be referred to higher authority. I would also say that in the case of one or two things which I could not be given to take away with me and which I asked should be sent on afterwards, they have never arrived. I am, naturally, very apprehensive as a consequence of this. I hope that there is not going to be an iron curtain between your Lordships' House and what is going on in Germany, because that would be a very great misfortune. The primal needs of the country are coal, food,—especially vitamins—and, after that, textiles and building materials. Time will not allow me to go into these matters this afternoon but I hope that my noble friend Lord Beveridge will do so. I will merely say that I was begged by very many people—both members of the Military Government and others outside the Military Government—to let the people in this country know what the condition of things was in Germany, because it horrified them. And that is the duty which I am trying to discharge this afternoon.

The next questions which occur to me as being of importance are: What is to be done now and how did this state of affairs come about? I think that we have to consider these things very carefully. I have not the slightest doubt that at any time after the middle of the year 1944, at any rate, we could have made peace by negotiation with the Germans. I have no doubt that we could have made peace at any time we wanted after that on terms that would have been favourable to us. But we refused. We spent at the rate of £14,000,000 a day and sacrificed the lives of hundreds of thousands of men—better men than ourselves, I think your Lordships will probably agree—in order to gain unconditional surrender I say plainly that it is a betrayal of the dead who gave us that victory if, having received unconditional surrender, we turn our backs on the duties which civilized communities have always considered incumbent upon those who receive unconditional surrender. A question which I very much want to ask is this. The greater part of the coal export of Germany, in the past year has I understand been sold through the European Coal Organization. I would like to know how much if any of the price of that coal has been applied in the payment of reparations, and if any of the products of German industry have been taken on account of reparations. I make that point for these reasons. It is impossible to get reparations out of a country which is lying prostrate, and we had a very good excuse for deferring the reparations until we could get the country on its legs. As I expect a great many of your Lordships know that it is contrary to our own laws to claim a payment on account of an unliquidated debt, and the amounts of reparations have not yet been fixed. That would have been a very good reason, if we have wished to put the country into a position to pay reparations, for deferring the exaction of them.

I want now to go back to the question of food. I have made inquiries as to the food position, and I am told that there is no food to spare. Yet during the whole of this summer the fishing fleet of Scotland has been working on short time on the orders of the Government, and, even so, cases have occurred of fish being thrown back into the sea because there was no market for it. If your Lordships follow the papers you will realize that the Government and the fishermen and the Government and the curers, have very often been quarrelling over terms. But to my mind the most important thing is to get all the food out of the sea that we possibly can. I recall how quite early in the year—I think it was about May—I ventured to write to the Government on this subject, because I remembered how after the last war there was an extraordinary slump in the British fishing. That persisted for a few years after the war, and I realize the importance of securing the German market to our fish this time if that can possibly be done.

One of the answers which I got on this subject was to the effect that there was no transport, no boats available either for taking the cured fish or for "Klondyking" and taking them to Germany. His Majesty's Government have the whole of the resources of this country at their disposal, and I am bound to say that that answer does seem to me to suggest that the feeding of starving Germany did not have a sufficient priority. I do not believe for a moment that there were no vessels available for this work. It is merely a question of priorities. One thing that does spoil that defence a little is that about a year ago a public announcement was made by a Minister that "the Germans are at the end of the food queue." I am not going for a moment to say that that brutal phrase was not justified. I am not going to say that the condition in question was not a practical necessity. But I am going to say that the phrase should never have been uttered, because it makes it extremely difficult for His Majesty's Government to say now that they could not help it. That is the kind of phrase that sticks. Whenever there is an official problem of difficulty in this connexion to be solved, always that phrase rises in the mind and it does a very great deal of harm. The worst harm which it does, I think, is that it makes it very difficult afterwards, when history comes to be written, for us to say that this has come about without our will, that it has come about simply by the force of events. It is extremely difficult, and I think one could excuse even the most candid German if he failed to accept that because all the facts that I have given about the fishing and so on are no secrets—they am well known to everyone. I think that if the Government can give a convincing answer upon this it is their duty to do so.

We are told that we have been disappointed, and that food is not coming into the west of Germany from the east as was expected under the Potsdam Agreement. If that Agreement has broken down, I think it would be much simpler to acknowledge the fact, and take the necessary measures which we ought to take, independently of it. I have always held that it was a mistake ever to imagine that under the Agreement food would come from the east of Germany to the west. I cannot imagine anybody who realizes the condition of eastern Europe ever thinking for one moment that we should be likely to get that food. It would be very much better to say now that our occupation of Germany in the British zone will go on indefinitely, and to restore trade and industry to the utmost extent, always making quite sure of our own strict control.

What I am going to say next, I will preface by recalling that when I was in Germany I was immensely impressed by the magnificent efforts that members of the Military Government were making to deal with the difficulties which they had before them. Yet they gave me the impression of being cramped and confined by orders from outside Germany which they could not set aside. They were doing their level best to make the country go, in spite of all the difficulties. Having said that, I would also add what seems to me of great importance—that the kind of administration we have set up seems to be very largely an administration of pinpricks. May I give your Lordships a few examples? We have abolished almost all war disability pensions—even to the blind—and we have heavily reduced the few which we have left. We have asked men to go without clothes for weeks while their uniforms, their only clothes, were being dyed. We have forbidden Germans to wear medals won by gallantry in the field, when even Hitler, with all his power, was unable to persuade German regiments to abandon their British battle honours. I do not know what your Lordships feel, but I know that I should blush to have to give such orders; and if through some misfortune I had to receive them, I should certainly receive them with the greatest contempt.

It seems almost as if that sort of thing were done on purpose, because when the furniture was requisitioned for the British wives who were going to Germany—quite properly requisitioned—it was requisitioned in a manner which would bring the utmost pain and annoyance to the people to whom the furniture belonged. The very people who had to carry out that requisition were bitterly ashamed of their task. I have spoken about that once before, and I have complained previously about people who sit comfortably in positions of authority ordering soldiers, sailors or airmen to carry out duties of which they are ashamed. It is an immoral thing, and a wrong thing, to do. These men are under the severest possible discipline, and the people who give them orders ought to be particularly careful how these orders are to be carried out and what they entail. It is the kind of thing which makes one wonder whether the first quality demanded of a member of the administration is not the quality of hate. And I do not think that anything sound can be built on hate.

I have heard, too, of Germans in charge of factories receiving contradictory orders from different administrative departments. We are accustomed in our country to that kind of thing, and we are accustomed to the vagaries of civil servants; but it did not happen in Germany, and it brings us into contempt. A German tells the man in charge of his factory. "I know I have to obey your orders, but which master am I to obey this time?" I have heard of a large foundry getting one ton of materials as a ration allocation. That is no use to a great factory, and it is not worth starting the furnace for; but it is of the utmost use to a blacksmith in a country district. Unreasonable distribution such as that, simply encourages the black market. Then I have heard of the Ministry of Supply taking a key machine from a factory and paralysing the works, when plans and specifications would have answered every purpose which we required. That seems absolutely senseless to me.

From what I have said, your Lordships will be able to judge whether this is education by the influence of a superior character over an inferior—or what kind of education it is. My own suggestion is that we should go back to the original idea of the control devised for the end of the war; that is, a system of control, not of administration. The Germans can never become a danger while we are in control. Let us give the Germans a chance to rise to their feet, through their own efforts, instead of interfering in every little detail of their lives. If the Potsdam Agreement has broken down, let us acknowledge that. It is surely better, instead of picking quarrels with our Allies about elections in Bulgaria or Rumania or Kamchatka, which are bound to irritate them, to make up our mind to set our own house in order, and to get our own zone running well, even if at the expense of the Potsdam Agreement, which we all admit has failed.

May I now say one word about politics? Everybody appears to be extremely satisfied with the results of the elections in Germany, and they seem to feel that it is a reward for all the trouble they have taken to stimulate German political life. I am convinced that this is an illusion. I have had the privilege of observing German political leaders in contact with our own Members of Parliament, and it was perfectly clear to me that the German leaders knew exactly where they stood with every Member of Parliament they talked to. On the other hand, it was quite impossible for anyone, even after years of experience, to gauge their own true aims and sentiments. I put it to your Lordships that a country in the starving and shattered state that Germany is in to-day is incapable of true political life, in any particular shape. The Germans will shape themselves into the form which they think will yield the best results. The Russians have accused us of favouring the Social Democrats. I do not know if we have or not, but I am perfectly certain that the Germans believe we have. They think that that is the political shape which would pay them best and that is the reason their political life has taken that form.

I would point out, however, that although their political activities may look pretty from the outside, they have no hold on the people. Whatever Party holds power in the near future under the British will certainly be swept from the saddle if Germany is given any measure of independence. I believe that that might be avoided, but at the present stage I do not think it is worth while offering any suggestions. Germany cannot conceivably be a danger as an aggressor nation while we are in control nor, if we are wise, for a long time after we have ceased to be in control. As a vacuum, of course, Germany is always a danger; and she always will be. But to my mind the danger is very different. The noble Lord who is to reply to this debate and I have one thing in common. We have exactly the same proportion of Irish blood in us, and he will know, as I know, the cost to this country of the mistakes that British Governments have from time to time made in Ireland. We know what they have cost us so far as public opinion is concerned in the United States and also in the rest of the world. What I should like to ask again—and this is the danger—is this: Is it worth while to add to the ranks of exiled Irishmen the members of a people who, even when you have said the worst of them, are intelligent, frugal, and industrious, and generally welcomed in the world as colonists, and allow them to become a centre of justifiable hatred of England wherever one of them is to be found? At the present moment we must appear to them to be both brutal and stupid. I would earnestly ask His Majesty's Government to take every possible step to remove that impression. I beg to move for Papers.

2.32 p.m.

LORD BEVERIDGE

, who had given Notice that he would call attention to conditions in the British zone of Germany; and also move for Papers, said: My Lords, I have myself a Motion on the Paper following that of the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun. I hope, however, that it will be for the convenience of your Lordships if I state the case upon my Motion in supporting his. I went to Germany last August at the invitation of the Chancellor of the Duchy, who is in charge of our Control Office. At the outset of my remarks, I should like to take this opportunity of thanking him and his staff, both in this country and in Germany, for the helpfulness and the complete openness with which they received me.

We all ought to realize how troublesome must be the job of administering Germany by people who have continually buzzing around them Members of Parliament, sometimes even Members of your Lordships' House, and all sorts of people from this country who go to Germany for the ostensible purpose of lecturing the Germans—as I went—and come back to lecture the Government. I should like to express my sympathy with the Chancellor of the Duchy in that position. But after all, self-knowledge and self-criticism are the law of democracy, and although I shall have to criticize what we are doing, and therefore what the Government are doing, in Germany, in the remarks that I make, I hope that the Government will not be inclined to think that my criticism is captious. I feel sure that the noble Lord who is to reply for the Government will not think so. If I may give my credentials for not making captious criticism against the Government in the sphere of foreign affairs, I would point out that at least in the other place I have supported them in taking such an unpopular line as that which the Foreign Secretary has taken with regard to Spain.

When I was in Germany I took the opportunity of defending the work of our administrators there against what seemed to me to be unjustifiable criticism. But I think there are some justifiable criticisms, and those are the criticisms which I shall try to make. I am going to talk very shortly about the actual conditions in Germany, because really it is undeniable that at the present time the conditions of life for the German people as a whole are absolutely intolerable, with the rations of food, when they are honoured, and nowadays we know that they are not being honoured, half what is needed; with industry hardly started again; with housing appalling, and with hardly any consumer goods in the shops. That is, broadly speaking, the picture to-day in Germany. Within the last day or two those of your Lordships who read the newspapers—as no doubt most of your Lordships do—will have seen Mr. Gollancz's letter in The Times. I am quite certain that what he mentions there is the true account of the conditions he found in Germany. Your Lordships, no doubt, have seen what is stated in The Times to-day and in other newspapers, that the conditions in Germany are appalling and intolerable.

They are such that I am sure that not one Briton in ten, if he really knew what was happening in Germany, would want them to continue. That, I think, is without question. What makes the matter worse is that such a state of affairs should exist in Germany eighteen months after total surrender of the Germans. There have been some improvements. One must admit that things have been done in Germany. We could not remain in Germany for eighteen months without improving some things; but, broadly, for the mass of the people no substantial improvement has been made, and one finds their health and energy suffering under privation. That state of affairs is producing hate, instead of reconciliation and re-education. I am quite certain that as a result of what we are doing we are probably most hated now in such places as Hamburg where formerly we were most popular. Hamburg was an anti-Nazi city and always was. We are doing this at great material cost to ourselves. It has been stated that it is costing us a figure in the region of £80,000,000. I am not going to dwell upon that fact any longer because it is beyond question or argument.

Nor am I going to say much with regard to two other arguments, but I want to mention them in passing. I hope that the noble Lord who is going to reply for the Government is not in any way going to justify this state of affairs as a piece of vengeance for what the Germans did in the war. It cannot be justified in that way. As the Foreign Secretary said in another place recently, it is true that the Nuremberg judgment does not wipe the whole slate clean. There are some criminals still to be punished. But once again I do not believe eighteen months after the end of the war that one Briton in ten in this country would wish to continue to punish the whole of the German population—the women and children and the helpless old people—because of the crimes of the Nazis during the war. To do so would be lowering ourselves to the standard of Hitler or even below that standard. Secondly—I am sure that the noble Lord who is to reply will not use this argument—I hope this will not be defended on the ground that it is necessary for the prevention of future wars. For the prevention of future wars there must be disarmament in Germany; the Germans must be prevented from ever re-arming. That I am clear about. But it is not necessary to impoverish the whole of Germany for that reason.

Leaving this possible argument on one side, the question is: Is this state of affairs inevitable? Is it really beyond our power to remedy? That is the real, practical issue, and in what I say I want to stress that we must distinguish between three elements in the present position of Germany. There are some things which it is wholly in our hands to remedy. There are some things which are wholly in our hands, but if we apply a remedy we should affect and wholly displease others of our Allies. But we are not bound by any binding agreement not to act. Thirdly, there is what we are bound to do if we carry out the Potsdam Agreement. Those are the three classes of topics about which I want to speak. Some things are in our hands only, and let me say at once that most of them are quite minor things. Their importance is really psychological rather than material, although not wholly so.

There is of course the question of the wives of the members of the B.A.O.R., whom we have sent over and whom we are sending over. Of course we ought to send them over; but equally, of course, we ought to send them over without making intolerable conditions worse, and we ought not to send them over with the kind of publicity which accompanied the sending of them over. I noticed that in another place in the discussion of this matter the Chancellor of the Duchy said he had no evidence of luxurious living on the part of the wives we have sent over. I can only say that the Chancellor's Press service is less efficient than the voluntary Press service of my correspondents. If he had looked at the Sunday Graphic of September 1 a copy of which I have sent to the noble Lord who is to reply, he would have seen the most revolting pictures of luxurious living, such as that of a sergeant and his wife collecting a joint of beef weighing over 5 lb.; a sergeant and his wife giving instructions to their servant in a luxuriously-furnished flat, knowing that all the furniture must have been requisitioned from some German. He would have seen really the most revolting publicity. I do not think that it is typical, but the unfortunate thing is that somebody in this country should have thought it desirable to feature that element.

There is another thing which the Chancellor of the Duchy said on this particular point. He said that in the minds of casual visitors there was great confusion as to the living conditions of the people who were turned out and the real living conditions of, say, the people of Hamburg. I think that he would say that the people who were turned out to make way for these wives were not themselves living in bunkers and would not be sent to live in bunkers, but, quite obviously, turning them out to make room for the wives meant that people who were living in bunkers and cellars would have to go on living there. There is no sense or reason for that particular action, but it is comparatively unimportant. There is a second thing, the Hamburg Project as it is called, the concentration of all our administrative offices in Hamburg and turning out 30,000 or 40,000 people before there is any alternative accommodation for them. I hope the noble Lord may be able to assure me that the project has gone into storage for four or five years. It is very doubtful whether it will be effective if we are going to work with the American zone, because Hamburg is very remote.

There is a famine of scientific and other periodicals in Germany. It is quite impossible to send them, though I believe there is now a scheme whereby periodicals like the Economist and the Spectator and scientific journals may be sent. I do not know how good that scheme is, but it is still impossible to send books by parcels post. Why is there no parcels post to Germany? I hope the noble Lord who is going to reply is going to explain that there has not been a parcels post but that shortly there will be.

Then there is the question of the prisoners of war. I do not want to dwell upon that; it is of course a larger question. Our zone in Germany is entirely starved of men of working age. It is just full of women and children, old people and invalids, and crocks sent from other zones. To keep the prisoners of war here for the purposes of slave labor when they want to go back cannot be justified. In one paper it is said that among the displaced persons there is plenty of labor only too anxious to come here. The new plan of the Government for the prisoners of war is entirely inadequate. They are postponing the date of returning to the end of 1948.

Regarding the problem of the numbers and efficiency of our staff, I think it is pretty clear that, instead of merely doing control work, we are attempting to do too much in the way of doing things which the Germans could do. Undoubtedly also a great many of the people who tried to do things there are suffering from a sense of acute frustration. When I spoke the other day the noble Viscount the Leader of the House assured me—and I have no doubt he had been so assured by the Chancellor of the Duchy—that His Majesty's Government are doing everything possible to revive German industry. I may say that this has produced a letter from a perfectly responsible person who was an administrator in Germany. He says that half of the statement is simply not true. All who were in charge of the industry said that again and again practical schemes put up were either rejected or unduly delayed until the time had passed. Since I came back I find that similar attempts have been made and have been defeated. With regard to the economic splitting of Germany, that is regrettable, but it must not be made a convenient excuse for avoiding the taking of decisions. I am sure we could do more to get ahead with industry in Germany, and that we are delayed by doing unnecessary work. These are really in themselves matters of comparatively small importance.

Then we come to my second category of the things which we are not bound to do by the Potsdam decision and which cannot be done without affecting the interests of others as well. Although perhaps the most urgent thing now is food, the most urgent thing when I was there was to have more coal in the British zone of Germany. It is urgent that more of the coal that is produced there should be made available for industry and the production of consumer goods. Consumer goods include boots, and it is very difficult to be an effective agricultural labourer without boots Consumer goods means not luxuries, but the real necessities of life. These are not being produced. We want more coal for industry and more coal for domestic heating. Of the total output in the British zone roughly half stays within the British zone, one quarter is exported to other countries and one quarter goes to other zones or is used for general purposes like railways outside the zone. The fact that we do export so much coal from the British zone of Germany is partly due to the fact that we are failing to export coal from this country. We are in a difficult position regarding France and Belgium and other countries, because no export of coal comes from here and we are under great pressure to export coal from the British zone. We must admit that, but the only effect of it is that we cannot get industry started again.

We cannot produce exports and that is one of the explanations for our £80,000,000 a year cost of the administration of the British zone. It is really as important to us to export goods from Germany as it is to export goods from here if we want to avoid unnecessary expense. I have mentioned this coal as one of the things on which we are free to act and on which we are not bound by the Potsdam decision. I want to say that I have just seen the evidence which General Robertson gave to the Select Committee of the House of Commons in July in which, speaking of the coal and the fact we did not get enough coal, he reminded the Committee that the question of coal was a question for the quadripartite authority. That is to say, it has to be agreed with America, France and Soviet Russia. I would like to ask the noble Lord who is to reply why the allocation of the coal that is produced in the British zone of Germany is a matter for quadripartite decision when the allocation of food that is produced throughout Germany is not a matter for a quadripartite decision, but can be settled, and is being settled, unilaterally. In the name of common sense, why this distinction between coal which is mainly produced in the British zone and the food which is mainly produced in other zones? There is no sense in it at all. Until there is some real change in this matter we shall have to go on buying because you cannot finance the highly industrialized population of our zone by exporting its raw materials like coal and timber. I think the noble Viscount the Leader of the House said something about what we were doing to export timber. We do not want to export timber, we want to use the timber for more production in Germany. You cannot finance the British zone by exporting raw material, and that is what we are doing. Until we can get something like a moratorium upon coal exports we shall never make sense of the British zone. I want to urge that pretty strongly indeed on His Majesty's Government.

The coal lack was the most urgent thing that I saw there, but probably to-day food is the more urgent. I do not want to dwell upon this dreadful crisis of food, of which the noble Lord opposite probably knows more than I do. I only read the newspapers, but I know that these people were living from hand to mouth. Since then we have had the American shipping strike and other great difficulties and we are finding it, I gather, impossible to honour the ration. Of course, this is one of the real world difficulties in dealing with the problem. What we can say is that we must somehow put the demands of our zone of Germany for which we are responsible higher in the scale of priority. It is true they are the last in the queue, but in an organized world even the last person in the queue should have the minimum ration before other people get more than the minimum ration. Somehow or other we have got to do that.

A number of other matters which are now dealt with by quadripartite decision seem to me to be open to criticism. I mentioned them in the article I wrote in The Times. I only want to mention them now and I will not dwell upon them. There is the cutting off of pensions to the German war wounded, which I venture to say is a thing which has offended the sense not only of Germans but of all responsible people in the British zone. They are being treated as war criminals, whereas they are really war victims. I heard that spoken about in the strongest possible terms by the most responsible people in the British zone. That we do as the result of the quadripartite decision; but why should we agree to do such a thing? Then we have been revising the social insurance without consulting the trade unions. It seems odd that this Government should be revising social insurance without consulting the trade unions, but that is what has happened. Then, under quadripartite decision, we have cut off all business communications between people in Germany and other countries. Cutting off business communications does not matter in the Soviet zone, because all business communications are Government communications. But it does matter vitally to us, unless we have already decided that the coal of our zone shall be completely socialized, and I do not think we have. I suggest that that is an example of control gone mad, control for the sake of control. In all this business, we are just trying to agree with others when they are wrong. I suggest that we ought to have our own mind on things and not go on agreeing with others when they are wrong.

Let me come now to the most important, but by no means the longest, topic of the Potsdam Protocol. There is real difficulty in discussing the Potsdam Agreement in this country, because it has never been laid before either House of Parliament and it has never been published as a White Paper; indeed, if what I am told in Germany is true, there are some parts of it which have never been published at all. They are being acted upon, but they have not been published. I do not want to say more on that than this. I want to suggest that if there are parts of it which have never been published we ought to lay down the principle that, while secret discussion of agreements is right, no democracy can be bound by an agreement which is kept secret, and nobody who represents a democracy ought to make a secret agreement in peace time. I suggest that as a principle of democratic government in foreign affairs we should have confidential discussion in making agreements but we should not have secret agreements. I do not personally want to revise the Potsdam Agreement, or to give it more publicity than it has had in the past. I think we all know, because the Foreign Secretary in the other place made it quite plain, that the Potsdam Agreement has been completely flouted by our Allies in some respects.

May I just remind your Lordships of one or two of them? One of the points is that so far as is practicable there shall be uniformity of treatment of the German population outside Germany. Other points are that Germany shall be a single economic unit; and that exports from current production and stock shall be available in the first place for payment of imports. Clearly the Potsdam Agreement implies an absolute, single united administration of Germany; the different troops in different parts of Germany, the Russians in one part, the Americans in another, the French in another, and the British in another, but with a single united administration. We all know that nothing of the sort has happened and that, in fact, there is no free access for our people to the Soviet zone at all. I suggest that until we get that real co-operation in administering Germany as a whole in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement we should say that for our part the Potsdam Agreement is in suspense. The position reminds me very much of the position of Mr. Morris Finsbury, the character who was once adjured by a friend of his that he should act as a gentleman. His answer was: "Many years ago I tried acting as a gentleman, but with the legal profession as it is it is such a one-sided business." I suggest to you that, with the international world as it is, acting as a gentleman is a one-sided business, and we are rather in that position.

I do not want to make that my main point. I do not think carrying out the Potsdam Agreement would really be acting as a gentleman, because I do not think the Potsdam Agreement is acting in accord with the Atlantic Charter or is in itself practicable. I want to urge that we should now come out with complete revision of it, and particularly of two things. One is the industrial side. The industrial side of it lays down the elimination of all industry that could be used for war. If you say "elimination of all industry that could be used for war", that is obviously nonsensical, because there is no industry which cannot be used for war. If you want to know how far we have gone, or nearly gone, into the purely ridiculous in applying that, here is one example. In Hamburg there were discovered to be a number of sheds which at one time were just ordinary plain sheds, four walls and a roof, which used to be used for making fireworks and, therefore, during the war were used for some kind of explosives. The military authorities were determined to destroy these on the ground that they could be used for war purposes. Fortunately they were saved and are now being used to house people. We are threatening to abolish a shipyard which is making fishing boats on the ground that it could be used for war purposes. Of course, every fishing boat could become a mine-sweeper or a mine-layer.

If you insist on the elimination of everything that could be used for war, you must eliminate the whole of industry. Elimination is an absurdity. What you have to do is to emphasize the other side of it, which is control of all that can be used. Let us have control and do away with elimination. I suggest that is the line we ought to take. The trouble with that common-sense procedure, saying that we are going to do away with elimination and we will only control that which can be used for war purposes, is that unfortunately this Potsdam business of dismantling is tied up with reparations to the Allies. What has happened is that the Potsdam decision was followed last March by a level-of-industry agreement which we made under the Potsdam decision, which laid down how much per cent. of every industry Germany should be allowed to have, and everything she is not allowed to have is liable to be sent to Soviet Russia, Yugoslavia, or wherever it may be, as reparations.

I would like to ask the noble Lord who is going to answer whether he is able to tell me anything as to what is going to happen to the Stulcken Works, which I mentioned in my article in The Times, which for seventy-five years had made fishing boats and are now making fishing boats. When I was in Hamburg they were told they had to be shut up, although fishing boats were most urgently needed. I wrote and I spoke to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and I got the answer that they were on the list for reparation supplies and therefore must be shut up. That is the last answer I had. I hope the noble Lord is going to-day to be able to give me a different one, because I cannot imagine anything that would be less defensible than to do that, following on the blowing up of 12,000 tons of one shipyard and the dismantling of another.

I hope the noble Lord may also have something to tell us about what was in the Manchester Guardian on Saturday, November 2, as to the dismantling of all these places in the Ruhr. The whole of this dismantling of German industry is thoroughly bad for four reasons. First of all, it actually delays recovery. I have had it from people engaged on it that they could have done much more reconstruction if they had not been spending so much time on dismantling. Secondly, it destroys the morale of the German people because it destroys their hope. Thirdly, it is bad because it is keeping faith with people who have not kept faith with us on the Potsdam Agreement. Finally, it is putting the means of making further wars beyond our control, whereas at the moment they are under our control in the British zone. I do not want to dwell on that, but that is a fourth sufficient reason. I think the Government should stop at once the elimination of anything with a peace potential and work out a new plan for control, not elimination, for the whole of Germany.

One word only about the companion problem of denazification. Under that heading, the Potsdam Agreement involves the removal from positions of public or private responsibility of anyone who has been more than a nominal Nazi—the dismissal of anyone who has risen as high, for example, as a corporal in the Nazi organization. I gave in the article in The Times the case of the best oculist in Hamburg who was not allowed to cure people of blindness because of that. I can add now from my postbag the case of the best seed expert in Germany. He was never a Nazi but he was so good that he was given an honour by the Nazis and therefore he is now in prison. I will give details of that case later to the noble Lord if he will get it looked into.

Here again, we are playing the game but the Soviet is not. Why do we go on playing the game? I suggest that we ought to pray in aid the words which stand at the head of the Potsdam Agreement—namely, that it is an agreement for the initial period of control, and only for the initial period of control. We should say that now we have got to the point of beginning to discuss a treaty the agreement is in suspense and all destructive action under it is suspended until that treaty is made. To repeat a point I made the other night, the Potsdam Agreement is, I think, impossible anyhow, but the Potsdam Agreement for the level of industry in Germany, combined with the new frontiers which are projected for Germany on the east, is utterly and hopelessly impracticable. I think we ought to say that the two things hang together.

I have already taken too long, but now I want to come to the last point of all. I do not underrate the difficulties of our task in Germany. The difficulties are immense and the task is extremely important. Its importance is a reason for giving it more attention, and more authoritative attention, than we have given to it in the past. We have been governing our zone in Germany by a species of remote control from London to Berlin, which is not in our zone, and which in some ways is out of touch with our zone—it must be. I have no doubt that it is this remote control which, in small things, has led to our getting a reputation for, I should-almost say, callous incompetence. I do not think we deserve it—we are neither callous nor incompetent—but the way in which we have administered our zone has given us that reputation in Germany. We have sat down for fifteen months under the complete flouting of the Potsdam Agreement by our Allies, and all we have done about it is to protest verbally and say things about it. We have gone on carrying out our part of the Agreement.

There has been this same weakness in dealing with our Allies in relation to the urgent coal needs, food needs, and material needs of the British zone, for which we are responsible, and for which, therefore, we pay if it cannot pay for them itself. I do not, of course, underestimate the difficulties of getting things done in Germany; nor do I ignore the fact that the really authoritative people in this country have had many other things to occupy their time. Germany is both a local problem and one of the political issues in our relations with our Allies and with the world as a whole. Therefore in the last resort the big decisions must come back to the Foreign Secretary, the Prime Minister and the Cabinet; but somehow or other that has meant that for fifteen months Germany has not had the important attention that it should have had—because it really is of first-rate importance.

When I am told that the Foreign Secretary has dealt with this matter before—and we all know how busy he has been—I confess I am a little reminded of the Minister in the First World War who was dealing with food and who did not manage to deal with all his problems in time. He explained "I cannot drive all my buses through Temple Bar at the same time; they have to wait their turn." But his successor solved that problem by the simple device of removing Temple Bar—namely, the bottle-neck of his own mind—and having any number of really responsible people in charge of the different sections of his work. I do not know how it can be done, but, somehow or other, I am sure it has to be done in dealing with this international problem. I think it means having a really responsible Minister of Cabinet rank living in the zone. I suggest that would be a better way in which to administer it. I say deliberately "living in the zone" and not in Berlin. There can be, if you like, an Ambassador to deal with the Soviet and our other Allies in Berlin. Germany is a very important part of the British Commonwealth at the present moment—a very important part indeed. My final word is this, and I hope I shall not be accused of lapsing into sloppy sentimentality. I think we should assert more to our Allies our views of humanity, justice, democracy and tolerance. I think we should make more of the Atlantic Charter and less of the Potsdam Agreement.

3.8 p.m.

THE LORD BISHOP OF CHICHESTER

My Lords, I have just returned from a second extensive tour of the British zone, from the Ruhr to Berlin, at the head of a joint delegation of Protestants and Roman Catholics to the Protestant and Roman Catholic Churches of Germany. I saw not only churchmen but representatives of every class—burgomasters, industrialists, trade unionists, Party leaders, university teachers, and social workers. Like the noble Lord who has just sat down—to whom we are all indebted for a most authoritative and persuasive speech—I should like to thank the Control Commission and the officers concerned for their great efficiency, kindness and hospitality.

The situation as we saw it was far worse than a year before, when I was there in other circumstances. I would repeat what one of the most influential authorities said to me at an early stage. England does not realize it. It is necessary to see the stark realities, both psychological and physical, on the spot. I wish that the Foreign Secretary and also the Chancellor of the Exchequer would go to the British zone and study the situation there, for they would then see in a much more tangible way than they can from a distance the gravity of the crisis facing all Europe and Britain, as well as Germany. There are two fundamental facts, firstly, the complete prostration of Germany, including the impossibility of establishing a war potential for the next thirty years at least, and secondly, the fact that the Government of Germany to-day is formed by the occupying Powers, the Quadripartite Commission, and as one of those Powers it is the British Parliament and the British Government who are responsible for the life and future of the German people in the British zone.

The two noble Lords who have spoken have just given you a clear analysis of the main elements of the situation in the British zone, and nobody could read the papers to-day without appreciating the new and alarming increase in the gravity of the food situation. I would give you just one or two brief illustrations of what we found on our tour. Dusseldorf has a population of 400,000 persons; 9,000 persons live in cellars or shelters with no windows; 1,500 to 2,000 persons have no fixed shelter at all and have to seek a place to rest their heads afresh each night, and 47,000 persons live in very dilapidated houses without windows or doors. The infant mortality in Dusseldorf has risen from seven per cent. to thirteen per cent. I was in Hamburg with a Salvation Army worker going round a great number of hovels, cellars and attics, inspecting them with my own eyes. You cannot imagine the damp, wretched, windowless dungeons in which people have to live, or the material, moral or medical consequences of such habitation. In Berlin in 1939 the total number of tuberculosis cases was 8,000. On July 31 of this year there, were 62,000 including 3,560 new cases in July.

The situation could hardly be more serious, and I noted, as the noble Lords have noted, an extraordinary change in the attitude of the whole population to the British Authorities. There is an almost complete want of confidence. Rumours are rife everywhere, and quite fantastic rumours, such as the statement that the English remove the food from Germany in order to feed the English and starve the Germans. Questions are asked, and as they are asked they ought to be noted: Is the paralysis intended? Is the destruction deliberate? Do the British really want the German people to die? There will be both a material and a psychological catastrophe with unpredictable consequences unless a great change is brought about in the next few months. By this I do not mean a change in Military Government, for although there are no doubt details and agents to criticize here and there in the Military Government, as in every other occupation, I should like to record my own admiration of the leaders of the Control Commission and Military Government in the British zone. No one who saw them and talked to them could fail to be impressed by their high standard of public service, the sense of responsibility and the desire to do their very best for the German people as trustees for Britain, by which they are inspired.

What is needed is a change in policy, a change in attitude, a creation of trust and a new basis of confidence, which is indispensable. In this I suggest that four principal factors are involved. I would agree in passing with what the noble Lord, Lord Beveridge, said about the revision of the Potsdam Agreement, root and branch, but subject to that working within the present framework. I would say first that we should insist upon the immediate fulfillment of the Potsdam decision to treat Germany, during the period of occupation, as a single economic unit involving, of course, the establishment of common policies as to mining, industrial production and allocation of import and export programmes for Germany as a whole. I understand that when the Soviet authorities were asked why they did not work their zone as part of an economic unit they said it was not opportune. If, after the other three occupying Powers have pressed as hard as they can, they still refuse, then we have a right to reply for our part that it is not opportune to remove industrial equipment from the Western zones, to destroy Germany's productive capacity and to continue to export German coal on the present scale.

A second principal factor in creating a basis of confidence is the bringing of the present process of denazification to an end. There was criticism on all sides throughout the zone of the present system. Denazification cuts at the root of all German life. In the early days after our victory it was regarded as the key to the whole problem of Germany, but now that is seen to be an error. National Socialism is generally recognized by the Germans as the path of madness, and the real danger is lest by unwise actions and policies on our part we should renazify the German people. The best of the Germans—nearly all, but not quite all—have been killed by Hitler, but subject to that the truth is that the great majority of the younger men of initiative could not very well help being members of a party or organization. If all of them are disqualified from taking an effective part in Germany's recovery, German life cannot get going again. Eighteen months after the war we are not within sight, on the present basis, of the end of denazification.

There are two classes—those within the internment camps and those who are denazified outside them. There are 38,000 persons in the British zone who are interned. I spent several hours at one of these civilian internment camps—No. 7 Esenheide near Haumuhle. It has been newly reopened. Conditions were very bad but there is a first-class Commanding Officer and a staff all doing their best. There you find Gestapo men, brutal murderers and war criminals. I talked to many and I found among them a boy of eighteen who at sixteen and a half had been interned as a corporal of the Hitler Youth Organization. He may have had some other offences against him but that was what was told me. Others in the camp included persons holding small posts in the local kreis, clerks in the Health Through Joy movement, those with small posts in the S.S., three hundred doctors and two hundred teachers locked up without charge. They were unable to communicate with their relatives except by means of twenty-four words on a postcard, once a month, the postcard to be censored in Bonn. Think of it: thirty-eight thousand postcards a month to be censored in one place! It is generally acknowledged that a very large proportion of these men will eventually be set free. In the meantime, they are suffering injustice and when they get out their livelihood will either have gone or have been very greatly impaired.

Then there is the second class, those outside the internment camps, the very great majority. We have to remember that among very many large numbers of these were nominal members of the Party; that, at the later stages of the war, transfer from the Wehrmacht to the S.S. was compulsory; and that the date of joining is, therefore, no real index to a man's present attitude. Many started as idealists in 1928 or 1929, and then saw the wickedness of the system. There are many young men who do not remember the world before 1933. The present procedure is to examine every single case in great detail. In Hamburg I was told there are five courts which examine thirty cases per week. There are eighteen thousand cases to be investigated, which means, assuming that the procedure continues at the present rate, that the whole job will take twelve years. Now there is the new edict, No. 38, published three weeks ago, since Nuremberg, by the terms of which not only wrongdoers but those who in the opinion of the Zone Commander might become dangerous come within its range. This, surely, is a crowning illustration of the fact that the conception underlying the system is wrong, for it would seem to aim not at actual criminals but at potential criminals. Everyone is in danger under such a system. All sorts of opportunities are offered to the denouncer and the hunter of witches. Indeed it brings back the terror State. Nobody who has not lived in a terror State, such as Germany was, can imagine what it means. No one who has stood under its ban can forget.

One of the most urgent and essential things is to deal with this whole question. October 16 should mark the beginning of a new chapter in the attitude to those who were under Hitler's sway. It is not only a question of acceleration of release or of increase of staff or of administration, but of guiding principles. The guiding principles, I suggest, should be these. Those who have committed crimes under the law should be punished as soon as possible if found guilty by a proper court. Those who, up to the last moment, with leading positions, were active for National Socialism and fought for it, should be removed from all leading positions in public and private life. In all other cases people ought to get the opportunity to start a new life and to stand the test.

The third principal factor in establishing a basis of confidence is to give the Germans more responsibility for their own internal and industrial life. I know that efforts are now being made, but much more is required. At present, as a burgomaster told me, the Germans have no right to say anything. The burgomaster gave me some telling illustrations of the disastrous economic results of failure to consult. You cannot truthfully say, as paragraph 16 in the Potsdam Agreement says, that the responsibility for the administration of such economic controls and any breakdown in those controls will rest with the German people, until you really give effective control to the German people. Now everyone can say when they see breakdowns or inefficiency or collapse: "It is the British who are guilty." At least tell the Germans what kind of a Germany they will have under the Peace Treaties. At present there is a complete disbelief in the existence of justice and there is no hope.

I suggest, first, that we should make it plain that Germany, East and West, shall be one for certain purposes, however much devolution to regions may be worked with it. Second, we must face the fact, as Lord Beveridge has faced it, of the reduction of German territory in a provisional way. There are twelve million refugees from the east populating the western zones, and nearly two million of these are in the British zone. They cannot live on charity indefinitely. In the long run, a political solution has to be found. This question ought to be faced in the most serious way: whether the whole of the territory provisionally administered by the Polish State ought to be ceded to Poland at the peace settlement seeing that it is much more than enough to compensate the Poles for the territory lost to Russia.

In conclusion, I would plead for a restoration of confidence. Let the Germans see that no stone is left unturned to cope with the famine situation. Remove the obstacles which stand in the way of self-determination. Let the Government do their best to banish mistrust as to the intentions of the victorious States. It is impossible to hide the hard fact that the Germans have a hard row to tread for a long while. Once it is clear that there is a basis for confidence, all the best forces in Germany will do their utmost for recovery.

3.30 p.m.

LORD LINDSAY OF BIRKER

My Lords, I do not want to criticize anything said by noble Lords who have so far spoken. I think I agree with almost everything they have said. But nobody can look at this question without feeling the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Beveridge, that lots of things which we want to do in Germany are not in our control. We can only say, and I am sure His Majesty's Government can only say, that in regard to some points of the Potsdam Agreement about treating Germany as an economic unit we are doing our best to get those things put right. Of course a person who works with the Russians needs not only a long spoon but a great deal of patience. You cannot hurry those things.

I want to put to your Lordships' House certain things which I think we can do now. I will enumerate them first, and later I will say something about them. I think that the British Control Commission, especially in this country, suffers from security madness. The amount of censorship and examination of persons is just awful, and I do not believe that it is in the least necessary. Secondly, I want to repeat something that I have already said twice in this House. Nobody has paid any attention to it, and I might add that I propose to go on until somebody does. That is, that if you are to get first-class men to do this most difficult of jobs you must give them Civil Service security. That has now been stated by the Committee, whose Report I have here, and perhaps some attention will be paid to it. Thirdly, I want to plead with the Government to second to Germany, for a year, between six and a dozen first-class practical economists, to deal with the extraordinarily intricate questions which are confronting us all over the place. Lastly, I want the Government to reexamine the set-up of the Control Commission, which is suffering very severely through certain faults in that set-up.

May I take, first, the Control Commission? In my experience, one's heart is lightened by the industry and the nobility of its members, and by the fine things they are trying to do. One soon realizes, however, that they are working under incredibly difficult conditions. We ought, in this House, to remember that we have by far the most difficult section of Germany to administer. The British zone is one of extraordinary industrial complexity. We administer the zone in a very odd way. Our system is not a free economy; it is not a Socialist economy controlled by itself. It is controlled by the Occupying Power, and the questions which arise are of very great complexity. I do not think that they can be answered by ordinary hard-working officials who are occupied with daily problems. We have got to do something about that. If you go to the Commission, you find intolerable delays.

I will give you one experience, which contrasts with the American and French zones. A young man came to me in Oxfort last summer and said that he and some others would like to go to a conference to confer with German students. I put his request to the Control Commission, who welcomed it but said that the officials in Germany would reject such a visit. Opinion in Germany then changed. They said they would like the men to go, and I was asked to get hold of the young men. (It was a little late by this time, as six weeks had elapsed.) I did find the young men, and was then told that they could go only if they paid all their own expenses. Oxford students are not now the millionaires they used to be, and they cannot easily go on trips to Germany, paying their own expenses. After some negotiations, it was stated that they could go on payment of half the expenses. By this time it was well on in September, and the opportunity was lost. To my surprise I found that there had been two international conferences of students, one in the American zone and one in the French zone—surprisingly enough—which had been held without all this fuss, and that two of the young men had gone from Oxford.

That is one instance. Another is more absurd. I heard last week of one officer of the Control Commission—a Major in the Army, with a lot of experience in Germany—who had come home for demobilization and who was wanted back at once. He could not get back until he had gone through Bletchley. But he cannot go through Bletchley, because there are no vacancies. What is there at Bletchley? There is a school to teach people about Germany. There is far too much wellintentioned, meticulous, and unimaginative conscientiousness. That applies above all, I think, to the security regulations which are always coming in the way of progress.

May I read a paragraph in a most interesting document about present conditions of Germany, written by that great Swiss theologian, Karl Barth? I wonder how many of your Lordships, in the dark days of June, 1940, read his noble message to the French Protestants. It rang like a challenge. He writes in this recent document: Germany is to-day one vast hermetically sealed prison camp. It is only in exceptional cases that Germans can travel abroad or foreigners visit Germany (as I at least have been allowed to do) Postal communications are impeded and made difficult by the censorship which, for example, expressly forbids the enclosure of printed matter (even newspaper cuttings). Germans read no foreign papers and books, and foreigners no German ones. Germans are living to-day—in continuation of their way of life in the Third Reich—shut up in a terrifying way in themselves, left alone with their own cares and problems, imaginings and ideas. But in the long run it cannot be healthy for the other nations only to know the Germans of to-day from a distance and in the light of the nightmare pictures of the period of the wars of domination—now luckily at an end It seems to me an urgent command not only of humanity, but also of a wise policy to open at last the closed doors between Germany and the world outside How can the Germans be readmitted to the fellowship of the other nations and learn to trust them and win their trust, as long as they continue to form the ghetto to which they are condemned today? I do pray that people should realize that you do far less to make the Germans Nazis again by allowing a few suspicious characters to go to Germany, than by allowing a continuation of the conditions which now exist, because they are bound to breed Nazism. Far be it from me to deny the importance of starvation and food, but I sometimes think that hopelessness affects people a great deal more. We do not mean it, but unwittingly we are allowing that state of affairs to continue.

The second thing I want to say is this. I do not want to ask the Government to give security to all the 26,000 members of the Commission in Germany, but I do say that if you want to get the best men to do this very difficult job you must give them the same sort of security that you give the young men who go into the Foreign Office or the Civil Service. We have young men from Germany to-day—quite first-class men, with plenty of knowledge and experience. Are they to go back to Germany, and be thrown out of employment in five or seven years, just when they cannot find it? It will be many times worth while to give them some sort of security, and to make some sort of provision for them. I will not enter into a long discussion on that. It is recommended in the Report of the Committee to which I have referred.

I want now to say something of more importance. We are concerned, in Germany, with a matter of frightful complexity, and I am sure that it needs a great deal of expert advice. And I say "advice" very advisedly. I do not want the Government to take economists, however distinguished, and put them in positions of executive power. It is not the business of Cabinet Ministers or executive powers to be economists, but it is their business to have their advice. We are dealing with questions of very great complexity. May I give an instance of the sort of thing that happens? Prices have all gone entirely "phoney." A miner working in the Ruhr six shifts a week, will get, after he has paid his tax, 150 marks a month. If he likes to sell his cigarette cards for the same period he will get 250 marks. The production of a certain quantity—I cannot remember what the quantity was but it does not really matter—of copper costs, everybody agrees, 1,000 marks. The controlled price at which it may be sold is 250. What happened about that was that the people producing the copper said they were going bankrupt and must stop. The Finance Commission then told the banks to lend them the money. The banks said they would not lend money to people obviously going bankrupt. They were then told "This is a military order." The firms said they would not have a loan, because it would make them bankrupt. The finance commission fortunately did not control the firms. They then asked the Economic Organization, which is a different section, if they would order the firms to take a loan which would enable them to go on towards bankruptcy!

There are problems of that kind. I do not think it is anybody's fault. I think it needs expect knowledge. May I give an instance of the kind of thing I know has happened? The British section of Berlin was a place of great industrial activity, and of great importance to German industry. Something like three-fifths of the electrical goods produced in Germany were produced in Siemens, from our part of Berlin. Siemens fortunately has been almost completely destroyed. It therefore was not concerned with the thought that it may be taken for reparation. It was then arranged that there should be some allocation of coal—which so far there had not been—to Siemens. Before that Siemens employed 150 men. They are now employing 15,000. Fortunately, Siemens, which has been destroyed, is not liable for reparations. We are conducting this whole business of trying to assess what firms are superfluous for reparations with extraordinarily meticulous conscientiousness with the result that up to a few weeks ago we had declared four firms superfluous. My informant, a trained man, could not put a figure as to what it had cost us. He thought obviously more than £1,000,000, and possibly not so much as £3,000,000. He was certain it would have saved a lot of money to have made a present to the Russians of the same factories out of this country. This process is going on. It is very good of us to do this. We are fulfilling the Potsdam Agreement with this prodigious conscientiousness, with this silly result.

Further, there is the very difficult problem about the currency. There is an immense mass of purchasing power in Germany. If you let it loose and if there were any goods to buy, the result would be dreadful. What are you going to do? The Russians have blocked these markets. I understand there is a contest going on in our zone as to what should be done. What I want to emphasize is that it is not an easy question to solve. It is a very difficult question to know what you ought to do with German currency under those conditions. There are similar problems about the allocation of things like coal. I may make a point about that. On hearing this, I recognized the situation I was up against in the First World War. On the general principle that one was asked to do a thing as unlike as possible what one did in real life, I was made a controller of labor in the First World War. I found, if I may say so with respect, what the uneconomic mind does about things. It asked for demands. It then took the demands, found what proportion could be satisfied and cut everybody down proportionately. Anybody with any sense recognizes it does not cost more to ask for 10,000 things than for one. Therefore, if you have any knowledge of what is going to happen, you ask for, let us say, 5,000 tons of coal, knowing you can use 1,000 and, expecting to be cut down half. When you get 2,500, you use your 1,000 and you sell the rest to the black market. It is quite simple. Any sensible person would do it. But it is a subtle business to put right. I do not know what the right answer is except that I gather this has now been put right.

I shall not keep your Lordships much longer. I could enumerate many problems of this kind. I am sure that what you want with these overworked executives, in whose decisions everybody seems to have the utmost confidence, is that they should be assisted by people whose business it is to deal with problems of this sort, recognizing the complexity—and it is a great complexity to combine a planned economy run by an Occupying Power with a certain amount of free industry. I do appeal to the Government to try and get young practical-minded economists. I hope it will be realized that any young economist who is now unemployed in this country will probably be a bad economist. There is far too great a demand for good young economists in this country to take people who do not happen to be employed. I am perfectly certain if the Government realized how important this was, and went to the universities and said, "Will you second A, B or C to the German Control Commission for a year?" they would do it. The Colonial Office do it. The Colonial Office gets young men to go out for a year to some place like Malaya to advise the authorities there. I know that some colleges when asked about this, have said, "In spite of the great shortage of teachers, if you can assure us that this is a really important business we will try to lend you these men." I think if the Government would do that, if they could get between half a dozen and a dozen good young economists and take them from their jobs for a year, They would get them, and. I think that might make an enormous difference to our administration in Germany.

Lastly, I would pray the Government just to look again at the set-up of the whole Commission. It is only too obvious that there are very great faults. Several of the noble Lords who have spoken have mentioned the shortage of houses. I am told in the Russian zone there are fifteen square yards per person, in the American zone ten square yards and in the British zone four square yards. Who is going to run things if man-power and housing are in one special Sub-Commission and industry and building in another Sub-Commission? Any unfortunate German trying to run this has got to deal with these people. What is much worse is the separation of the Economic Sub-Commission and the Finance Sub-Commission. These two things are clearly dependent and complementary, and you cannot run Germany unless you put these economic things together. These things, I think, are all possible without necessarily getting the agreement of the four Powers, and certainly without getting anything changed in the procedure. Do noble Lords realize that German industry is working now under thirty per cent. of what is allowed under the Potsdam Agreement? If these things were done I think we really could say, at any rate, that we have done the best job we can do within the conditions we have got and thus have a much better case to argue that those conditions must be improved.

3.51 p.m.

VISCOUNT SWINTON

My Lords, I think it would be wrong if this important debate were to pass without a speech from this Bench. I propose to be as brief as I can. I also hope I shall be constructive. It is very easy to diagnose the disease—the vicious circle of shortages and deficiencies of food, coal, houses, and consumer goods, all inter-dependent and each shortage breeding another shortage. If you can relieve the shortage of one you relieve the shortage of another. That is common ground, and it is easy to say. It is a great deal harder to prescribe the remedy, but I am sure it is not worth while speaking in a debate like this unless you try to offer constructive suggestions and try to offer remedies which are within our capacity and, as has been well said in this debate, within our powers as they are to-day.

I should myself find it easier if I were a little career as to what is the precise relationship between the civil administrations and the military administrations in Germany. If the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, with his usual courtesy and clarity, for both of which he is renowned, could tell us very briefly what is the relationship between the military and the civil, I think we should all he obliged. I am glad to find myself in complete agreement with Lord Beveridge on my first point. I am perfectly certain that you have got to have on the spot a Minister with real powers to take decisions and to make those decisions effective on the spot. I have said that very dogmatically, and I venture to do so because I had for two years in the war exactly that experience of being sent out as a Minister of Cabinet rank to do a war job. It was a job of production, of supply, of strategy and of control in our own territories in West Africa, and to work in the closest co-operation with the territories of our Allies, the Belgians, the French, and further down with the Portuguese. It was exactly the situation which exists in Germany to-day. There is our own zone which is the exact equivalent of the territories I had, and there are the adjoining zones which is again exactly the relationship which I had with the French and with the Belgians.

Now the first thing is that the Minister should have power to take decisions and to see that those decisions are made effective. There need be no risk, if you give the Minister that power, that you are overriding or treading on the toes of this or that Government Department. He should be, as Resident Minister, or Minister of State or whatever we call him, a projection of his colleagues in the Cabinet. Policy is laid down and is agreed and there is not the least difficulty in that Minister carrying out that policy and giving his directions to the different authorities, military or civil. I had not the least difficulty when I was in West Africa in giving directions to the three Service Ministries, to the Colonial Administrators or in regard to foreign affairs, or in matters of supply. In food, for example, Lord Woolton and my noble friend Lord Llewellin were here, and of course we agreed the policy together. The policy was laid down and it was not merely a question of having an agreed policy in the British Cabinet, it was a question of having agreed policies between all the Allies or certainly between ourselves and the Americans. One's contacts were nearly as much with Washington as with England. It was the only way of getting the job done.

Of course, that does imply that you have got to have a policy and if there is not a policy then no Minister can carry it out, but you do not make it better by having several Ministers. The next thing I would say is that that Minister must be on the spot. I agree entirely with Lord Beveridge in this, and I think Lord Lindsay would agree too. Everything turns on personal contact. It is no good receiving reports in Whitehall. When I was in West Africa I flew a thousand miles a week on an average. The only way of getting the job done was to sit in with the men, whether it was a military, a naval or a supply job. I flew to Freetown to sit in with the Admiral and the Air Force, and the same with supply, because you had to go round your territories and sit in with the men having the problems before them. You had to go down and visit your neighbours constantly. I would get a message from the Governor-General of the Congo about something and it was no good sending telegrams about it. The simple thing to do was to get in one's aeroplane and fly sixteen hundred miles because everything depended on personal contact. You get to know your staff that way, and get personal contact with the people in the other zones.

I am sure it is true you do not want a vast office. I think our own administration is too big. I do not speak with first-hand experience of Germany, but I feel sure that what we want is fewer and better. I do emphatically agree with Lord Lindsay that you are not going to get the good few unless you offer the right terms. You may get this or that man of public spirit spared by his firm or university to go out for a year to do a job, but some of the best of these men are young men who are standing to-day at the parting of the ways. They can come forward and do work that nobody else can do, but how can you expect them to do that if you give them a five years' contract? If you say to a man of 25 or 26 "Very well, you have done well in the war and are the right man for the job—"

A NOBLE LORD

One year.

VISCOUNT SWINTON

I am not sure that one year is not better than five, but the vital thing is that he is going to have the risk that you will throw him adrift at a time when he cannot go into a business. If we are going to occupy Germany for a long time, as I have no doubt we shall have to, I would take my chance and offer him a longer period, and if these are the people who are really well worth having you would much better say "I will keep you on in the public service whether it is the Foreign Office or the Colonial Office." If they are the men who are really good and not the men who want a job and are looking for a safe job, you probably will want to keep them at the end of the time, and quite a lot of other people will want to get them away from you. But you have no business to ask those men to play for uncertainty when you want to be sure of them.

The next thing I want to say is this. Do not let us try to do every German's job, whether it be in administration or in industry. We are not competent to do it. If we try to do it the German loses heart, and I think hopelessness is perhaps worse than hunger. He tends to lean back upon us and fails to develop a sense of responsibility. And it is not going to be too easy to develop a sense of responsibility in administration in a country that is accustomed to being run from the top and from the centre, and we shall be blamed for everything that goes wrong.

Another point is that we must have a sense of proportion and a sense of balance in this matter, and it is most of all necessary in regard to Germany economically. Of course we have got to prevent German rearmament, but that is not going to be a very difficult thing to-day. The thing the Germans are worrying about to-day is not building guns but getting enough to eat and enough to wear. The danger to-day is not rearmament, but a danger of a hungry, homeless and hearthless population. I would say this—and I think it is the only point with which I disagree in the Foreign Secretary's speech—do not let us impose our economic ideology on them from outside. I am not saying for a moment whether a socialized industry in Germany, in this or that industry, is right or wrong, but I do say that the people who ought to decide that are the Germans and not ourselves.

I say that for two reasons. First of all, it is contrary to all that we are arguing for in international affairs to-day. Surely, the whole plea we put up is that neither the great Powers nor the combined Powers should dictate to a country what it should do internally, provided that it is not doing something which is damaging to the security of the world. After all, we fought this war for freedom and "freedom "means the right to determine your own fate provided you do not create a security threat to other people. It would be wise to leave the Germans to decide this for themselves, and unless they decide it for themselves they are not at all likely to stick to what is imposed on them. Nor is it in the least necessary from the point of view of security. In things great and small we have gone rather silly, I think, if I may respectfully say so, about security. I also had some-thing to do with security in the course of the war. It is quite absurd to say that officers are not to be driven about by German chauffeurs for fear that they may be insecure, while chauffeurs who are badly needed in industry in England are sent out to Germany at eight or nine pounds a week, when the German chauffeur is really quite competent to drive the car and, as his livelihood depends upon it, he will probably be quite as secure.

One of the things about security, I will not say I had to teach people during the war, but, at any rate, we learnt together during the war, is that it does not mean casting a wide meshed net round everything in the world. That is the last way in which you get security. Security means a very careful narrow net drawn where you have a risk, and in fact security all the time has got to be informed by intelligence, intelligence with a big "I" as well as intelligence with a small "i."

So much for the smaller side of it. To take it on the big scale, do you have to have a particular system in Germany in order to prevent that industry from turning over to being a war danger? It is not really sensible. I speak subject to correction and the noble Lord will correct me if I am wrong. The key to all this is the Rhineland and the Ruhr. That is where all the motive power has to come from. Of course you have to get coal; there is not dispute on that, and everybody agrees that we have to get out as much coal as we possibly can. So there is no security question there. With regard to steel, we have to produce a great deal more steel, and we have probably got to produce more than is provided for in the Potsdam plan. But we are nowhere near the Potsdam plan as vet in the steel figures. What is the risk in the production of steel? Is it not a fact that 85 per cent. or 86 per cent. of the iron ore which goes into the making of steel in the Ruhr, comes from abroad? If that is so, the way to control the Ruhr industry is to control it by licensing the imports of raw material. That is much the most effective form of control you can have; and if you want to carry it further you can also make a condition of your licence that you should have control over where the manufactured or semi-manufactured articles go to afterwards. We seem to tackle the Ruhr last; we ought to tackle it first, because it contains the prime movers, the coal and the steel.

I would like to make one or two other constructive suggestions about that. The best way you can use the Ruhr coal is to use it on the spot in the production of electricity. That certainly applies to the brown coal lower down in the Cologne area where there are great electrical plants. It is a great deal easier, as well as being more economical, to carry current on high tension wires than it is to carry coal, and the maximum amount of electricity should be produced on the spot. Again, the thing moves in a circle—shortage of mining machinery. I do not know whether some of the plants which make mining machinery have been designated for reparations, but surely the very first thing one wants to-day is to have the full mining machinery of German industry working. It is needed for their own mines, and we need a great deal of that machinery here. I believe one of the difficulties in English coal mines is that you cannot get the mining machinery. Take another thing—fertilizers. We have got to get the maximum we can out of the land. How absurd it is, if it be true, that any limitation should be put upon fertilizers. The danger to these people is starvation. We have but a very small amount of agricultural land in our zone of Germany, and we need all the fertilizers we can get.

Let me put this to your Lordships in conclusion. The most important thing is to get the immediate things done as quickly as possible. Do not let us wait for great long-range plans which may be all right but which will take years to accomplish, or on which you may never get agreement and which may never mature. Planned navigation is a very good way of avoiding shipwreck, but when you have got a shipwreck and when people are floundering in the water, you do not want long-range plans; what you want is salvage and first-aid. The French have a very good motto, "The better is the enemy of the good". In this reestablishment of German industry I am sure the motto we should set before ourselves and the principle which we should put into practice is that the better is the enemy of the good, and we should get the practicable things done in any way we can as quickly as possible.

Even if co-operation in all the zones were complete, I say this would still be the right policy to get German industry going as and where we can. But that co-operation is not there, and I would certainly say that we are much more likely to get co-operation from our Allies if, within the zone which is under our control and which is our own responsibility, we go forward doing that which is right and necessary. In that way we are more likely to get co-operation than by waiting to try to secure theoretical agreement. Let us go forward without delay in doing what is immediately practicable. That is in our own interest and in the interest of the Germans, and neither in our interests nor that of the Germans can we afford to wait.

4.12 p.m.

LORD ROCKLEY

My Lords, it is with much diffidence that I attempt to make a contribution to this debate, but I am prompted to do so because I was a member of the Military Government which went into Germany, after experience with civil affairs in Belgium and France. As has been said by some noble Lords, I think that people over here do not fully appreciate the conditions in Germany. When we went in at the end of hostilities there was really a complete dislocation of transport. The rolling stock had almost disappeared, lorries were non-existant, and thousands of bridges over almost all the roads had been blown. In addition, of course, there were acres of houses reduced to rubble in every city, and very little clearing up had been done. On top of that, there were literally millions of displaced persons who were wandering about the countryside carrying in their wake general hooliganism. I remember going along some twenty miles of road near Munster in the beginning of June, 1945, and seeing a steady stream of Germans and foreigners going in both directions, simply trying to get back to their original locations. In these conditions the central and local government had completely broken down, and as our Armies advanced most of the local officials disappeared. So it really was a case of starting from scratch. Control had to be built up from the bottom, beginning with Kreis-Regierungsbezirk-Provinz. No doubt we made many mistakes, but I think it is fair to say that when the Control Commission officials took over at the end of the summer of 1945 control had reached the Provinz level.

Two or three noble Lords have talked about the reconstruction of the Commission and the personnel involved. That is the point which is, I think, one of the most important to-day. The number of officials we employ clearly depends on the form of control and the level at which we control. It would be reasonable to assume that as the administration machinery improved, so you would be able to withdraw personnel from the lower levels. But the opposite seems to have happened; there has been an enormous increase in our officials, mainly, I think, because we have recruited the wrong type of person and because many have been attracted who can earn there probably two or three times what they could earn anywhere else in the world. Living is cheap and gin is 3d. a glass. The result has been an increasing number of mediocre men, either young and inexperienced or old and a bit passé, who are incapable of taking a decision on the spot. Those who are good are rather swamped by the number of such people there.

I feel that the situation has drifted and that the basis should be altered. A far better and firmer control would be obtained by having a limited number of really good men with civil rank, backed up by a military force, and by making the German officials, who know the job, do all the donkey work. As the noble Lord, Lord Lindsay, has said, I think it has a good deal to do with the security question that they do not employ Germans half as much as they might in doing the most ordinary menial tasks. To obtain better men, I think it is essential that they should alter their unimaginative recruiting policy. I am afraid I have not read this latest pamphlet, but I know the original terms of service of one year, two years or until general demobilization were hardly attractive for any young man who wanted to make anything like a career out of it. It is essential that they should be given a salary for at least ten years and that that salary should not be dependent on the number of personnel who are in their branches. I believe that they have recently been offering contracts for six or seven years, but in the agreement there is also a clause which specifies that there can be one month's notice on either side. The contract, therefore, can be broken at any time and is really absolutely null and void.

In order to get work out of the Germans I think they must be given a future; it may be a hard one, but at any rate they should be offered the prospect of a home and food for their families. They must see some hope of getting out of the obvious mess in which they and the whole country are. From the food point of view I know there are many difficulties, but there is one point which has not, I think, been mentioned. The loss of the seed-growing area round Magdeburg is really of the greatest importance. Their existing stocks have largely run down. That would apply to clothes too. They were largely built up by plundering neighbouring countries, but now I think it is true to say they are really non-existent. I feel there can be no economic stability until we have faced such problems as the internal debt or the constitution of the Reichsbank. I hope I have not been too disparaging about members of the Control Commission, because I really do appreciate their difficulties. I hope the Government will give a lead for a drastic reduction and reorganization, and that the Control Commission will cease to become the happy hunting ground for promotion and the rendezvous for people without any special qualifications. If our administration falls into further disrepute, it may have far-reaching repercussions on British prestige and possibly the future peace of Europe.

4.20 p.m.

THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (LORD PARENHAM)

My Lords, I am sure that we all agree, as we always do, but even with more conviction than usual, that this has been a most helpful debate. I myself have learnt a great deal, and hope that when we resume the debate on some other occasion I shall have had time to visit Germany, which I conceive it my duty to do as the spokesman in this House of the Control Commission. Most of us were taught many years ago that when the wicket is at all sticky there are two courses open to the batsman. Either he can run out to the ball and try and hit a six, or he can play back a long way in the direction of his stumps. Well, I would be delighted to run out a long way and attempt to hit one or two sixes, but unfortunately I might break a neighbouring window, and windows far outside this House and far outside this country. I may be forced, therefore, rather far back on my stumps.

I hope that you will allow me to be somewhat less frank on this occasion than we all try to be when we speak from tins Box. Take the great questions which have come up again and again this afternoon, and about which we all feel so strongly, and about which there is no difficulty whatever in holding very frank exchanges in private between members of the Government and members sitting elsewhere. Take the great question of food; take the question of coal and, particularly, the question of coal exports, or take the whole attitude of Soviet Russia. With regard to food—about which I shall say a good deal in a moment—the international position is about as delicate as it well could be. If we take coal, and above all the question of coal exports, the attitude of His Majesty's Government is extremely well-known, but to labor it to-day might prove to be a poor service to some of our closest friends abroad at this moment of all moments. Finally, I do not suppose any of your Lordships wish me to "come clean" about Soviet Russia this afternoon. I do not imagine that any of you would feel that I had performed a useful service to the country in doing so. Before, however, attempting to set out the Government attitude in so far as I can do so without the gravest indiscretion this afternoon, I would just like to say one or two words—nothing like enough, nothing like their deserts—about the speeches to which we have listened.

I would like to begin by congratulating the last speaker. His speech was a most polished affair. The noble Lord, Lord Rockley, brings a special knowledge to our debate this afternoon as having been prominent on the financial side when first we went into Germany, and I must say that I hope whenever the question of Germany is raised in this House he will find it possible to offer us his guidance. I should like, if I may, to pay a special tribute to the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, who, if I may say so speaking as a much less experienced man in the service of the country, was at his kindest and best this afternoon. I think we may put it that when he is good, he is very very good, and on other occasions he is nearer one's own level.

The noble Viscount asked for a clearer explanation of the relations between the civil and military sides. The Control Commission is a civil administration. There are many soldiers in it, as is inevitable since it was at the start wholly military. But the whole Government machine is subject to the Chancellor of the Duchy, which is a point I think the noble Viscount may have desired me to elucidate. The Commander-in-Chief has a dual function. He is head on the one side of the military forces of occupation and on the other of the Government machine. In that latter capacity he is responsible to the Chancellor of the Duchy. The Control Commission is in no way controlled by the military.

The noble Viscount, the noble Lord who has just spoken, and the noble Lord, Lord Lindsay, all stressed the necessity of making service under the Control Commission more attractive. I believe I am right in saying that that is very much in the minds of the Control Commission themselves and those responsible for it. There is no doubt at all that the present conditions are not tremendously attractive, and somehow or other we have got to make sure that a young man, think- ing of a career in Government service, decides that this has similar attractions to other branches of the service. It is not an easy problem; the future is so indefinite. But I can assure noble Lords that I will lay before my right honourable friend all that has been said and emphasize the very strong feeling of the House—

VISCOUNT SWINTON

Including the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

LORD PAKENHAM

Yes, I shall even dare to beard the Chancellor and stress the points which have been made. There again, I shall be very much surprised to find that he does not feel a certain emotional sympathy.

Now there were a great number of points raised by the first two speakers, as was right and proper. If I may just pick out two or three questions that were put to me by the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, I would assure him that no proceeds from exports of current production in the British zone have gone to reparations. They are set off against the cost of imports. This answer of course covers coal. The noble Lord put another question which I must confess took me off my normal beat, wide as that is occasionally forced to be. I can give him a little information about herrings, but I warn him that if he chooses to put any supplementary questions he will find me very much at a disadvantage. I would assure him that contracts have been placed with the Ministry of Food for 25,000 tons of cured herrings and 20,000 tons of Klondyke herrings for delivery over the second half of 1946. By the end of September, 7,555 tons of cured herrings and 4,322 tons of Klondyke herrings had reached the zone. These were the total tonnages available in the United Kingdom at the time. The German fishing fleet has been put to sea in the maximum strength, and has also contributed substantial quantities of fish. I must ask the noble Lord to restrain that desire for further cross-examination which I am sure afflicts him.

The noble Lord, Lord Beveridge, will, I hope, receive a full reply to what you might call his central point. There were one or two smaller issues which he raised. He referred to war pensions, and suggested that we behaved in a particularly callous way on that subject. Now these war pensions were deliberately inflated by the Nazis as a military measure to popularize the Army. What we have done is to bring the Army into the social insurance system applicable to all other Germans. I cannot see any great hardship in that.

The noble Lord then referred to some photographs with suitable captions which had appeared in the Daily Graphic, and may I thank him for his courtesy in sending me an advance copy of what he was going to say on that subject. As I am an old pupil of his, perhaps he feels a small vested interest in my performance, and he is no doubt anxious that I should not fail too completely. I appreciate very much his friendly and paternal attitude. I am afraid that the Government, which must take responsibility for many things, cannot take responsibility for the Daily Graphic. It is no doubt an excellent paper. I do riot: read it regularly myself, but I read it as a child. I have no doubt that if you exclude certain political passages it makes excellent reading to-day for the children of this country., but, honestly, I do not think that a Government spokesman should be compelled to defend the Government because certain things have appeared in the Daily Graphic.

On the subject of wives going to Germany, I feel very strongly indeed that we were right to send them, I am quite clear in my own mind that if we are going to have an Army over there we must let them take their wives, and we could not delay much longer the arrangements for that to be done. I can appreciate the generous sentiments which animate noble Lords in dealing with this subject. But I feel that the case for doing what has, in fact, been done, was overwhelming. There was no other course open to the Government. It should be recognized—as I am sure noble Lords will recognize—that these wives are not living in the lap of luxury. Their food has to come from this country, and their standard of living is, in fact, a very modest one. I am rather surprised that the noble Lord should have been so misled on this subject.

He raised a question about the Stülcken shipyard. I have no doubt that here again he possesses specialized knowledge—he has made quite a study of this subject, I understand—which may prove very troublesome to combat. But the facts, as I have been able to ascertain them, and they are official, are these. The Stülcken shipyards were very heavily bombed during the war, and as a result it has not been possible to carry out any new construction of vessels in them, though repairs have been carried out to various types of craft. A decision was reached that the facilities available at certain other yards in Hamburg were such that work should be concentrated there, with a view to economizing coal and electric power, and also man-power. I have satisfied myself, and I hope that I shall be able to satisfy the House, that in this case no loss whatever occurs to Germany, and that a small gain "though I am afraid it will be very small, because the plant was practically destroyed), will accrue to the Allies in reparation payments. So much for the Stülcken shipyard.

Now we come to the broad issue of the food situation in Germany, and the question of what the Government is going to do about it. There is no concealing the fact—it would be absurd, imprudent and dishonest to attempt to do so—that the position is extremely serious. The present ration of 1550 calories a day for the normal consumer, while sufficient on our reckoning to sustain life, is not sufficient to enable a man to undertake reasonable work for a long period. It is about half the German pre-war consumption, and a little more than half the present level of our own rations. None of us can feel complacent: if 23,000,000 people for whom we possess any share of responsibility whatever, are living at that standard of life. I do not suppose that the most hard-hearted members of your Lordships' House could remain deaf to the kind of appeal which the right reverend Prelate has made. It is a heartrending affair, and what has to be said in reply is almost bound to seem callous. It is very difficult, at any rate, not to make it seem callous. One has to point out what is familiar to all of us, but it is a duty to place alongside what we have heard from the other standpoint this afternoon, that this tragic mess in which Germany is placed to-day, as regards not only food, but also coal, housing, and consumer goods, not a mess of our making. It is, I am afraid—though God forgive me if it is an unfair thing to say about people who are now suffering as they are suffering—a mess of their own-making. In so far as we human beings can ever judge one another, one is bound to say that, in fairness to our own people, and looking at both sides of this matter.

Nevertheless, it must be a constant preoccupation of the Government to see how Germany can be enabled to consume more, or at least be prevented from having to consume less. There are four ways in which the problem could be tackled. The British zone could grow more food herself, and, I think the House has been told on other occasions how we are doing everything in our power to make that possible, and to bring it about. The British zone could obtain more food from what, before the war, was Eastern Germany. I use that expression because, in fact, a good deal of the old food supply would now have to come from territory that is under Polish occupation at the present time. But more could be obtained, and should be obtained, from those quarters if others shouldered their full responsibility as this country is trying to do.

Third, Germany could obtain more food at the expense of the people of this country. Now here I wish to speak with extreme care because various negotiations are taking place, and I do not wish in any way to jeopardize the chance of their success. The question of whether to lower the British standard of living further in order to assist Germany is perhaps the hardest moral issue that this Government have had to face. The Government are reluctantly but absolutely clear that nothing more can be done in that direction at the moment. To attempt to solve the problem along those lines by our own actions, by our own direct assistance, would be to attempt an impossible task, and would, in our opinion, be likely to bring down this country and Germany in common ruin.

I am sorry to have to put the matter before the House so plainly this afternoon, but I know that the House likes plain speaking. In the long run, the food situation in Germany will be cured by the recovery of food production in the world. In the short run, everything hinges on what can be obtained from overseas—much of it at the expense of the British taxpayer, but all obtained from overseas. I would like to explain the situation as it stands at the moment. The long American shipping strike has accentuated supply difficulties for both the British and the American zones of Germany. It has hit the British zone particularly hard because indigenous production there is relatively lower than in the American zone. It is true to say that we are, at the moment, in Western Germany, on a hand-to-mouth basis, and working stocks of bread grain in hand on November 1 did not exceed ten days' supply. Everything possible is being done to accelerate the collection of the harvest, but the position at present is that we cannot hope to get through, even during the last weeks of the year, at the existing very moderate calory level of distributions without some wheat being made available in addition to the import arrivals at present anticipated as coming to the British zone. Urgent negotiations have already begun in Washington, and I am sure the House would not wish me to prejudice them in any way.

May I take a broader view of the factors behind the food shortage in Germany? Many factors have co-operated, and most of them, if not all, have already been referred to earlier this afternoon. What is the result? We see an area which is potentially one of the richest areas in the world, dependent (and bound to continue dependent) on the charity of others. That is a position which cannot go on indefinitely; we are determined that it shall not. But it is the position at the present time, and somehow or other we must enable the British zone to pay its way and to export enough to buy essential imports. There, I know, we are all entirely at one. Noble Lords have rightly stressed the great importance of increasing German production—above all, German production of coal—in the British zone. Germany is bound to continue dependent on others until we can get coal production somewhere near its pre-war level. That is the long and the short of the economic problem.

At this stage of the debate I will not begin describing the vicious circle which has been so well explained by the noble Lord, Lord Beveridge, and other speakers—the way in which the coal problem, the consumer goods problem, and the food problem are all inter-connected. At times, it seems impossible to break the chain; but break the chain we must, and will. The figures for coal production are, perhaps, the best available guide as to how the economic life of the zone is faring. It would be untrue to say, as has been said in certain responsible quarters—although not. I think, here to-day—that the position is deteriorating. As a result of measures which we have taken to encourage coal production the figures now show that 186,000 tons of coal are being produced per day—the highest level since the zone was first occupied. There has been a steady although small rise since the end of September; so that in that respect there has been an improvement which is not entirely negligible although, of course, in its turn, it has to be much improved upon in the future.

I come now to the heart of the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Beveridge. It raises an issue which I think ran right through the speeches of all noble Lords who have spoken this afternoon—the Potsdam Agreement and the level-of-industry plan. Your Lordships will remember that the level-of-industry plan was designed to carry out the provisions of the Potsdam Agreement in the field of the industrial disarmament of Germany. The noble Lord, Lord Beveridge, does not like the level—industry plan. We in the Government have never liked it. We did not like it when it was signed, although it was the best compromise that we could get at that time. We do not like it now. Speaking for myself—and I hope I am not running "beyond the book"—I may say that I like it a good deal less than I did a few months ago. At any rate, we have no affection for the level-of-industry plan.

If I may say so, however, with great respect, the noble Lord tends to exaggerate the direct contemporary effect on German industry of that plan. To-day there is scarcely an industry in Germany which is operating anywhere near the level provided for in the plan. The noble Lord, Lord Lindsay, said that it was operating to 30 per cent. of what was allowed. I know that the figure is somewhere in that quarter, and I will willingly accept it from my old teacher. (I see many of my old teachers around the House to-day, but the time has not yet come when I see any pupils.)

But the noble Lord, Lord Beveridge—and I say this in all seriousness—has not been able to bring forward any very striking examples of his thesis. He has referred to this yard which was making fishing boats—and he has not been able to refer to very much else on that subject. He has written articles for The Times; he spoke last week, and he has spoken again to-day; but I do not feel that he has been able to lay before the House a well-documented explanation of how the level-of-industry plan, in the direct material sense, is affecting German industry. I am in the judgment of the House on this point. The House must judge my statement against that of the noble Lord, and read them both in Hansard. I agree, however—and this may enable harmony to be restored between the noble Lord and myself—that indirectly the level-of-industry plan is retarding German recovery. It does that in various ways. There is the general psychological effect, and there is also the uncertainty to which, I think, those who have been to Germany attach special importance—the uncertainty in the minds of any particular group of people whether a particular factory is to go or is to remain. It is the uncertainty about the future, rather than the harshness of the plan's immediate contemporary operation, that is causing the trouble at the moment. It is for these reasons, because we do recognize the indirect damage which it is already doing and, taking a longer view, the direct damage which it might do in the future, that we are quite clear that the present state of affairs cannot continue indefinitely.

VISCOUNT SWINTON

And the borderline plants will not be allowed to go? The noble Lord made a point about uncertainty. Even more important—as I think we are all agreed—is the point that if the plan ought to go, we should not now do anything by way of reparations in getting rid of plants which in a year or two's time ought to be in production.

LORD PAKENHAM

The noble Viscount raises an essential element in the problem, which leads me to remind him—although I am sure he does not need reminding—that the Council of Foreign Ministers are considering the whole question of Germany this month. Noble Lords may have seen an official statement in the papers to-day, that British and American experts are going to meet, and our experts are now on their way to America, to discuss these matters on an economic experts' level. Perhaps I had better be precise there. The announcement states: Discussions will take place in Washington between representatives of the British and United States Governments on certain financial and economic questions related to the bizonal arrangements between the British and American zones in Germany.… The British Government is sending to Washington a group of experts to assist the Embassy in the discussions, including Lieut.-General Robertson, Deputy Military Governor of the British zone of Occupation, Germany, and representatives of the Foreign Office, Control Office for Germany and Austria, and Treasury. Discussions are expected to begin on 12th November. They will be exclusively concerned with financial and economic aspects of the bi-zonal arrangements which have not been worked out in Berlin or which require governmental approval. We have, therefore, two kinds of discussions about to take place in America—those on the high Ministerial level between the Foreign Ministers, and expert discussions between British and American experts, regarding the bi-zonal problems.

I need not say a great deal more, because we have a Royal Commission shortly, and most of the points raised this afternoon are either of such importance that they should be discussed again and again in this House, or of such minute detail that they are best dealt with by letter, or privately in other ways. I would remind the noble Lord, Lord Beveridge, and the House, that we were not completely mad when we decided—when all Parties decided—at the end of the war, that Germany must be disarmed, and must stay disarmed. One is so apt—I know how my own feelings go in these matters—to move rapidly from one extreme to another. While it is most proper that the other side of the case should have been stated by the great humanitarians to whom we have just listened, we must remember that basically we all agree it is a duty—if I may quote the expression used by the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun—to those who died in this war, and a duty to those who might die if another war were to break out, to make sure that Germany is never again given the opportunity to make war. That does involve a drastic measure of industrial disarmament.

But it is all very well to say, "Let destruction come to an end; let the work of construction begin." We would all have preferred that destruction should have already been completed. But it is not so. It has not yet been finally completed. It would have been completed much more rapidly if we had gone in for a policy of wholesale demolition, and if we had paid no attention to the future needs of the German people; but just because of that very scrupulousness which has been referred to earlier with somewhat faint praise, and because of our anxiety to look to the future of the German people, we have taken rather longer than perhaps one would have hoped and expected to complete the work of destruction, and some destruction must still go on. It would be misleading the House to give any other impression. At the same time, we do realize that the sooner it is brought to an end the better. The sooner we can say to the German people, "Henceforth all is construction; all is creative," the sooner we shall be able to make the real move forward to which we are all looking.

I conclude by hoping that your Lordships will not think I am claiming too much for the Government, because it is not a question of credit for the Government. Let the Government take any blame that is going, but let the credit for anything that has been done in Germany go to the men on the spot. I know that they will be watching this debate with great interest, and I hope that it is possible to send out there to these Englishmen who are performing a task of unparalleled difficulty with great courage and determination, a message of encouragement from every member in every quarter of this House.

4.55 p.m.

LORD SALTOUN

My Lords, I should like to endorse the words with which the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, concluded. I should like to take this opportunity—I did not do it before—of thanking the Chancellor of the Duchy and everybody under him for the kindness and help which I received in Germany.

In conclusion, I must congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Lindsay, on the fact that he believes that hope is more important than food. It indicates that he has never been really hungry, because with lack of food comes hopelessness. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, for his statement that no exports will be taken for reparations. I think that that should receive very wide publicity. It is a very important statement, but a large number of people doubt that that is so. With regard to the rest of what he has said, I would just like to say that, if this situation had suddenly blown up out of a clear sky, I think it would be a most magnificent answer. But this situation has been inherent for a very long time. When I listened to his answer I kept thinking of the fishermen on short time in the north and the herring that remained in the sea or that had gone back to the sea. That source of food which was neglected would be of the greatest help now. I am the last person in the world of force this question to a Division. It is in the hands of His Majesty's Government, and on what they do our credit and our future in the world must depend. I beg your Lordships' leave to withdraw my Motion.

4.57 p.m.

LORD BEVERIDGE

My Lords, I do not wish to press my Motion. I do not know whether, with the leave of the House, I might say a few sentences on a number of points which the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, has made. Before doing so, I still disagree with my pupil on many of the minor points he raised. I am only going to ask him to read my speech carefully when printed and change his mind about some of the things I said. I have only one point to make on this main issue of the level-of-industry plan and destruction. Of course, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, that, although there are cases in which our process of destruction—and I can quote them to him; I will send them to him—has in fact delayed reconstruction, the level-of-industry plan is not the main cause at the moment of the material distress of Germany. That is lack of coal. Let me make one point, in respect of which the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, has not answered me. Why is coal a matter of quadripartite decision, whilst food is not?

LORD PAKENHAM

I have got the answer and I will give it to the noble Lord.

LORD BEVERIDGE

It is the case that the level-of-industry plan with the destruction has a profound demoralizing psychological effect in Germany. There is no doubt at all about that, and it is tied up with reparations. May I mention the case of the Stulcken shipyard? Why should we decide it will never be necessary for Germany now? Why should we destroy it? I hope in fact the Government can come to a decision to stop destruction until we have got a proper statement on the future of Germany. Let them stop, and not go on making things worse and worse.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

House adjourned during pleasure.

House resumed.