§ *SIR C. DILKE (Gloucester, Forest of Dean)This money concerns two subjects—telegrams, upon which, by the rules of recent years, it is impossible to raise the question of policy; and the item for the salary of the new Assistant Under Secretary in the Foreign Office. Last year, when this appointment was first rumoured, and afterwards announced, some questions were put here as to the reasons which had made it necessary to appoint this new Assistant Secretary, and the statement made here was that the appointment was due to a very great increase in the work of the Foreign Office. Now, anyone who has watched the conduct of the Foreign Office during the last few years is aware that an enormous number of new duties—not only new in bulk, but new in character—have recently been thrown on the Foreign Office by the policy of this country. This is not a Party question, because it has gradually grown up under successive Governments; but it is a matter thoroughly deserving the attention of the House, and which is distinctly brought before it for the first time by its inclusion in this Estimate. Now, this great increase in the work of the Foreign Office has, in my opinion—and we shall hear what the Under Secretary has to say with regard to it—been mainly caused by the Foreign Office undertaking duties which are not properly duties appertaining to the Foreign Office at all, and carrying on the government in Colonies and undertaking wars; and having, in fact, all these miscel- 651 laneous duties which have at other times been thrown upon the Colonial Office and India Office, which have a staff for the purpose, and which have not before been discharged by the Foreign Office. Some years ago there was one particular case where such duties were, for a short time, thrown on the Foreign Office. There were then strong reasons for throwing the government of the Colony in that case on the Foreign Office; but peculiar as it was, that arrangement was brought to an end because it was found thoroughly unsatisfactory. For that technicality there were no doubt reasons which made it necessary that the work should be thrown on the Foreign Office. It was the Under Secretary of State and the head of the Turkish Department spending all their time upon devising uniforms for a police force which brought that to an end. It is only quite recently that such a system has sprung up again, and if you will look at the new work in the Foreign Office for the last few years, I think the House will be astonished when it goes through the list of the new duties which have been thrown on the Foreign Office in connection with countries, some of them foreign, some of them Protectorates, and some of them real Colonies. Of course, with regard to the duties which have been thrown on the Foreign Office in connection with Egypt, that arrangement was probably inevitable. There are probably circumstances connected with our position in Egypt, which make it impossible for any Office but the Foreign Office to deal with; and that may, to some extent, account for the new duties thrown upon it in connection with the arrangement as described here as regards the Soudan. But outside the great additional duties which have been thrown upon the Foreign Office in connection with Egypt and the Soudan, there have very recently sprung up new duties in connection with the Foreign Office which belong really to the Colonial Office, for they concern Colonies of this country, for which the Foreign Office is not the proper Office to carry out those duties. I do not speak as an enemy of the Foreign Office, but as a great admirer of it, having a great respect for its staff of clerks. The more one looks into this question the more one feels convinced that the Foreign 652 Office ought to discharge diplomatic duties, and not the duties of government and of carrying on war. I hope we shall have an opportunity to consider how far the Foreign Office can possibly carry out military duties, apart from the control of the War Office, which would give an uniformity of system which at present is wholly wanting. Well, now, Sir, as to the matters which are entirely new duties at the Foreign Office. There is the control of Uganda and of Unyoro; the control of Zanzibar, the Protectorate of British East Africa and Somaliland. Now, no statement has yet been made to this House upon this subject, and it is a matter upon which I would invite the Under Secretary to tell us what is the fact. It has been stated that the India Office is making Somaliland a Foreign Office matter, but I do not know whether that will carry or will not carry the Island of Sokotra. Then there is British Central Africa, which is a pure colony, where there is no native Government of any kind, such as that which we generally contemplate when we talk about the Protectorates. British Central Africa is a pure colony, and absolutely indistinguishable from other Colonies in the same neighbourhood which are under the control of a different Office—namely, the Colonial Office. It may be said that there is some difficulty in cutting off from the-Foreign Office the control of countries like Unyoro, because of its nearness to the Soudan, but there is a great gap of space between those countries on the East Coast of Africa which are accessible from the Indian Ocean and the Soudan. There is a much greater gap than between the countries which the Foreign Office governs in South Africa and the countries with which the Colonial Office has to deal in South Africa. Everything south of the Zambesi, although under the High Commissioner and under the Chartered Company, is dealt with by the Colonial Office, and everything north of the Zambesi is dealt with by the Foreign Office, though under the same persons. In Barotseland, for example, we have the Foreign Office control; but across the Zambesi we have Colonial Office control, and the thing is a working arrangement between the two offices. I think this is a matter which deserves the at- 653 tention of the House, especially when a demand is being made upon us for a new Assistant Under Secretary of State, who seems to be required on account of the new work thrown upon the Foreign Office in connection with these eight Protectorates which I have described. In addition to these there is the work of the Foreign Office on the West Coast of Africa. That, I believe, the Foreign Office is now getting rid of. The Under Secretary ought to tell us what are the arrangements come to between the Foreign Office and the Colonial Office with regard to the Niger Protectorate. That has hitherto been under the Foreign Office, and we hear that that is in future, to be under the control of the Colonial Office. I think we ought to be told whether the Foreign Office has already got rid of its work on the West Coast of Africa. This work is purely Colonial in these countries, and yet they are really governed by the Foreign Office, although they should be governed, like any other Colonies, by the Colonial Office. I should probably not be in order on this Vote if I were to enlarge upon the facts in regard to the various individual instances; but we shall have another opportunity of considering the effect of Foreign Office control on the government of Uganda, and it will be better probably that I should reserve that matter for discussion upon a later item than to attempt to discuss it upon this particular Vote. We all know with regard to this subject what has been the result of our attempt to govern Uganda and Somaliland by the Foreign Office. We have discussed this matter on a former occasion, but very briefly, and we are now being invited to discuss it again. If the present state of things is a temporary arrangement, can we consider that the existing wars in Uganda will give us a state of things which holds out the hope that there will be any change in the administration as carried out at the present time. I think affairs in Uganda are going from had to worse. The time has come when the Foreign Office ought to make up its mind to part with its eight or nine Colonial dominions, and hand them over to some other authority more fitted to administer them. I shall conclude by moving a reduction of £100 in respect of the salary of the new Assistant Under Secretary of State for 654 Foreign Affairs, and, unless very clear explanations are given in the House, I shall have to divide the Committee on the subject.
§ *THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. BRODRICK,) Surrey, GuilfordThe matter which has fallen from the right honourable Gentleman has been, to some extent, I think, mixed up with other Questions which do not altogether govern the increase that has been made to the staff of the Foreign Office. The right honourable Baronet has rather assumed that the increase in the Foreign Office staff would not have been necessary except for the assumption of extraneous duties by the Foreign Office. Sir, I do not think that would be borne out by anybody. I shall deal presently with what has fallen from the right honourable Gentleman in that, particular; but I do not think that anybody can doubt, that, if the staff of the Foreign Office, was only adequate in times gone by, it is now extremely inadequate. It is not necessary to go back a great number of 3rears, because we know that fifty years ago all the offices were on a very easygoing footing. To go no further back than the Parliamentary career of the right honourable Gentleman himself. Between 1883 and 1898 the development of the Foreign Office has been prodigious. In 1883 the number of dispatches that came in and went out of the Foreign Office were 70,000. In 1888 they had risen to 75,000; in 1893 it was 88,000; and between 1893 and 1898 they rose by progressive steps from 88,000 to 102,000—making an increase in the number of the dispatches passing through, in and out, the Foreign Office of 32,000 in a period of 15 years. During all that time there has not been an appreciable increase in the staff, and I am bound to say, with perhaps some knowledge, having spent a great number of years in another department, I do not think it is possible to over-rate the amount of time and attention that is given in the Foreign Office by the higher permanent officials. Not one of the present permanent officials has for years past been able to take his annual holiday completely. They are there to a late hour at night, and I know that a great many of them work at home as well. But, whether they work at home or not, the increase in 655 the staff is absolutely necessary. Last year the increase in the staff was too moderate, and it was absolutely necessary that, there should be a further increase of the staff in the present year. Looking at the question the right honourable Gentleman has raised, I am not quite sure that he is right in saving the pressure in the Foreign Office has been caused through Uganda. But, after all, what is the reason why this country is not administered by the Colonial Office? Surely that is obvious. Every step involves the conduct of Foreign Affairs. So long as you are negotiating in Africa with Germany, France, Belgium, and Italy those questions can only be dealt with by the Foreign Office. In the negotiations that are going on in regard to the Protectorates, question after question arises with which only the Foreign Office can deal; and to hand the Protectorates concerned over to the Colonial Office would only cause an immense amount of departmental correspondence. On the other hand, I think it is desirable that those matters which can be handed over to the Colonial Office should lie so handed over. For instance, the Niger Protectorate will be taken over by the Colonial Office during the present year. The administration of Somaliland is now in the hands of the Foreign Office, having been transferred from the India Office; and as regards the other African Protectorates, they cannot be separated because they are being administered as a whole. The officials of the one work with the officials of the other, and the troops of one have lately been employed by another. It has been necessary to continue to work them together up to the present. As to Uganda and the prospect of quietness there, I will not deal with that question now, as that can be dealt with on the larger Tote for Uganda, which has been put down. One of the difficulties, I may say, of handing over these matters to the Colonial Office is that that department is very cramped for space, and they do not care to take any more work there than they can help. I do not think I need add anything to that, except to say, with regard to all these things, it is a matter of convenience, and I cannot see that it can be carried on any better by one department than by another. I am not specially in love myself with the 656 principle of the Foreign Office having to carry on military expeditions, but at the same time I cannot say that we have ever found, where that has to be done, that the efforts of the Foreign Office compare unfavourably with the efforts of the War Office in connection with our small wars. They have been carried on with celerity, and I do not think that there has been any greater expense, and, indeed, I think the House will find that the public purse has been most rigidly guarded; and I think there has been no difference between the War Office and the Foreign Office, and that the agreement with regard to the nomination of proper persons to take command has been complete.
§ SIR E. GREY (Northumberland, Berwick)I do not think there is really a very great difference of opinion between us upon this question as to whether the Foreign Office ought to administer these large territories or not. The question is not whether the Foreign Office administers Protectorates well or with less trouble and expense than the other offices or departments can do it, but whether, in the long run, administration is not a kind of work which ought, as far as possible, to be managed by one office. There ought to be a large staff of officials under one office, trained for the purposes of administration, and capable of being-transferred from one territory to another. Clearly, that one office cannot be the Foreign Office. The Foreign Office is not an administration office, because the administration must always be subordinate to Foreign Office work. But when reflections are being made upon the administration of the Foreign Office where it has had to administer, then I would ask the Committee to bear in mind that in many cases the Foreign Office has been confronted with a far more difficult task than the Colonial Office. The Foreign Office can only deal with questions of boundaries and spheres of influence. We know that the territories with which they deal must, in the long run, be brought under close control: but, so long as it is unsettled, and so long as it brings us into communication with other Powers, these spheres of influence must be administered by the Foreign Office. The Foreign Office, therefore, is called upon to take over a very large job of administration with 657 a, small staff and somewhat scanty resources. I deprecate any invidious comparison between these offices, and I think you will find that, as soon as it is possible, the territory is transferred to the Colonial Office by the Foreign Office, after the Foreign Office have done something for the sake of order, and the Colonial Office consequently has not had such a hard task. I admit that, in the long run, it should be the object of the Foreign Office to get rid of the administration altogether if they could. There are some eases which must always be dealt with by the Foreign Office. Take Zanzibar, which is a British Protectorate. Other Powers have treaty rights there, and it is impossible, so long as those rights exist, that Zanzibar will be administered by the Colonial Office, because we could not submit to the intolerable delay of a third office being brought into our relations with Foreign Governments. I think that the right honourable Gentleman opposite is in substantial agreement, with what I say. What has been said with regard to the Oils River, now called the Niger Coast Protectorate, indicates a very considerable step, and I daresay there are others in view. I am sure the figures which the right honourable Gentleman has given to the Committee will have convinced them that some new scale must be arrived at for the payment of the Foreign Office, and I object to its being said that, if the administration now in the hands of the Foreign Office were taken over by the Colonial Office matters would easily be mended. The question of this Vote should not depend on Foreign Office administration, because if to-morrow the bulk of it was transferred, it will be necessary to maintain the office of the Assistant Under Secretary, and, therefore, I trust that the right honourable Gentleman will not seek to deprive the Foreign Office of this legitimate assistance, but will withdraw his Motion.
MR. GIBSON BOWLES (Lynn Regis)In my opinion, and this is what I shall submit to the House, the Foreign Office is organised in such a manner as to be wholly incapable of administration. It has no knowledge of strategy or statistics, or recruiting of any kind; it is formed for the sole purpose of negotiating, and that is the only 658 thing which it understands, though people go so far as to say that it does not even understand that. But it is impregnated with the spirit of nations, and it is selected upon a knowledge of international Law. It knows the particular language in which to state to a friendly Foreign country those things which it would scarcely venture to put down upon a State Paper. But in the whole of the Foreign Office there is no one who is competent to command a company of infantry or conduct a campaign, or perform any like acts, and for the Foreign Office first to conquer a country and then administer it is to conceive for it a purpose for which it was never intended. I was struck by the fact that the right honourable Baronet was very much more in favour of the Foreign Office as an administrator than the right honourable Gentleman the Under Secretary himself, because he gave up the whole case on the point of administration.
§ *MR. BRODRICKNo, no; I did not say so. I said I did not find a single case in which the country had lost by their doing it.
MR. GIBSON BOWLESIt seems to me it has done it illegally. Uganda is another matter, and I do not presume to enter upon that now, but I do seriously assert that it is not fair for the Foreign Office to do these things. There is a War Office and an Administration Office, and this office is not organised for that. With regard to the Colonial Office, we have been told it was absolutely necessary for the Foreign Office to take part in the administration in certain cases as a matter of fact. The Colonies are entitled to enter into difficult negotiations with France and West Africa, as everybody knows, and, if the Colonial Office is not able to superintend these matters, then the Colonial Office ought to be turned out and the Foreign Office put in its place; but no attempt being made to do so shows that there is no necessity for a Foreign Office to administer these countries merely because you are likely to have questions arising with Foreign Powers. What about Canada and the United States? Is the Foreign Office to administer Canada because questions may or may not arise with the United States? Certainly not; 659 the tiling is absurd. I am perfectly confident that nothing but disaster and mistakes can arise by setting one office to do that which it is not organised to do, and which it is not capable of doing. I can no more trust in your belief that the Foreign Office is capable of conducting administration and war than that the War Office is capable of undertaking negotiations, and I hope that the right honourable Gentleman the Under Secretary will be brought to a better frame of mind in that matter.
§ *SIR J. FERGUSSON (Manchester, N.E.)Of course, whenever a territory is coterminous with a foreign country, until a Protectorate has become, to a certain extent, settled, and its boundaries defined, and it has attained a certain position, it is inevitable that it should be in the first place administered by the Department which has to deal with foreign relations; because questions frequently arise respecting spheres of influence and so on with foreign Powers. My honourable Friend says the Foreign Office has no machinery for administration. I think he has forgotten what competent administrators have been employed by the Foreign Office in various places where our spheres of influence extend. I suppose Lord Cromer would be taken to be a very competent administrator; he is not only a Diplomatist, but a remarkably competent administrator, because there is no doubt that his direction of the affairs of Egypt has redounded greatly to the credit of his country. I take it that men like Sir Harry Johnston, who was employed originally as Vice-Consul in the Oil Rivers; Sir Claud Macdonald, now our Minister in China, who was employed to administer Zanzibar; the late Mr. Portal, and many other men have shown how competent the Foreign Office is to appoint men who become fitted to that kind of temporary and somewhat irregular administration. And as has been also said, the warlike operations which have been undertaken under the direction of the Foreign Office have certainly not been less successful than those conducted by the Colonial Office. The Colonial Office has no special gift for direct administration where civilisation has hardly begun and a regular Government has not been established. Anybody connected with the Foreign Office, I am 660 sure, would recognise how glad Ministers have always been to transfer to the Colonial Office regions which have, by settled government, been formed so as to be able to be administered as Colonies. I do not think there is any difference of opinion on this side as to what is desirable, but I do not think any case has been made out for concluding that the Foreign Office has caused any public inconvenience by the extent to which it has carried out this irregular administration.
§ *MR. MCKENNA (Monmouth, N.)I cannot but think that the right honourable Gentleman has misunderstood the first observation made by the honourable Member who spoke before him, and by the right honourable Baronet. There is no attempt to attack individuals in the Foreign Office. It is not suggested that they are not themselves perfectly competent administrators, but they have not got any system of control, any administrative system. It is true they are very good men, and have made up for the defects in their training, but they ought to have at their disposal such an office as the Colonial Office has now got. We have made no endeavour whatever to draw distinctions between the Colonial Office and the Foreign Office at the expense of the Foreign Office. We are only saying that we are not using advantages which we have got in the Colonial Office, while we are putting on the Foreign Office work for which it is decidedly unfitted. The right honourable Gentleman says the Foreign Office conducts the affairs of those Protectorates which, by their position and other circumstances, are brought into intimate relation with foreign countries. How does he apply that rule to the case of British Central Africa? What possible distinction is there between the British Protectorates north of the Zambesi under the Foreign Office and the British Protectorates south of the Zambesi under the Colonial Office? They are both in exactly the same relation to foreign countries. The troubles we have had in West Africa in connection with foreign countries have all been in the particular Protectorates under the control of the Colonial Office. The Niger Coast Protectorate has not one iota of communication or connection with foreign countries more than has 661 Lagos or the Gold Coast. His theory I will not hold water for a single moment. I My honourable Friend the Member for the Berwick Division also seemed to treat this Motion as if it were an attack upon the Foreign Office. What some of us feel in this matter is this—I certainly feel it myself—that by placing these Protectorates under the administration of the Foreign Office you are acting in a way which, in the long run, is the most disastrous in the interests of the natives. The Protectorates which are under the control of the Foreign Office have not got a sufficient force at their disposal. You encourage rebellions in these Protectorates—not willingly, of course, not intentionally, but by your weakness. We have seen what has taken place in Uganda and East Africa. Now, I cannot help feeling that it would be far less cruel to leave these natives in their barbarism than to attempt to civilise them by inadequate means. You send out capable individuals, and by the help of their powers of organisation and Maxim guns you manage to control the natives when they rise in rebellion against you, but you are not preparing any system of government in this new African Empire which you are undertaking. Such improvements as we can bring about without large cost, as by a transfer of the administrative powers from the Foreign Office to the Colonial Office, that we ought to do, at least. For my part, I do not think it would be anything like sufficient. I was astonished to hear from the right honourable Gentleman that the removal from the Foreign Office of the whole of the British Protectorates now under their control would not add more than £500 a year to the cost on the Estimates. That is what his statement amounts to.
§ *MR. BRODRICKI did not say that.
§ *MR. MCKENNAThe right honourable Gentleman must mean that, or his statement was meaningless. He said, even if all the Protectorates were removed from the Foreign Office this Vote would still remain necessary. This {Vote is only for £500, and therefore the diminution of your establishment charges by £500 a year would more than cover, according to him, the extra cost that is put down.
§ *MR. BRODRICKI beg the honourable Gentleman's pardon. What I said was that the Foreign Office was so fully worked at this moment that it would not cause a reduction of the further charges if you were to take away the Protectorates.
§ *MR. MCKENNAIt seems to me to be exactly the same thing. We are only discussing now the increase of £500 a year. If the right honourable Gentleman seriously thinks that that extra £500 a year is going to be sufficient in order to enable the Foreign Office to administer their new African Empire, I am afraid there will be further troubles in store for him in new countries like Unyoro, and Uganda, and East Africa. Your troubles will begin over and over again, and until you fairly and squarely face the difficulties which you have undertaken in Africa you will only become more cruel in the long run to the natives than if you had left them severely alone. By these half-hearted measures, by these attempts to govern Africa on the cheap, you are imitating what has been done in the Congo Free State. I know that our home resources will always in the long run enable us to avoid some of the difficulties into which the Belgians have fallen: nevertheless we shall be compelled by our economy to shoot down the best men among the natives, who have been encouraged to rise by our appearance of weakness, and we shall deprive the natives of their natural leaders and their only chance of independent life and action. I suppose that the right honourable Baronet will not go to a division in view of the statement of the right honourable Gentleman that we shall have on the Vote for Uganda a further opportunity of dividing upon this subject.
§ *SIR C. DILKEI do not propose to divide the House upon this subject. I think we shall have an opportunity again on the Uganda Vote, which will come on later.
§ Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
§ Vote agreed to.