Commons Sitting of 11 March 1915

Preamble
The House met at a Quarter before Three of the clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.
PRIVATE BUSINESS.
  DONCASTER CORPORATION BILL.
  Reported, with Amendments, from the Local Legislation Committee; Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.
  NEW WRIT.
  For Borough of Carmarthen, in the room of Mr. Llewelyn Williams, esquire, K.C., Recorder of the City of Cardiff.—[Mr. Gulland.]
  ALIENS (NATURALISATION).
  Return presented relative thereto [Address 9th March; Mr. Cecil Harmsworth]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 156.]
  INTOXICATING LIQUOR (TEMPORARY RESTRICTION) ACT, 1914 (ORDERS).
  Return presented relative thereto [Address 9th March; Mr. Cecil Harmsworth]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 155.]

  SHOPS ACT, 1912.
  Copies presented of Orders made by the Councils of the undermentioned authorities, and confirmed by the Secretary of State for the Home Department:—
  County of Pembroke (Milford Haven urban district) (two);
  County of London (Metropolitan borough of Paddington)
  [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.

  LABOUR EXCHANGES AND UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE.
  Copy presented of the Proceedings of the Board of Trade, under the Labour
  1540
  Exchanges Act, 1909, and under the National Insurance Act, 1911, Part II., with Appendices [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.

  GOVERNMENT WAR RISKS INSURANCE SCHEME.
  Copy presented of Text of Agreements made between His Majesty's Government and the War Risks Insurance Associations [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  RAILWAYS ABANDONMENT.
  Copy presented of Report by the Board of Trade respecting the Dunfermline and District Tramways (Extensions) Provisional Order Bill, and the objects thereof [presented pursuant to Standing Order 158 b]; referred to the Committee on the Bill.
  DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE AND TECHNICAL INSTRUCTION FOR IRELAND.
  Copy presented of Fourteenth Annual General Report of the Department for the year 1913–14 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  HOMELESS POOR (ADVISORY COMMITTEE).
  Copy presented of Report of the Metropolitan Poor Law Inspectors' Advisory Committee on the Homeless Poor [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  EMIGRATION.
  Copy presented of Report on the Emigrants Information Office for the year ended 31st December, 1914 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  BOARD OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES.
  Copy presented of Regulations for Grants in Aid of Agricultural Education and Research in England and Wales, 1915–16 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.

  BREWERS' LICENCES.
  Return ordered, "of Accounts of the number of persons in each of the several Collections of the United Kingdom licensed as Brewers for sale, i.e., Common Brewers, Victuallers, Retailers of beer to be drunk on the premises, Retailers of beer not to be drunk on the premises, and Brewers of beer not for sale, particularising each class in each Collection; and of the number of Licences issued to Victuallers and Retailers of beer to be drunk on the premises and not to be drunk on the premises; and stating also the quantities of malt, unmalted corn, rice, etc., sugar, including its equivalent of syrups, etc., hops and hop substitutes, used by Brewers of beer for sale, and of malt and sugar used by Brewers not for sale, from the 1st day of October, 1913, to the 30th day of September, 1914:
  Of the amount of Licence Duty paid and Beer Duty charged from the 1st day of October, 1913, to the 30th day of September, 1914, distinguishing Brewers for sale from other Brewers:
  Of the number of Brewers for sale (i.) who use malt and hops, or hop substitutes only, and (ii.) who use malt with substitutes for same and hops or hop substitutes paying for Licences, from the 1st day of October, 1913, to the 30th day of September, 1914, separating them into classes, according to the number of barrels of beer charged with duty calculated at 1.055 degrees gravity, namely, under 1,000 barrels; 1,000 and under 10,000; 10,000 and under 20,000; 20,000 and under 30,000; 30,000 and under 50,000; 50,000 and under 100,000; 100,000 and under 150,000; 150,000 and under 200,000; 200,000 and under 250,000; 250,000 and under 300,000; 300,000 and under 350,000; 350,000 and under 400,000; 400,000 and under 450,000; 450,000 and under 500,000; 500,000 and under 600,000; 600,000 and under 700,000; 700,000 and under 800,000; 800,000 and under 900,000; 900,000 and under 1,000,000; 1,000,000 and under 1,500,000; 1,500,000 and under 2,000,000; 2,000,000 barrels and over; showing separately, in each class, the quantities of malt, unmalted corn, rice, etc., sugar, including its equivalent of syrups, etc., hops and hop substitutes used; and stating also the number of bulk barrels of beer produced, and the amount of Licence Duty paid and Beer Duty charged in each class:
  And of the number of barrels of beer exported from the United Kingdom, and
  1542
  the declared value thereof, and where exported to, from the 1st day of October, 1913, to the 30th day of September, 1914, distinguishing England, Scotland, and Ireland (in continuation of Parliamentary Paper, No. 157, of Session 1914)."—[Mr. Acland.]

ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS.
  WAR.

    BRITISH GOVERNMENT (FRIENDLY RELATIONS).
    Mr. JOWETTasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, if he will inform Parliament what are the present relation between the British Government and the Governments of Bulgaria, Holland, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and China?
    The SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Sir Edward Grey): His Majesty's Government are, I am glad to say, enjoying friendly relations with the Governments of all the Powers mentioned.

    TSINGTAU.
    Sir WILLIAM BULLasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, whether British merchants at Peking and Tientsin have been able to visit Tsingtau for the purpose of opening up business connections; and in case this is not so, if he will use his best offices with our Ally Japan to ensure equal opportunity of commercial development?
    Sir E. GREY: So far as His Majesty's Government are aware, Tsingtau is still in the hands of the Japanese military authorities, and I have no information in regard to the first part of the question. His Majesty's Government have, however, been in communication with the Japanese Government in consequence of which access to the port by a certain number of British vessels has been allowed.

    JAPAN AND CHINA.
    Sir W. BULLasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, if he can inform the House of the exact position of

    1543
    the Chino-Japanese negotiations regarding the new demands put forward to the Pekin authorities by the Tokio Government; whether any progress has been made and, if so, what; and whether China has defined her position generally in respect to the various requests?
    Sir E. GREY: I can only refer the hon. Member to the reply given to previous questions on this subject, that His Majesty's Government are not in a position at present to make a statement in regard to these negotiations which are taking place between two other Powers.

    FOOD EXPORTS.
    Mr. PETOasked the President of the Board of Trade whether he has imposed any restrictions on the export of feedingstuffs to Denmark; and whether, in view of the shortage and high price in this country which is resulting in the premature slaughter of pigs owing to the high cost of feeding them, he will consider what steps can be taken to give British pig-keepers and stock-keepers the first call of limited supplies of feedingstuffs that are available?
    The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of AGRICULTURE (Sir Harry Verney): The exportation of feedingstuffs is prohibited, and only limited quantities of those articles of which the supply in this country is most plentiful are allowed, under special licences, to be exported to Denmark.
    Mr. PETO: Does that prohibition apply to imported barley?
    Sir H. VERNEY: The only exception to the prohibition is the one I have given.
    Mr. WATTasked the President of the Board of Trade whether there is any embargo placed now by his Department on the export of tea from this country to certain European countries; and, if so, to what countries?
    Mr. ROBERTSON: No, Sir, except to enemy countries.

    ROYAL GARDENS, KEW (WAGES).
    Mr. TYSON WILSONasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture if he is aware that employers of labour at Kew, Hounslow, Brentford,
    1544
    Mortlake, and Chiswick have increased the wages of their employés by 2s. and upwards per week; and whether he can, in view of the increased cost of living and the high rents the employés at the Royal Gardens, Kew, have to pay, see his way to increase their wages by at least 3s. per week?
    Sir H. VERNEY: I shall be glad to bring this matter to the notice of the Treasury.

    GERMAN RAIDS (COMPENSATION CLAIMS).
    Mr. PENNEFATHERasked the President of the Board of Trade if, in view of the intention of the Government to deal with all cases of damage to persons and property sustained during the recent raids on East Coast towns, he will now take steps to investigate claims from masters, officers and men of the mercantile marine for compensation for loss of personal effects sustained through the capture, internment or sinking of their ships by the enemy?
    The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. J. M. Robertson): I would refer the hon. Member to the answer which was given on the 1st March to the Noble Lord the Member for Portsmouth, of which I am sending him a copy. The scheme of insurance there referred to has been in operation since the 3rd March.

    PRISONERS OF WAR.
    Mr. PENNEFATHERasked the President of the Board of Trade if the Government will consider the possibility of using passenger vessels such as those of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, which are now idle, for the purpose of housing German prisoners, thereby setting free for the ordinary purposes of commerce any cargo-carrying vessels which may now be employed by the Government to accommodate such prisoners?
    The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the ADMIRALTY (Dr. Macnamara): It is expected that by the middle of April all the vessels now engaged in housing alien prisoners will have been vacated, and the ships will then be released unless required for other Government services.
    Mr. MORTONasked the Undersecretary of State for War whether he can now say if the supply of cured herrings to prisoners of war as part of their rations has been made; and, if so, whether the experiment has been satisfactory; and will it be extended to other camps where prisoners of war are interned?
    Mr. TENNANT: A first supply will be issued on Friday, and if the experiment proves satisfactory after a fortnight's trial, the issue will be extended to other camps.
    Mr. NEWDEGATEasked the Prime Minister whether his attention has been directed to allegations as to the treatment of British prisoners by the Germans; and whether, in order to test the accuracy of such allegations, with a view to getting the same treatment meted out to British prisoners in Germany as we mete out to German prisoners in this country, he will request the Government of the United States of America to furnish a Report as to the treatment of British prisoners?
    The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. Primrose): I would refer the hon. Member to the answers given in the House on 24th February, 2nd March, and 9th March on this subject.

    BELGIAN REFUGEES.
    Mr. GEORGE TERRELLasked the President of the Board of Trade the number of Belgian refugees who have been registered at the Labour Exchanges as eligible and willing to undertake agricultural labour; and whether a classified list of such applicants has been sent to each of the Labour Exchanges in the agricultural districts?
    Mr. ROBERTSON: The Labour Exchanges throughout the country have been instructed to endeavour to obtain, with the assistance of the local committees dealing with refugees, a complete registration of all Belgians who are eligible and willing to take work of any kind. Special attention has been called to the demand for Belgian agricultural labourers. The procedure adopted by the Exchange is to place in local employment any Belgian agriculturists on its register, the names of the applicants who could not be placed locally being referred
    1546
    to the central clearing house for distribution in other districts where there is an unsatisfied demand. This procedure is, I think, best calculated to secure the desired result. I regret that it is not possible to give the figures for the number of Belgian agriculturists registered without a special inquiry from all Exchanges.
    Colonel LOCKWOOD: I presume that these men whose names are given will be men not eligible for military service in Belgium?
    Mr. ROBERTSON: I should have to make a special investigation into that.

    RAILWAY CONGESTION.
    Mr. HOHLERasked the President of the Board of Trade whether he has made any inquiry, and, if so, with what result, as to why the twenty-two trucks of coal, particulars of which, with the number of each truck and the dates of despatch, were given him by letter dated the 23rd February last, and which were despatched by railway from the Pinxton, Creswell, and Exhall collieries between the 22nd December, 1914, and the 29th January, 1915, consigned to the Gillingham Co-operative Society, Limited, Gillingham, Kent, had not been delivered up to the 24th February last; whether they have now been delivered and, if so, what was the cause of the delay; and what steps he proposes to take to ensure the delivery of coal by the railway companies within a reasonable time with a view to thereby reducing the price of coal?
    Mr. ROBERTSON: The Railway Executive Committee informs me that eight of the trucks in question are known to have arrived, and others have probably been delivered. Apart from these particular trucks the supply of coal to the society appears to have been well maintained. There has been a great increase in the amount of coal put on rail for this district, and it has been necessary to regulate the flow of the traffic.
    Mr. HOHLERasked the President of the Board of Trade whether he would consider the desirability of taking steps to close the railways for passenger traffic from Saturday midnight to Sunday midnight, with a view, during that period, to

    1547
    enable the railway companies to deal with the congestion of goods traffic in their sidings?
    Mr. ROBERTSON: I have no doubt that the Railway Executive Committee are alive to the needs of the situation, and will take whatever steps may be found necessary; but I will communicate to them the hon. and learned Member's suggestion.
    Mr. HOHLER: Is the President of the Board of Trade taking any steps to meet the situation in regard to the great demand for coal due to the difficulty of delivery?
    Mr. ROBERTSON: Special inquiries have been set on foot, and it is possible that further steps may be taken.

    COTTON YARNS (EXPORT).
    Mr. PETOasked the President of the Board of Trade, whether his attention has been called to the figures of export from this country to Denmark for the month of January of cotton yarns 281,000 pounds, as compared with 94,400 pounds for the corresponding month of 1914, and 88,700 pounds for the corresponding month of 1913; and whether he will see that in future at least equally strict watch will be kept over shipments from this country of presumed enemy destination as will be enforced in the case of goods from neutral countries?
    Mr. ROBERTSON: The figures in question appear to be correct. The answer to the last part of the question is in the affirmative.

    UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFIT.
    Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKEasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he can say why a labourer employed in His Majesty's gunwharf at 22s. 8d. a week, and placed on the sick list, was on 5th February given 17s. 3d. for his weekly pay, and since then only 7s. 3d.; whether he is entitled to three-quarters of his pay, namely 17s. 3d. per week; and, if so, will he explain why that sum has not been paid to him?
    Dr. MACNAMARA: If the hon. Member will give me full particulars of the specific case which he has in mind, I will have full inquiry made and let him know the result.

    VOLUNTEER TRAINING CORPS (ROYAL DOCKYARDS).
    Mr. HOHLERasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he is aware that numbers of men employed in His Majesty's dockyards who have joined the Volunteer Training Corps have been required by the Admiralty to withdraw therefrom; and whether, having regard to the fact that the rules sanctioned by the War Office recognise that such employment is a valid reason for joining these corps instead of the Colours, the Admiralty will grant permission to those working in the dockyards to join these corps if they are desirous to do so?
    Dr. MACNAMARA: As I stated in reply to the hon. and gallant Member for the Medway Division on Thursday last, instructions have been issued that applications to join the Volunteer Training Corps are to be dealt with in the same manner as applications to join the Regular or Territorial Army. These instructions were issued not on the ground that drill and instruction would necessarily interfere with the discharge of official duties, but because, under the War Office rules for recognition of Volunteer Training Corps, membership of the corps involves a contingent liability for service with the Regular or Territorial Army which only those who could really be spared for such service should be permitted to undertake. It is not considered desirable that the instructions should be cancelled.
    Mr. HOHLER: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the instruction only applies to those between the ages of eighteen and thirty-eight, and will he therefore withdraw it in respect to those outside those ages?
    Dr. MACNAMARA: I will consider the matter, but I can give no undertaking about it.

    METROPOLITAN POLICE.
    Mr. RADFORDasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether, in view of the sacrifice which members of the Metropolitan Police have made in giving up some portion of their leisure and of his intention of watching their interests closely and sympathetically, he is now in a position to say what action he is prepared to take?
    The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. McKenna): I have given this matter close consideration, and, in recognition of the extra work the Metropolitan Police have so willingly performed, and of the increased cost of living brought about by war conditions, I have decided to grant a war allowance of 3s. a week to all ranks, to begin on 15th March and to continue until the Declaration of Peace.

    OVERSEAS DOMINIONS (YOUNG RECRUITS).
    Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKEasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is aware of the number of young men in the Overseas Dominions, anxious to assist their country in the present War, who have not yet been accepted for service; and whether arrangements can be made by which this surplus of Imperial strength may be utilised?
    The SECRETARY of STATE for the COLONIES (Mr. Harcourt): All the self-governing Dominions have put large forces into the field, and all are keeping them up to strength or even increasing them. The arrangements for utilising the recruits available are, in the opinion of His Majesty's Government, best left in the hands of the Dominion Government immediately concerned.

    RUM RATION.
    Mr. CHANCELLORasked the Under-Secretary of State for War whether the War Office will take steps to provide some form of hot liquid refreshment to be supplied as a matter of course to total abstainers in the Army as an alternative to the rum ration, seeing that appeals are being made for private donations for that purpose which should be a responsibility of the Government; and whether he is aware of the appreciation of, and thanks for, the alternative thus privately provided which has been publicly expressed by General Wilcocks, the officer in command of the Indian forces?
    The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for WAR (Mr. Tennant): It is generally impossible to provide for any form of hot liquid refreshment to be supplied to total abstainers in the Army as an alternative to rum, because of the difficulties of making hot beverages on occasions when
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    rum is issued. Hot soup is issued on leaving the trenches to all ranks, including total abstainers, but this, of course, is prepared in the men's billets behind the trenches.
    Mr. MACMASTER: I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman what is the alternative for refreshment administered to the troops in the trenches when they are total abstainers and decline to take rum rations; and, in addition, I would like to ask whether there is any truth in the statement that attempts have been made to introduce the rum ration to total abstainers through the medium of coffee?
    Mr. TENNANT: I am informed that there is no truth in the suggestion that that endeavour has been made. As I have frequently stated in the House, the rum ration is only issued to those who desire to receive it, on the recommendation of the medical officer.
    Mr. MACMASTER: What is the alternative that is open to total abstainers to receive instead of the rum ration?
    Mr. TENNANT: I am afraid there is no alternative.
    Mr. PIKE PEASE: Will not the right hon. Gentleman consider the question of giving them an alternative?
    Mr. TENNANT: If the hon. Gentleman will be so kind as to suggest one I will consider it. It is very difficult to know what would be an alternative, as we have no facilities for making anything hot.
    Mr. PIKE PEASE: I will.

    WAR OFFICE TIMBER PURCHASES.
    Mr. SHIRLEY BENNasked the Under-Secretary of State for War if the Government have authorised inquiries being made on their behalf in America from houses engaged in the timber business who have recognised agents resident in England?
    The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the WAR OFFICE (Mr. H. Baker): Inquiries are being made in the United States and Canada for timber suitable for pontoon work. The requirements were advertised in September last in the timber trade papers in this country, and similar advertisements are also appearing at the present time. No instructions to apply to particular houses in America have been given.
    Mr. BENN: May I ask if the hon. Gentleman realises the injury which is being done to English houses which are agents for American houses by the American houses being applied to directly and the English houses ignored?
    Mr. BAKER: No injury is being done. If this particular kind of wood can be obtained in this country, it certainly will be.
    Mr. BOOTH: Have these inquiries been made by the War Office direct, or through the Office of Works?
    Mr. BAKER: By the War Office direct.
    Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: Is the hon. Gentleman undertaking this business through some agency like Mr. Meyer; and, if so, what agency?
    Mr. BAKER: It is a special kind of wood which is being asked for. Advertisements have been published, and if the wood can be obtained in this country, it will.

    EPSOM GRAND STAND HOSPITAL.
    Mr. WHITEHOUSEasked the Under-Secretary of State for War whether the agreement with the authorities of the Epsom stand, now being used as a hospital, necessitates the removal of a number of the wounded from that part of the stand which is to be re-occupied by the owners of the stand; what is the number of wounded who will be so disturbed; and whether they are being removed to other rooms in the stand or sent to other hospitals?
    Mr. TENNANT: I understand that an agreement has now been come to under which none of the accommodation at the Epsom Grand Stand which has been used as a hospital will have to be vacated in connection with the Spring meeting. This very satisfactory arrangement reflects credit upon those concerned.

    SOLDIERS AND SAILORS (PENSIONS AND ALLOWANCES).
    Mr. MORTONasked the Financial Secretary to the War Office whether a cousin is eligible for Government separation allowance when he has been living with and entirely dependent on a soldier in the New Army?
    Mr. BAKER: The definition by the Select Committee of dependant as "any person who is found as a fact to have been dependent on the soldier" applies to the New Army as to other soldiers.

    TERRITORIAL OFFICERS (UNIFORM AND KIT).
    Mr. SHIRLEY BENNasked the Financial Secretary to the War Office what allowances towards uniform and kit were granted to officers who joined the Territorial Forces in 1908, in 1914, and in 1915; and if the Government will consider the question of redressing any inequality in the amounts granted at the various periods mentioned?
    Mr. BAKER: The allowances in the years mentioned were:—

    £

    s.

    d.

    1908

    25

    15

    0

    1914 (to 4th August)

    45

    15

    0

    1915 (from 5th August, 1914)

    50

    0

    0

    The increase from the date of mobilisation was given on account of a rise in prices. I regret that I cannot see my way to make the increases retrospective.

    SERGEANT-INSTRUCTORS (CLOTHING).
    Mr. MORTONasked the Financial Secretary to the War Office whether clothing is issued to sergeant-instructors who are moved from regiment to regiment?
    Mr. BAKER: All sergeant-instructors receive clothing free. The fact of their being transferred from one regiment to another does not affect the issue of such clothing.
    Mr. MORTON: Will the questions of promotion and pay be considered?
    Mr. BAKER: The hon. Member must give me notice of that.

    CLYDE SHIPBUILDING STRIKE.
    Mr. JOWETTasked the Prime Minister if he will lay upon the Table of the House of Commons the instructions sent to the general commanding the forces

    1553
    in Scotland in connection with dealing with certain persons suspected of urging the Clyde strikers to remain on strike until their demands were fairly considered?
    The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Asquith): No such instructions have been issued from the War Office.

    CIVIL SERVANTS (ENLISTMENT).
    Mr JOWETTasked the Prime Minister if he is aware that pressure is being brought upon many officials who have rendered valuable services to the public in civil avenues of life who are of military age to compel them, upon threat of dismissal, to join the military forces of the Crown; whether he is aware that proposals have been made in certain Departments of State to suspend the powers in various Acts which provide for the employment of inspectors in order that such inspectors may be compelled to undertake military service; and whether he has authorised high permanent officials at the War Office to send for and threaten minor officials of their Departments of State, who happen to be of military age, with a view to compelling them to join the Officers' Training Corps?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I am not aware of the truth of any of the statements in the hon. Member's question. It has rather been necessary, in order to maintain the efficiency of the public service, to refuse many applicants permission to join the Forces of the Crown. If the hon. Member can give me any specific instance in support of his statement, I will have inquiries made concerning it.
    Mr. JOWETT: I will give them.

    NATIONAL SERVICE.
    Sir J. D. REESasked the Prime Minister whether any inquiries and investigations are now proceeding, or will be commenced, in order to render it possible to introduce forthwith national service and training should such a measure become necessary at any time during the present War?
    The PRIME MINISTER: No such inquiry has yet been found necessary.

    LICENSED PREMISES (HOURS OF SALE).
    Sir H. ROBERTSasked the Prime Minister whether he is in a position to make any statement with reference to the representations which have been made to him urging such an amendment of the Intoxicating Liquors (Temporary Restriction) Act as will vest in the licensing justices full discretion with regard to the reduction of hours of sale on licensed premises; and whether, in view of the present circumstances in which the country is placed, the Government propose to take administrative action for the curtailment of drinking facilities?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I must refer my hon. Friend to the answer which I gave yesterday to the questions put by my hon. Friends the Members for East Denbigh and East Edinburgh.
    Mr. RAFFAN: In view of the importance of this matter, will the right hon. Gentleman make a statement before the House adjourns?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I will consider that.

    LONDON OMNIBUS CONDUCTORS (ENLISTMENT).
    Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKEasked the Prime Minister whether he is aware of the number of young men now serving as conductors on the London omnibuses; and whether the Government will approach the directors of the various companies with a view to facilities being given to these men to enlist for the duration of the War?
    Mr. TENNANT: This possible source of supply for recruits is not being overlooked.
    Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: Will the right hon. Gentleman kindly answer my question? Is it not a fact that there are a very large number of young men now acting as conductors on omnibuses in London?
    Mr. TENNANT: That is a very difficult question to answer.
    Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: I can answer it.
    Mr. TENNANT: It may or may not be true. A large number have already joined and are now in the service of the Crown.

    1555
    I think probably those omnibus companies and the other companies concerned are not the only companies in this country of which what the hon. Gentleman says might not also be said.
    Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: But does the right hon. Gentleman not think the time has come to approach these other companies as well to give their young men opportunities of joining the Army?
    Mr. TENNANT: All the necessary steps are being taken.

    BRITISH DYES, LIMITED.
    Sir J. D. REESasked the President of the Board of Trade whether the Government of India made any offer in connection with the launching of British Dyes, Limited; whether any German ships carrying alizarine to India have been interned in neutral ports; and whether the dye-stuffs they contain will be made available for Indian spinners?
    The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for INDIA (Mr. C. Roberts): No offer was made by the Government of India in connection with the launching of British Dyes, Limited. I do not know whether any of the German ships sheltering in neutral ports are carrying alizarine to India, but endeavours are being made by the London Chamber of Commerce and other bodies interested, with the approval of Government, to secure the release of the cargoes of such vessels and the dispatch of the cargoes to their destinations.

    GERMAN SUBMARINE ATTACKS.
    Mr. BIGLANDasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he is aware of the successful action of Captain Porter, of the ss. "Graphic," in saving his ship, which was carrying over 100 passengers, from a German submarine off Liverpool on the 30th January last; and whether he will recommend that some suitable recognition of Captain Porter's conduct shall be made?
    Dr. MACNAMARA: The report from the "Graphic," with similar reports from other ships which sighted submarines off Liverpool about the same date, is now being investigated. Meanwhile I can give no undertaking.

    ROYAL DOCKYARDS (PAY).
    Mr. C. DUNCANasked (1) the Secretary to the Admiralty whether, in view of the increases of pay already granted to the workmen in His Majesty's dockyards, it is intended to improve the pay of the clerical staff, observing that the latter are working under conditions equally as arduous as the former and are suffering in a not less degree from the increase in the cost of living; and (2) when a reply will be given to the representations made by the Admiralty and Outports Clerical Federation in December last respecting the overtime payment for clerks and hired writers in His Majesty's naval establishments; whether he is aware that the scales of pay for this extra attendance are in many cases less than the hourly rate for ordinary attendance and is not equal to that in force in the War Department; and whether it is intended to remove this grievance?
    Dr. MACNAMARA: Both this matter and that raised in the next question of my hon. Friend are under consideration.
    Mr. CHARLES DUNCANasked the Prime Minister whether Sir George Ask-with has reported upon the requests of the Government dockyard labourers and skilled labourers for increased wages which they are now claiming; and whether he is in a position to inform the House of the result of the inquiry?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I am informed that the Committee to whom these matters have been referred are to-day meeting a large number of representatives of the various classes of workpeople concerned, including, I understand, representatives of the union of which my hon. Friend is the secretary.

    CURRENCY NOTES.
    Mr. DAVID MASONasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether the Treasury Minutes of the 8th and 20th August last regarding the conditions under which currency notes are issued have been presented to Parliament in accordance with his promise; and, if not, when does he intend to have them presented?
    The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER (Mr. Lloyd George): The Minutes in question have been presented and will be issued shortly.

    DOPE POISONING.
    Mr. ROWLANDS: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department a question, of which I have given him private notice: Whether his attention has been called to the case of a young girl working on aeroplanes being killed by dope poisoning on 28th February; whether this is the second death this year at the Crayford Works; whether there have been other cases in other parts of the country; whether it was admitted in the evidence at the inquest on 3rd March that the system of ventilation required by the Home Office to prevent dope poisoning which was supposed to be perfect had failed; whether the Home Office is still thoroughly well satisfied that the provision of effective means of ventilation are sufficient precautions, and what are those means; or whether any further steps have been taken to insure the absolute safety of the health and lives of the young women employed on varnishing with dope?
    The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. Cecil Harmsworth): I am aware of this case, but I am advised that the circumstances attending it do not throw doubt on the efficiency of the means which have been recently taken, on the recommendation of the Home Office, to prevent dope poisoning. Poisoning from the dope is gradual, and in the case in question the mischief must have arisen before the installation of the new system of ventilation, as the ventilation was not at work till the latter half of January, and the girl, who had been employed on this work since October, left on the 3rd February. I am informed that it is not correct that any admission was made at the inquest that the system of ventilation had failed. The arrangements at the Crayford Works, which provide for the removal of the fumes at the point of origin, have been carefully inspected by the expert advisers at the Department, and have been reported by them to be quite satisfactory.
    Mr. ROWLANDS: I would like to know whether the medical authorities of the Home Office are satisfied now, as they were a month ago, that this ventilation system is thoroughly efficient, and whether they will take the precaution of again examining the girls as they did in December, when they found forty-three girls affected by the fumes?
    Mr. HARMSWORTH: Yes, Sir; I believe the medical advisers of the Board are perfectly satisfied with the system, but if my hon. Friend would like another inspection made I will make representations to the proper authorities.
    Mr. ROWLANDS: I should.

  Congested Districts Board (Ireland).
  Mr. BOLANDasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether the attention of the Congested Districts Board had been called to the damage caused by a recent storm to the pier under construction at Ballinskelligs; and whether steps will be taken to repair the damage?
  May I express my own sympathy and that of every Member of the House with the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Birrell) in his bereavement.
  Mr. T. W. RUSSELL (Vice-President of the Department of Agriculture, Ireland): The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative. The Congested Districts Board have called for a report as to the extent of the damage caused, on receipt of which the question of repairs will be fully considered.

  Desertion of Families (Insurance Cards).
  Mr. GEORGE TERRELLasked the President of the Local Government Board whether he has been able to make any arrangements with the National Insurance Commissioners to assist the Poor Law authorities in tracing, through the medium of their insurance cards, men who have deserted their families, thus causing them to be chargeable to such authorities?
  The PRESIDENT of the LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. Herbert Samuel): The Government have decided that information which has been obtained solely for the purpose of administering the Insurance Act could not properly be used, unless in very exceptional cases, for purposes such as those suggested in the question.

  Sale of Liquor (India).
  Sir HERBERT ROBERTSasked the Under-Secretary of State for India whether his attention has been called to the action of the Deputy-Commissioner of Amritsar in removing, upon the recommendation of the municipal committee, all the liquor

  1559
  shops of Amritsar to sites outside the city boundaries, the number of licences being simultaneously reduced; and whether the Secretary of State will encourage further experiments in the same direction in other municipalities?
  Mr. CHARLES ROBERTS: The Secretary of State has noticed a statement in the Indian Press to the effect mentioned by the hon. Member, except as regards the alleged reduction in the number of licences. Inquiry will be made on the point. I would refer to paragraph 6 of the Secretary of State's dispatch of 29th May, 1914, as to the treatment of "those special cases in town or country in which it might seem desirable and likely to be in consonance with the wishes of the inhabitants that the ward or special area should be kept altogether immune from the sale of intoxicants."
  Sir H. ROBERTS: May I ask whether the paragraph in the dispatch means that the Secretary of State approves of further extension?
  Mr. ROBERTS: The dispatch distinctly contemplates that there may be special areas in town or country which would be properly kept free from the sale of intoxicants.
  Sir H. ROBERTSasked the Under-Secretary of State for India whether his attention has been called to the opening, in April, 1913, of a shop for the sale of country liquor in the village of Ghoda, near Poona, upon the alleged ground of illicit distillation in the neighbourhood; whether inquiries have disclosed the fact that the majority of the inhabitants of the village are opposed to the opening of the shop; and whether he will cause inquiry to be made in the matter?
  Mr. C. ROBERTS: The reply to the first part of the question is in the affirmative. As regards the second part, while the Secretary of State has approved the principle that new liquor shops should not be opened in face of strong opposition from inhabitants of the locality, unless the opposition springs from interested motives, the location of individual shops in particular villages is obviously a matter for the discretion of the authorities in India.

  Opium (Supply).
  Sir J. D. REESasked the Under-Secretary of State for India whether there is at present a serious deficiency in the
  1560
  supply of opium for medicinal purposes; whether prices have greatly risen; and to what extent the deficiency in stocks and the rise in prices is due to the Government policy of destroying the opium trade?
  Mr. C. ROBERTS: I am informed that at present the market for opium for medicinal purposes in this country and the United States is well supplied, and that prices are tending to fall. Opium for these purposes has hitherto been drawn from the Levant or from Persia, and the supply is quite independent of the Indian Government's opium policy.

  Metropolitan Police (Motor Patrol Boats).
  Mr. CHARLES DUNCANasked the Home Secretary how many motor boats are attached to the Thames Division of the Metropolitan Police; how many are converted rowboats; how many boats with improved engines compose the fleet provided since the coroner's inquest on Sergeant Spooner in January, 1913; and are these boats used on patrol duty or in supervision of the ordinary patrol boats?
  Mr. McKENNA: Eighteen motor boats are attached to the Thames Division. Seven of these are converted row boats. Five boats with improved engines have been supplied since January, 1913; two others are completed, and will shortly be in service; and another is nearing completion. The boats will be used for supervision or for patrol duty as in the opinion of the responsible officers is from time to time necessary.
  Mr. C. DUNCANasked the Home Secretary whether he is aware that police officers of the Thames Division of the Metropolitan Police are hampered in their public duty by the inefficiency of the motor patrol boats and their lives endangered by the failure of the engines to act at critical moments; and will he give permission to the constables and sergeants to hold a meeting to discuss this question and lay their views before the police authorities?
  Mr. McKENNA: No, Sir. The lives of the Thames police are not endangered, nor are they hampered in their duty. The earliest police motor boats are, as I mentioned in reply to a previous question, being replaced by an improved type. The engines of these earlier boats, like all motor engines, are liable not to act at times, but oars are carried to meet such

  1561
  a contingency, and these boats are not now used on the lower river where the currents are strong. This matter is receiving the close attention of the Commissioner and his export advisers, and he informs me that he is not prepared to give permission for a meeting to be organised to discuss this question.

  Insurance Committee (West Riding of Yorkshire).
  Mr. JOWETTasked the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, as representing the Insurance Commissioners, if he is aware that the insurance committee of the West Riding of Yorkshire have declined to continue the provision of extra nourishment required by Sam E. Fieldhouse, a member of the Stuff Pressers Approved Society, on the ground that Poor Law relief is going into the home although such relief does not include the extra nourishment which the patient needs on account of his illness, and for which he has paid his contributions; and whether he proposes to take any action in the matter?
  The CHANCELLOR of the DUCHY of LANCASTER (Mr. Montagu): I find that the case referred to has been fully considered both by a district committee and by the insurance committee concerned. The administration of sanatorium benefit is entrusted by statute to insurance committees, whose duty it is to provide treatment and not to relieve destitution. Further, I may add that in the circumstances in question insured persons are entitled, subject to the usual conditions, to sickness benefit of 10s. a week for twenty-six weeks, and disablement benefit of 5s. a week thereafter during the continuance of incapacity for work, in addition to sanatorium benefit in any form other than treatment in a residential institution.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE (SUPPLY).
Ordered, That the other Government Business have precedence this day of the Business of Supply.—[The Prime Minister.]
ORDERS OF THE DAY.

  CONSOLIDATED FUND (No. 2) BILL.
  Order for Third Reading read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read the third time."

  ARMY (PROMOTION AND PAY).
  Mr. WALTER LONG: I very much regret that it is necessary for me to refer to-day to subjects which I have already brought to the notice of this House. I confess I had hoped they would have been dealt with by the War Office long before this, and would have rendered any further reference to them unnecessary. The Government have, on more than one occasion, notably through the mouth of the Prime Minister, expressed their thanks to Members of the Opposition individually and collectively for the services which they have from time to time rendered during the last few months in support of their policy and the plans which they have adopted for the War. In reference to this matter I am certain I can speak for every one of my hon. Friends with whom I usually act, and I believe that, for once in my life, I might even go further and speak for every Member of the House who is not seated on the Treasury Bench, when I say that we do not desire, and we do not think we deserve, thanks for anything which we may have done to assist the Government in their great national work. To whatever party we may belong or whatever may be our individual calling, we look upon it as a very great privilege, which we are proud to avail ourselves of, to be asked to do anything, however small, at a time when our nation is in difficulty and our Empire is confronted with so great a crisis. We neither desire nor deserve thanks.
  I do not know whether in what I am going to say next I can speak for hon. Members opposite, but I am satisfied that I am speaking for my own side and for many outside this House, altogether
  1572
  irrespective of party, when I say that, while we do not desire thanks or recognition in any form for what we have done, we do hold, and hold very strongly, that we have not received from the Government during the last few months the recognition to which we are entitled as Members of the House. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, speaking the day before yesterday, described our position here as almost a farce. He said that, for his part, he would prefer that the Government should bring in a sort of Henry VIII. Bill giving them absolute powers and constituting themselves, what they really are—dictators in the present situation. In the position in which we find ourselves, when we are called upon to take part in Debates which appear to have little if no practical result, we are, I think, entitled to complain that the Government have not recognised up to this moment, and, so far as we know, have no intention of recognising, the expressed opinions of Parliament, even when it is clear, as it has been on many occasions, that the opinions are shared by almost every section and, I might almost say, by every Member of the House, with the exception only of the Government Bench. I could enumerate, if it were necessary, many subjects to which this description applies. I could refer to the aliens question, upon which opinions were expressed from all sides of the House, and upon which opinions have been expressed outside this House. I believe that the Government stand alone in the view they take as to what their policy ought to be in regard to this great question. The House of Commons has spoken as plainly as the House of Commons can speak. They have done almost everything. The one thing they cannot do, and which I hope that they will not do at this or any other time, is to carry their criticism of the Government to the extreme length of a Division in the Lobby. I appeal to those who have, as I have, a long recollection of the practice and custom of this House, and I say that it has been the invariable rule for Governments to act when they have found that the feeling of Parliament was opposed to the proposal which they had made; they have not waited for Divisions.
  I could enumerate cases in which Governments to which I myself have had the honour of belonging, have made proposals, some of them dealing with the Army, which they have found, when they were brought under

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  the fierce light of Parliamentary discussion, did not receive the support of Parliament. It did not require Divisions to force the Government at that time—normal peace times—when there was no truce, to take action to alter and in some cases to entirely remodel their policy. If that were right, and if that were the almost unbroken rule in normal times, when the critics of the Government had all their weapons bright and ready to their hands, how much more ought it to be so when those weapons have been voluntarily and temporarily laid on one hide and when all we can do is to urge upon the Government the views which we hold, and explain to them the reasons why we believe that their policy is wrong When we find that our views in principle, if not actually in detail, are generally accepted in the House—
  Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTT: Not at all.
  Mr. LONG: The hon. Gentleman who interrupts hardly followed what I said. I said, "when we find." If we do not find our views shared, my proposal falls to the ground. When we find that our views are shared in principle, it may not be in de tail, we are doubly and trebly entitled to expect at the hands of the Government the treatment which we have received in times of peace and in all normal times when Debates take their ordinary course; and for my part I regret immensely that on these particular questions to which it will be my duty to refer, the Government have not taken their cue from the evident sense of Parliament. It is not only the sense of Parliament, but it is the strong view of the people of this country. The people of this country are ready to find money, even by the sack, and they are prepared for the time being to withhold their criticisms even if, as they think, it is unwisely spent, but they are unanimous and heart-whole in their desire that everything that money can do shall be done for those magnificent fellows who are fighting so gallantly for us on French, Belgian, and other soil to-day. Is this wish of the country being acted upon by the Government? I have brought up case after case in which I have shown that injustice of the gravest kind is being done to the soldiers in the field. That injustice has been increased one hundredfold by the events of the last few weeks. I regret that it should be necessary for me to deal with these questions at all, and above all to deal with them in this particular way.
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  I want to express my regret—this refers not only to the War Office—that there has not long ago been a Committee of the Government known to us all by name whose duty it would be to supervise the proposals and the policy of the various Departments and to see that they harmonise. There can be no such Committee, because at this moment the policy of the different Departments is absolutely inconsistent. Let me give one example. The War Office are constantly urging the necessity of additional aid in making the necessary provision for the troops in the field. We were discussing yesterday or the day before a Bill brought in at the last moment—the House knows that is a procedure which can only be justified in times of great national emergency—and we were told that the need for this special Bill was so to command the resources of the country as to be able to add to our supply of the munitions of war. We know that the Treasury have issued special orders in regard to financial matters. Within the last week—I only give this as one example—the Treasury have addressed a communication to the London County Council as to the issue of loans by them, and have desired them to restrain their ardour and to be as chary as they possibly can. Why? In the first place, because every penny we have got is wanted for the prosecution of the War, and, in the second place, because all the labour we can get is required in order to produce the munitions of war.
  At the very moment when the War Office and the Treasury are doing this, the Local Government Board write to the local authorities and urge upon them the immediate expenditure of money upon very important and desirable works which would absorb a very large amount of the identical labour which the War Office tells us they are seeking in order to provide the munitions of war. Could anything be more hopelessly inconsistent? I see the President of the Board of Education (Mr. J. A. Pease) there. The same thing, I am informed, can be said of the Board of Education. At this very time when we want to concentrate all our thoughts and energies and resources upon the prosecution of this War, other Departments of the Government than the Treasury, the War Office, and the Admiralty, urge upon the local authorities the expenditure of money on labour which could very well wait until the War is over.

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  Could anything more than this inconsistency show the necessity of a Committee of the kind I have suggested. I hope the Ministers now sitting opposite will not fail to convey to their colleagues this suggestion, because I am confident, if it were adopted, it would materially improve the conditions under which we are working.
  I come now to the War Office itself. I have said that, by their policy, they have not made things easy for us here, and in some respects they have made them very unsatisfactory indeed for the soldier in the field. Some weeks ago I said in this House it was a very great pity the Government did not take Parliament more into its confidence as to the general state of affairs. I watch, as I have no doubt other hon. Members do, the statements in the newspapers with the greatest possible care. I read several papers in the morning and what is the result? Does anybody who reads the communications in the newspapers—the telegrams and so on—feel when he has sought information from a good map that he really knows what is actually going on and what is the position of affairs? I venture to say that not one man in a hundred can give a really intelligent account of what is going on. The information afforded is of the most meagre description.
  One piece of information might surely be given us: we have asked for it repeatedly. We have been invited by the Government to aid them in getting recruits and we have responded to that call. The work has, I think, been well done by all classes in the community. We are asked to continue it, and if the Government would treat the country as intelligent grown-up people instead of as children, and very stupid children too; if they would say to them frankly, "We believe the forces which the Germans are going to put into the field number so many, and in order to meet them we have determined to raise so many men," it would be better. But they have decided otherwise, and I accept their decision. I do not now ask them to tell us the number or recruits they require, but they might inform us what they estimate to be the forces of the enemy, and then, instead of relying as we do on the calculations made by distinguished men here and abroad, and making the best deductions we can from them, we should, if we had the Government statement, at
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  all events know, as sensible people, what, in the view of the Government, we have to face in this way, however the War may be prolonged. I cannot understand why the Government should not take us into their confidence and give us this very small bit of information. It could not add to the resources of the enemy, as, whether it be correct or otherwise, the enemy have got their men and would not reduce the number because we had made a bad calculation We should know what it is we are working for, and, with that knowledge in our possession, we could give more intelligent help in recruiting than we do at present. This ought not to be treated as a matter of mere amusement by the Members of the Government present; it is a serious proposal and embodies the views held by a large number of people outside this House. I hope that even now it will receive consideration at the hands of the Government.
  I made a suggestion to the War Office the other day, and no steps have yet been taken to adopt it. I cannot understand why. We are told—and there is no secret about this—that there is, I will not say a scarcity of officers, but a need for a larger supply of officers for two purposes—to fill vacancies unhappily created in our gallant regiments at the front by the lives so splendidly given by the commissioned ranks on the field of battle, and to supply officers to aid in the training of the New Armies at home. We are entitled to ask the Government whether they have exhausted all the means at their disposal to obtain these officers. I say they have not. The other day I called the attention of the War Office to what I regard as the hopeless failure of the system controlling recruiting in this country. What is going on in almost every town of a reasonable size—of, say, a few thousand inhabitants? You will find there two recruiting officers—one recruiting for the Regular Army and the other for the Territorial Army. I said on that occasion, in regard to 95 per cent. of the men joining either of those two branches of His Majesty's land forces, they are joining for active service and not for service at home, and to maintain two distinct organisations in order to enrol them is a waste of men, material, and money, and produces an immense amount of confusion.
  But it goes even further than that. You have not only two sets of recruiting commissioned officers—fighting men, young men who ought to be on the field of battle

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  and are longing to be there, and who are, instead, doing work which any one of us old men could do just as well—but you have also got a system which is wholly bad and wholly unnecessary. You have got two recruiting sergeants standing on opposite sides of a street no broader than the floor of this House, one of whom gets 2s. 6d. for each recruit he secures while the other sergeant gets nothing. What is the object of this? Surely if a half-crown is given to the man who gets a recruit for the Regular Army it ought in justice to be given also to the man who recruits for the other Army! Look at the result. You have two recruiting sergeants standing there in their uniform. They are like two vendors of a popular ware; they are doing their best to urge the advantages of each particular system; it is like that kind of account-keeping which I, as a poor landlord, always hated. I always said to my agent when he told me that so many pounds had been spent under heads A, B, C, and D, "What does it matter to me; it all comes out of my pocket? I only want to know how much has been spent." All this recruiting is for the Army; you want to get as many men as you can. Why, then, employ six, eight, or ten officers and non-commissioned officers when two or three could do the work? You have scattered all over the country hundreds and thousands of old soldiers—both of commissioned and non-commissioned rank—who would readily come forward to-morrow and do the whole of this recruiting work. It is not so very difficult. I am familiar with recruiting regulations. I know the old custom of the War Office has been such that a recruit cost nearly his weight in pens, ink and paper. Most of these documents might easily be dispensed with. We old fellows surely are quite capable of seeing that a man writes his name on a sheet of paper, of passing him from room to room, and of handing him over to the doctor! Why this should be done by a gallant soldier who is longing to be taking his part in the fighting in France passes my comprehension.
  We have suggested to the War Office—but they have taken no notice of it—that they should first get rid of every officer of fighting age now engaged in recruiting and use them either for the work you have in hand abroad or for the training of men at home, which is very urgent. We have suggested, further, that you should amalgamate your recruiting systems; take the
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  men from one source and distribute them, as they desire or as you may require, as between the two different Forces—the Regular and the Irregular. We maintain that this would result in very great economy. So much for the officers engaged in recruiting. This is not all. The War Office are still engaged in purchasing horses. This is a subject which is very familiar to mo. I have urged the War Office ever since I remember that a soldier, per sc, is the worst person in the world to send out to buy horses, and the War Office know well that a soldier is not the man to do this kind of work. Twenty years ago, or more, when the War Office began to hold manœuvres on a very large scale in this country, they went about the country carrying on mock warfare and necessarily did a good deal of damage to property. As soon as the manœuvres were over what happened? A body of officers—"cocked-hats," as they were irreverently called by the farmers—descended on the district and proceeded to assess the damage done.
  I remember discussing the matter with one officer whom I found doing this work. He said, "What do you think of that field, Mr. Long? I am told by the farmer who keeps it that we have done it a great harm because our troops have been over it, and he wants a considerable sum in compensation." I said, "You are strange to this part of the world, Colonel?" He said, "I am. I have been sent down here by the War Office." He did not wear a cocked hat, but he had a cap with a good deal of gold lace on it, which appealed just as much to the farmer. He said. "What do you think?" I said to him, "I would call your attention to the fact that the tract of country which you point out is supposed to be a field of turnips, but as a matter of fact, owing to the great drought at the end of the spring which preceded this autumn, there is hardly a turnip to an acre, and I do not believe that if the whole of the Artillery in the British Army were to go over that field it would do more than a few pounds harm to it." He was greatly obliged to me for the information, and I have no doubt that the amount of compensation paid was a great deal less than it would have been if he had not been informed of the facts.
  Mr. CROOKS: Did the farmer hear about it?
  Mr. LONG: He heard a great deal about it from me, because I happened to know him. The hon. Member's interruption

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  points to another important consideration. In dealing with these matters you want men who have local knowledge, not only of the land, but of the people on it. As a body farmers are as upright, honest, hardworking and straight as any other body in the country. But farmers vary, as do every other class, and some of them try to get the best, particularly of gentlemen in gold-laced hats. At the time of which I am speaking compensation for these purposes was assessed by a body of staff officers. We called the attention of the Government to the folly of that system. What was the result? After a very long time they abandoned it and adopted the present system, by which men who are used to the work of fixing compensation, who know what they are doing, who do for the War Office the business they are used every day to do for themselves, are called upon to do the work which they can do, and do it far cheaper than it could ever be done by any officers. Take the question of the buying of horses. Why do you assume that an officer is a good buyer of horses? He may be a very good judge of horses: he often is. He may be a very good horseman: he often is. But that does not mean that he is a good buyer of horses. You want to go to the same kind of man to whom yon would go if you were buying anything else, a man who knows what he is going to buy, and, above all, knows the method of the trade in which he is engaged and the people who are engaged in it.
  The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for WAR (Mr. Tennant): Those are the men we have got.
  Mr. LONG: If only the right hon. Gentleman's practice equalled his speech, we should have no complaint to make. He says, "Those are the men we have got." You have got officers on the other side of the Atlantic buying horses—a sufficient number of officers to fill a division of His Majesty's Army. You may say they are the sort of men you have got; that they are good judges of horses and capable men. So they are. But does the right hon. Gentleman suggest that the officers the War Office sent out to the United States of America and to Canada were conversant with the American system and the Canadian system of buying and selling horses, or, above all, that they were acquainted with the men who have been all their lives engaged in this trade? I do not think he will advance any such claim on behalf of the
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  officers they have sent out. I will make him a present of his statement, and will allow, for the purposes of argument, that these officers have all the qualities that they require—full knowledge, intimate acquaintance with the extremely clever people who are the sellers of horses, not only in America, but also here; that they have all these gifts, that they are hard-fisted, and that they know how to deal with people who will take the skin off your back if they have the opportunity. Then I come back to my original question. Why, when he wants officers in the field or for training men here, are officers doing work in Canada and America which can be better done by business men? The right hon. Gentleman's interruption shows that he does not appreciate what is the real foundation of my charge. It is that, while you complain that you have not got munitions of war, that you have not got labour to produce them, and that you have not got officers to do the work they have to do, either abroad or here, you are not taking the necessary steps you ought to take, and that when you have not exhausted all the available material you have got for all these major purposes—purposes for which the officers have been trained—yet you have a number of officers scattered all over the world who ought to be working in France or here at home training troops.
  I come to another question we have raised here, one about which I regret there has been some misunderstanding. I mean the maintenance of the fundamental difference between the professional and the amateur soldier. I am very sorry that this question was raised in a way which made it appear, although it was not so intended in any way, that it was connected solely with the appointment of one particular officer. I think I may claim the right to remind the House that I raised this question some time before that appointment. On the day that I raised it I had learned, for the first time, of the appointment to a Brigade of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Ilkeston Division (Brigadier-General Seely), and I carefully said that my remarks would have been exactly the same had it not been made, because I had arranged to make them long before I knew of his appointment. Some hon. Gentlemen opposite thought they detected in my action in regard to this matter some undue bias because of the politics of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Ilkeston Division. I can assure them

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  that they were mistaken. In their mistake, not unnaturally, one of them said the same remark would apply to the Marquess of Salisbury, who also holds a brigade appointment. If I were to debate this question on the ground of the claims or merits of individuals, I do not believe that I know, among these amateur brigadiers, two men you could find who more deserved their promotion than Lord Salisbury and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Ilkeston Division. As amateurs they have worked hard at soldiering as a temporary occupation for a period of the year. They have done their best to make themselves efficient. Therefore, I should not select either of them if I were going to discuss this question from the personal point of view.
  Let me go further. I know a great number of these brigadiers, and do not hesitate to say that, so far as my acquaintance with them goes, by far the great majority of them belong to the same party in politics to which I belong. Therefore, the views we seek to urge have no connection whatever with the political views of these able gentlemen. What we contend is that the War Office has been gravely, unduly remiss, in allowing these plums of the Army to be given to the men who are only amateurs, instead of giving them to professionals. We have nothing to do with the individual, but we ask is it true that your supply of the trained article has run out and therefore that you are compelled to fall back on the amateur? We know that your answer must be in the negative. There is not a man in this House who thinks of the people in the neighbourhood in which he lives who cannot lay his hand upon one or two, and sometimes many more, officers of right age and ripe experience who would be able to take the field to-morrow, and who have had many years' training in the Army, but who have not had the opportunity. This is a great War, and our soldiers, whether they have served as officers, non-commissioned officers or men, have covered themselves with glory and have won our gratitude and our affection, and they will fight to the end, whatever we do here and whatever mistakes the War Office makes, as they have fought from the beginning. But surely we ought not to rest upon that knowledge and, taking advantage of it, let them, because of their patriotism and public spirit, suffer if we can prevent it!
  May I ask the House to remember that when these men joined the Army they
  1582
  naturally and properly looked forward to the time when some of these plums may, if they have deserved them, fall into their lap? What do you think must be the feeling of these men, who have given the best of their lives to the Service, who have adopted all the suggestions made by Governments and by Parliaments and spent their money upon expensive preparations for examinations and made themselves familiar with all the most recent developments of tactics and of strategy, when they know that they are fit for these appointments, when they see these appointments become vacant and find that they are denied to them and are given to those who, however efficient and however capable they may be, have only given a fraction of the time which they could spare from other occupations to the prosecution of the military art? It is not fair.
  It is not playing the game. It is not treating these men as they are treating you. They are giving you of their best. They are serving you with all their hearts. They are giving to you and to their country their lives, and all they ask is that you will remember that they are professional soldiers, that the Army is a great profession, and that its plums should be reserved for those who are its real and active members, and not distributed amongst those who would be glad enough to go into the field in altogether minor positions where they might, and would, do excellent work, but who ought never to be allowed to filch from the professional soldier the advantage which his training and his loyalty and his knowledge entitle him to claim for himself. It is not on personal but on public grounds that we urge this case upon the Government, and I say to them that while it is absolutely and literally true that our officers and non-commissioned officers and men will go on fighting as they have done, yet it is also true that if they see that your policy towards them is one of kind words but of neglectful actions, they will feel a bitter consciousness that they have not been justly or fairly treated, and they will come out of this War feeling that the Army is no profession for the man who is prepared to give to it his best, but who, when the time comes, will receive at its hands none of the rewards which the Army is able to offer.
  The same comment applies to the regimental officer. We have acknowledged here, and are ready at any time to acknowledge, the magnificent services which Sir John French and the other distinguished

  1583
  officers who are serving under him have rendered. We know that Sir John French has rendered services which we can never sufficiently acknowledge. But if Sir John French had had ten times his ability he could not have done what he has done if it had not been for the regimental officers. I believe that in no war which has occurred in the whole history of the world has so much responsibility and so much trial fallen upon the regimental officer. Remember that you have been holding with your little Army a long line of trenches, and remember what that trench fighting is. It is not the glorious form of fighting of the olden days, when the general and the colonel and so on were able to control and direct the operations. Here you have miles and miles of trenches filled with bodies of men, almost each little section carrying on, on its own responsibility and by the aid of its own wits and its own training, the work of the Empire. The generals can do little after they have given the actual orders and made their dispositions.
  It is to the regimental officers that you owe the glorious record that our Army has won in this campaign. And how have you treated them? How are you treating them now? You are breaking their hearts. You are teaching them to feel that the Army is no place for them. You are making them realise that, although you pay lip service to them here, you will not do them the common justice that they ask. I will only take one Cavalry regiment as an example of all. There are plenty more which can be described in exactly the same way. The establishment of the regiment is a lieutenant-colonel with four majors, eight captains and so many subalterns. There are regiments fighting in the field now which have been fighting for the greater part of this campaign with no lieutenant-colonel, and instead of four majors there are three, or two. What happens? It means that the work of the lieutenant-colonel is done by a major. All the responsibility, all the anxiety and, what is to him a minor question which he never considers, all the extra expense fall upon the major. The captain is doing major's work and the subaltern is doing captain's work.
  Yesterday we were discussing the action of the Government in regard to the taking over of industrial undertakings, and Gentlemen on the Labour Benches naturally raised the question of the payment of the men. I ask this House what would happen to the Government, even in these times of
  1584
  truce, if in the works which they are taking over men were doing foremen's work and receiving the wages of day labourers and you were paying those employed in responsible posts, on the successful management of which the whole output of that factory depended, at the rate of ordinary workmen without responsibility at all. Labour Members would act together and would demand at your hands the cessation of such an unsatisfactory state of things and you would concede it without a moment's hesitation. But because the Army have no united body of men, because they will not ask, because they will not complain, because they fight and never think what your treatment is going to be until afterwards, you take advantage of all these splendid characteristics and you let them work there in France without the rank to which they are absolutely entitled. If there is such a thing as a claim to anything their claim is absolute to this promotion and you will not give it to them.
  I said at the beginning that this condition of things which I described in a previous speech had been made ten times worse by what has happened recently and I will tell the Government why. The whole blame rests with the War Office here. In the course of the last few weeks they have had published Sir John French's dispatch and his list of honours. About these lists of honour everyone knows, ever since the days of the Duke of Wellington, the publication of dispatches and the granting of honours cause a great deal of very natural criticism and comment. I believe that never in the history of the world has the regimental officer received fairer treatment or fuller acknowledgment at the hands of the Commander-in-Chief than has been the case in this War. We all know what is the system tinder which these great rewards are given. No Commander-in-Chief in the world can keep his eye on the whole of his Army when it is in action. No Commander-in-Chief in the world can tell who ought to be the recipients of the various honours. There is only one way by which this most difficult task can be performed, by procuring from the officers commanding your Armies, down to brigades and regiments, the names of those who, in the opinion of the commanding officers, have made themselves most deserving of reward.
  The most casual study of these reports will show anyone what is the fact, that commanding officers vary, as other people vary. Some have a more far-seeing eye

  1585
  and a more generous appreciation of the the deeds of their subordinates than others. If you take a report containing the lists of four or five regiments you will find that in one regiment there are eight or ten names given and in another two or three. Does anyone believe that that is because there has been a smaller number of men who have done gallant deeds in the other regiments? No. For aught you know there may have been even more men. The commanding officer takes a different view of his duties. All the Commander-in-Chief can do is to take the lists as sent to him, examine them, criticise and look into them, and discuss them and make his best report, and splendidly has that work been done. What have you been doing in the War Office? You have been allowing regimental officers to serve in subordinate ranks when they are as much entitled to their promotion as you are entitled to your monthly cheque from the Treasury for your services. Then what has been the result? Every officer who is fighting in France or in Flankers now and who at the beginning of the War was senior to officers who have got rapid promotion in Sir John French's list of honours has gone down by so many places in the list of seniority in the Army to which he belongs. It is a cruel injustice which is bitterly resented, as I know from letters received from the front. These officers are not jealous of the recipients of rewards. They are thankful that their merits have won these distinctions. They feel no grievance against anybody, and still less do they feel any jealousy, but they do feel a real grievance with respect to the War Office, which has sought an inactive line and allowed promotion to remain in abeyance to this day, with the exception of a few brevet lieutenant-colonels—promotions which have no value whatever. In fact, they are worse than of no value.
  4.0 P.M.
  The commanding officer of a regiment cares for his regiment, but officers resent brevet rank. It only rewards the officer, because it carries no consequential promotion. You lay down that a regiment is to be commanded by lieutenant-colonels, but, you have had majors commanding regiments for months. Why do you not make them lieutenant-colonels? When I applied privately as to the reason for this, I was told that it was because of the Treasury—that old Buffer. I hope I made the "B" quite plain. The Treasury will not allow the War Office to
  1586
  do this. I am not going to challenge the accuracy of the right hon. Gentleman's statement here, but we really are in a very great difficulty. We are obliged to get our information as best we can. The other day we brought up the question of compensation and pressed for an answer. We were told that the Treasury would not admit the principle for a moment. Then the Chancellor of the Exchequer came down here a day or two afterwards and said, "We are going to pay fair and reasonable compensation." Can you not agree with the Treasury with regard to this question of promotion? I am absolutely certain of the cases to which I am referring, and there are scores of them. They are not to be counted by twos or threes. These cases could be taken up and considered by a Committee of three, consisting of, say, the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State for War, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I will undertake to say that in half an hour the whole thing would be done. Why should you have men in France and other parts where we are carrying on war doing work that properly belongs to higher ranks? They have done this for months, bearing the heat and burden of the day without getting the promotion to which they are entitled. You are paying them on a lower grade, and if they think that they are not getting the promotion to which they are entitled, while you may do something at the eleventh hour by way of giving them justice, you cannot restore to them the position of which you have deprived them. You cannot by any means in your power undo the great wrong you have inflicted upon these men who have been fighting for the country, and who have done splendid service. Their commanding officers speak in the highest terms of their services, and what is their reward? They have been left by you not only where they were, but, as the result of your system, they are in an absolutely worse position than they were in before they went out to the front. Is that treating these men fairly?
  As regards their pay, I do not know how to talk. I think it is almost impossible to discuss it. I have got a letter here from a colonel—a distinguished officer who has been badly wounded. He was invalided home, and he has been two months in hospital here I say that the War Office system of pay is bad. That gallant officer, after two months' suffering is not yet convalescent, but on account of the War Office

  1587
  system of pay, he is fined £40 by a grateful country for the services he has rendered. You have docked his pay. That is the way you deal with officers financially. I know of another case of an officer who was shot through both legs and who was shot badly in the forehead. He was invalided home. His only chance of restoration to health and activity is a prolonged and pensive system of medical treatment. How does the War Office treat him? It cuts his pay down to a little over one-third, leaving him here at home wounded and struggling to get well with the thought ever present to his mind that a grateful country which talks so glibly of his services, deprives him of his money. I ask that the same—I will not say kindness—but the same justice should be meted out to noncommissioned officers.
  Here is a case to which I beg the attention of the War Office. I know this case myself. I know the man, and he is as fine a fellow as you would wish to meet. He served eleven years and eight months in a regiment. He found himself in Gibraltar. Everybody knows that that is a station which imposes a heavy strain on the health of soldiers. He had a difference with his colour-sergeant, and the colour-sergeant put him under arrest. What did he do? He had never had a mark against him before; he had gone steadily up, having been instructor in musketry and instructor in the gymnasium. He is a first-class man, but when he was put under arrest he broke his arrest, and got some atrocious stuff which made him drunk. He has never been tried to this day for insubordination, but because he broke his arrest and got drunk he was fined by the commanding officer and reduced in rank. He claimed his discharge, and two months ago, after he had left the regiment, he rejoined and went straight to the trenches. His work in the trenches was so gallant that his company officer offered him his sergeant's stripes. He replied, "No, Sir, I would rather not take them. Having served all these years without a mark against me, I ask that I should be restored to the rank which I formerly held in my regiment. If I have done well for my country, my sentence might be wiped off the slate, and I might be restored to the position I held before." The company officer agreed with him, but he was killed.
  He was succeeded by another company officer under whom this man continued to fight. He was badly wounded by being
  1588
  shot through the shoulder and the chest. He lay for twenty-four hours in the wind and rain, and finally he crawled into a place of shelter. That officer confirmed the recommendation that this man should be restored to his original rank. I am assured that his colonel confirmed the recommendation. When he came out of hospital his arm had been cut off, and he is now walking about at home. He has no grievance. He is grateful to the Government for the increased financial allowance they have made to him. He is not troubled about money, because, whatever this House or the War Office may do, country landlords may be trusted to look after such cases. He knows that he is secure. He has no misgiving, but he does want one thing. He wants it more than I can describe. He wants, if the country thinks that he has done his duty, to be restored to the position he formerly occupied. When I heard of this case I wrote to the general officer commanding and begged him to take the matter into consideration. He told me he could not do so because it was contrary to the regulations. I say that the country wants not only to help men with money, but in every other way, and if there is a regulation which stands between this man and the reward to which he is so justly entitled, it should be swept away. I say that a regulation of that kind is an injustice. It is unreasonable, and it is an anachronism during a war like this. I say it ought to be the business of someone at the War Office to see that these things do not occur.
  It is no good telling people that these are matters which had Lord Kitchener's approval. I have been head of a Department, and I know that there is no department in the world which, even at an ordinary time, can be carried on by the head of it dealing with matters of detail himself. He is obliged to rely upon subordinate people, and all these matters to which I have referred come under the control of subordinate people. The man responsible for denying to this man this small measure of justice is rendering a bad service to the Army, for the future as well as the present time, and is doing very little to aid in the successful prosecution of the War. I pray the Government to look into these matters without a moment's delay. In reference to the question of the officers, I know that my own son is one of the officers concerned. I do not bring the case forward because it is in his interest, but because I am

  1589
  compelled to do so. But because it is my own son I am not going to refuse to fight a case which I believe to be a just one, but I may say that is only one of many. There are scores of others which are dealt with in this way. On the last occasion the right hon. Gentleman told me that what was asked could not be done because you could not employ a brigadier. Let the House remember that you have created all of a sudden a vast Army which has risen from 120,000, to say, three or four times that size in France. That means that everyone of your subordinate commands has had to be very largely increased Where you had ten Brigades you now have fifty or sixty or perhaps a hundred. The War Office tell us that they cannot give these promotions, because after the War is over they will have too many officers of senior rank, and they will not be able to employ them. That is no answer to make. Finish the War, do justice to the Army, and then come to the House of Commons and ask them to help you if you have any problems of this kind to face, but do not, because you are afraid of problems in the future, inflict criminal injustice on either the commissioned or non-commissioned ranks of the Army.
  There is only one other matter to which I wish to refer. That is the question to which I referred before, of the National Reserve. I cannot understand the attitude of the War Office in this matter. The men concerned are working men, small tradesmen and men of that kind. They entered into a contract with the Government that they would be willing to serve for two purposes—for Home defence or for service abroad. For one they were to be given a pink and for the other a blue card, which they had to sign. It was the War Office who devised the system, and it was the War Office who appointed the officials to carry it out. Owing to mistakes, which one can easily understand, these cards were never sent out. In one particular case which I have investigated myself in the town of Westbury in my own county, the reason why the cards were never sent out was because the local commandant in his enthusiasm hurried off and joined himself, the men were sent to other parts of England, and he forgot all about his duties in this respect and never issued the cards, and therefore they were never signed. Have these men failed you? Has one of them failed you? Has one of them
  1590
  declined to go where he was sent? Have not they been doing their duty ever since they were called upon? Did not they come at once? Was there one man missing? Have they been dissolute, disobedient, or drunken? No, they have been doing their work, at one time of the utmost importance, of guarding your railways, bridges, and canals. To every one of them you promised to pay £5 for service for Home defence and £10 for foreign service. What is the reason that you have not paid that money? The reason is that they never signed the cards which your officials never sent to them.
  Could there be anything more con temptible in the way of administration by a great Department? How many of those poor fellows are there? What are you doing? I am not going to take account just now. The time will be hereafter. But you are spending money, you are pouring it out, building huts in bogs and marshes, and putting up buildings which no human being outside of Bedlam would try to do, without first of all making roads. You are trying to establish camps, and then you find that you have forgotten roads, drainage, and water supply. You have not taken the trouble to ask a single local man whether the place was a bog or what it was, and you are paying £5 for work which you could have got done for 10s. The Financial Secretary told us the other day of certain huts which only cost £13. They are not finished in nine cases out of ten, because they have not done anything to provide roads, drainage, or water supply.
  You are spending money in this way. You are throwing it away. I know the pressure of your work. I know that you have had to expand a small Department suddenly into a big one. You have had to provide for an enormous Army instead of a small one. I am not throwing these things in your face. I know that mistakes of this kind are almost inevitable. I think that you might have avoided some of them. You might even avoid them now. You might now effect economies before it is too late. But if you are going to spend money, and spend it profusely, over camps and other places, you have no right to try to make something appear on the other side of the ledger by making these economies out of the pockets of these hard-working men. That is what you are doing. You are depriving these men of their few pounds bonus and resting yourself upon this miserable fact that these cards were not signed. You have had the services of

  1591
  these men. If these men had not come I could quite well understand your attitude. But that is not the case. You have not pretended that that is the case.
  I have seen the whole of your War Office correspondence with General Somebody or other at the War Office. I raised the question here. The Prime Minister was then present. He said that he would look into the matter and he gave what appeared to us to be a very favourable reply. A friend of mine took up the question and corresponded with the War Office. They said that the Prime Minister and I were talking about two totally different things, and that the Prime Minister understood one thing and I another. The War Office appears to take a somewhat low view of a Prime Minister's intelligence; it was not mine. I should have said the Prime Minister is above, and not below, the ordinary standard of intelligence, and yet, apparently, we are told, he could not understand this very simple proposition which I explained, and he thought, when I was talking about National Reservists not being paid £5 or £10 for their services, that I was talking about Territorials or something else. I could not accept that officer's description of the Prime Minister's attitude. He certainly very largely held the view that these men were being underpaid. Of course he made no promise. I am not suggesting that he did, but I say that if you take advantage of your autocracy, or your position, for the moment unassailable, if you resort to these injustices against these men, you will be doing a grave injury to the fighting forces of this country, and you will be bringing on the good name and the fair fame of this country a vast amount of discredit.
  The same thing applies to the question of the pay of officers. I could quote the Prime Minister's statement. I could show, if necessary, that under the new system so far from increasing the pay you have actually decreased it. There are cases where a second lieutenant gets an increase, and a lieutenant gets an increase, and after seven years' service his pay is actually reduced. In many of the upper grades of the Army you boast that you have raised the Service pay, and yet, actually under the new scale, when a captain rises to a certain point at which he becomes a major, you take 1d. a day off his pay. I will not delay the House by going into details of these matters now, but I will give the right hon. Gentleman
  1592
  the cases, so that he can have them in his hands when he comes to reply.
  These cases are so extraordinary that one is compelled to think that they must have been settled in some place when reason does not prevail. It is almost incrdible that such mistakes should be made. It is no good for the Financial Secretary to the War Office to say that these things are not so. They are so. My statements come from the officers themselves. I prefer the statements of the man who receives the cash to those of anyone else. Undoubtedly, the system has been to reduce the pay of officers in certain cases. I apologise for the time which I have taken. I assure the House that I have not trespassed, as I have done, so unduly upon their time, because I am anxious to make a statement of this kind, or still less because I am anxious to make a speech. I have put these cases before the House, because I believe in my heart and conscience that this country desires at this moment that justice should be done, and that all ranks should be fairly and properly treated. I believe that the general feeling is that, if necessary, we should err on the side of generosity. I say that to save money by robbing men of pay which is due to them, by depriving them of the bonus which you have distinctly promised them, on account of some technical error for which they are not responsible, and by depriving soldiers in the field today of the promotion which is their due, and which they ought to have received long ago—I believe it is the War Office who are charged with the work—is a negation of everything that this country is asking for at the present time. I do pray the War Office, not to treat this matter again with the neglect and contempt which it has hitherto exhibited, but to give it real consideration, because I believe that is in the interest not only of the Army but also in that of the fair fame of this country that our soldiers should be fairly and honourably treated.
  Colonel YATE: I am proud to be allowed to say a word in support of the position put forward in the thrilling speech of the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Long). The case which he has presented is one in which we must all acknowledge the justice of the claims which he has put forward. There are one or two cases to which I may refer. The first is that of the recruiting officers. From my own experience of the recruiting officers who are now about the country I am perfectly

  1593
  certain that there are hundreds, or I may probably say thousands, of old colonels like myself, over sixty years of age, who could do this recruiting business just as well as the men of thirty and thirty-five who are now engaged on it. The right hon. Gentleman spoke about officers abroad in Canada purchasing horses. A Canadian friend of mine told me that the British War Office is a sort of gold mine for Canada, and that the prices which are being given for Canadian horses are out of all proportion to their value. I do not want to dwell on those points, but I would ask the right hon. Gentleman the Under-Secretary of State for War to give his attention for one moment to a question about which I spoke a month ago—the question of regimental officers. It is a month since the Under-Secretary of State promised that the regimental vacancies should be filled up. What has been done? I put a question to the Under-Secretary only yesterday, and all he could tell me as to what has been done during the last month was that promotions to fill the places of officers taken prisoners or missing will be gazetted as rapidly as circumstances permit. I was glad to hear that, but I must say that circumstances are permitting of very slow promotion. I have watched the "Gazette" very carefully, and very few men have been gazetted during the last month. Then, again, the right hon. Gentleman told me that promotion in the place of lieutenant-colonels appointed brigadier-generals is still under consideration. We always understood that the Under-Secretary, on 10th February last, definitely promised that in the case of lieutenant-colonels promoted to be brigadier-generals the officer who took over the command of a battalion should receive full pay and rank on appointment.
  Mr. TENNANT: I never made a promise; I said it was under consideration.
  Colonel YATE: We all took it as a promise. However, the question is still under consideration, and has been under consideration for a month, and no definite solution has been arrived at. May I ask why? Is there any reason why the question could not have been settled long ago? I cannot express the disappointment which this delay is causing officers at the front. As the right hon. Member for the Strand Division (Mr. Long) said, the regimental officer is the mainstay at the front; he is the man to whom we owe everything; he is the man to whom we owe the glorious
  1594
  record won in this War, and to use his own words, "Here you have men, men who are leading our troops in the grandest possible manner, and yet the Government refuses to give them proper pay." My own old regiment is one of those concerned, and a captain has been in command of it ever since November last. But it is not only in one regiment, for in a dozen regiments a captain has been in command since November last, and during all those months has been deprived of any pay or acknowledgments of the duties he is performing.
  I may state that in some cases a captain of one battalion has been posted to command another battalion, and surely he deserves the rank and pay of the appointment which he has been sent to hold. Money is being poured out in this country, as the right hon. Member for the Strand has just said, yet you refuse to give the regimental officers, who are the mainstay of the Army, the pay due to the rank of officers holding the position of commandant and second in command of their regiment. Necessarily they should have the pay attaching to the rank to which they are appointed. I hope the Under-Secretary of State, when he comes to reply, will inform us that this question is no longer to be kept merely under consideration, and that a settlement will be reached. In speaking on this subject may I express my regret at the reply which the Under-Secretary gave to my question the other day, as to whether any increase of pay is to be given to officers in the near future? The right hon. Gentleman referred to the fact that an increase of pay had been given last year. We know that, but it was absolutely infinitesimal. Why, in some instances, the result of that was, as was brought to the notice of the House the other day, that some officers found themselves worse off by a penny a day than they were before. I would like to recall to the House the memorable speech of the Prime Minister on the 16th November last, regarding the insufficient pay of officers. The Prime Minister said:—
  "I am sure that the grievance of the officer who cannot live on his pay, and must either get into debt or be supported by his parents and friends from extraneous sources, is a reproach to the country, and ought to have been remedied long before, for it becomes increasingly urgent and scandalous when men are laying down their lives for the sake of their country."
  Those were the words of the Prime Minister, who went on to say that the Government had—
  "got the matter in hand, and will not delay to propose remedies."

  1595
  What are those remedies? So far as I can gather from the reply of the Financial Secretary for War to my question of the day before yesterday, it was the Army Order of the 24th November, and that Army Order relates almost entirely to officers promoted from the ranks, and applies to no officers above the rank of captain. The Army will welcome that Order, but I may point out that the Prime Minister's words excited great hopes, and I trust that this Order does not mean that nothing is to be done for majors or lieutenant-colonels. A captain of the line will now get, under the new Order, a maximum of 14s. 6d., but why is a major to be limited to 16s. a day? I ask the Under-Secretary to think of this question, and to think of the Prime Minister's promise regarding the grievance of the officer who cannot live on his pay. The right hon. Gentleman said that this was to be left over until the end of the War. Why should it be left over until the end of the War? There are lots of retired and unemployed officials, well acquainted with the subject, who might be called together to inquire into it and formulate proposals. There was no difficulty in the appointment of a Select Committee to consider the question of separation allowances, nor has there been any difficulty about the consideration of officers' pensions and allowances. Why should this matter be delayed until after the War?
  Officers at the front at the present moment are in the greatest difficulties, especially married officers. One of those difficulties is the question of insurance. Here is the case of a married man. About twelve years ago he insured his life for £3,000. The annual premium was £63 15s. His pay was 16s. a day, less 1s. in the £ for Income Tax. That officer is now in a new service battalion, but he is liable at any moment to go back to his own battalion at the front on the old pay of 16s. a day. His whole pay is £277 12s. a year. Out of this he has to pay not only £63 15s., his ordinary insurance, but additional insurance amounting to five guineas per cent. on the £3,000, making a sum of £157 10s., or a total of £221 5s. out of his whole income of £277 12s., leaving him a balance of £56 7s. out of which he has to feed himself at the front, and provide for his family at home. The officer, as the right hon. Gentleman well knows, cannot, even if he has money invested, sell out now without loss, and the result is that he has
  1596
  to borrow money, and I am told that money cannot be obtained under 6 per cent. Therefore, he will probably have the debt hanging over him for years and years. The Prime Minister himself has stated that it is a reproach to the country that an officer cannot live on his pay. I ask the Under-Secretary to consider this question, and remove this reproach before the end of the War. The Secretary to the Admiralty stated on the 11th February that the Admiralty were considering the advisability of approaching the insurance companies with regard to naval officers. I would ask the Under-Secretary if he cannot approach the insurance companies on behalf of the military officers also.
  Mr. GOULDING: I wish to call the attention of the right hon. Gentleman to the question of commissions in the New Army. It is one in respect to which a great deal of anxiety is existing, because it is believed there is a veto against colonels of service battalions issuing the necessary recommendations for promotion from the ranks in service battalions. If that be the case, it entails an injustice on patriotic men who wished for temporary commissions in the Territorial Force. A great many members of the Territorial Force, when the War broke out, instead of joing the Territorial Force thought they were doing best for the State by joining the New Army, and in many of those cases, at the time of their patriotic action, it was understood that they would be in no way hindered from getting promotion. Here is one case in the North of England where a circular was issued to old public schools and university men:—
  "All who are awaiting results of their application for commissions should at once enlist in this force (the New Army). The very fact of their having enlisted in these battalions will increase their chance of obtaining commissions later on. The War Office will place no hindrance in the way of obtaining a transfer if a commission is obtained further on."
  Mr. TENNANT: Was that an advertisement?
  Mr. GOULDING: It was a circular issued in the North of England to public or county schools, and university men. I regret to say that there are certain service battalions who resist very effectively any promotion from the ranks for those commissions, and the colonel absolutely declines to consider applications for commissions. They are notably the 18th, 19th, and 21st Royal Fusiliers (Public School Corps), the 16th Middlesex, the 10th Fusiliers, the Honourable Artillery Company

  1597
  (1st battalion), the London Rifles (1st battalion), and the Royal Warwicks (Birmingham contingent). Officers commanding these regiments have systematically put obstacles in the way of men applying for commissions; in some regiments they have actually declined altogether to see them.
  Mr. TENNANT: When the hon. Gentleman says that this is done "systematically," does he mean that the commanding officers always take that course, or does he mean that it has occurred recently?
  Mr. GOULDING: In the last few months.
  Mr. TENNANT: The last few months?
  Mr. GOULDING: Yes. The right hon. Gentleman will see I am not stating anything that I cannot prove. This is not a case of a Public School Corps, for, of course, there are other service battalions in which individuals have had their applications for their commissions signed by the colonels. But I have been informed by a number of public school men that several of the colonels have absolutely declined to see them at all. Some of those who were fortunate enough, as they thought, to get before the colonel, the instant the word "commission" was mentioned, the sergeant-major came to the rescue—"Rightabout turn, march!" They received no consideration, whatsoever. I myself have endeavoured to verify these statements. Colonels who I know are in need of capable and qualified men to serve in their regiment have been asked to sign the papers necessary to get a commission; and I have written to colonels myself, and I have several of their letters, but I think two of them which I have here will satisfy the right hon. Gentleman. The first answer is this:—
  "The general officer commanding this brigade has received verbal instructions from Lord Kitchener that no further men in the brigade are at present to be recommenced for commissions. Under these circumstances, yon will see that it is impossible for me to grant your request."
  Here is one of several from colonels, which I will read. Though there is need of these men, yet this is the reply:—
  "I beg to inform you that I cannot grant the necessary recommendations for these men to take up commissions in the battalions under your command, in consequence of the general officer commanding the brigade having received verbal instructions from the Secretary of State for War that no further men are to be granted commissions from this brigade for the present."
  I do hops that the right hon. Gentleman in the course of his observations will be
  1598
  able to explain away that mistake and that misunderstanding, and that the conditions under which many of those men joined originally in the New Army are not to be swept away, and that there is to be no embargo on promotion in those particular regiments.
  I am not here to find fault with the difficulties of the officers commanding. I perfectly understand their position. I perfectly understand that they do not want to see their battalions depleted of the efficient officers under their command, but I also see a very distinct danger if all promotion is stopped, for not only is there injustice caused and discouragement given to the men, but there is also stagnation in those regiments. I cannot say what takes place in other regiments besides those. I have mentioned, but I am told that this embargo and veto does exist, and I suggest it should be removed and that there should be the possibility of promotion for able and capable men wherever they are serving. That officers are wanted, we all know, and the right hon. Gentleman I notice bows his assent to that We know, too, that many colonels are applying for men, and the necessity is also indicated by the "Gazette," which shows that 500 commissions are issued weekly. I am informed that several of these men who are applying for these commissions are men who, as I say, purely for patriotic motives at the beginning joined the New Army instead of going into the Officers' Training Corps. Many of them are men who have been very distinguished both at school and in college, both in learning and in different fields of sport. Several of them are blues of our universities besides being scholars, and some of them captains of our best football and athletic teams.
  Why are those men coming forward? They know there is a shortage of officers, and they feel perfectly confident, while they are in this struggle to take their part in the service of the State, that they are not giving their best services in the ranks when they have the training, character, and ability, and the power of leadership to enable them to serve the State better in positions as officers. The right hon. Gentleman will, I am sure, do me the justice of agreeing that I have not attempted to bring this matter forward in any contentious spirit. I know perfectly well that the War Council in the formation and creation of this New Army have had terrible obstacles and difficulties to get over.

  1599
  They have got over those difficulties with the greatest credit to themselves, but I am equally certain that it is not right, as a matter of justice, as a matter of common sense, or as a matter of good business working, that you should close the avenue of promotion to any capable man in any single battalion in the country.
  There are men serving in the battalions in the humblest spheres to-day who have all the capacity for leadership, men who come from the public schools and who had the self-sacrifice in the beginning to join, and those men should not be sacrificed for any red tape. I may tell the right hon. Gentleman that I have in mind several cases of men who joined quite early after the War broke out who had been in the Territorials, and in positions in the Territorials. The very instant they joined the New Army nolens volens they were given promotion as corporals or sergeants. Those who were with them in the Territorials, or who were serving with them in the Public Schools Officers' Training Corps before the War, and who by a different approach are giving their services to the country, have got their commissions, while the men who were their leaders and instructors, because they went into the New Army units early, still remain in those positions, and the door to promotion is entirely barred. That cannot be right and cannot be good for the Army, and it cannot create the spirit which you should have—namely, that every single man in the Service is to be given the opportunity of sewing his country to the best of his ability. I am perfectly willing to give the right hon. Gentleman some of those names. They are not few, but there is a great number of splendid fellows resting to-day under this injustice. They wish to get the opportunity of giving the full advantage of their ability to the country. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman when he comes to reply will say that there is no truth in the statement that the Secretary for War has stopped Commanding Officers from signing the necessary recommendations for commissions for men who are in their opinion capable of promotion.
  Colonel DALRYMPLE WHITE: I desire to mention one or two points. The first has been dealt with by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Strand (Mr. Walter Long) and refers to the placing of wounded officers on half-pay.
  1600
  I know a case where an officer gave up a very good staff appointment to go out to the front, where he was badly wounded, and he is now put on half-pay. He is a very poor man, and it is a material matter to him, quite apart from the injustice. The other point I wish to mention is with regard to the promotion of what are known as Special Reserve Officers. In my own experience, since the War started, many of these young officers have joined, men of twenty-eight, thirty, thirty-five, perhaps even up to forty years of age, who form most splendid material, and are the very men well qualified to lead men in the field. They are men who, though they joined for the purposes of the War, would in many cases wish, now that they have taken up the soldiering career, to remain on as officers after the War. We may very likely want those officers very badly after the War. How are you persuading them to stop on? You are saying that they are to get no promotion at all. A man of perhaps thirty-two or thirty-four years of age may have joined on the 5th of August on mobilisation as a second-lieutenant in the Special Reserve, and may have gone out in September or October. Meanwhile he gets no promotion, while boys who may be at Sandhurst in October or November go out also, and, since promotion is very rapid, some of them may be promoted as lieutenants, and thus take command of the company over the head of the older man, who is far more qualified to do so. That is not an encouragement to the men to whom I refer to stop in the Army. It may be perfectly true that you do not wish to block what I may call the higher ranks of lieutenants and captains with men whom you may not wish to retain after the War, but in that event you could give them temporary rank and make them temporary lieutenants or captains, and if either they are not satisfactory or you do not wish to retain their services after the War you could dispense with them. I know that, unless you do something of this kind, you are going to lose very valuable officers for the future, in addition to inflicting what is certainly a grave sense of injustice in their minds by not giving them the temporary rank to which they are entitled.
  There is one other point which I have some diffidence in mentioning, because it is perhaps an administrative matter, and it may be said that I am not as well qualified to judge of it as those who are on duty at the front. I do, however, think that perhaps the right hon. Gentleman may pay

  1601
  some attention to it. There are a certain number of men, I am sorry to say, not as many as we would wish, who have gone through the whole campaign, and I am now speaking of private soldiers and noncommissioned officers. Those men have had to undergo a strain unequalled in any previous campaign. That nerve strain through which they have gone has, in many cases, made them physically unfitted to continue at the front without some rest. I had a case of the kind brought to my notice only the other day. There are a few men allowed back on five days' leave. It was reported to me by a lady who works in connection with the Soldiers' and Sailors' Families Association that there was a man in my regiment back on five days' leave, that he was due to return last Saturday, and that he was absolutely unfitted to go back to the front. He seemed to be in a half-dazed condition, suffered from most acute headaches, and really was broken down. Acting on my own responsibility, I said that the man should go and see my regimental doctor. The man himself said he did not wish to go, because his spirit was so good that, he said, having got the five days' leave, he did not want to abuse it. I sent word to him that I was sure the matter would not be treated in that way if the medical officer certified him unfit, and that they would give him further leave. The man did not appear to be examined, and I presume his spirit was so good that he returned on the Saturday. I wrote to the commanding officer, telling him that I understood that the man was not physically fit, and suggesting that he should have him examined by the doctor. I think it would be a very great matter if those men could get a furlough of one or two months at least, and I believe there is a considerable number of men available in all regiments to take their places. If they got that furlough, you would have the men better fitted for their duties on their return, and you would not be losing your trained soldiers, but would get better work out of them when they went back to join their battalion. While the matter may not come quite within the Department of the right hon. Gentleman, I trust that he will mention it in the proper quarter, as I think it would be a very valuable course to adopt, and I am sure the Army would not lose by it.

  ROYAL FUSILIERS (EMPIRE BATTALION).
  5.0 P.M.
  Mr. HOGGE: The subjects dealt with this afternoon so far have been of interest,
  1602
  I think, to everybody in the House. I felt very much obliged to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Strand (Mr. Walter Long) for again putting the case for promotion. Although I am not as interested as he is in the subject, I do feel very strongly on the point that promotions should be given to amateurs over the heads of men who have given their life to the Service. I very much hope that the right hon. Gentleman will not be discouraged even by the failure of his third attempt to secure something on this question from the War Office, but that he will pursue the old Scottish tradition of the Scottish king who tried six times before he got what he wanted on the seventh attempt. With regard to the speech of the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Goulding) with regard to promotion, while he named a certain number of regiments, he certainly did not name any regiment with which I was familiar, and I myself know a great number of other regiments where the men are exactly in a similar position, and where they have a further disadvantage in endeavouring to secure a commission which was not mentioned by the hon. Member. That disadvantage is this: In some cases where they have persuaded the colonel of the battalion to sign the commission paper, the colonel of some other battalion denies the opportunity to the men to get a commission in that battalion, so that there is a double barrier put upon the man applying for a commission and who enters the ranks with the idea of serving his country and taking a commission when it came along. The subject to which I want to address myself particularly to-day is a subject for which I have been responsible, certainly in questions in this House, for some time past, and that is the affairs of what is known as the Empire Battalion Committee. The hon. and learned Member for Ealing (Mr. Nield), speaking last night, deprecated my taking any interest in this question at all.
  Mr. NIELD: I rise at once to correct the hon. Member. I took no objection to his interfering. My comment was that it was strange, the City of London having two Members, and this being a City of London battalion, that those for whom the hon. Member speaks had to go as far as Edinburgh to get a champion.
  Mr. HOGGE: That is what I was going to say, and to remind the hon. and learned Member that not only had they to go as far as Edinburgh to get me to interfere in

  1603
  this business, but they had to go as far as Edinburgh to get the Member who represents the City. So if it is necessary on the part of the constituents of the City of London to go to Edinburgh for a Member to represent them in this House, surely there can be no complaint if another Member from Edinburgh takes up a subject of interest in that particular constituency. However, I do not put my argument on that ground. I base it upon the consideration that we, as Members of the House of Commons, are responsible for the expenditure of public money. The right hon. Member for the Strand (Mr. Long) this afternoon spoke about the question of recruiting. He knows, and we all know, that we are still attempting to get recruits for the Army. This particular battalion has been recruited for six months; it is not yet ready, or nearly ready, to go to the front; it is not yet under the direct control of the War Office, although the War Office is responsible for the military training. Therefore, it suggests itself to me that, instead of at one end of the system attempting to secure new recruits, it would be more effective if the War Office would take over every fancy service battalion at once, and make these men efficient and ready to go to the front. I do not complain at all of what has been done towards training these men; I presume that they have the same opportunities as others. Their position may be due to the fact that they have not been able to get all the equipment necessary. What I emphasise is that you have a large body of effective and efficient men. I understand that a large number of these men—several hundreds—have already seen active war service, and would be particularly efficient. It is high time the country understood that these special battalions are not yet under the control of the War Office, and that the only thing for which the War Office is responsible is their military training.
  The matter I have mainly to deal with is certain practices in connection with this battalion which I consider have been particularly reprehensible. The hon. and learned Member for Ealing dealt last night with the nature of the committee. He pointed out who were on the committee, and gave their names. I myself reminded the House, in the questions which I put on the subject, of the large number of officers of the King's Army who are serving on this committee. The hon. and
  1604
  learned Member also reminded the House, which I did not intend to do myself, because we regret that death has removed him from our midst, that Field-Marshal Earl Roberts himself was a member of this committee. There were on the committee, in addition to Field-Marshal Earl Roberts, one general, four major-generals, two colonels, two majors, two captains, the Lord Mayor of London, and two Members of this House. The original intention was to raise a regiment to be called the Imperial Light Horse, but owing to the War Office making a different suggestion it was changed into a battalion of Infantry, and is now known as the Royal Fusiliers (City of London) Regiment. On the committee, which had its offices at 3, St. James' Street, there were two gentlemen named Devereux and Watson. Mr. Devereux was made honorary secretary of the British Empire Committee. The affairs of the committee were put into the hands of a sub-committee, presumably in order that the arrangements for the battalion should be made on a more businesslike basis. I mean by that, that the whole committee could not be expected always to be present, and it was easier to have the business done by a subcommittee. Mr. Devereux was honorary secretary of that particular sub-committee which consisted of General Sir Bindon Blood, who was chairman, Colonel Lumsden, General Herbert, Lord Calthorpe, and Messrs. Watson and Devereux.
  The sub-committee proceeded to arrange for the contracts for the battalion. The equipment contract was given to a contractor named Hand, and when that contract was secured—and I do not suggest that it was secured in any but a proper business way — Messrs. Watson and Devereux, particularly through Watson, blackmailed that contractor. If the House wishes for it, I have the evidence and can produce it. The hon. and learned Member knows that it is true; therefore that is common ground between us. They blackmailed the contractor, as the hon. and learned Member admitted last night, to the extent of £285 out of £3,000 at that time. That is to say, on 24th October last year, Hand had received £3,000 out of something over £4,000, and out of that Devereux and Watson had £285. Naturally, that came to the ears of certain members of the committee, and as a result an inquiry was held, presided over by the hon. and learned Member for Ealing. That inquiry lasted the whole of one day

  1605
  and was continued for a second day in the chambers of the hon. and learned Member. I understand from my own friends on the committee that the hon. and learned Member conducted that inquiry as if he were conducting a strictly legal inquiry, and did it remarkably well. I mean that he set aside for the moment his private function as a member of the committee, and acted as if he were in a judicial capacity. I did not intend to suggest anything else. At that inquiry evidence was taken from Hand, the equipment contractor, and from Watson and Devereux, who were members of the committee, and one of whom was its honorary secretary. The committee came to certain conclusions which, so far as I have been able to ascertain—and I think my information is fairly accurate—were four in number. The first was that they decided to remove Messrs. Watson and Devereux from the British Empire Committee.
  Mr. NIELD: I think I ought to point out that both of them had resigned on the 4th October on the ground that they were holding Government contracts, that their resignation was accepted at the first meeting of the committee subsequent to that date, on the 6th, and that Devereux was asked to remain honorary secretary until a successor could be obtained. At that time the committee knew nothing at all about these transactions.
  Mr. HOGGE: I am sorry to differ from the hon. and learned Member. I hold in my hand a letter from a member of the committee who was present at the committee meeting on the 6th October, after the date given by the hon. and learned Member on which these gentlemen were supposed to have resigned, in which it is quite clear that they had not resigned. As this is a copy of a letter addressed to the hon. and learned Member for Ealing by another member of the committee reminding him of the fact, he himself not being present at that meeting, it is quite conceivable that the hon. and learned Member is misinformed on that particular point. But that is one of the questions which I am going to suggest to my right hon. Friend ought to be inquired into—as to whether or not these gentlemen had resigned from the British Empire Committee or the 4th October. If they had, it is a curious fact that it was found necessary towards the end of October to conduct an inquiry into their conduct.
  I should like to ask the hon. and learned Member for Ealing if he will explain, when
  1606
  he takes part in the Debate, what power they had, if any, to compel the attendance of Messrs. Devereux and Watson at that Committee of Inquiry if those gentlemen had resigned from the committee and ceased to be members of it. However, that is a point in dispute. The second conclusion was that the committee should remove its offices from 3, St. James' Street; the third was that they should strongly recommend that all the contracts held by Devereux and Watson should be cancelled; and the fourth, that General Sir Bindon Blood should be asked to convey to General Woollcombe, in charge of the Eastern Command, the result of this particular inquiry. Reference is made in the conclusions arrived at by that committee to other contracts hold by Devereux and Watson, and there are one or two very pertinent questions that I want to put to my right hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for War with regard to that particular point. I deprecate, and I hope the House deprecates, in all these committees in charge of special battalions, the giving of any contract whatsoever to any member of the committee. The moment you give a contract to a member of the committee responsible for the battalion you open up possibilities which may lead to considerable and regrettable results. Will the House believe that despite this report of that sub-committee of the British Empire Committee, which presumably was put in the possession of General Woollcombe as far back as the 14th October, and in spite of the fact that Mr. Devereux was removed from the honorary secretaryship of the committee because he had been convicted of blackmailing a contractor—
  Colonel BOWDEN: As a member of the committee I really must correct the hon. Member. That is not so. Mr. Devereux had resigned long before that date. His resignation was in before that transaction. He was not dismissed from the committee. He was acting at that moment as temporary secretary while we were finding another, he having already resigned, but at the request of Sir Bindon Blood he stayed on for a short time.
  Mr. HOGGE: I have already discussed that point and as to whether my hon. Friends are right in regard to it. It can be settled by the production of the minutes of the British Empire Committee. My hon. Friend will bear in mind that I am talking of these facts with knowledge that I have from these members of that committee, all of whom have resigned from the committee

  1607
  on account of practices which they deprecate. If it is, as the hon. Member for North-East Derbyshire (Colonel Bowden) says, the simple production of the minutes will show it. In any case, perhaps the hon. Member for North-East Derbyshire, if he takes part in the Debate, will explain, or will assist me in deprecating, to the right hon. Gentleman the Under-Secretary of State for War the continuance in the contract from the War Office of the man who has been convicted of the blackmailing of another contractor. If my hon. Friend will give me assistance on that point I shall be infinitely obliged. I will repeat to the House that, despite the conclusions of this committee, those two men were continued in the hutting contract for the battalion and in the messing contract. It is only within the last fortnight, or seventeen or eighteen days, that Mr. Devereux has ceased to be responsible for the victualling of the Royal Fusiliers.
  I understand that since he has ceased to be responsible for the victualling there has been obtained a very great economy on the feeding of the battalion. Perhaps the colonel, who happens to be present, will be able to tell us whether that is true or not. If my information is correct, it is going to be a very wise arrangement for his battalion, and he is going to save money. If it be true that the man was convicted by the sub-committee of the British Empire Committee of blackmailing the equipment contractor as far back as October, 1914, is it not a remarkable circumstance that he was still in possession of the victualling contract for the battalion a fortnight or so ago? The hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Ealing (Mr. Nield) suggested that I was casting aspersions upon public men. Does the hon. and learned Gentleman regard it as an aspersion when I say that an appeal can be made to the public by men of the type and status which the hon. Member read out to this House, and that those things can be allowed to go on under their name—because so long as they continue and are not rectified they are as responsible as everybody else?
  I could give my hon. Friends opposite quotations from newspapers. I could read a quotation from the "Globe" newspaper months ago, in which they were asked to take decisive action so that they could persuade the public that what they
  1608
  wore doing was with a single eye to the public service. These rumours have been going on in the public Press, and not a single member of the British Empire Committee has taken the trouble to deny them. What is the result. In those circumstances the general public either believe that they are not true or they get the impression that those big names stand for something which is above suspicion, and that nothing is really going on. It is not in the mouth of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Ealing to suggest that I am casting aspersions on any public body. What I am seeking to do is to clear these people—some of them friends of my own—of the aspersions which have been cast upon them by the committee on account of the fact that Messrs. Devereux and Watson in particular had used the committee for purposes which should bring them within the Prevention of Corruption Act passed in this House in 1906.
  There happens to be, or did happen to be, in the Royal Fusiliers a lieutenant and quartermaster whose name is Willard. That man is an old soldier. He has served his King and country in more than one war. Whilst he was with the Royal Fusiliers he was an efficient quartermaster. He was liked by the men, and he looked after the interests of the men. I have not yet found any man in the Royal Fusilier Battalion—and I know many of them—who has anything but the highest opinion of Lieutenant and Quartermaster Willard. This man reported to the colonel of the regiment that Mr. Devereux had attempted to bribe him in connection with the messing of the battalion. Lieutenant and Quartermaster Willard, for that and other reasons—which I do not know, but which we may hear in Debate—was brought before a Committee of Inquiry—the names of which I could give the House if it were worth while—and as a result of the inquiry he has been dismissed the Service. I would ask hon. Members to bear in mind what that means. This man, after serving his country as an ordinary soldier in the ranks, is thrown neck and crop, bag and baggage, out of the Army, with no prospects at all in life, or his prospects, at all events, entirely damaged.
  I want the members of the committee who happen to be present, to tell me, if either of them, or anybody in connection with the committee, knowing, as they knew, that Mr. Devereux was continuing the victualling contract, being convicted of

  1609
  obtaining illicit commissions already from Hand, the equipment contractor, informed any member of the committee that that was the man who had attempted to bribe the lieutenant and quartermaster? I think it iniquitous that a man in the ranks, who has nobody to champion him, should be so dealt with. The result will be to deprive him of every opportunity hereafter. Everybody knows what it means when a man is cashiered from a regiment, after he has been brought before a Court of Inquiry, with nobody to make it plain that the man who brought one of the charges against him was the man who himself ought to have been prosecuted by the British Empire Committee! Having said that, I do not want to elaborate the case more than need be.
  There is a practice obtaining in connection with these battalions by which the contractor pays, or refunds, some of the profits to the battalion fund. It is on record that Mr. Devereux, convicted of obtaining illicit commission, paid over to the battalion funds of the Royal Fusiliers as much as £400. That money had come out of the ration allowance of the men, which for every battalion is 1s. 9d. per day. That amount is what the War Office consider the men ought to have. Any profit that is made is made by persuading the contractor or caterer to accept the contract at a lower figure than 1s. 9d., the remaining money going, as in this case, into the funds. I do not know whether it was all the remainder of the money, or a certain portion of it. I consider that system wrong. I consider it an iniquitous practice. I consider that when you are training men for the front, when those men come to you—not as a matter of fact in this case, because this happens to be a particularly fine body of men—in some cases not altogether physically fit, that they require to be made physically fit, and their food is one of the chief necessaries for that purpose.
  I deprecate very much that anything should be taken off the allowance to these men and used for the purpose I have described. I want now, practically in conclusion, to put some deliberate questions to my right hon. Friend on the Front Bench who represents the War Office. Since I came into this House this afternoon, I have had sent to me a letter which I have not been able to show my right hon. Friend—I have, as he knows, sent to him a large number of questions—a letter from Captain Parsons. There are
  1610
  a great many men on the other side of the House who know Captain Parsons. He is one of the greatest exponents of anti-socialism that we have in this country I see my hon. Friend opposite (Colonel Bowden) amused, but he will remember, of course, that when they removed the battalion offices from St. James' they went to the offices of the Anti-Socialist Union—to show, I suppose, that the party truce was still on. I presume the hon. Member for North-East Derbyshire felt quite clear that he would not there be impregnated with any anti-socialist doctrines, and that he could safely go there. Captain Parsons, this well-known public man, a member of the British Empire Committee, writes to me as a result of having been at the committee yesterday. Presumably the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Ealing was present. He must therefore have known that at least three members of the committee had resigned. Despite the fact that he knew that he read out to the House in the Debate last night the names of those gentlemen as being members of the committee—
  Mr. NIELD: No, no; that is wrong. I read them out as being original members of the committee. I said that some of them had died, and that it was possible that even some of them had never attended a meeting.
  Mr. HOGGE: The one that died was the name, regretfully given, of the late Field-Marshal Lord Roberts. I accept what the hon. and learned Gentleman says, that he read the names out as being those of the original members of the committee; therefore I will put it that he omitted to mention the fact that three of them had resigned. The gentleman to whom I referred, dealing with the hon. and learned Gentleman's speech last night—in arguments which I will not take from him—winds up his letter to me with a desire that I now put to the right hon. Gentleman the Under-Secretary of State for War:—
  "I feel that all the honourable and distinguished men who have so ungrudgingly sacrificed their time and ability to further the patriotic tasks of this committee—and none have done so more than Mr. Nield, K C.," —
  There is no animus there, you see.
  "however much they may differ one from the other as to the methods of procedure, will at once welcome the establishment of some machinery by which all the facts in connection with the committee can be dragged into the public light, and those guilty of disgraceful conduct brought to justice."
  That is a letter from a member of the committee, a distinguished officer, and a man who has seen war service; one who

  1611
  is disgusted with the disgraceful conduct which has obtained in certain instances. I want to ask the War Under-Secretary a few questions. If the sub-committee of the British Empire Committee removed Messrs. Devereux and Watson from the committee, or, if I accept the interpretation put upon it by my right hon. Friends opposite, if they resigned from the committee, and if the committee removed from 3, St. James's Street, will the War Office tell me, or the House, why Messrs. Devereux and Watson were continued in the hutting contract? They got the contract from the War Office, according to General Sir Bindon Blood before the British Empire Committee. They are on the War Office list. The War Office knew, or ought to have known, from General Woollcombe what had been the report of the committee presided over by the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Ealing. Yet they were continued in the hutting contract. I should like my right hon. Friend at the same time to tell me if he has looked into the price that was given for that particudar hutting contract. If he does he will probably find that no higher price was paid by the War Office for any huts that had been built than for the huts built in connection with this contract.
  Then I should like to ask my right hon. Friend if he has ever inquired whether, in spite of all that I have said being true, Mr. Devereux was an honorary member of the mess of the Royal Fusiliers; whether, for instance, on 1st January, he was an honorary officer of the mess on the occasion of the inquiry into the conduct of Lieutenant-General Lowe; and will anyone tell me why Devereux, convicted of those offences, and the colonel of the regiment knowing he was convicted of those offences, should be made at any time an honorary member of that particular mess? Will my right hon. Friend tell me why the committee did not prosecute Messrs. Devereux and Watson? Perhaps the hon. and learned Gentleman who presided over the Committee of Inquiry will tell us. There is an Act of which they know—the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1906. I understand that if the facts are placed before the Attorney-General he can advise on a prosecution. Does my right hon. Friend know whether those facts were placed before the Attorney-General or not for the purpose of the prosecution? He knows perfectly well, and even the hon.
  1612
  and learned Member for Ealing (Mr. Nield) has admitted in this House, that Devereux and Watson obtained £285, or 7 per cent.—much better than the Meyer contract—on this particular contract by blackmail, and yet nothing was done by anybody. Nothing was done by the sub-committee of this Empire Battalion which ought, in the public interest, to have done something, and was entitled to do something, knowing those facts.
  I want to know from my right hon. Friend why no prosecution took place. I have asked already whether it was true that the highest price paid for huts was paid in connection with these huts. I should like him to find out where the materials were obtained, and to whom they were invoiced. In pursuance of an inquiry of that sort he will find some distinctly interesting information. He will find that firms from which the material was ordered were not the firms to which it was invoiced. Then I should like to ask him whether Devereux or Watson, or both, in any capacity, are on the Army contract list now? Have they been removed? Are they in possession of any contracts? I would also like to ask him if he knows whether a very careful attempt has been made to cover up the tracks of this particular incident by the contractor Hand, who was blackmailed, issuing a writ for the return of his money; whether he knows if that money has been returned or not; and whether he knows, if the writ has been issued and the money paid, that that constitutes an admission on the part of all throe of an illicit transaction?
  I think I have given the House enough material to demand from my right hon. Friend a very searching inquiry into this particular case. He tells me that he is having a Departmental inquiry. I do not think that is really sufficient. I think there ought to be a public inquiry—a judicial inquiry. If there is nothing to hide in connection with the affairs of this battalion, let them be brought into the light of day. Things have been hidden since the end of November, and would never have been dragged into the light of day but for the questions I happened to put on the Paper; and I say again it is the duty of any public man, knowing those facts, to bring them to the notice of this House. The use that is so frequently made of the names at the top of the list by the people who come in on the ground floor for their own purposes is a practice which ought to be deprecated in public life, and it is perfectly

  1613
  obvious that two men, with antecedents that will not stand investigation, by some means or other got themselves constituted the executive part of this committee, and have been making money. If there is one thing more abominable than another in public life it is improperly trying to make money out of contracts in equipping our soldiers. This has occurred in connection with this battalion.
  I make no reflection on the two hon. Gentlemen opposite who happen to be connected with the committee. I have made specific charges against two men who remain on the War Office Contract List, and I say the War Office ought to remove them from that list, that they ought to be prosecuted for what they have done, and that if you want to restore confidence in these special battalions you ought to have an inquiry. I also strongly plead with my right hon. Friend that he will immediately take the step of putting all those battalions under the direct control of the War Office. It ought not to be possible for any Committee to be responsible for the equipment and the housing and feeding of soldiers who are going to the front. The War Office is responsible for their military efficiency; let the War Office come in now and take over every special battalion. There are enough of them in the country to form one of the divisions which an hon. Member has said were necessary for the front. It is fine material and it is ready to go. In this case it is being exploited by men who have no right to exploit it, and from whom we in this House ought to protect it.
  Mr. NIELD: I have no complaint to make about the tone of the hon. Member's speech. From the information I gave to the House yesterday, it is perfectly clear that the Committee admitted that at a certain date they became aware of a certain fact, and they proceeded to hold an inquiry. I fully acknowledge the reference the hon. Member made to myself in relation to that inquiry, and I can only tell the House that I and others who were associated with me, on 27th and 28th October, when that inquiry was held, desired to probe the whole thing to the bottom, and, having probed it, made a report and passed resolutions which I will read in a few moments to the House. I think the House will be perfectly satisfied that the honour both of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for North-East Derbyshire (Colonel Bowden) and myself, and those distinguished gentlemen who
  1614
  are members of the committee, will be amply vindicated in the proceedings which we took. I will ask the House to keep in mind the dates which are of importance in determining whether the proper course and the prudent course was followed. I yesterday sketched the constitution of this committee and sub-committee. I pointed out that we had received the War Office circular of the 29th September directing all communications to be made not to the War Office, but to the Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Eastern District, General Woollcombe. It was General Woollcombe who, on the 12th September, inspected the battalion in St. James's Park, immediately before it went into its camp.
  Although I am not concerned to-day to minimise the conduct of the two men whom the committee found to have received this money, nor the contractor by whom the money was paid, I do say that Mr. Devereux, before that unhappy event, had rendered signal service to this battalion—I do not say it was not for what he might ultimately get out of it—but those who are acquainted, as I am not, with the details of the management of the battalion since it has been in camp, will, I think, bear testimony that, at any rate, Devereux was responsible for considerable additions to its comforts. I feel sure that the fact is that Devereux had sent in his resignation—I think I am right in saying both Devereux and Watson, but certainly Devereux, had tendered his resignation on 4th October, and on the 6th October the committee had the matter brought to their attention. I was not present myself. General Sir Bindon Blood was in the chair, and the other members present were: Colonel Harland Bowden, Major Cosmo A. Little, Lord Calthorpe, Major-General C. W. Robinson, Mr. J. A. McCandlish—who, I think, is the hon. Member's informant—Captain Parsons—
  Mr. HOGGE: I hope the hon. and learned Gentleman will not assume that. I do know Mr. McCandlish.
  Mr. NIELD: Perhaps the hon. Member will give the name of his informant. However, we will psss that. Mr. Watson and Mr. Devereux were also present. A question arose at that meeting as to the propriety of Mr. Devereux holding the messing contract of the battalion. The only connection the committee had with the messing contract was to provide in advance for the men when they arrived in camp on the

  1615
  20th, and the liability to pay for the provisions supplied to that battalion, so far as the general committee was concerned, was limited to a period of one week, from the 10th to 17th September, so as to cover the date when they would get into camp. From 17th September the messing contract was purely one between the War Office, through the commanding officer, and the contractor. No money passed through the general committee's fund, which had been kept in such order that, if the hon. Member chooses to examine the vouchers and pass book, he will realise at once that every payment made through the committee has been a regular payment and proper.
  Mr. HOGGE: The hon. and learned Member must not take it that I made any observation about that. So far as I know, what he is saying is the case. That is not the point I was making. It may be true that the messing contract was at that date in the hands of Mr. Devereux. My point was that if the hon. and learned Member knew that about Devereux, did the War Office know when they were continuing his contract?
  Mr. NIELD: That I shall show in the course of a few minutes, but the minute relating to the 6th October states that the question of the propriety of Mr. Devereux holding the messing contract of the battalion while a member of the committee was raised, but, on it being explained that Mr. Devereux was receiving no profit from the contract, the committee unanimously approved of the arrangement. The members whose names I gave you just now were present at that meeting when that minute was signed. Mr. Watson and Mr. Devereux tendered their resignations from the committee, but Mr. Devereux was requested to continue to act as honorary secretary until somebody could be found to replace him. I am informed that the resignations were sent in on the 4th October. The first committee meeting after that date was on the 6th, and at that meeting the resignations were accepted. It was on the 22nd October, which was the day on which the notice convening the meeting to inquire into these alleged irregularities was passed, on a communication sent by a member of the committee, whose name I mentioned a few minutes ago, that Major-General Herbert took over the temporary duties of secretary in order that we might deal with the whole matter in the inquiry. The hon. Gentleman wants me to answer
  1616
  certain questions. One of them was what power had we to bring about the attendance of Messrs. Watson and Devereux at the inquiry. We had no power, but we made a request, and both of them attended. We made a similar request to the contractor, and he also attended and produced his documents. It has been said that what we did on that day ought to have prevented the War Office from having any further dealings with these men. I will not take up the time of the House by reading more than I am obliged to, but as I stated last night, the committee had to decide a question in which there was a conflict of statements between these men. On the one hand, the contractor alleged that he had been compelled to grant a share of his profits, amounting to £285, to these men. The prices had been settled by tender, and there is no member of the committee, past or present, who will allege that in regard to the quality of the goods supplied the battalion has in any way suffered. The goods were carefully examined by experts, and they were in the main right, although there was a few trifling rejections.
  Mr. HOGGE: Did you take the tenders for the huts?
  Mr. NIELD: No, we had nothing to do with the hutting which was done with the War Office. These goods were delivered and the full value has been received by the battalion. The mischief was that these men went to the contractors after the placing of the order, and then induced him by some means—he said by saying they would make it awkward for him to get payment of the money—to concede them a share of the profits amounting to £285. Messrs. Devereux and Watson's story is nothing of the sort. They say that they received the money under a limited partnership which was contained in a letter of the 17th September. I am sorry that last night I misstated the division of the profit. The letter suggested three-fourths to the contractor and one-fourth to these two men. It was alleged that it was stated in this letter that any sum the contractor might advance to the men was to be regarded as an advance under profits made under this contract. That is the issue we had to determine, and looking at the two statements and the documents as I would look at them in my own profession, the conclusion was irresistible that the money was paid in accordance

  1617
  with this statement of the contractor, and not in accordance with the letter of the 17th September, the existence of which the contractor denies, and there is no satisfactory evidence to show that the letter was ever posted. Under these circumstances the committee reported as follows:—
  "The committee are of opinion that in considering the conflict of evidence between the parties they must have recourse to the documents, and so fat as they are admitted, it appears to them that they support the statements made by Mr. Hand. They cannot but express a strong opinion that Mr. Hand ought not to have made any of the payments without acquainting the committee of the circumstances, or, at any rate, of bringing the facts to the notice of Lord Calthorpe, who was the chairman of the executive sub-committee, who had the arrangements in hand for the clothing of the battalion. In the opinion of the committee, the matter, while not involving any loss of public money or operating to the immediate detriment of the battalion, is indefensible and ought not to have taken place. It was of a character which was and is calculated to give rise to criticism which cannot fail to injure the work of the committee, which has been undertaken purely upon patriotic grounds."
  Mr. HOGGE: Very proper.
  Mr. NIELD: That was the conclusion which the committee arrived at. This report was adopted upon the motion of General Sir Bindon Blood, seconded by Colonel Lumsden. Upon the proposal of Major Cosmo A. Little, seconded by Major-General Abadie, it was resolved—
  "That the committee, upon the facts admitted by Messrs. Devereux and Watson, consider it obligatory upon them to show their strong disapprobation of the transaction by requesting Mr. Devereux to retire from the temporary secretary-ship, and, further, that all connection with Messrs. Devereux and Watson and the British Empire Agency, Limited, should be forthwith severed; and that in future the meetings of the committee be held and its business conducted at some address otherwise than at 3, St. James's Street."
  On the proposal of General Abadie, seconded by Colonel Lumsden, it was resolved:—
  "That Sir Bindon Blood be requested to personally interview the authorities at the War Office (or the Horse Guards) and explain the circumstances of the case, and the course which the committee have been obliged to take in order to preserve the position of the committee and the battalion in relation to the authorities. That he be also requested to place before them the question of the existing contracts."
  On the 30th October, immediately after the passing of that resolution, Sir Bindon Blood did call, together with the commanding officer, upon the admittedly proper officer, General Woollcombe, and he explained the whole of the circumstances. I am not sure that he did not read a copy of the whole of the Report which I have quoted—at any rate, he read a summary of the evidence of the Report.
  1618
  General Woollcombe had that in his possession on the 30th October. I am told that at that time the question was discussed how far the messing should be continued in the hands of Mr. Devereux. The general inquired how the men were being fed, and satisfied himself by visits to the camp that the men were having good value for the money. The contract was for 1s. 11d. per head, and this was afterwards reduced to 1s. 9d. I am bound to say, in fairness to everybody, that Mr. Devereux, on the completion of the contract, which was in formal War Office form, wrote a letter to Colonel Bowden, in which he said:—
  "You are fully aware of the part I have taken in the raising and equipping of this battalion and of the increased interest I have in the progress and welfare of the men, who have so readily and quickly subjected themselves to discipline and willingness to become efficient soldiers. I am pleased to send you copies of letters I have from wholesale suppliers of provisions and meat, friends of mine, from which you will gather that I am in a unique position to buy at the lowest possible price the best articles. I wish to give the battalion the benefit of the position I am in the market and would ask you to permit me to hand over to the battalion for the men's extra comfort and for their general welfare 85 per cent. of my profits, if any. I estimate that 15 per cent. will repay my working expenses, and I repeat I am delighted for above reasons to give the benefit of my position for use of the men under your command and for their future welfare. The best of luck and good wishes to all in your charge, and may the Empire Battalion succeed and prosper."
  The colonel commanding acknowledged that letter and thanked him for his generosity, and the result was that one penny per head per man was put into the regimental funds, which produced a sum of £400, which has been of inestimable advantage, and has enabled the regiment to get what the War Office would not allow them to have. It is only fair to remind the House that at the end of October the hutting contract was only partly completed, the materials were not on the ground, the weather was wet and the men were under canvas and suffering great inconvenience, and after a full consideration of the whole of the circumstances General Woollcombe came to the conclusion that the proper thing to do was to allow the contract to go on. It is only fair to say that the Chief Engineer of the Eastern Command, after paying a visit to this camp, found that the huts were satisfactory, and stated that they were, in his opinion, superior to any he had seen. It is a matter between the War Office and the contractor whether or not the War Office thought under the circumstances that General Woollcombe should have disregarded the convenience of the battalion by the cancelling of this

  1619
  contract, necessitating going to arbitration, and interminable delay with regard to the new contract. This is a matter upon which I think General Woollcombe exercised common sense in allowing the contract to continue. That is the only point that can be made by the hon. Member.
  6.0 P.M.
  It is said that the War Office, having had notice of these facts, ought to have had no further transaction with Devereux or Watson. That is for the War Office and not for the committee to decide. We have nothing to do with it, and the bulk of us knew nothing about it. I think I may say, with every justification, that the War Office have indicated their obligation for past services by asking them to raise two Field and one Heavy Artillery brigades, and that would not be entrusted to the committee if the War Office entertained a shadow of doubt as to the propriety of their conduct in regard to the Infantry regiment. I am anxious to keep within certain limits, but I must complain about the method in which these questions have been put, and the circumstances under which they came to be put. The hon. Gentleman opposite has not called attention to the publication of paragraphs in the "Globe," spiteful little paragraphs, for which they could have taken proceedings. Any member of the public, or the "Globe," in the exercise of that beneficent duty which it wants to discharge towards the British public, could have had the documents, and could have called upon the Empire Committee to produce the original documents and put the law in motion. I have always expressed my obligations to the "Globe" in the past for many years, but I am not quite sure that the "Globe" is not in search of a policy like Japhet in search of a father, and is bestowing its filial affections on the affairs of the Empire Battalion. There is nothing like getting something to run. I know that the "Globe" has not put these papers before the Public Prosecutor, and the reason they have not done so is that they wanted the committee to play the cat to their monkey, and pull the chestnuts out of the fire for them. On the 26th January in the present year the "Globe," acting through its editor, wrote to the secretary of the committee as follows:—
  "When last you called upon me, at the request of General Sir Bindon Blood, to discuss the question of the Empire Committee's action in connection with certain alleged irregularities they had investigated, I made a suggestion to you which
  1620
  you promised to consider. I have not yet had an answer, and, if the committee is still to meet, may I ask you to formally put it before them. I told you that a certain clothing trade society was desirous of instituting a prosecution for the alleged payment of illicit commission and were anxious to be supplied with the names of the parties concerned. I suggested to you that, if the committee still hesitated themselves to take the course I venture to think they should have taken three months ago, a way out of the difficulty might be found and the ends of justice served by placing the names and facts before this society. You asked time to consider the suggestion. Perhaps the committee have already had it placed before them, in which case would you be good enough to let me know what they decided?"
  The following day this answer was sent to the editor of the "Globe":—
  "The committee have had before them your letter of the 26th instant, which has received their careful consideration. Their one object is the interests of the battalion, and they are satisfied that nothing has taken place which has caused any pecuniary injury to the committee or battalion, nor has the public been prejudiced. I am to inform you that the committee do not consider that they are justified in acceding to the request you make; but if, unfortunately, litigation of any character should result (and in the interests of the battalion the committee will much regret it), whatever documents the committee have in their possession, or any evidence which would be material which members may be able to give will, under subpœna, be forthcoming at the proper time. The proper military authorities were made acquainted with the whole of the facts immediately after they were ascertained."
  In reply the committee received a letter which was a distinct threat as to the course the "Globe" would take. They indicated that there were three courses open to them. They might publish the correspondence. Curiously enough they had incorporated in the correspondence the terms of a confidential interview, so that is the reason, I think, why, when it was called to their attention, they abstained from that course. Secondly, they might place the facts before the Trade Protection Society. And, thirdly, the matter might be raised in the House of Commons. The House will hardly believe that the editor of the "Globe" was furnished with a copy of the statements of the contractor, independently of the investigations made by the committee. The member of the committee whom I suspect has been responsible very largely for all the trouble which has come upon this battalion in relation to this matter had, himself, originally taken the statement of the contractor. It was he who brought it to the notice of the committee, and it was he again, we find, who was in communication with the editor of the "Globe." The result of all this is that they have from time to time introduced very mischievous paragraphs in their paper. One has only to look at to-day's issue to see in a little leader, written in satirical terms, that they "await the

  1621
  explanation" which may be offered to the House of Commons. They have now got it. I have never attempted to justify the taking of that commission, but if ever a circumstance of that sort was misused to abuse other people and to cover other people who have done their best in the public interest with scorn, it is the case of this alleged illicit commission in the Empire Battalion.
  The Member for East Edinburgh also suggested that the committee had been wrong in not at once putting an end to this contract. They took the only step possible. They put the whole of the facts before the competent authority, General Woollcombe, and, if he has not handed them on to the War Office, then I can only regret that the system of public business is such that there is no communication, not only between Department and Department, but even between a General Officer Commanding and the War Office. They had the facts on 30th October. They had this typewritten précis which I hold in my hand, containing a careful history of the whole of the dealings of the committee. The resolutions passed by the committee, the whole of the correspondence, and the contract relating to the messing were lodged with General Woollcombe on 9th February, and I regret that the system should be such as to enable the Under-Secretary of State for War to say, as he has said again and again during the early part of this month, that he had not received a report on the matter. I commend the inquisitiveness of the hon. Member, because I think he has probably mistaken his vocation. He would have done very much better where cross-examination always brings an advocate to the front. Under these circumstances, I regret that the system did not enable this communication when male to General Woollcombe to be promptly sent to the War Office, so that they might have been able to answer in such a manner the first of these inquiries as to allay at once the suggestions made against a number of honourable and gallant gentlemen who are trying to do their duty by the State.
  Colonel BOWDEN: I trust that hon. Members will grant me the customary indulgence on such occasions, because in attempting to answer as fully as I possibly can the statements made by the hon. Member for East Edinburgh, I want also to make a protest of which I wish the right hon. Gentleman to do me the honour to
  1622
  take notice. My protest is in regard to these questions, and the manner in which they have been brought up in relation to the Service. I do not blame the hon. Member. No doubt he thought that he had sufficient facts absolutely to justify his questions, and therefore his asking those questions was perfectly justifiable, but I do think that he did not take sufficient trouble to compare the characters and histories of the men from whom he was getting his information and on which he based his questions, with the characters and histories of the men who were doing the constructive work. There is such a difference between construction and destruction at such a time.
  It is so easy to stand in the background and criticise men hard at work night and day. It is the easiest possible thing. I say this, and I say it to the right hon. Gentleman: One does not know what harm these questions are going to do. Now we are talking about it and letting the men of the battalion know the truth, but until they know the truth, what is the relation between the men in the ranks and the officers? It is bad for the Service. It is very bad indeed for the officers, and it is worse for the men. It is injurious to the battalion. I do protest, and I think, if it can be shown that any such agitation has been worked up on a malicious foundation and that work has been delayed and efficiency impaired in consequence, the right hon. Gentleman should give some expression of opinion that at such a time of national crisis these people are deserving of punishment and should have it.
  I submit to the hon. Member for East Edinburgh that if anybody really interested desired to ask a question or two, or had a doubt in his mind—this was a time when the committee and all concerned deserved assistance and not to be hampered—he had only to go to that committee, a body of gentlemen doing a great patriotic work, and they were able and would have been willing to answer any honest inquiries. Surely the fact that on that committee were distinguished soldiers like General Sir Bindon Blood, Major-General Herbert and Colonel Lumsden daily doing their work would have assured anybody desirous of making fair inquiries that he would find, as he certainly would have found, that the very best was being done in the interests of the men and the Army to which they belonged. There is no doubt about it. I shall never forget that first month or six

  1623
  weeks. We were formed in a week. The first recruit was enlisted on the Monday morning, and we marched a thousand strong on the Saturday.
  My battalion has sent out 300 men for commissions, and I can raise another battalion at once. The men want to come to us. At a time when we were working at that pressure, night and day, on construction, on finance, and on organisation, our work was made doubly hard by a system of organised revengeful agitation, founded on a little fact which gave a little ground for it, by people who stuck to it with a tenacity worthy of a better purpose. They hampered the committee, they hampered me, they worried the battalion, their action affected discipline, and they made it every day a part of my duty the writing of reports and the answering of reports, to the detriment of the battalion and to the delay of national work. That is my plea for saying that these people, if it is proved malicious, should be punished.
  I will endeavour to answer the points mentioned by the hon. Member for East Edinburgh to the best of my ability. He referred, somewhat humorously, to the committee going to the anti-Socialists' premises. It will probably interest him to know that when we had to find premises suddenly it was through Mr. McCandlish, his friend, we went there. His friend Mr. Parsons also works there. It was Mr. McCandlish who introduced us there, and we are delighted to be there, because we have in our new secretary, Mr. Urwin, an organiser who is working night and day in our interests and doing the very best work possible.
  Mr. HOGGE: I have no objection to the committee being in the office of the anti-Socialist Union. My point was this: Why did the committee remove from 3, St. James's Street? They removed because they did not want to be associated any longer with Devereux and Watson.
  Colonel BOWDEN: I have no objection to your humour either. You made a humorous suggestion why we went there, a reference which I certainly grant was humorous, and which in the serious Debate which was going on I enjoyed. I have endeavoured to return it in the same strain. I am sorry if I have failed. The only thing in the hon. Member's remarks to which I object was the calling in of that unfortunate individual and mentioning his name—Lieutenant and Quartermaster
  1624
  Willard. If the hon. Member is a friend of that man, he has done him the most unkind action he could possibly do him. I will tell the hon. Member and the House at once that in Lieutenant and Quartermaster Willard, up to a point and up to a period of time, I do not think any commanding officer could possibly have had a better quartermaster, but I am compelled, in my own defence, to say that I had to have that officer put under close arrest for a serious breach of discipline. The whole matter was fully inquired into, and he was dismissed the Service. I am sorry to say that, on inquiry, I find that it is the second occasion it has occurred. He is one of those from whom the hon. Member has got his information.
  Mr. HOGGE: I do not even know the man. I am not making any comment upon the reason the hon. Member brought him before the inquiry, but Lieutenant and Quartermaster Willard alleged that he had been attempted to be bribed by Devereux.
  Colonel BOWDEN: That was the point. I am sorry the hon. Gentleman mentioned the man's name. It was one of the points I had against him—that he reported the suggestion to my own personal secretary, and not through the battalion. I heard it outside, and I had to send for him and ask why he did not report to me. He replied that he was pressed for time, and further that he could not prove the statement. I have inquired in an unofficial way, to the best of my ability, and it appears to me that it was a counter-charge, and he had asked for it. What could we do under the circumstances? Later I heard of written documents flying about my battalion among the men, and presumed to be official documents sent to me in regard to that incident. It was one of the matters which was brought forward when he committed an act I could not possibly excuse. If I had excused it I would not have been worthy to hold my command, and I had to have him promptly arrested.
  I come next to the question of the catering for the battalion. Mr. Devereux, on the whole, did what he had to do in this connection very well indeed. With regard to the man being an hon. member of the mess, while I do not object to the way in which the hon. Member for East Edinburgh mentioned this point, I am sorry he thought it necessary to bring it in. I would ask him to remember how this committee, with its secretary, was looked at from the battalion point of view. It was deemed to be a step between the War

  1625
  Office and ourselves. This man was its secretary. He was the first member of the mess. Hang it, he got the mess ready for us! What could we possibly do? This incident cropped up weeks afterwards, and till it was proved and acted on nobody could take any step. As secretary of the committee the man naturally carried some weight. We looked to him a good deal. He had much to do with it in the early stages. He provided our food for us the first time we went down. He got into touch with the contractors, and therefore when the time came when we had to arrange our own contracting, what could be more reasonable than that we should go to the man who had the whole matter in train? The higher military authority decided that it was best, in the interests of the men, that the feeding should go on as before. Our General Officer came down three times and personally went through the kitchen, saw the men feeding, and questioned them as to whether they had any complaints. Since the first fortnight in camp—I should think even since the first week—when we were under temporary conditions, and had temporary cooking houses, and when the men were being trained to do the carving, we have not had one single complaint as to the way in which the battalion is fed.
  I have two samples of the menu here, and if it were not that I might make the mouths of hon. Members water, I would bring more here. From the first the feeding has been extraordinarily good, and I have heard the boast that the battalion is the best fed battalion in the English Army. Here are samples of the menu at the end of January. For breakfast—porridge, bread and butter, and coffee; for dinner—curry stew, roast beef, boiled meat, cabbage, potatoes, and jam roll. For tea—tea, bread and butter, and cake; and for supper, a most unusual thing, soup, sausages and potatoes, and cheese. There was nothing wrong about the feeding. There was nothing to complain of either as to quality or as to quantity. More than that, during the time Mr. Devereux was acting as temporary secretary to the committee, and doing the catering, he voluntarily and patriotically gave up 85 per cent. of his profits, and I can assure the House, as the commanding officer of a newly raised unit, that I was very grateful to receive it on behalf of the men.
  I hope the hon. Member for East Edinburgh will not think I am applying this
  1626
  charge to him, but I wish to point out that this fact has been made the foundation for a most foul suggestion of the worst kind. The money has been used, every penny of it, for the men in providing extra comforts, in purchasing sporting and training appliances, and providing extra comforts for the sick and needy, and money has even been sent away to help some poor soldier's wife left at home with sick children, on one occasion when the man was absent without leave, because of his anxiety for his wife, and because he failed to realise, not having been a soldier before, what military discipline really meant. The account of the expenditure of the money has been most scrupulously kept. It is not involved. It is kept apart from every other regimental account. It has been the subject of one regimental audit, and another audit is due in a fortnight's time. Yet when this matter has been discussed, an innuendo has been thrown out that the officers were involved in this money. It is a scandalous thing to allege.
  Mr. HOGGE: I hope the hon. and gallant Gentleman does not suggest that I made that innuendo?
  Colonel BOWDEN: I do not. I come next to the question of the huts. Nobody who lived on that hill from the end of October, through the wet months of November and December, would have dared to suggest the taking of any steps whatsoever that might, even apparently, cause delay in putting in a single plank or brick. The weather had been of the very worst kind. The huts were put up as rapidly as possible, bearing in mind that there was a scarcity of civilian labour, and that carpenters especially were hard to get. I am an engineer myself, and I know what construction is. I went in for road building. The camp is now practically complete. I may be biassed, but I should very much like to show the camp to hon. Members. I am very proud of it. These huts had to be provided. They were part of the War Office specification. One half of the camp has been passed by Major Redway, who has complimented us on it, and given his certificate for that portion of it. As to the other half, there is only one buliding to be finished, and it will be completed in five days' time. All the rest of the buildings are occupied.
  Then with regard to the expense. I want to nail a statement on that point down at once. The right hon. Gentleman will find when he comes to look into the

  1627
  question of hutting—and I hope he will see that the information is conveyed to the House—that, so far from the estimates having been exceeded, we are one of the very few battalions which have been able to carry out this kind of work for the amount authorised by the War Office. There is one item of £300 for unforeseen contingencies, cutting down trees, clearing hedges, and levelling up sites, which could not possibly go into the War Office quantities, but, with that exception, the work has been completed for the authorised amount. I am sorry I should have had to delay the House so long, but I did feel that the honour of the regiment and of myself, as commanding officer, was at stake, and therefore I was bound to take part in the Debate.
  Mr. TENNANT: I am sure the House listened with much interest to the vivid and picturesque speech of the hon. and gallant Gentleman. I will, if I may, congratulate him on it, and I may add it is not surprising that he should have used some warmth of language in repudiating charges which he considers have been made against the honour of his colleagues on this committee. I was glad to hear my hon. Friend the Member for East Edinburgh (Mr. Hogge) say that they had not been made by him. The House is aware that this matter is now in a position which renders it impossible for me to make anything like a full statement. But I wish to say a word or two because I do not desire that anything in the nature of charges should lie against either hon. Gentlemen in this House or gallant gentlemen outside, when those charges cannot possibly properly so lie. I should like to state categorically that the charge brought by Lieutenant and Quartermaster Willard did not and never has involved any suggestion of corruption or personal misconduct against any existing member of the committee. The charges were made in September last, and the then secretary of the committee and the other member concerned have ceased to hold their positions in connection with it. There is a controversy between my hon. Friend the Member for East Edinburgh and the two hon. Gentlemen opposite who have spoken as to the actual date. The statement is, I believe, that these gentlemen resigned their position on the committee on 6th October last, but I am unable to vouch for the date.
  I rather deprecate discussion on this matter at the present moment, because
  1628
  the whole question will have to be gone into by the committee which I have promised the House and my hon. Friend to appoint. The inquiry will be of a very searching kind. It may take the form of a military court of inquiry with a legal assessor, but probably the House will be content to leave it to the War Office to decide on the form of the inquiry. My hon. Friend the Member for East Edinburgh asked several questions, and I may be able to reply to some of them. With regard to the contract undertaken by Mr. Devereux, of the execution of which the hon. and gallant Gentleman opposite spoke in terms of such enthusiasm, I think the House will agree with me that it is usually considered irregular, and it certainly is undesirable for any member of a committee to obtain a contract from that committee. My hon. Friend asked me whether Mr. Devereux was still one of the contractors on the War Office list. I should like to disillusion his mind on that point. He is not.
  Mr. HOGGE: You have taken him off.
  Mr. TENNANT: He was never on.
  Mr. HOGGE: If he was never on, how did he get that contract from the War Office?
  Mr. TENNANT: The information that reaches me was that a company called the Construction and Contract Company, which, I believe, is one of Mr. Devereux's companies, applied to be put on the War Office list, first for huts and then for palliasses. They were not put on the War Office list for huts owing to their uncertain position and standing; and as to palliasses, bedding, etc., they were informed in December that their application must be declined. That was not upon the same ground, although I dare say the same ground would apply as well, but upon the ground that we did not require any more, as our requirements had been met. My hon. Friend went on to ask whether Mr. Devereux was made an hon. member of the mess before the inquiry. I am uncertain as to that. The hon. and gallant Member (Colonel Bowden) said he was, but I think it was after the inquiry. Again, my hon. Friend asked why did the committee not prosecute Mr. Devereux? This matter will be before a court of inquiry; it may be considered as being sub judice, and it would be premature and undesirable for me to make any statement here on that question. As to the price of huts, I would say that we, at the War

  1629
  Office, have no control of the prices under contracts entered into between raisers of battalions and the contractors whom they employ. That is the business of the raisers. In this case I think the hon. and gallant Gentleman (Colonel Bowden), and the hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Neild) were both mistaken when they said that the messing contract was made by the War Office and not by the committee.
  Mr. NIELD: I said it was for the first ten days only, between the 10th and 17th September, but that the contract that is dated the 17th September, a copy of which I had in my hand at the time, was made between the officer commanding—it had nothing to do with the committee—and the contractors.
  Mr. TENNANT: That is a different thing from making it with the War Office.
  Colonel BOWDEN: It was made through the Paymaster of the Eastern Command at Hounslow, where the payments are made. After a given time it is all put down through the paymaster, and, of course, the War Office is the head of it. It is a regimental matter purely.
  Mr. TENNANT: I think we all understand how it was made. The hon. and gallant Gentleman says quite truly that it is a regimental matter. Because it is a regimental matter in connection with a regiment not taken over by the War Office, but under the management of the raising committee, it becomes perfectly clear that, however much you may desire to bring in the War Office, it is very difficult to bring the War Office into this contract. I do not believe that either of the gentlemen mentioned by my hon. Friend (Mr. Hogge) are in the Army List. There is an Ernest Devereux in the Army List. As to the name of Watson, there are a good many Watsons in it, and I do not know whether this is one of them. I am not able to give an absolute answer upon that point. That answers all the questions he put, except the last, which was: Has Mr. Hand recovered the commission paid to Devereux and Watson since the date of the inquiry? From the documents we have in our possession, I believe that is not so, but, as the matter is so doubtful, I consider it much better that the matter should be left to the searching inquiry which I have promised, and that I should say nothing which would at all prejudice the case either for or against. Before leaving the matter I should like to say how greatly we should regret it if any of
  1630
  the actions which have occurred, or any of the charges made, should impair the efficiency of the battalion which is under the command of the hon. and gallant Gentleman (Colonel Bowden), and how much I hope that may not be the result, because we feel that the men who have joined this battalion are most patriotically serving in the best possible manner and are deserving of all praise. We should regret nothing more in the world than that any action taken by us or any Member of the House should do anything to impair their efficiency or discourage them in their patriotic action. I would like to say the same thing about Sir Bindon Blood and the other gentlemen who have done so much work on the committee.
  Mr. HOGGE: May I ask a question to clear up doubt about one point? Are we to understand that, instead of a Departmental Inquiry, the matter will be the subject of a Military Court of Inquiry, with legal assistance?
  Mr. TENNANT: My hon. Friend is very anxious to pin me down to a definite form of inquiry. I say it is quite within the competence of the War Office to order such an inquiry. I think very likely that may be the course we shall adopt, but I ask my hon. Friend and the House to have confidence in us and to believe that we shall not burke an inquiry, but that we shall have an inquiry which will be the most suitable and the most certain to bring out all the facts and satisfy the feeling of disquietude which may be, and probably is, in the public mind as to the transactions that have taken place. I do not wish it to be said that I definitely stated that there would be a Military Court of Inquiry. It may be so, but, if it is not so, there will be some other Court which will be equally efficacious. If I may, I would return to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Strand Division (Mr. Long) and the speeches upon various matters connected with War Office policy which have been made. The right hon. Gentleman prefaced his speech by informing the House, and me in particular, that not only he but all his Friends have been most desirous of helping the Government in everything they have done. I am very grateful to them and to him, as I have said before in this House, for the help they have accorded to us. He went on to say that the Government had not treated him and his Friends with that amount of consideration which he expected and they

  1631
  deserved. I was amazed to hear that. It is desirable that we should remember that he has stated he was anxious to help us, because we may be in danger of forgetting it. Therefore, I would ask hon. Members always to bear that fact in mind. He painted all of us, including my Noble Friend the Secretary of State, in somewhat gloomy colours. He talked about the incompetence of the War Office and said we were, generally, hardly fit to remain outside Bedlam.
  Mr. LONG: I did not say anything of the kind. Let us be quite clear. I never suggested that the right hon. Gentleman or Lord Kitchener ought to be in Bedlam. What I said was that certain arrangements had been made and obviously by people who had charge of that particular duty. I did not suggest it was either the Noble Lord or the right hon. Gentleman. That is a gross travesty of my statement.
  Mr. TENNANT: I am within the recollection of the House. I do not wish to enlarge further upon that. I only suggest this to the right hon. Gentleman. It is not very desirable at the juncture in which we find ourselves that the kind of aspersions which have been cast by him upon the War Office methods and policy should be made, because there is nothing less likely to encourage us, the Army, or the good administrators who are responsible for the Army, than the kind of language he has used, which is much more likely to encourage the enemy.
  Mr. LONG: Nonsense!
  Mr. TENNANT: It is not nonsense.
  Mr. LONG: I rise to a point of Order. This is a charge which should not be made by a Member of the Government in circumstances under which he knows that no answer can be made to him. I am entitled to ask the right hon. Gentleman to state here and now upon what grounds he charges me with making a statement which would encourage the enemy.
  Mr. TENNANT: I will tell the right hon. Gentleman what I mean. He said, for instance, that we were gravely and unduly remiss in our action. He said that we were breaking the heart of our soldiers in the trenches and in the field.
  Mr. LONG: Hear, hear.
  Mr. TENNANT: He said we were taking the heart out of them.
  Mr. LONG: Hear, hear. In certain specified cases.
  Mr. TENNANT: He charged us with breaking the hearts of wounded men who came back from the front. He said our recruiting officers were perfectly absurd. I do not wish to be unduly controversial, but I really must remind the right hon. Gentleman that he hit very hard at the War Office, and he cannot expect us to take it lying down. I do not think he ought to get up on points of Order, and say that I am taking an undue advantage because I knew he would not have a chance to answer me. We work very hard at the War Office. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will confirm that. I do not think he will deny it.
  Mr. LONG: Deny what?
  Mr. TENNANT: That we work very hard at the War Office.
  Mr. LONG: If the right hon. Gentleman wants a certificate of good character from me, I have given it often and often in this House. I said to-day that the War Office works extremely hard. If that gives any satisfaction to the right hon. Gentleman, I will repeat it.
  Mr. TENNANT: I am very much obliged to the right hon. Gentleman. Perhaps I may be allowed, after having said so much to endeavour to answer the points raised by the right hon. Gentleman. He asked us to provide a co-ordinating authority as between the various Departments of State, and he gave as an illustration a certain defect as between the Local Government Board and the War Office. I can only refer him to the fact, which is very well known to him, of Cabinet responsibility and the co-ordinating authority of the Cabinet. That is the only way I conceive it would be possible to deal with cases of that kind. I feel quite confident that if he will bring to the notice of the President of the Local Government Board the case he has in mind my right hon. Friend will endeavour to put the matter right. The right hon. Gentleman asked me, as representing the War Office, if I could not give the numbers we should require for the War; whether I could not give the numbers of the enemy. The numbers we have asked Parliament to vote must be considered a good index of the numbers we think we shall require for the War. Further, I have given, in answer to a question, the numbers of the Germans, as far as we knew them. I do not know whether

  1633
  the right hon. Gentleman has seen those figures, but they have been given and published. It is desirable not to rely on any figure which we can get of that kind, because the enemy is constantly taking large numbers of divisions and Army corps from one front to the other. It is their business, and they do it with great skill, to try and confuse us and the Allies as much as they possibly can. Therefore, as I say, no figure that one could give would be a figure upon which you could rely.
  To come to the case of recruiting officers, recruiting officers of the Regular Army are retired officers who have volunteered their services. They are, I should say, in 90 per cent. of the cases, men who are not fit to fight from age or infirmity of one kind or another. I am so informed since the right hon. Gentleman spoke. Not being on the active list we have of course no control over them. If they should by any accident happen to be within the age limit of men fit to serve and of physical capacity to serve, it would be within their competence to volunteer for service; but not being on the active list we have no control over them. Territorial recruiting officers are officers in charge of depots, and the depots are in the hands of the Territorial Force Association. I believe they, as a rule, also are men who have served a considerable time and are not of the right age to serve at the front. I should like also to inform the House that instead of having half a crown and one shilling, I think the right hon. Gentleman said, as a contrast between the Territorial and the Regular recruiting, I do not know when it was changed, but the figure is one shilling per head for both. We have called for a return of all the recruiting officers in the Regular Army, and I think the Territorial Force too, to see whether there should be among them any larger proportion than the 10 per cent. When the return arrives I will communicate with the right hon. Gentleman.
  Mr. PETO: Can the right hon. Gentleman explain why we have two recruiting offices?
  Mr. TENNANT: The fact that we have two recruiting offices, one on one side of the road and one on the other, happens to be fortuitous. In time of peace the Territorial Force Association does the whole of the recruiting both for the Regular Army and the Territorials, but now the Regulars are doing their own recruiting, and they happened to want an office, and
  1634
  it happens to be just opposite one belonging to the Territorial Association. It is not an inconceivable thing nor one quite so absurd as has been made out that they should be one opposite the other. I quite agree that the differentiation as between the half crown and nothing is an undesirable condition, and I am glad to say it has now been cancelled.
  Mr. RONALD MCNEILL: Does the right hon. Gentleman really say that the Territorial recruiting agencies recruit for the Regular Army?
  Mr. TENNANT: Yes, in time of peace. I now come to the question of purchasing horses. The right hon. Gentleman considered that we were extraordinary foolish in our methods of purchasing horses because he considered we were sending out so many officers. I should like to disabuse his mind of that. The truth is, of course, that an enormous percentage of our recruiting officers are civilians—men of the type of masters of hounds, and of a man like Sir Alfred Pease, who was well known in this House and one of the best riders to hounds, I believe, in the North of England, with a great knowledge of horses. He took the place of Major Dixon, and allowed him to go to the front. With regard to purchases in the United States and Canada, General Sir F. Benson writes that "horses are to be bought at many different kinds of prices, even as low as 125 dollars" (£25). The average price paid by the commission is 175 dollars (£35) for riding horses and 210 dollars (or £42) for draught and Artillery horses.
  The commission of which Mr. Alec Parker, the well-known horse authority, is a member agree among themselves that a lower price would not secure the horses we require, that is, broken in and in good condition. They are satisfied that they are getting full value for their money. They are buying from the large firms, and there is no doubt that they could not get the proper type of horse at a lower rate in any other country. To represent that we are being swindled in America because we do not understand their methods is not, I think, a true description of what has occurred when I tell the House that we are only paying these comparatively small sums of £25 to £35 and £42 for draught and Artillery horses, which cost more in this country. I am informed further that, out of thirty-one buyers of horses in America, only nine are officers at all, and of those nine only two probably

  1635
  are fit for service, so that it is not correct to suppose that we are employing large numbers of officers who might be fit to fight for us in the purchase of horses. I now come to the question of the promotion of officers. I should like to be able to impress on the right hon. Gentleman that by conferring an immediate benefit on a certain number of juniors you do not necessarily create justice amongst the larger number. In fact you very likely create injustice to a large number.
  Mr. LONG: How?
  Mr. TENNANT: I have already given the right hon. Gentleman the illustration of the brigadier-general which he enlarged upon so much in his argument. A brigadier-general who was a lieuenant-colonel before he was appointed brigadier-general, immediately hostilities cease, if his place is filled up by a lieutenant-colonel with substantive rank, is reduced from £1,000 a year, which he gets as a fighting brigadier-general, to the pittance of half pay, which comes to 11s. a day—rather less than £200 a year. That being so, it cannot be to the advantage of the Service to produce a system by which you place a man, singled out for his ability to be a brigadier because he is really a fine soldier, in so happy a position after the War is over as that would be. I know I am wholly unable to convince the right hon. Gentleman, and if he has decided it in his own mind it does not seem really necessary to argue the point with him. I submit that that would be a very hard case. The question of granting temporary rank, with pay, to an officer who is a major and is promoted to be a lieutenant-colonel is one which I told him was engaging our attention. I am not able to give a definite announcement because I think he understands that it is impossible for the Department to make promises of that kind before the Government has given its decision upon the question.
  Mr. LONG: I quite understand that, and I am the last person who would desire to ask for undue haste, but what I tried to impress upon the Government is that every day these men are risking their lives. A man who is doing the work of a colonel dies as a major, and his widow receives the pension of a major, although her husband has died doing the duty of a lieutenant-colonel. Every day's delay
  1636
  runs the risk of fresh injustices added to the large number of those which have already been incurred.
  Mr. TENNANT: I quite understand that, and fully appreciate it; and I will expedite the matter as much as I possibly can. I will also admit, quite freely, that there have been a number of promotions of dead officers brought to the notice of the House by the right hon. Gentleman. That was due to the time which elapsed before we got authority to promote them in place of prisoners and missing. We have practically got up to date now. I wish to add my appreciation, equally with that of the right hon. Gentleman, of the services of regimental officers and the gallant and splendid actions which we know they have performed in the military operations. I am not aware of the reduction of pay of wounded officers at home alluded to by the right hon. Gentleman. Is it the case that wounded officers get half pay? I understand not, but I have not had time to investigate that.
  HON. MEMBERS: After six weeks.
  Mr. TENNANT: I was not aware of that, and it comes to me as a surprise. I will, at the same time, engage to investigate the case of the non-commissioned officer whom he desires to be restored to his original rank in the case which he had in mind. If he will furnish me with the name and particulars of the case I will see what can be done. The hon. and gallant Gentleman (Colonel Yate) spoke on the question of insurance. I should like the House to realise what a very large stride we did make in that matter at the beginning of the War. It was really a most remarkable step taken in advance to be secured on the insurance companies. We got the whole of the New Army and the Territorial Force admitted without any extra premium at all, although in the old Army the old officers had a perfect opportunity, if they had only taken it, to pay the extra 10s. per cent. for the risks which their occupation naturally engendered. Of course, I very much regret that they did not do so; and no doubt they do too. The present situation, as I am constantly informed by members of the boards of various insurance companies, does not pay them. So far from paying they are losing money very largely. Anyone connected with insurance work will tell you that. I do not think it is possible for me to press them further with regard to the Regular Army. In fact, I cannot

  1637
  possibly do it. I have done my very best, but I think the insurance companies have behaved most generously, and I would not say anything which could at all be misconstrued as not recognising that and I really do not think the hon. and gallant Gentleman should press me to go further into that matter.
  The hon. Member (Mr. Goulding) asked me to say a word or two about the very hard case, as I quite agree with him, of the young men who at the outset of the War were patriotic enough to go into these Public School Corps because they properly thought they would get commissions and perhaps larger advantages by that method more rapidly than by any other. I sympathise very strongly with their case, but I ask my hon. Friend to put himself in the position of the commanding officers. I will tell him the history of this matter. It is all recorded in a number of War Office letters from which I will read one or two extracts. I should like him to realise that these public school battalions supply a very large number of officers. The particular brigade he alluded to supplied between 1,800 and 1,900 officers to the two Armies. That is a very large number. They came to the Secretary of State asking him to put an embargo on further officers from their ranks as they were gradually being so thinned that they feared that when they came to be considered as a unit they might prove insufficient or inefficient. On 1st February this letter was written to the General Officers Commanding-in-Chief of various commands, in which we said:—
  "It is not in the public interest that any individual should serve in a capacity which affords no scope for his particular qualifications, nor is it advantageous that those in the ranks should feel that they have no outlet for their legitimate aspirations. For these reasons it is not proposed to place any real restriction on the appointment to commissions of candidates from these sources, although it is recognised that some limit must be placed on the number promoted from the ranks of any one un t, in order that its efficiency as a unit may not suffer."
  7.0 P.M.
  That is all very sound sense I am sure the hon. Member will agree. Then we went on to refer to the pressure on the commanding officers. The gentlemen who are raising this public school brigade wrote to the Secretary of State for War, asking that this might be done, and the Secretary of State replied:—
  "As your ranks are becoming very thin, I think it is desirable that no more officers should go at present."
  Therefore, when the hon. Gentleman said he wrote letters to two commanding officers, we were both correct in saying that no further officers should be allowed
  1638
  to proceed from the ranks of these battalions. Since then I have had a conversation with Lord Derby. I have asked him whether he would engage that these commanding officers should free a few more men from the ranks of their battalions, and I hope that will be done. I do not wish to encourage unduly the hopes of any hon. Gentleman that all or each of his candidates will be by that means recommended for promotion to the commissioned ranks, for I am sure hon. Members will realise how difficult it is to carry out their wishes. No doubt it will be a very difficult task for the commanding officers. No doubt there are many men who are well qualified for commissions, but if commanding officers were to give to each young man who is qualified the recommendation which he desires, undoubtedly his ranks would be unduly depleted. I would ask hon. Gentlemen to use such patience and indulgence as they can command in this matter, and I hope very much that a modus vivendi may be arrived at.
  Mr. GOULDING: I am very much obliged to the right hon. Gentleman. Are we to understand that the veto against all recommendations is still to exist?
  Mr. TENNANT: I think the hon. Gentleman should understand that that is withdrawn for the moment. I am only thinking of five battalions and one brigade of the Middlesex.
  Mr. GOULDING: Will the right hon. Gentleman look into the circumstances of the others?
  Mr. TENNANT: I will see what I can do. The hon. and gallant Member for Southport (Major White) also spoke about promotion, and especially in relation to the Special Reserve. I am unable to give him an answer at the moment on that subject. I am not really quite certain that I know what he was referring to. He said that there was a differentiation between the Regular Army and the Special Reserve.
  Major WHITE: The right hon. Gentleman knows better than I do what is the actual latest ruling of the War Office. There are men who are second lieutenants who are having junior Regular officers placed over their heads.
  Mr. TENNANT: I cannot say as to that, but I will engage to look into it, and communicate with the hon. and gallant Gentleman. He will understand that a great strain has been placed upon our troops

  1639
  during this most momentous struggle. There has been, as one result, a very great deal of physical and mental strain and stress. These men are most deserving of all the leave the hon. and gallant Gentleman asked. In a large number of cases they have been given a certain amount of leave, but not such long leave as the hon. and gallant Gentleman suggested. I certainly feel with him that it is due to them, and I hope it may be possible, in connection with the arrangements which are being made for the New Army, to allow them the necessary amount of leave, so as to give them the chance for recuperation, which they so splendidly deserve.
  Lord C. BERESFORD: I think the speech of the right hon. Gentleman is really most unsatisfactory as an answer to my right hon. Friend. He hardly answered any questions at all. He does not appear to be aware that there is a strong feeling in the Army on the subject of promotion. We talk of appreciation and consideration, but it is time that we began to act. These men are saving the country. They are laying down their lives by thousands, and so far as regimental officers go, the regimental major who takes command of his regiment may save the whole campaign. He may save thousands of lives, though he is not getting the pay and promotion to which he is entitled. As the right hon. Gentleman said, it is very hard on their wives. They do not get half pay or pension which otherwise they would get. It is the same with non-commissioned officers. We are at war, and if these men do the work, they should get the pay. Another point which the right hon. Gentleman never mentioned at all was that in regard to the National Reserve. In connection with that, the men have been swindled out of £5. By the mistake of a War Office official these men did not sign in the way required, and it is monstrous when they believed they would get the £5 that they do not get it. We have given the Government a dictatorship. They are autocrats. They passed a Bill yesterday which might be injurious to the interests of the country if it is not well managed. If we give the Government a dictatorship, it is very unfair not to bring forward in the House of Commons proposals to provide what is required for the men who are saving the country. The right hon. Gentleman's speech was not an answer to the points raised by my right hon. Friend.

  BRITISH DYES, LIMITED.
  Mr. BOOTH: I desire to direct the attention of the House to a mysterious document purporting to call itself a prospectus. It is one illustration of the case referred to by the right hon. Gentleman opposite, when he complained that the House generally was not taken into very great consideration by the Government. This prospectus has not been distributed to Members. It is not available in the Vote Office. If we want information as to contracts which vitally affect a loan of £1,000,000 of the ratepayers' money immediately, and a further loan later on, we have to go into the City to a firm of solicitors. I decline to go into the City to any firm of solicitors to find out what are the intentions of the Government on a question of this magnitude. The House knows nothing of the whole proceeding, and I venture to say that this is a matter which requires the closest attention of the House. It is perhaps the first time in history when this has been done in this way. It may have been done at the time of the South Sea Bubble, but it has never been done since.
  This is the first time of a great British Government forwarding a joint stock company, and with a modesty which does not always characterise them, they decline to state that they are the real parents of the scheme. I looked carefully through the document to see if there was any mention of the promoter's name, and to find out who selected the board, who selected the committee, and who has paid for the printing of this prospectus. There is no information on these points, and I venture to submit that the very cogent statements made in the "Times" were quite justified. What does that great organ say in its "City Notes" on Monday last? I may remind the Government that this is the only London newspaper which, so far as I am aware, was given an advertisement of this company, and I say that it is to the credit of the "Times" that their City editor was allowed to give an independent view, nothwithstanding the fact that in the adjoining pages there was a remunerative advertisement. What does it say about "The British Dyes Prospectus"? I ask the Government if they have any answer—I ask if they will really take any responsibility for this document or not. The "Times" says:—
  "If the situation were different, and this issue were being made on the ordinary lines of a new

  1641
  commercial company, we should have to criticise the prospectus rather severely, for on the face of it the document is quite unsatisfactory, and has nearly all the faults that a prospectus can have. The necessary facts are not stated, and what is stated is misleading."
  These are not the words of a Back Bencher. They are the words of a great organ of public opinion in this country—one that is specially favoured from time to time by receiving the confidences of the Front Bench. The "Times" further draws attention to the bargain with Read, Holliday and Sons. It complains that proper particulars are not given, and then goes on to use these words:—
  "The only point which is really at all clear in the whole prospectus is that a very good bargain was made by Read, Holliday and Sons with the Secretary to the Board of Trade. It gives no proper ilea at all as to how the new company proposes to succeed apart from any State necessity that it should. We hope for national reasons that the money will be provided, but it is regrettable that the issue should have been made by a prospectus which sets so bad an example to company promoters."
  I think that those are very important words. It is the Board of Trade which prescribes rules as to the balance-sheets and statements of companies. All these great insurance organisations have to make regular returns and submit to very searching questions. It is the Department of the Board of Trade, who I presume are going to father this scheme, who deal with the rules of limited companies, and one would have thought that they would know exactly what should be done in the case of a prospectus. They are quite aware, as a Government Department, of what the correct thing is when trying to get money from the public. We have looked forward, therefore, with a certain amount of keenness to the issue of this document in order to see the presentation of an ideal scheme, telling the subscribers exactly what the prospects of the scheme were. I also understand that it has had the assistance of some very distinguished lawyers in another place. I ventured, in a previous Debate, to think that the legal fraternity were in a considerable measure responsible for the scheme, but the President of the Board of Trade denied it. I have continued my inquiries, and my friends and foes of this scheme assure me that it has the support of distinguished lawyers connected with the Government. I do think that if those great lawyers and judges who occasionally have to sit in judgment upon company proceedings would just ask themselves the question how they would like to sum up and pass judgment upon a document of this description,
  1642
  perhaps they would realise their responsibility and take responsibility for this document and possibly for the whole of this jejune scheme. We are all familiar with the old lines,
  "Take up this child and nurse it well,
  For in this house its fathers dwell."
  And the point of this will be presented to the Government again and again if they do accept responsibility for this scheme. The disappointed shareholders and the complaining employé will have the right to come to this House and arraign the Government in a way that has not appertained to any other joint-stock company. There are, I claim, three great omissions from this prospectus. The first is that it does not disclose the name of the promoter or say what his terms are. The second is that it does not give the balance-sheet of the large firm to be taken over; it gives a number of particulars of Read, Holliday's, from which one could gather that there is a certain amount of goodwill, which could be arrived at in some measure, and therefore you can make a certain kind of calculation. But there are no definite figures and there is no certification of profits and no auditor's statement. This is an exceedingly bad precedent. The rule is that when businesses are taken over the one thing on which you can rely is that the figures stated of the previous history of the firm are properly certified and audited and can be accepted. The intending investor of course asks himself whether that prosperity is likely to continue or not, but, as a rule, he does not question the career of the firm. I cannot understand this great Government Department being in any way associated with a document which omits so much.
  The third omission is the absence of any mention of the manager. The question of the manager is ten times more important than that of the directors in a concern like this. There should be some information as to the management. Who is to run this business? I cannot think that the man's name is unknown. I cannot think that the scheme has gone so far and that there is not some man in view, especially if the matter is so urgent as the Government has stated. Why is not that gentleman's name put in? Where is the necessity for suppressing it? Some of the names put in inspire us with confidence. This is an instance of the slovenliness and in a sense the discourtesy to this House which have been shown. It is not conscious discourtesy, but is an instance of that discourtesy with

  1643
  which the Government seem lately to be getting into the habit of treating this House. This is such an instance of forgetfulness that they make no mention at all of such an important position as that of manager. I think that it is generally recognised throughout business circles in this country that the best service which boards of directors can render to their shareholders is to select the most capable manager obtainable and give him their support, knowing that the directors of a company cannot do anything which is at all commensurate in importance with the selection of a capable manager; and I regret very much to find that there is no indication on this paper as to who the gentleman is to be. The only little light thrown on the subject is that two gentlemen not connected with Read, Holliday's are to receive £10,000 each for the option of employing them, which is one of the most wonderful bargains ever made.
  This prospectus, having mentioned the capital, goes on to say that the Government loan, which, if this issue is subscribed, will be a million pounds, will not be cumulative as regards interest and the interest is to be contingent upon the net profits, so that it is quite possible—and I should rather say that it is probable—that the taxpayer will get no return whatever for that million pounds except in some indirect way through the effect of the manufacture and distribution of dyes. We have got to risk it. There is another kind provision, that for twenty-five years there shall be no compulsory sinking fund. There are very many concerns which have a rigid sinking fund, but this is simply an invitation to slack finance. There are many concerns which would like to accept debentures without being compelled to pay interest or to put up a sinking fund for their repayment. Then we come to a delightfully poetic phrase. I venture to say that no playful company promoter in a wild flow of poetic imagination ever coined a phrase like this. After describing what may be done by the Government and so on, here is the last sentence in the principal paragraph:—
  "It is thus seen that there may emerge in time, and if circumstances justify, a company whose resources might be £3,000,000 in subscribed capital."
  I do not know whether these Caledonian lawyers were thinking of some Scottish cattle-lifters emerging from a Scottish mist and sweeping down on the Lowlands, but I believe that never has any company promoter invited subscriptions to a public
  1644
  issue on such a statement as that. You are not merely to put up your money on the merits of the scheme and the history of the firm which is partially disclosed, but this also is given as an attraction, as a lure to the public to subscribe towards this hybrid scheme. They say that
  "there may emerge in time"—
  I suppose it must emerge in time and space; I do not see where else it could emerge—
  "a company whose resources might be £3,000,000."
  It is a statement like that on which people are to invest their money at a time of national emergency when the Chancellor of the Exchequer wants it all for the manufacture of explosives. The hon. Gentleman (Mr. J. M. Robertson) is a great literary scholar, but I do not think that even he, with all his literary reading, which is almost encyclopædic, can quote from any previous prospectus a precedent for this. No doubt he can say from what particular classic this phrase is taken. What is a German submarine? It emerges from the mist and the waves showing only its periscope. That is not a prospectus. This is a commercial periscope, an indication of what may emerge in time. The next phrase is that—
  "The users of dyes who are shareholders in the company will have priority in the available supplies of the company."
  I presume that means that they are to have priority in the obtaining or the purchasing of the available supply. I do not see how they can have priority in the supplies themselves. It is an important point, because points like this, in reference to a prospectus, show carelessness. This document is a compromise, and persons of different views, in my opinion, have put it together. This particular portion is in the blackest ink. Probably the persons who drafted it know what it means, but it is simply an instance of how the prospectus has been drawn up.
  Considering that the Government are fathering it, the prospectus ought to be an example in all respects to those who study it. Next we come to an intimation that the capital cannot be available for twelve months. There is to be 2s. 6d. payable on allotment, then the calls are not to be more than 5s. each, and no call shall be made for six months after allotment. That will bring the shares up to 10s. Then at intervals of not less than three months the subsequent 5s. calls may be made, so that it is only a year from now that the money at present being subscribed will be

  1645
  available to the company. That is a very excellent way of dealing with an evil which demands instant treatment, because the trade of the country and the occupation of the people are endangered. I will leave it to the Government to reconcile that point and pass on to one feature which is not merely an innovation, but a very dangerous innovation, in the history of joint stock enterprise. The Government, who are to subscribe this million pounds although they are promoters of the scheme, have decided that the money shall take the form of debentures. I do not think that any promoter of a scheme has ever had the audacity to put himself in that position. He generally takes an interest, if any, either in preference or ordinary shares. I have never known a case where the people responsible for the origin of a scheme decided that their interest should be confined to the debentures. Here they are to hold a mortgage or a monkey on this concern. But they make two conditions: one of them has practically no meaning—that this company shall remain British. As it was formed ostensibly to fight Germany and make dyes available in this country, presumably it will be a British company, but there is no security as to that.
  If it is meant to be a protection against Germany buying it up after the War there is no protection whatever. If Germany came in to buy up the shares after a time of peace—suppose it was allowed by a complacent Government—to try to re-establish themselves in this country, and if they bought the shares, surely they would do it with the knowledge that their Government would back them, and their Government would find a million pounds to replace that of the British Government and they would get the company. It is therefore quite illusory to imagine that the condition made by the Government as a mortgagee is going to keep the company British. It must be British so long as their money is in. Do the Government contemplate actually taking a million of money out, and deserting the company, which would then cease to be British? Surely, if they are going to take the money out of the company, they should see that it is not to be left in the hands of aliens. According to a further clause, there are to be two Government directors, with power of veto. If only one of them should be there, he is to have power of veto over many things which his colleagues might do. I submit that the fitful intervention of two men, however clever they may be and however
  1646
  great their qualification, is not going the way to make a business prosper. Where is there a company which could work amicably under those conditions? Are those two men to sit there as Government spies? So far as I can see, that is their principal duty, as defined by this article. They are to see that the other men are not doing anything false to the principles on which the company is founded. I do not think that is necessary.
  Sir A. MARKHAM: What are they going to pay them?
  Mr. BOOTH: I will come to the remuneration later. The two directors are very distinguished men, no doubt, but I really do not think that the Government should put them in such a position, but should put them on the board and leave them free to rank with their colleagues, trusting to their independence and justice, and not tying them up in this way, giving them power to veto whatever their colleagues are doing. For myself, I do not think that any of the seven gentleman, who are also members of the board, are capable of conduct which would call for the exercise of such a veto, and the Government do not need two watchdogs to report proceedings to them. I venture to say that the business men of the country will view any such provision as one not likely to lead to the harmonious working of the board. It has been laid down in this House, and insisted upon again and again, that the Government must never have relations with any firm which does not pay fair wages.
  We have heard from that Box, in relation to a certain firm, that it was not allowed to deal with the War Office because it was not of good financial standing. We all know that it is an indispensable condition, in order to do any business with the Government, the firm concerned must pay fair wages or trade union wages. Yet, in this prospectus, there is no consideration of that kind mentioned. They do not say, "You shall not have our money unless you pay fair wages." And as regards this point why not introduce the idea of co-operation? This is the money of the whole, community, of rich and poor alike, and, in introducing this company, surely it would have afforded a good opening for co-operation in labour interests, so that there should be a common object in working for the good of the State. But they have entirely forgotten to mention in the whole of this

  1647
  document whether any such idea was discussed in the committee. There is no stipulation that the employer shall erect machinery and make the promptest use of any discovery for which the Government is finding the money; I should have thought that those were businesslike stipulations.
  They have got two nominees to sit on the board, who are to override their colleagues sitting in the room. As to those directors, I wish to say nothing disrespectful of them. They are eminent and capable men, men of brains, men of great business faculties. I hope they will not go to the board meeting save with the object of doing the best in their power for the company, and I certainly think that their selection is deserving of no criticism or opposition from me. I wish to ask, further, whether there is any scientist on the board? I do not know whether there are any university Members present, but if there are, I think they will agree with me that a company which is going to pay £100,000 for research ought to have some scientists or chemist on the board. And why is not there a labour man on the Board to whom the workpeople could lawfully look for protecting their interests? This is a matter which may effect research matters, in regard to which the workpeople would be entitled to know from one of their own representatives that inventions or processes to be introduced would be established in a manner to give labour proper consideration with regard to wages and conditions of work. But they do nothing of the kind. There is no representative of the workpeople upon this board.
  The limit the qualification to a thousand pounds. I do not say that there are not working men in this country who have saved £1,000, but can you expect a man of moderate means and position to put his £1,000 in a very speculative concern of this description? The very fact that £1,000 is put down as a qualification is an intimation that no workman need apply for an appointment to this board. Then as to the offices of this company. I do not know where the board is to meet—whether in the North, or the South, in the Midlands, or in Scotland, but the prospectus is dated London, 5th March. What part of London? It does not even give the postal district, whether it is E.C., S.W., or anything. It has an office pro tem. at Manchester, in Dalton Street, a spot I know well;
  1648
  it is within a few yards of the room where the Anti-Corn Law League held their meeting. Little did they think that a Liberal Free Trade Government would commemorate them by having, right in the midst of this sacred area, pro tem. offices of a company of this description, with the name of John Dalton, at the corner of the street. The hon. Gentleman representing the Board of Trade will take it that there is nothing personal in what I say with regard to himself. He is one of the ablest, if not the ablest, debater on the side of Free Trade in this country. But I do not think that in any of those contests which were held in that Free Trade area it was ever contemplated that a Liberal Government would set up temporary offices in a street bearing the name of John Dalton, for the purposes of a company, called "British Dyes, Limited." The hon. Member for Mansfield (Sir A. Markham) asked, "What about the remuneration of the directors?" It is £10,000 per annum—£5,000 for ordinary services and £5,000 for special services.
  Mr. CROOKS: Put me on that, will you?
  Mr. BOOTH: I should be very glad, if my hon. Friend is prepared with the qualification of £1,000.
  Mr. CROOKS: I forgot that.
  Mr. BOOTH: I have obtained this copy of a prospectus from the City, and in this copy the remuneration is stated to be £5,000 per annum for ordinary services and £5,000 for additional or special services. The sum of £10,000 is divided in this way: £1,750 to the chairman, £1,250 to the deputy-chairman, and £1,000 each for the other seven directors. As to the committee, I wish to ask whether the committee referred to in the prospectus is to be under the board or what committee is in contemplation? Is the committee named here in the prospectus to be a committee within the meaning of this remuneration clause? The suggestion is, I do not pin myself to it, that this committee is to elect the board, and then the board is going to elect the committee, and I think the point is one that ought to be cleared up; but there is no indication in the prospectus. But that is the impression I gather, and it has been conveyed to me by more than a dozen Members of this House who have pressed me to get the point cleared up. We have the remarkable statement in the prospectus that this issue has been sanctioned by the Treasury.

  1649
  I ask any representative of the Treasury here or any Member of the Committee—I see two present, one sitting near me and one sitting vis-à-vis—to explain this matter. If we cannot get an answer from the Government I must ask one of these hon. Members. I understand that the Government set up what they called a Treasury Committee to advise upon any issues, the object being that if any money was wanted from the country no issue was to be sanctioned unless it was urgently necessary. This Committee, acting in a bonâ fide manner and in the interests of the State, refused, so I am told, their consent to this proposed issue. That is not denied. I received the information, which was quite startling, from an hon. Member, but it has never been officially stated by the Government that its scheme has been rejected by its own Committee. I submit that this statement in the prospectus does not correspond with what I have stated. The prospectus says this issue has been sanctioned by the Treasury. I understood, as far as I could gather from previous documents, that when the Treasury sanction issues they do not want it to be stated on the prospectus as an inducement to people to subscribe merely from the fact that the Government have approved the issue. I submit that it is not quite fair when an influential Committee presided over by an ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer, a man who formerly adorned a Treasury Bench and is now risen to great respect in the other House, and with two distinguished Members of this House on that Committee, together with several other distinguished colleagues, take the course I have indicated, that there is no mention in the public interests that the Committee declined to give their sanction to this scheme. This purchase has been made, and I suppose the Government over-rode their own Committee. The next paragraph of the prospectus is:—
  "Minimum subscription, on which the directors may proceed to allotment, is fixed, by the Articles of Association, at seven shares."
  When legislation was passed by this House asking directors to state the minimum at which they would go to allotment, that was meant to be a safeguard for investors that they would not go to allotment unless a substantial amount of the proposed capital was subscribed. The Government have, I think, made some stipulation. I do not know what it is, but I think an answer was given that the amount was to be about £500,000. My complaint is that this is a very bad example to anyone issuing a
  1650
  prospectus. They go down to the bare minimum of seven shares, which is a legal and technical evasion of the legislation of this House. Do they want all companies to do that? They can do it, and they can quote Government sanction for doing it. I think it would be a misfortune for the investing public if this deplorable example were followed in subsequent issues.
  I have felt it my duty to speak somewhat strongly. I felt free to do so because the issue closes to-morrow, and any remarks of mine which could only appear in to-morrow's Press would not affect the subscription. I should not have liked to have been an unwitting party by raising a discussion in this House to producing a smaller subscription than the Government wish. They have determined on the matter. They have not got the support of the House for this scheme and they could not pass it in normal times, and could only do so under abnormal circumstances. It is neither a Free Trade nor Protection scheme; it is neither a Government scheme nor a private company; it is neither a scheme suited to peace times or to war; it is part of everything and a mix-up of everything; it is a miserable compromise, such as has never succeeded in furnishing dividends yet. If the problem is as serious as the Government make out, there are only three ways in which they could tackle it: begin the manufacture of the dyes themselves, pay fair compensation to those engaged in the industry and take it all over, which is a course which would be advocated by hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway, and which would be a logical course, or help the industry by giving liberal bounties from Government funds to people who will extend their works and proceed to manufacture dyes. They could also impose a tariff against any competition, and induce people to subscribe because they would erect a wall round the industry and secure it from German competition. I venture to say, if the situation is as serious as the Government say, those three courses only were open to them. This is not on any definite hypothesis. You have a board which is incongruous and of mysterious origin, and you have fitful intervention by Government nominees. I venture to say that many many times there will be sorrowful requests from numbers of disappointed shareholders and employés to Members of this House, asking for the intervention of this House in the conduct of the concern.
  Mr. PENNEFATHER: I rise with great diffidence and with great misgiving, because I am fully conscious of the fact that I have been such a short time a Member of this House that I cannot possibly have learned all the rules and unwritten laws which govern the proceedings of this august Assembly. Therefore, I think that the first thing I have to do is to throw myself on the mercy of the House, and to ask them to extend to me, to the fullest possible extent, that indulgence which I believe they are in the habit of extending to their young Members. It is a great satisfaction to me that on this, the first occasion of speaking in this House, I have not to rise to controvert what has been said by an hon. Member of the opposite side, but to express to a great extent my substantial agreement with a great deal of what he has said. The prospectus of British Dyes, Limited, is certainly, as he has described it, a most remarkable document, and it is not so much what is in it that is remarkable as what is left out. After studying the document very carefully, it has occurred to me that it is the work of two different people, one of whom is an optimist who can see a concern of three millions of capital emerging from a company where the authorised capital is only £2,000,000, and the other gentleman concerned appears to be a pastmaster in the art of withholding information while appearing to convey it.
  The prospectus is extremely difficult to understand. I am confirmed in that view by the fact that the hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. Booth), who has just spoken upon it and has endeavoured to analyse it, has not yet really been able to get to the bottom of it. One of the reasons why I believe hardly anybody in this House can understand this prospectus is because it refers to certain agreements, and because those agreements are only to be seen at the offices of the solicitors to the company in the City. I would suggest it would have been much more convenient for the purposes of discussion if the agreements had been sent up to this House. Yesterday I made it my business to go to the offices of the solicitors in the City. I was met by a clerk who asked me if I was an intending subscriber. I might have said "Heaven forbid," but I contented myself with saying that indirectly I might regard myself in that light, because I was a Member of this House, and that this House might be called upon to vote a million or so of money in connection with this scheme. Thereupon I was handed in
  1652
  the waiting-room some documents to peruse. I spent about half-an-hour reading them. I took a few notes, but I had another appointment and I found it was impossible to get all that I wanted out of those agreements. They were printed copies and were not the originals. I saw one of the gentlemen in authority, and asked him whether he could not send to me to this House a copy of the agreements in order that I might study them at my leisure and show them to my colleagues. The reply I received, very courteous and perhaps very proper, was that the solicitors were merely the servants of the directors, and that they could not furnish a Member of this House with a copy of those agreements for the convenience of this House without the sanction of the directors, but that they would try and get that sanction and would try and send them to me here. Up to this time I have not received that copy.
  I do not propose to follow the hon. Member for Pontefract in criticising too severely the action of the Government in regard to this matter. I fully realise that they were in a difficulty, and that that difficulty was not lessened by the fact that they had to go and make negotiations in Yorkshire, because we all know when you go to do business in Yorkshire you meet a very capable class of business men. I think anybody who has read the prospectus will realise that Messrs. Read, Holliday and Sons, Limited, are eminently capable of looking after their own interests. I desire to draw attention to one or two omissions in the prospectus. The first omission which, I think, is a very important one, is that the prospectus refers to Option A and Option B, but does not state how long the options are in force or when they expire, which is a most important point. For the information of the House I may say that on referring to the agreement yesterday I found that these options do not expire until the 31st December, 1915. That is an important point, because in dealing with this matter a great deal turns upon the question of the urgency of exercising the option. The next error in the prospectus refers to the debentures, and I think I ought to refer to an omission in connection with this in the prospectus.
  The prospectus ought to have contained information as to the share capital and debenture capital of Read, Holliday and Sons, but that is not mentioned. I find that the issued capital is 7,034 ordinary shares of £9 each paid.

  1653
  That is mentioned in one portion of the prospectus incidentally. In addition to those ordinary shares, and I think this may come as a surprise to many Members of the House, there are 9,000 cumulative 5 per cent. preference shares of £10 fully paid. As regards debentures, there are 46,900, or roughly 47,000, in £100 registered bonds at 4½per cent. secured by trust deed, the trustees being a Yorkshire Trust Corporation. It is stated in the prospectus that these debentures are to be repaid at the rate of £105, which is 5 per cent. premium. But according to the official records of the Stock Exchange, and I have referred to the "Stock Exchange Year Book" and another publication, those debentures, if paid off prior to 1920, have to be paid off at £110.
  That may not be a very important point, but it amounts at least to two or three thousand pounds, and part of that money is to be found by the Government with the sanction of this House. Therefore, I think it is important that that point should be cleared up. The prospectus states that the debentures amount to £59,500, but if you add 10 per cent. premium it means that the new company has to find a considerably larger sum in order to redeem those debentures. There is another point which comes out of the agreements which I think may answer some inquiries which Members of the House have been making, and that is as to the salary which is to be paid to Mr. Lionel Brook Holliday and to Mr. Joseph Turner for their services in case they are called upon to render those services. The House will remember that whether those two gentlemen are called upon to serve or not, they are to be paid £10,000 apiece for the option of calling upon them, and in addition to that they are to be paid a salary, and the prospectus says the salary "mentioned in the agreement."
  Would it not have been much more frank and straightforward for the prospectus to have said, "paid a salary of so much." Why was that sum kept out of the prospectus? One of the reasons why I went down to the City was to find that out. I found that the salary which is to be paid to Mr. Lionel Brook Holliday and Mr. Joseph Turner, to each of them is to be "not less," and I draw attention to those words "not less," than £5,000 per year. What is not loss than £5,000 per year? It presumably means more. It does not say £5,000, neither more nor less, but it says not less than £5,000. Therefore it may be, more, and who is to say how
  1654
  much more. Is it Mr. Holliday and Mr. Turner who have to say how much more, or is it the directors of the company? Is there an agreement as to that, and, if so, why was it not stated in the prospectus? These are comparatively small points. I now come to a more important point, namely, that if you read the whole of this prospectus from beginning to end you will not find a single reference to the £90,000 worth of preference shares which play an important part—a doubly important part—in option (b). Surely £90,000 worth of 5 per cent. cumulative preference shares is an item worth mentioning! It was only by going down to the City and inspecting these agreements—which we ought to have had here—that it was possible to find out that these £90,000 worth of preference shares existed, unless one referred to the official Stock Exchange Record, where, of course, they are given. The reason why I say these are very important in a double sense is, first of all, because £90,000 is a large sum, especially when that £90,000 worth of preference shares under option (b) would take priority of the £200,000 advanced by the Government, for which the new company has to take responsibility; and in the second place, because these 9,000 preference shares of £10 each have a voting power: they have one vote for every five shares.
  8.0 P.M.
  The House will find that this is very material when they come to consider option (b). Really this option (b) requires very careful consideration, and I am afraid I must most reluctantly detain the House a little while in explaining this very intricate matter. The whole of this option (b) is wrapped in mystery which will be very hard to elucidate, but I will do it to the best of my ability as the result of considerable study of this subject. I think I ought to read out the words of option (b) from the prospectus. Option (a) is very simple. It merely gives the company the right of buying out Messrs. Read and Holliday, lock, stock and barrel, for the sum of £248,000 odd. Option (b) reads as follows in the prospectus:—
  "In the alternative, to purchase from the said Lionel Brook Holliday 2,451 of the 7,034 issued ordinary shares of the company of £10 each (£9 paid) at the price of £22 10s. per share.…"
  plus a certain proportion of profits, which is immaterial. Then comes the important part—
  "and the purchaser is also bound to purchase on similar terms any other ordinary shares of the company which may be offered to the purchaser on like terms within three months of the completion of the sale of the said 2,451 ordinary shares."

  1655
  This is a double-edged option. First of all, the purchaser has the option of acquiring the 2,451 shares of Mr. Holliday, but the moment the purchaser has exercised that option the vendor has the option on the purchaser of "plugging" him with all the rest of the shares at £22 10s. for £9. The option is no longer a buyer's option; it becomes a seller's option. It is very unsatisfactory from this point of view, because it really puts the vendors on velvet. The vendors have the option, if they think they have a good bargain, of "plugging" the buyer with all their shares at this particular price. If, on the other hand, the vendors think they can do better by waiting and holding out, they can "corner" the purchaser by refusing to part with these shares, and that means that the purchaser would be powerless, because he would not have a majority of votes at the company meetings. This is particularly important because the 9,000 preference shares carry 1,800 votes.
  Therefore if option (b) is exercised, the purchaser will have no control over the company to which he has advanced £200,000—for this new company through the Government will have advanced Read, Holliday and Company £200,000—unless he buys up, not 2,400, for which he holds an option, but about 6,000 of these ordinary shares. That being the case, it might conceivably pay the vendors to "corner" the new company and say, "No; we refuse to sell these shares even at £22 10s. for £9." The vendors would really have the purchasers "on toast" Therefore, that is very important. It may be thought that it is a fantastic idea of mine that the vendors might possibly attempt a "corner" of the new company, or that it is necessary for the purchaser to hold such a large proportion of shares as about 6,000. But I would point out to the House that this possibility was foreseen by the Board of Trade officials or somebody when they first went into these negotiations, because the version of Option (b) which appears in the agreement is absolutely different from and entirely opposed to the version of Option (b) which appears in the prospectus. I will read the words of Clause (b) as it appears in the agreement. First of all there is an agreement that Lionel Brook Holliday will sell his 2,400 shares to the purchaser, and then the agreement goes on:—
  "Lionel Brook Holliday agrees to use his best endeavours to procure other holders to grant similar options up to 6,626 ordinary shares. In the event of the said Lionel Brook Holliday not
  1656
  obtaining within six weeks from the date hereof the options from other shareholders which, with the option given by the said L. B. Holliday, will, if exercised, enable the purchaser to acquire 6,626 ordinary shares, these presents may be cancelled by the purchaser by notice in writing. Such notice, if any, shall be given within seven days of the expiration of the said six weeks."
  That is, the option to cancel would have to be exercised before the 22nd of January last. I respectfully ask the House to consider this question. If that was the view of the purchaser on the 4th December last, why has that view been altered? There is no such Clause that I could see in my hurried investigation of the agreement as that which appears in the prospectus, and the only conclusion I am driven to is that Mr. Lionel Brook Holliday could not induce his colleagues to give a firm option of the requisite number of shares to the purchaser. It is evident that the purchaser has not cancelled the option; therefore it seems obvious that there must have been some further supplementary agreement which does not appear in the prospectus, is not referred to in the prospectus, and was not shown to me when I called at the solicitors' offices yesterday. This is a point on which no doubt some Member on the Treasury Bench will enlighten us later. I think it is a most important point, and one on which the House requires to be enlightened.
  In the meantime, we must accept for the purposes of discussion option (b) as it is printed in the prospectus. One must accept it for this reason—that, unless that Clause is correctly printed in the prospectus, any man who has applied for shares on the strength of this prospectus would, I believe, be legally entitled to cancel that application, or, if he did not do that, and the concern lost money—I do not profess to know the law, and doubtless I shall be corrected if I am wrong—he might come forward later on and claim damages from the directors on the ground of misrepresentation in the prospectus. Either of these results would be very undesirable.
  After what has transpired it must be realised that if option (b) is stated correctly in the prospectus, it must be absolutely impossible for the directors to exercise option (b). They could not put themselves in a position in which they had no control over a company to which they had advanced £200,000. Therefore, the question arises: Why put in the prospectus an option which cannot be exercised? What is the object of putting in the alternative option if the directors have made up their

  1657
  minds and already know, as this extract proves that they must know, that they could net possibly exercise that option? Therefore, I rule option (b) as being out of the question, and will assume that the only possible option which could be exercised by the directors would be option (a), which means the buying out of Read, Holliday and Sons, Limited, "lock, stock, and barrel" by the payment of £248,000 odd. I would like now to turn to what the financial position of the company will be if that option (a) is exercised. That, of course, must depend largely upon a factor regarding which, at present, we have no information, that is, on what amount of money the directors will proceed to allotment? I believe it has been stated that they will go to allotment on applications for £500,000. They may get it. They have used very drastic means to get it, by imposing a certain amount of intimidation on the dye users.
  I think it would be convenient if the hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Robertson) at this point would say whether he thinks they will get more than that or not. A reply might enable me to spare the time of the House. If the hon. Gentleman cannot say that he thinks they will get more, I am entitled to assume, for the purposes of argument, that they will not get more than £500,000—or not much more—and that they propose to go to allotment on about that sum. Therefore, as the basis of my calculations, I assume that the dye users will subscribe for over £500,000 of shares, and that as soon as that £500,000 worth of shares are allotted the Government will come forward and pay up £500,000. The words of the prospectus are:—
  "The Government will pay up £1 for every £1 subscribed.'
  It has been stated in the letter from the solicitor to the company, which appeared in the "Times," that it is the intention of the Government, irrespective of the amount paid up, to pay the £500,000.
  Sir P. MAGNUS: Is that in addition to the £200,000?
  Mr. PENNEFATHER: That is a different point. I am now dealing with the question as to what the financial resources of this company would be if the £500,000 is subscribed by the public in the dye industry, and if the Government immediately hand over £500,000. It will again assist us if the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Robertson) would give an indication as to whether I am right
  1658
  or wrong in assuming that the Government will pay up £500,000 as soon as £500,000 of shares are subscribed, irrespective of the amount called up. I assume that is so?
  Sir F. CAWLEY: That is so.
  Mr. PENNEFATHER: On that assumption I would like to give a calculation of what the liabilities of the company will be immediately after formation—that is to say, how much will the company have to pay out in the first few months, or possibly the first few weeks, of its existence; then I propose to turn to what cash they have available. The first thing the new company will have to pay out will be £248,000 odd purchase price to be paid to Read, Holliday and Sons—that is, assuming that the company is operating under option (a). Then there will be the payment of £200,000. I am not quite clear whether that will be a repayment to the Government of the money already advanced, or what shape it will take. The prospectus only states that the new company will be "responsible" for the £200,000 already advanced by the company to Read, Holliday and Sons. Then there will be about £62,000 for the repayment of outstanding debentures. If the prospectus is right in saying that these debentures have to be redeemed at 5 per cent. premium it will be about £62,000. If the Stock Exchange official records are correct the amount will probably be nearer £65,000. I am only, however, taking it at the former figure. Then there are these two sums of £10,000 to be paid to Messrs. Holliday and Turner for securing an option on their services (for which they each further intend to charge not less than £5,000 per year). This makes £20,000 more. Then there is £10,000 for preliminary expenses which have to be borne by this company. The new company will thus have to disburse £540,265, or possibly two or three thousand pounds more—take it at £540,000 in round figures. The sums available for the company to pay these disbursements out of are, as I assume, the Government loan of £500,000. It is not, so far as I can gather, certain that the Government are going to pay that up at once. I cannot say. I do not think anybody on our side of the House knows. There will also be the proceeds of the first call of 2s. 6d. per share on application and 2s. 6d. per share on allotment, or 5s. per share. Assuming applications for £500,000, that comes to £125,000. That added to the Government

  1659
  loan, if it is £500,000, makes a total of £625,000. From that we must deduct the present liabilities I have mentioned of £540,000, and the magnificent surplus of about £80,000 is left. I respectfully submit that at this point we have to consider what are the objects of the company which is going to start business with available surplus assets of a sum not exceeding £80,000 to £85,000. The prospectus here gives us the scheme. Apart from purchasing the business of Read, Holliday, it says, almost immediately after the names of the directors, and under the heading of "Operations":—
  "After purchasing the business of Read, Holliday, the new company will continue negotiations, already begun, to acquire other dye-producing concerns."
  The next paragraph goes on:—
  "Existing plants of companies whose undertakings this company may purchase or financially assist will be largely extended."
  Later it says:—
  "The erection of entirely new works can be undertaken."
  I respectfully ask this House to consider how is it possible for a company with only £80,000 odd in hand, during the first six months of its existence, to undertake these far-reaching schemes? How can it acquire new concerns? How can it largely augment the existing machinery of concerns? How can it give this financial assistance to still other concerns? The first six months during this War—and we hope it will be over at the end of the six months—will be the most vital period of this company's existence in regard to rendering useful assistance to the dye-users of this country. If the company have not got the money at the beginning the whole utility of the scheme is to a large extent discounted. Again, suppose they start with this £80,000, that is all they have got for working capital, and for all this other work which they propose. They are sure to have spent that in the first six months—or before. Then they will have to wait, and at the end of the six months they will be able to make another call of 5s. per share. That will bring them in from the 6th to the 9th month of their existence another £125,000—I am assuming the first £80,000 is spent—but £125,000 six months hence to carry out the objects of this company is surely an insufficient sum, and, when they have spent that, they then only get another £125,000, and so it will go on.
  I submit that this company will be in financial straits from the moment it goes to allotment; it cannot be otherwise. It
  1660
  will be a poor, embarrassed, weak company, unless the subscriptions are very much in excess of £500,000. Even if the subscriptions were a million pounds, this company would still be unable, through lack of financial strength, to carry out successfully the objects which are mentioned in the prospectus. Then, when the War is over, when peace comes, when military operations cease and a commercial war begins, what is going to happen to this company with its limited capital, when it has to face the competition of the importation of German dyes? It is obvious to anybody who knows anything whatever about business—I do not care what his political views or his economic views are—that when war ceases, when the present conditions of the dye famine give place to the condition of a plethora of dyes coming to this country, a company like this must be prepared to lose a good deal of money for one, two, or possibly three years, before it establishes its position. How can this company do it if it is so miserably under-financed?
  Therefore I venture to plead with the Government for something less niggling, something less petty than this small and miserable, and probably inefficient scheme. I ask them to try and look at any concern of the kind—with which the name of this House is to be associated—in a broader spirit, to see whether they cannot offer something more worthy of this emergency. I do not think that is too much to ask. I am convinced, from my knowledge of the business men of the North of England (they are not all Mr. Holliday's or Mr. Turner's, who want to drive hard bargains and mainly get off with the swag). The business men of the North of England who use these dyes so largely are quite capable of being patriotic if appealed to in the right way. They did not come forward, perhaps, willingly to support this scheme. First of all, perhaps, they did not like the element of intimidation which it contained, and then their instincts as business men revolted against the details of the scheme. They know it is unsound, so they did not come forward very willingly.
  But I believe that if a patriotic scheme were put before the dye users—and, after all, we are all dye users; there is not a man, woman, or child in the country who does not use dye in some form—I say that if it were put before the country that what we are setting out to do, and what the Government want the assistance of the

  1661
  country in doing, is to recapture this German dye industry—which is an industry in our midst, and ought really to be an English industry—and that, having recaptured it, we mean to hold it, to dig it in, to entrench it, and to make it impossible for the Germans ever to capture it back from us again; then, if that proposition were put by the Government before the country in a noble spirit and on a sufficiently large scale, and an appeal was made to the patriotism of the country, then I say confidently from my knowledge of the business men of England, particularly in the North of England, that they would respond to that appeal, and I believe the Government would have no difficulty in getting an amount of money which would enable a scheme of this kind to be carried out really effectively.
  If it is not too late I would plead with the Government, if they have an excuse, if they can find an excuse, to abandon, this present scheme. The option over Read, Holliday's concern does not expire until December, 1915. I would plead with them, with all respect, that they should bring in something better, something nobler, something more worthy of a great country like ours in a great emergency like this, because if this industry is recaptured from us by the Germans it will, in my humble opinion, be nothing short of a national calamity, a national degradation, and an admission on our part that in this particular branch of industry we Englishmen are not able to compete with our enemies.
  Sir FREDERICK CAWLEY: The hon. Member who has just sat down has made a most able speech and given a most capable analysis of the subject. I am not going to follow him in regard to criticism of this company; I want to deal with the general objection. The course which the Government has taken is a most extraordinary one, and I do not think anything can better exemplify the state of dictatorship which we are under. Nobody wants this scheme. Nobody wants it in the country and nobody wants it in this House, and if the scheme had come before the House in ordinary times it would have been laughed out and would not have had a dog's chance. But the Government took not the slightest notice of hon. Members opposite or of hon. Members on their own side, but went pushing on with it. It is a bad company-promoting scheme. I should like the hon. Member to give us a really detailed account of how the thing has
  1662
  come to pass. As far as I know the consumers of aniline dyes went to the Government to ask them to do something to relieve the present situation. They saw that as time went on the consumers of dyes would be short, and they wanted something done to relieve the present situation. Well, the Government have taken a long time. We have been at war now for the last seven or eight months, and at last the Government has come before this House with this great scheme, which is not a scheme of immediate relief for the present situation, but is more a company-promoting scheme for the future.
  What we wanted done was something immediately. There were colours in France that might have been had. Everybody knew that the principal place to get colours was Switzerland, and now, forsooth, a company has been formed so that they can send raw materials to Switzerland and get manufactured dyes back again. Could not something of that kind have been done at the very first? Could not we have got some of these colours before now from Switzerland? And was it necessary to form a company with a million of money to get goods from Switzerland in exchange for the raw material sent out? I do not think it was. So far as I know, the first step the Government took was to form a Committee under the presidency of Lord Haldane, and they invited a great many representative men to sit on it. They did not do any Member of the House the honour of asking him to sit on it. There were two Members—I was not one—who asked to be put on that Committee, but they were not allowed to be put on. I frankly confess I should have liked to be on. I have been connected with this business all my life, but did not ask to be put on, though other Members, with qualifications such as I have, asked, but were not put on.
  I should like to ask how many times the Committee met. I am told they only met twice, and that then this scheme was brought before the Board of Trade—I believe principally initiated by a lawyer—but it has never had the sanction of Lord Haldane's Committee. It has had the approval of some consumers, but are the large consumers in favour of it? I am told that the largest consumers in the country are not in favour of it, and I have been told personally by small consumers that they are not in favour of it. Who is in favour of it? The only supporters seem to be those at the Board of Trade. The

  1663
  consumers have asked the Government to help them out of a difficulty. I do not think myself that a single Member of this House has supported the Government in this scheme. It is true that the hon. Member for Swansea says that if the consumers want it they ought to have supported it. So they would if they approved of the scheme, but it has been cut and dried, and the only way they are asked to support it now is that they are told if they do not support it they shall not have dyes.
  The scheme of the Government is, "We are going to buy the principal aniline colours in this country and we already have the option of the principal firm. We have made an arrangement with the largest makers in Switzerland and we shall give them facilities for transport and grant licences to send the raw material to Switzerland, and in that way we shall collar most of the trade for this country." You are going to buy up all the companies you can get into this combine, and get the principal Swiss manufacturers to send all their stuff, so that they can tell the people—and they do in the prospectus in so many words—"If you will not join us and subscribe to our promotion scheme we will not let you have any dyes." That is a very unfair thing, and the Government have no right to use public money to force people into a scheme which they would not go into otherwise. Suppose this thing is successful, and they get the money and buy up all the manufacturers in this country, what are we faced with? We are faced with a combination, or a trust or a cartel, actually promoted and supported by the Government. It is a most iniquitous position. I suppose the gentlemen who are promoting this company have always had in view what hon. Gentlemen opposite would do under Protection. What will be the position of the consumer under Protection? All the works of this country will be under one huge combine. There will be a tariff, so that there will be no foreign competition, and we shall have the very worst features of an American trust brought about and supported by a Free Trade Government.
  It is the most reprehensible course that any Government could possibly have taken. This company has been formed, as the hon. Member opposite said, by intimidation, and the Government are fusing their great powers to help this one company. What about the £100,000 for
  1664
  research work? It is not going to be given to any university nor to any other company that may be started to do chemical and research work, but they are going to give all this money to this one company, with no sort of guarantee that it will grant licences for any new discoveries which may be made. That sum will pay a good many chemists, but if any other chemist discovers any other new product, what is he going to do? Is he going to hawk it round to other manufacturers and say. "I have discovered a new colour, and I will give you the licence to use it, and you will be a competitor of ours and we shall go on all right." It is not very likely they will do that. These chemists which the country are really paying for will be in the employ of this new company and working for it. The Government have no right to give public money to one company for their own profit. That is the reason why this company should not be gone on with. In my opinion, it is an unfair company and it is using public funds in a way which no Government ought to use them.
  Sir PHILIP MAGNUS: I am certain that the House listened with very great pleasure to the lucid explanation by the hon. Member for the Kirkdale Division of Liverpool (Mr. Pennefather) of the prospectus which is now in our hands. I regret that the hon. Gentleman did not speak before a larger House than is here assembled, and I sincerely hope that his speech will be read by hon. Members in all parts of the House to-morrow morning. He has explained to us for the first time what is the character of this prospectus, and I may be allowed to say that I regret very much indeed that those particulars were not placed in possession of the Members of this House some days before. It is very difficult to make ourselves masters of the details of this prospectus, but surely, before the House is compelled to vote a very large sum of money for this purpose, hon. Members ought to have had an opportunity of expressing an opinion upon the details of the scheme, and possibly pass some criticism which might have been of some service to the Government. It is a very ungracious part to have to criticise in any way this scheme.
  The Government were face to face with a very great difficulty. Dyes and dye-stuffs are essential ingredients for employment of an enormous number of persons engaged in productive industries in this country, and there was a possibility of a

  1665
  famine in dyes confronting the Government, affecting the employment of 1,500,000 persons. The Government, therefore, decided to do what they could to meet an emergency of this description, and all I can say is that if the scheme put forward by the Government showed, any chance of meeting the difficulties which we at present feel, or of doing what I am all anxious should be done, enabling this country in future to be independent of Germany in the supplies of dye-stuffs, then, even although the scheme might not be all that everyone would desire, we should do what we could to give the Government our thorough and unqualified support. I myself am certainly more interested in the prospect of regaining and of retaining this colour industry than in any other part of the scheme, and I must own that, as I understand the scheme, I see no prospect of our succeeding in so doing.
  I am not in a position, nor do I desire, to follow the two previous speakers in discussing the financial provisions of this scheme. I am not able to do so. I do not understand finance, and I should be very sorry to be called upon to criticise the prospectus of any public company. There are, however, one or two points which have been partially touched upon by other speakers to which I desire in a few words to refer. The first of these is as regards the directorate of this company. I notice that the scheme provides that the directorate shall consist of not less than six, or not more than twelve, persons, and, according to the prospectus, there are already nine persons on the directorate. The directorate will be paid a sum of £5,000 a year, with an increased grant of £5,000 a year for any special service which they may render. The directors, therefore, may at once absorb a sum of £10,000 a year.
  Sir A. MARKHAM: They can take £20,000 a year under the prospectus. They can vote the managing director whatever they like.
  Sir P. MAGNUS: That includes the managing director. I think it will be found that nearly all the successful chemical industries of this country have been carried on not by a large board of directors, everyone of whom is a busy man engaged in other important business, but has been carried on by two or three persons devoting the whole of their time to making the industry a success. Here we have nine directors, each one of whom is a director of some other great
  1666
  important company. It surely cannot be wise to entrust the development of this new industry, involving experiments of a most difficult character, to a number of men, every one of whom has far more important business to occupy his attention than that connected with the particular company of which he becomes a director. There is another grave objection. When I was speaking on this subject about a fortnight ago, I pointed out that the success of every chemical industry depended upon the management of the company being entrusted on the one hand to a person of great commercial experience and, on the other hand, to persons of great scientific eminence. No chemical industry can possibly be carried on unless there are on the management men of high scientific attainments with an expert knowledge of chemical products. I have looked through the list of these directors, and I do not find a single one who can be said to have any great chemical knowledge or who would be regarded for one moment as a chemical expert.
  It may be said that the directors have the power of appointing an advisory committee of scientific experts, but I would point out that an advisory committee is a very different thing from an executive or a management committee, and it is most important that chemists themselves should be pecuniarily interested in the success of this company and that they should form an influential part of the managing body. I do not know a single company in this country, or in any other country, dealing with chemical products on the management of which we do not find chemical experts. The hon. Member for Limehouse (Mr. W. Pearce) spoke on the last occasion when this was being discussed, and on the chemical business with which he is connected there is a manager closely associated with it who is an F.R.S. and an eminent chemist. I do not think, if you look through all the entire list of successful chemical industries, you will find that any one has had any chance of succeeding without there has been chemical experts on the management. One of the most important things is that when some new discovery is suggested, from whatever source it may come, the board of directors shall be competent to ascertain whether or not there is any value in it. That is not possible unless, on the board itself, there are men of scientific ability and knowledge. That is the second objection I have to raise to this scheme.

  1667
  The hon. Member who has just sat down has pointed out that the Government propose—and no one is more pleased to see it than I am—to devote the sum of £100,000, distributed over ten years, to chemical research, but the allocation and the control of that sum of money is left entirely in the hands of the board of directors of the company, on which there does not exist, according to the prospectus, a single person with a knowledge of chemistry. We do not even know that the £10,000 to be placed in the hands of the directors will be employed for chemical research. There is no indication as to the manner in which this money may be used. In any circumstances it seems to me remarkable that it should be proposed to devote £10,000 a year to research and that no part of it should be appropriated to the use of the universities, but that the whole of it should be under the direction of a number of directors who are not themselves scientific men. I should have thought that it would have been highly advisable that the universities of this country should have some part of this Grant, or, at any rate, that there should have been offered to the universities of the country some opportunity of bringing their discoveries before a competent body of men, who would be prepared to pay them very handsomely for any discovery which promised to be of value to them.
  When this matter was being discussed a fortnight ago the President of the Board of Trade told us that this money was going to be devoted to technical education. I did not in the least understand how it was to be so devoted. I hoped that it might be given to the higher branches of scientific and technical education which are being carried on in the universities, and I certainly could not suppose that it would be devoted to the lower branches of technical education which are carried on in some of our smaller schools, but to my surprise the President of the Board of Trade told us that what this country wanted was second-grade chemists. "The difficulty we suffer from," he said, "is that there are not enough second-grade chemists; it is the business of the Government to produce a larger number of chemists in the second grade." I hope that that view will not be entertained by the directors of this company. What we want are chemists of the highest possible ability, and there is no chemical industry
  1668
  which necessitates a higher and more protracted scientific training than that connected with derivatives of coal-tar. I must say the statement to which I have referred was most unexpected, and I earnestly trust it will not meet with acceptance at the hands of this company.
  I want next to say a few words with regard to the contract which the users of these dyes are expected to enter into. The contract requires all users of the dyes to obtain their dyes, for a period of five years after the cessation of this War, from this particular company. It imposes that upon them as a condition of their obtaining dyes at the present time. There can be no doubt whatever that the users of dyes during the War will be willing and glad to obtain their colouring matters from this company, because they will have no opportunity of obtaining dyes elsewhere. But how can we expect that the users of these ryes at the present time. There can be be willing to continue to take their dyes from this particular company?
  9.0 P.M.
  The President of the Board of Trade said that they would be under no legal obligation to take their dyes from the company if they could obtain them more cheaply from any other firm. I particularly asked him whether they might obtain them from any foreign firm and he said, "Certainly, they might." If the user of the dyes objects to the prices which he is called upon to pay for them from this company he can complain and the matter will be left to the decision of a referee, who will have to ascertain that the prices charged by the company are reasonable. I do not know exactly what "reasonable" means in that connection. It is suggested that it is a price not higher than that at which the dyes can be obtained from any other firm. As soon as this War is over German companies will be sending great quantities of their dyes into this country; they will be dumping them down here, and it will be impossible for a British company to compete on equal terms with their German rivals in the price at which these dyes can be supplied. There is nothing in the agreement, nor in the words by which the agreement was interpreted by the President of the Board of Trade, which necessarily requires the users to obtain their dyes from this company, and, therefore, I see no chance whatever, in the scheme now before us, of our being able, as I would like to do, to recapture

  1669
  this industry from the German manufacturers and to secure its maintenance in our own hands. In a letter in yesterday's "Times," from that very eminent chemist, Sir William Ramsay, it was stated that there was no possibility of our being able to build up the industry unless, for some time after the War, we absolutely prohibited the importation of dyes into this country. That is exactly what the Government are trying to do and what they will not succeed in doing. They are trying to prohibit absolutely the importation of foreign dyes into this country by requiring users of this company's dyes to sign a declaration that they will not use foreign dyes for five years after the War. But there is no sanction for that contract, and I do not think it could possibly be enforced.
  Therefore, it seems to me, with all respect, while this scheme, as placed before us, will not enable us to obtain immediately as we require them the dye-stuffs needed for our various industries, it holds out no hope whatever of enabling us to recapture from the Germans that trade, which originally belonged to this country, and to retain it in our own hands. I wish, very much, I could speak more hopefully of the scheme. I have sympathy with what the Government are endeavouring to do in order to meet an emergency of this kind, and I feel certain that, if they had taken the House of Commons more into their confidence, and if they had sought the advice of many scientific men who would have been able wisely to advise them, they might have brought forward a scheme which had greater prospects of success and by means of which there would have been a possibility of our being able to retain this important industry in our own country.
  Sir A. MARKHAM: I first want to register my protest that hon. Members have been unable to obtain copies of this prospectus in the House, and have had to go to the City to get them.
  The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. J. M. Robertson): Did the hon. Baronet make an application to the Board of Trade?
  Sir A. MARKHAM: No, I went to the Vote Office. We are voting a large sum of public money, and Members of this House are entitled to know the conditions under which they are going to vote it. I am utterly opposed to this scheme. I have
  1670
  had something to do with coal tar by-products, and I know the many difficulties the Government have to face in setting up these new works. It has been said that we in this country have allowed the Germans to go ahead of us, and that their Bardashee Works have secured a practical monopoly of the dye industry in Europe. But the House of Commons would do well to recollect that the trade of Germany is centred largely in banks and syndicates, and owing to their operations the German Bardashee Company, by the expenditure of something like £40,000,000, have built up works in Germany which have cost them, for research work alone, millions of money. It may be asked why the manufacturers of this country do not join together for the purpose of forming a great trust to compete with Germany. It has not been done for the reason that public opinion in this country does not like great combinations which dominate a whole trade, as has been the case in Germany.
  First, I want to say a few words about the prospectus. I am not going to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract (Mr. Booth) in his humorous remarks about it. But I do think the prospectus is not one which the Board of Trade should put forward as a model for industrial companies to adopt. It errs in many important points to which the Board of Trade, being responsible for the correcting and bringing to book in Courts of Law of fraudulent balance sheets and prospectuses should have been the first to conform in every way, not only to the law, but to the intentions of Parliament. Let me first deal with the directors. The House knows that the real man behind this scheme from the beginning has been Lord Fletcher Moulton, who has given an enormous amount of his time to helping the Government in every way to bring this scheme, bad or good, to the position in which it stands. I look at this question from this position. I am a Free Trader. Here we are in the face of a national emergency, and I am not going to be bound by any fetish. I look at the question from the standpoint that we are going to spend a large sum of money, and, when we have spent it, are we going to be successful in competing with the Bardashee Works or not. As a matter of fact, I believe those works will smash this company within a very few years, even if the Government goes on finding the money.
  What is happening now? If hon. Members will take the trouble to refer to the

  1671
  German technical journals they will find that the Germans are to-day manufacturing large quantities of material which they boasted at a recent meeting in Coblenz that they were going to dump in this country after the War. They had the impudence to say that. At another meeting of steel manufacturers, they also said they were going to dump into this country the surplus steel they were making during the War. If the Government start giving £10,000 a year to research work, which is very difficult and complicated, these second-class chemists cannot deal with a difficulty of this kind. We all know that it is not the second-class chemist but the super-chemist who is required for the dye business. In Germany, nothing in connection with the by-products of coal tar is wasted. Everything that passes through the Bardashee Works, from the time it enters it until it comes out, is used. In the face of that position, the Government come here, although their own Committee at the Treasury say that the scheme is an undesirable one, and not a single Member on either side of the House is in favour of the scheme, and seek by their charter to set up this company. We are going to lose every penny that we are now finding for what I really believe is nothing but a wild cat scheme. When the Germans have spent not merely tens of thousands a year, but millions a year, in research work, how can you hope, even if this research work is carried on for a number of years, to compete with them, having regard to the position they have arrived at.
  Sir F. BANBURY: The hon. Baronet said that the Committee have stated that the scheme is undesirable. The communications which passed between the Committee and Treasury were private. The Committee were only set up to advise the Treasury, so that the statement was private as between the Committee and the Treasury. The Committee did say, however, that if any statement with regard to the Treasury was put upon the prospectus, it ought to be the usual statement which has been put upon all prospectuses.
  Sir A. MARKHAM: That is not what appears on the prospectus. The hon. Baronet well knows that they were not the usual words that appear in a prospectus.
  Sir F. BANBURY: That is not with the sanction of the Committee.
  Sir A. MARKHAM: The statement was made by the hon. Member for Pontefract
  1672
  (Mr. Booth) and was not contradicted. I saw the Leader of the Opposition turn to the hon. Baronet and ask, "Is that true?" and the hon. Baronet nodded his head.
  Sir F. BANBURY: It is not so at all. As to what passed between the Leader of the Opposition and myself I do not know that I am bound to divulge a private conversation. I did not nod my head in that sense.
  Sir A. MARKHAM: We will not quarrel about words. It comes to this, that the Treasury Committee did not give this their hall-mark as they have given it to other schemes.
  Mr. BOOTH: They refused it.
  Sir A. MARKHAM: I do not know whether they refused it or not; I will not put it so high as that. I used the hon. Baronet's words, that they did not give it their hall-mark.
  Sir F. BANBURY: That is not absolutely correct. What I said was that the Committee did say that if a statement were put upon the prospectus, it must be a statement in conformity with the statement which was put on all other prospectuses.
  Mr. BOOTH: Was that done?
  Sir F. BANBURY: No, it was not.
  Sir A. MARKHAM: What is the meaning of this interruption?
  Sir F. BANBURY: I want to make the matter perfectly clear.
  Sir A. MARKHAM: The prospectus says:—
  "This issue has been sanctioned by the Treasury."
  What appeared in all the other prospectuses were words to the effect that the Treasury did not hold themselves responsible for any statements which were set out in the prospectus. The hon. Member opposite (Mr. Pennefather) made a very able speech to-night, and perhaps he will allow me, as an old Member of the House, to say that we should be grateful to him if he can elucidate other points as he has done to-day. The point I desire to make in regard to this prospectus is an entirely different one. The hon. Baronet opposite (Sir F. Banbury) is really playing with the issue. He knows perfectly well that this prospectus has not got the hall-mark. The hon. Member (Mr. Pennefather) said he thought that any shareholder who applied for shares in this company could seek to

  1673
  get his money back, because there had not been a full disclosure of all the facts in the prospectus.
  I come to the directors. There is nothing in the prospectus which does not warrant these gentlemen voting themselves £20,000 a year. A director is to receive £5,000 a year, but they may vote themselves into a committee, and then there is another £5,000 a year. Not one of these persons knows anything about the business which is going to be done. Why you want to bring in all kinds of people who have never had anything to do with this trade and put them on this board I am at a loss to understand. All these people are wholly unacquainted with the work. That is the way the Government starts to build up a great industry of aniline dyes in this country. I want to know whether the Government are to use this for blackmailing manufacturers who do not come within the scheme itself? As an hon. Friend of mine pointed out, the Government are using this company for the purpose of forcing manufacturers to buy their dyes from it. It would be absolutely wrong that we in the House of Commons should vote money for the purpose of compelling manufacturers to get their dyes from a Government monopoly, and from that monopoly only. We were told the other day that that was not so, and that manufacturers could buy outside. That was not the impression I gathered from the balance-sheet itself.
  Are we to understand that no manufacturer is to be prejudiced in any way by the fact that he has not subscribed to the issue of this capital? Of course, I at once admit the manufacturer is entitled to say, "We are not going to give a preference to you who have not subscribed, but we shall give that preference in the manufacture of the dye we actually make ourselves to our own shareholders." That is only reasonable. But if this company is going to send coal-tar products from here to Switzerland, and they are going to be manufactured in Switzerland and brought back, and the final products are to be sold by this company, you are going to put every manufacturer in the position that he can only buy through this company, and you are not, therefore, giving him fair play. All products which are manufactured by the company, qua manufacturing company, ought to go in preference to the shareholders of the company, but you ought not to give this company a right, as I think you have done under this memorandum
  1674
  of articles, to send the raw products to various countries, to make the products up and let this company finish them, and then create a corner against merchants who have not, subscribed.
  I hope it will be made clear that that is not the intention of the Government. That is pressure which no Government ought to put on manufacturers. Will the Government tell us at the same time who was responsible for drawing up this prospectus? There is no promoter's name on it. That, of course, ought to have been on. I do not think it can have emanated from a Government Department. It must have emanated from some solicitor or company promoter. Whoever has done it has so fogged the issue that I should be ashamed to have my name put on the prospectus as one from which I should seek to get money from the public for the purpose of my business. If I could not put a more clear business statement on a prospectus on which I was seeking money from the public to carry on my business, I certainly would not make any appeal whatever. I hope we shall have an assurance that this company is not to be used for the prejudice of manufacturers, who know that the scheme is bad from the beginning, and that when the War is over the Germans will smash it and the shareholders will lose every penny they have subscribed.
  Mr. HEWINS: On the last occasion when we had a debate on this very important subject, it was almost the most extraordinary debate I ever listened to. The speeches, especially from some hon. Members on that side of the House, showed an extraordinarily high degree of technical knowledge of the subject they were discussing, and yet, so far as I remember, there was not a single hon. Member who approved the scheme or who did not urge what were absolutely fatal objections to it. The only one who spoke, in favour of the scheme was the President of the Board of Trade. The prospectus does not meet one single criticism which was offered on that occasion. On the contrary, now that it is fully disclosed, we find it infinitely more objectionable than the rough draft of it given by the President of the Board of Trade. The prospectus itself is an outrageous document to be published by a public Department of this country. I will not characterise it any further. I agree with the hon. Baronet (Sir A. Markham) that I do not think any Member of the House would care to have his name associated with it.
  Sir F. BANBURYmade an observation which was not heard in the Reporters' Gallery.
  Mr. HEWINS: Yes, there is one. I look at the Press. I take the financial criticism of the "Times," which is of a very high order. There has rarely been a more severe condemnation of any prospectus than you have in the "Times." Even the ordinary Press supporting the Government condemns this scheme. I take the ingenious way in which the "Manchester Guardian" condemns it. It had an interview with a technical expert which was fatal to the scheme, and it had a leading article showing that after the War dumping would probably begin, and so great was the economic efficiency of Germany that we could not do anything to hinder it. What I rose to refer to was this: I want to know precisely where we are. Parliament is going to adjourn in a day or two for a month. What is going to be done in that month? Where is this scheme going to be at the end of the month? Is the Government going on with it? I do not want to raise any question of a controversial type in the ordinary way. I know that some hon. Members, especially those on the Front Bench opposite, suffer from a kind of economic hysteria in certain circumstances, and therefore I will not put them to any strain.
  But I wish to allude to one of the most important measures which this House has ever had to consider, and which has a very intimate bearing upon the present situation. I mean the Bill we passed yesterday—the Defence of the Realm Amendment Bill. What is the Government going to do about it? Under that Bill they can do everything which is requisite to develop the potentiality of dye-producing in this country. If they take their definition of war material in that Bill, it will certainly cover aniline dyes. I want to know, when the Government are organising the industries of the country for war purposes, are they going to apply the provisions of the Bill we passed yesterday to aniline dyes, or are they not? When they have these great powers entrusted to them under which, for instance, they could call to their counsels the right hon. Baronet (Sir A. Mond) and other great experts who command great amounts of capital and say, "Will you help us in relieving us from this war difficulty of aniline dyes?" They can take all these potentialities and develop them to the utmost, just as they can ammunition or the ordinary things required for
  1676
  war purposes. But are they going to do that? If they are, this scheme, which is after all, not yet really established, is totally irrelevant and unnecessary, and if they are not going to do that I want to know what is the bearing of this scheme upon another subject we were discussing yesterday in relation to the Defence of the Realm Consolidation Bill—the question of compensation.
  The case is exactly analogous to the case of ammunition—in fact, some development of the coal-tar industry has a very direct bearing on the question. The workshops of the country are equal to the situation. If from the point of view of the Bill we passed yesterday you took manufacturers into consultation, the potentialities of the country are sufficient to get it out of its present difficulty in regard to aniline dyes. That is the information I get from technical experts on the subject. Are they going to do that? And if they are not do they wish the terms of their option with Read, Holliday and Company to be taken as a model as to the way in which you will deal with firms when you require them to organise their potentialities for the service of the country in time of war. It seems to me this is a very important question, but as was shown clearly yesterday, the Government had no plans whatever in their mind to carry out the Bill they were discussing. They apparently had not considered it. It is an ad hoc Bill to deal with a particular situation. They do not know where they are, and they have not considered that Bill in relation to the aniline dye situation.
  When the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade replies I hope he will tell us exactly what the situation is, and, of course, supposing that they do carry out the scheme, what could be done under the Defence of the Realm Act which was passed yesterday? It still remains that you have to give some kind of security to manufacturers to take up this business. I do not wish to say anything discourteous to the hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. J. M. Robertson), but for particular reasons I would rather that the President of the Board of Trade could have been here. It does seem to me that right hon. Gentlemen on the Treasury Bench are frightened of the controversy between Tariff Reform and Free Trade. I am not going to raise that controversy, but I wish to point out that if the Government really want to give the security which manufacturers require in regard to the manufacture of aniline

  1677
  dyes, it is not necessary to raise the question of Tariff Reform. There are scores of ways in which effective security could be given which do not require what hon. Members opposite are so much afraid of. I should have been only too glad to discuss alternative methods if they had shown the least disposition to meet manufacturers in that regard. Certainly no one could ask the Government to go into any kind of detail as to the particular measures they will adopt.
  Who in this House, before we came down here two days ago, expected that we were to be asked to carry through in two or three hours what is nothing less than an industrial revolution? We had no warning that the measure would be brought in, and we did not know anything about it. When you look at the present financial situation and the manufacturing situation, I am perfectly certain that there is no man on either side of the House who would venture to say what the position will be after the War. Therefore, not being in a position to say what will be the position after the War, it is idle to give detailed pledges as to how you are going to carry out certain proposals. But you can give definite security. There are different ways in which it can be done. I would be very glad to discuss possible methods if we were only able to discuss them with absolute freedom. There are many ways in which you can achieve that purpose, and how important it is I will try to explain to hon. Members in a few words. There in more than one Member of the House, and there are many men in the country, who, to my certain knowledge, if that security could be granted, are prepared to find several millions for the manufacture of aniline dyes.
  Mr. ROBERTSON: On what condition?
  Mr. HEWINS: On a condition against the dumping competition of Germany after the War. I said on a former occasion that I hoped hon. Members will not suppose that I am trying at the present time to raise anything in the nature of Tariff Reform. I ask hon. Members to take it from me that I would not begin a Tariff Reform system by putting a tariff on particular forms of manufactures. I do not myself believe that Tariff Reform Members are going to be carried away in that manner. I believe that it is an entirely different proposition to deal with the conditions required in relation to the production of ailine dyes and analogous cases
  1678
  from carrying out a great scheme of national policy. Here we are at this crisis in our affairs. The Government have destroyed our banking system. They have destroyed our currency system. We are prohibited everywhere. We have scrapped the British Constitution. We have nearly a million under arms and hundreds and thousands are dying for the great cause in which we are engaged. There are certain things which the Government will not even consider. Suppose you do scrap our fiscal system, what on earth does it matter in comparison with the great issues of this War? How many of the old causes does the House suppose are going to survive the great flood which is altering everything? I do not want the hon. Member opposite to commit himself, but I ask the Government to consider this proposition from the point of view of giving a perfectly free hand looking to what can be done under the Defence of the Realm (Amendment) Bill which we have passed.
  Is it desirable in view of the passing of that Bill to go on with this ramshackle scheme? Will not this scheme, which the Government are trying to establish, actually hamper the War Office or whoever is responsible for the administration of the measure, when they come to deal with certain questions of explosives and ammunition which are closely related to the aniline question? When that Committee has been appointed, and when you have got commercially your Lord Kitchener, he ought not to be hampered in such a vital matter as aniline dyes by the existence of this scheme which the Government is trying to pass without the ordinary ground of expediency. I can assure the Government that I am so much alive to the difficulties which will arise that, if I thought well of their scheme, I would not hesitate for a moment to give it my heartiest approval. I have no desire to make any capital out of this question for any particular cause. I would be willing to adopt any scheme which I believed would help the country through its present difficulties. I ask the Government to imitate the spirit in which we on this side of the House are acting. That is our attitude. I do not wish to make any kind of economic or political capital out of any one of these questions. We do ask the Government, before it is too late, to act in the spirit of those on this side of the House who supported the Bill which we carried yesterday. Let them

  1679
  call to their councils all manufacturers who can give any assistance in reference to this problem, and I feel perfectly certain that they will find a sufficiency of suggestion which can be carried out with advantage to the community and to the safety and security of all concerned.
  Mr. ROBERTSON: It is obviously impossible for me to deal in detail with the hundred and one criticisms which have been advanced in reference to this scheme, but I will do my very best to deal with all the substantial points as I understand them. Unfortunately I did not catch the opening words of my hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract (Mr. Booth), but, as I understand, he shared the view expressed later by the hon. Member for Kirkdale (Mr. Pennefather), that they had not had proper access either to the prospectus or to the agreement made with the firm of Read, Holliday and Sons. I do not know whether my hon. Friend suggests that these documents ought to have been issued with the ordinary Parliamentary Papers. I do not profess to be an expert with regard to these matters, but I confess that it never would have occurred to me that that should have been done. I can only say as regards the hon. Member for Kirkdale that they were offered to him.
  Mr. PENNEFATHER: No; I applied at the office of the solicitors yesterday. I stated that I was a Member of this House and gave my card, and they refused to allow me to take a copy with me. They told me that they might send one to the House—
  Mr. PRINGLE: I offered one myself.
  Mr. PENNEFATHER: Excuse me, I understood the hon. Member to say that he understood that a copy was on the way to this House, but if it was on its way it has not yet reached me.
  Mr. PRINGLE: I simply wish to say that my hon. Friend told me that he did not require it as he had extracted in the office of the solicitors all that he required.
  Mr. ROBERTSON: I think that it is a very small point. The hon. Member is mistaken in one point. I do not think that he was entitled to go to the solicitor's office as a Member of Parliament and ask for it.
  Mr. PENNEFATHER: May I suggest that as this House may be called upon to sanction the expenditure of £1,000,000
  1680
  or more of public money I, as a Member of this House who may be called upon to sanction it, had a perfect right to go there.
  Mr. ROBERTSON: The Department concerned, the Board of Trade, would have been perfectly willing to give the hon. Member a copy of the document if asked to do so. But I merely wanted to explain that the solicitors were guilty of no discourtesy or of any unwarrantable action. The prospectus states that the agreement with Read and Holliday is open to the inspection of any applicant, and that is the proper attitude of the solicitor connected with the company.
  Mr. PENNEFATHER: Of a private company.
  Mr. ROBERTSON: The hon. Member has a perfectly clear right to come to the Board of Trade, the Department concerned. I can only express my regret that he did not do so, as he would have been supplied with a copy of the document.
  Sir H. DALZIEL: Does the hon. Gentleman suggest that Members of Parliament are to go over to the Board of Trade to see these documents instead of the documents being brought here, and that we are to stand in a queue at Whitehall Gardens awaiting our turn to see them?
  Mr. ROBERTSON: The right hon. Gentleman is perfectly well aware that I meant no such thing. Hon. Members of the House can communicate with the Departments concerned. I did not suggest that hon. Members should come to the Board of Trade and form a queue outside; and the House knows that that is not a serious interpretation of the expression which I used. The prospectus was issued on Saturday last, and I can only repeat that, if any request had been made to us for a copy of the agreement referred to in the prospectus, it would have been acceded to. The right hon. Member who spoke last often asks the Department for information, and the Department, so far as I am aware, always gives it with the utmost rapidity with which it can be given. In reference to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract, I rather think that he has been unduly excited as a good Free Trader by the contemplation of what we all admit to be the very exceptional situation which is created by this scheme. It is just as exceptional in its way, perhaps, as the War in which we are engaged. The War brought the House at once

  1681
  to the business of emergency legislation. We have had to pass measures, some of them I suppose quite unprecedented, collectively certainly quite unprecedented, dealing in all manner of ways with usages and liberties that had been part of the regular daily life of the country. We have had to interfere in all these ways, and I am not surprised that my hon. Friend, as a good Free Trader, is disturbed by this particular measure, which, of course, could not have come into existence and would never have been put forward at all but for the extraordinary crisis in which the country finds itself.
  Mr. HEWINS: We are equally disturbed.
  Mr. ROBERTSON: I fancy that there is a great deal of disturbance on both sides, and I fancy that it has somewhat affected the logic and the economic force of hon. Members' arguments. My hon. Friend proceeded to criticise the prospectus and used some very strong language about it. I observe that he grounded a large part of his case on the simple citation of some extracts from the City article in the "Times." He paid a high compliment to the writer of the City article in the "Times" in general and he practically invited the House to take their authority from that source. I confess that I was a little surprised that the hon. Member for Pontefract, as an experienced controversialist, should have so readily committed himself to that position and should have been so ready to endorse an attack of that kind. But the most surprising thing was that my hon. Friend made no allusion whatever to a very crushing answer made to the "Times" City article immediately after it appeared, and which was the most crushing exposure of the gross inaccuracies of that article.
  Mr. BOOTH: My hon. Friend missed my point. The solicitors who replied to that article made no reference whatever to the quotations which I cited. I cited the portion of the City article which I thoroughly endorse, and the portion to which the solicitors in the controversy omitted entirely to make any reference.
  Mr. ROBERTSON: The portion which my hon. Friend cited was simply language of disparagement and condemnation used by an authority who grossly misrepresented the financial facts, so that he is not so high an authority as my hon. Friend seems to think. It was pointed out that the writer in the "Times" City article stated as a fact that only £250,000 was to
  1682
  be called up at once on the 1,000,000 £1 shares offered for subscription, so that the Government loan to begin with would only be for the same amount. The solicitors pointed out the utter inaccuracy of that, and the writer of the article was bound to admit, when he referred to the subject later, that he had been mistaken and that the prospectus did really bear the sense which the solicitors stated. As a simple layman I am bound to say I cannot see how he could place any other sense upon that paragraph than that to which I have called attention, and if that authority is convicted of having seriously misrepresented the facts with regard to the company, I am bound to say the writer's disparagement of the prospectus has little weight. There is another passage which was quoted by the solicitors from the "Times'" City article as follows:—
  "The only point which is really at all clear in the whole prospectus is that a good bargain has been made by Read, Holliday and Sons with the Secretary of the Board of Trade"
  Then the letter in reply goes on to say:—
  "If you really have any information which justifies this statement our clients will be glad to be supplied with it before deciding as to the exercise of the option. Our clients are officially informed that Read, Holliday and Sons, Limited, would be only too glad if the British Dyers Company did not avail itself of the option, and that if they (Read, Holliday and Sons, Limited) had to make the bargain to-day, they would insist on a very much higher price."
  The hon. Member laughs. I can inform the House, on the opinion of a high industrial authority, the option could be sold at a considerable advance to-morrow. [An HON. MEMBER: "Take the offer!"] My hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract slides away from the issue by calling "Hear, hear," to that interruption, but I would point out that if the option can be sold at a profit, then there is an end of the controversy.
  Mr. HEWINS: May I ask if the hon. Gentleman has the best authority for making that statement?
  Mr. ROBERTSON: Certainly, or I should never have dreamt of making it. I have that authority, and the fact, cannot be evaded that a very good bargain has been made in the opinion of very high authorities. I must express my regret that my hon. Friend, when informed of this fact, should merely applaud those who say, "Take the offer!"
  Sir F. CAWLEY: Is it a firm offer?
  Mr. ROBERTSON: I did not speak of any offer. I stated that Read, Holliday and Company would be glad to take the

  1683
  option back, and we have the evidence that it could be sold to-morrow at an advance. The hon. Baronet will be bound to admit that if what was stated be true, then his statement is wrong. The hon. Member for Pontefract spoke of discourtesy to the House, of slovenliness, of forgetfulness, but of justification for this criticism I am bound to say I find very little. He complained that no manager was named. He knew perfectly well that the prospectus indicates that part of the purchase terms, included Read, Holliday and Company, and included payment to Lionel Brook Holliday and Joseph Turner, and, in connection with those terms, there was the option of their services. In regard to the question of compulsory sinking fund, I think my hon. Friend will see that his remarks do not justify the aspersion of slovenliness. The strangest part of my hon. Friend's criticism was that the two Government directors gave no security whatever that the company will remain British—no adequate security. At the same time he protested against the presence of those directors as being Government spies on the board.
  An HON. MEMBER: What are their names?
  Mr. BOOTH: They are the last in the list, the engineer and the railway director.
  Mr. ROBERTSON: My hon. Friend says that we have not got enough security, and then says we have taken an unwarrantable course to get the security.
  Mr. BOOTH: I did not say that.
  Mr. ROBERTSON: What does he mean? That they are not needed, and ought not to be put in that position? The hon. Member went on to point out that there was no "fair wages" clause in the prospectus. Just before he had said that he would trust the directors; and surely the directors may be trusted to see that fair wages are paid. Surely it may be taken for granted that the whole thing will be up-to-date from beginning to end. The machinery will, of course, be as up-to-date as possible, and it is not necessary in a prospectus of this kind to enter into such details. The prospectus is not addressed to the general public appealing for funds; it is addressed to owners of dyeing works in the country and others directly interested; and it does not in the least
  1684
  influence the ordinary investor to take shares; in fact, he is not wanted.
  My hon. Friend further objected that there was nothing in the prospectus about co-operation. Does he really say that in an emergency scheme of this kind it is practicable to introduce co-operation, profit-sharing, or other industrial ideals? I think the proper course is to leave it to the directors of the company, and we ought not to be accused of lack of sympathy with the idea of co-operation because it is not introduced into a scheme which really does not raise the question. The objection of the hon. Member for London University is one of more importance. He pointed out that there was no scientific man on the board. I very readily admit that there is a great deal of force in that particular argument, but I would remark that there is also a very great deal of force in the argument on the other side. I have heard this matter debated frequently, and in my opinion the arguments do not balance. In my opinion, the balance finally comes down on the side of the practical course. I admit there are good grounds in past experience for the wish that you should have on the board of such a concern a chemist of great practical capacity, a chemist of genius. We know of great industrial concerns, the success of which is due to the presence of such a chemist amongst the men forming the board, but we also know of concerns, great chemical concerns, the ruin of which has been due to the controlling power of highly qualified chemists; and if we are to come to a business conclusion, we must weigh both sets of considerations. There are a great many business men who have discussed this particular point, and the hon. Member will believe me when I assure him that it has been very anxiously weighed and considered.
  There are a great many business men who are quite convinced that it is a mistake to have on the board of such a concern a man of special technical knowledge, because the whole of the other directors are in his hands. He would be practically entitled to say, "I am the only man who has chemical knowledge of the matter, and you must settle it in that way." What then would be the position of the other directors? This is a very practical issue, and one that has arisen and been discussed in connection with the fortunes of many industrial chemical companies. I can only say I do not think it was the function of the Board of Trade to attempt to decide

  1685
  such an issue as that. They took, first of all, counsel with the great dye users, great practical business men, as to the general course to be pursued, and those dye users practically selected the directors. They took finally the view of the various experts they had consulted, and that view was emphatically in favour—perhaps I am going too far in saying emphatically, but their view was in favour, so far as things have gone, of not putting chemical experts on the board in the position of directors. I may point out that they are still at liberty, if they see reason to reconsider their decision, to co-opt a scientific man as a director. They actually put into the prospectus the power to appoint committees composed not only of chemists with theoretical knowledge, but—and this is a matter of some importance urged upon us not later than this very day—also dye users, men representing the dye trade and dye users. Those men complain that the scientific chemist was too apt to look into the scientific theory and not to think of the everyday needs of the dyer. Those committees will be composed of both kinds. The power is one which I think will certainly be used, since the composition of such committees is actually under consideration; and in view of that power to use chemical counsel to the fullest degree I really think the hon. Member for London University need not be under the apprehensions which he has expressed.
  10.0 P.M.
  Sir P. MAGNUS: Has the hon. Gentleman considered the composition of directorates of the successful firms in Germany?
  Mr. ROBERTSON: Yes, of successful and unsuccessful firms, both in Germany and in England. I am sure all of us would at once, unless we had a particular business prejudice, be prepared to say that the ideal state of affairs would involve putting a chemist on the board. But the hon. Gentleman is, I am sure, aware of cases where concerns have been brought to ruin in the hands of most eminent chemists. I have heard of schemes propounded by highly qualified chemists which have never emerged into anything. I think, when you realise that business men know these facts, that you ought on such an issue as this be content to leave the shaping of this particular concern to the practical judgment of the men in whose hands it now stands.
  Mr. HEWINS: Surely the hon. Member does not say that there are no chemists in England with business capacity?
  Mr. ROBERTSON: I made no such suggestion. I indicated that the opinion of business men who have discussed this point is that if you have an expert or two experts on a board of directors they practically command the situation, and either they are there for that or they do not count. It their special knowledge is to settle points they have really authority over the board, and a number of business men very much prefer on that account to be able to take their counsel without having their counsellor a co-director, when he would be practically in a position to give orders.
  Mr. HEWINS: Is the objection of business men to chemists an objection that there are no chemists of business ability?
  Mr. ROBERTSON: The hon. Gentleman is not giving a natural interpretation to my words. On the ordinary principle of averages I should say there must be a percentage of chemists with good business capacity. I said at the very outset, and surely the hon. Member cannot have forgotten it, that we all know of great concerns that owe their success to the presence on the management of highly skilled chemists. I stated also the kind of objection that is often made by practical business men, and which would appeal to business men. I am not saying whether they are right in their objection, but I did say it is not an issue which the Board of Trade can fairly be called upon to decide. The practical decision should be left I think to business men in charge of the concern. I do not think my hon. Friend will lay much stress on his point that there is no possibility of having a working man on the board. That kind of criticism brought against such a scheme as this surely is not part of his charge of slovenliness and forgetfulness. Then we had his dithyramb about the situation of the office. He remarked that I looked round suspiciously at the time. I do not wonder that I did. I have often heard my hon. Friend with the deepest interest, but I never heard him use a more preposterous argument than that.
  Mr. BOOTH: You must have light and shade.
  Mr. ROBERTSON: I will let it go at that. We had references by several hon. Members to what was stated to be the opinion of this scheme by the Committee who advises the Treasury on new issues. I was a good deal astonished, since the deliberations of this Committee are supposed to be confidential, at the confidence with

  1687
  which certain assertions were made as to its decisions. My official information was that the Committee made no recommendation on the scheme on the ground that as the policy of the new company had already been decided by His Majesty's Government it did not come within their scope. My difficulty is that I do not see how this happened to come before that Committee. Here is a scheme which the Government is absolutely behind. I should have thought that that very fact would at once have excluded it from the scope of this Committee. At all events my official information is that they declare that they made no recommendation, on the ground that His Majesty's Government had already endorsed the scheme.
  Sir H. DALZIEL: Did they not recommend anything with regard to the prospectus?
  Mr. ROBERTSON: I do not know what they said on the score of what should go into the prospectus. I do not think that that was a matter to be settled by them at all.
  Mr. PIKE PEASE: Was the matter sent to the Committee?
  Mr. ROBERTSON: They evidently had the matter before them. I have no right to make any comment upon that. They seem to have acted quite correctly in saying that they made no recommendation at all.
  Sir F. BANBURY: If the hon. Gentleman quotes part of a document, we have a right to the whole.
  Mr. ROBERTSON: I was just giving my official information—that they made no recommendation.
  Mr. BOOTH: On this point I made the assertion, which I repeat, that this Advisory Committee did make a recommendation which the Government have overruled and not followed.
  Mr. ROBERTSON: I can only repeat my official information, and express my surprise that my hon. Friend should get such knowledge of the deliberations of a confidential Committee.
  Mr. BOOTH: Oh!
  Sir W. BULL Sir W. BULL rose—
  Mr. SPEAKER: Is this a general conversation, or is it a Debate?
  Sir W. BULL: I rose to a point of Order. I wish to ask whether, if the hon. Gentleman reads part of a letter, he ought not to read the whole?
  Mr. SPEAKER: He was not reading a letter at all. He simply said that his official information was so-and-so. There was no quotation.
  Mr. ROBERTSON: I made no allusion to a letter. I now pass to what is for me perhaps the most important part of my hon. Friend's speech. After all these attacks on the scheme, he indicated that there were, in his opinion, alternatives or other ways of meeting the need. I am justified in assuming that my hon. Friend admits that there is a most urgent need for some means of providing dyes and colours.
  Mr. BOOTH: No, I never admitted that.
  Mr. ROBERTSON: Then I need not deal with my hon. Friend's alternatives. He gave me that impression. He said that this scheme was suited neither to peace nor to war, but that there were three alternatives open to the Government. They might make the dyes themselves; they might give bounties on dyes; or they might impose a tariff. I take it, then, that my hon. Friend regards every one of those alternatives as bad also.
  Mr. BOOTH: No.
  Mr. ROBERTSON: My hon. Friend puzzles me.
  Mr. BOOTH: What I said was that if the Government's case was good as to this being a very urgent matter, there were three ways which were perfectly consistent in which they could deal with it. I instanced those three ways, and I said that this scheme was not one of the three, but was a hotch-potch of several ideas—a compromise.
  Mr. ROBERTSON: Then I will proceed to show how bad my hon. Friend's proposals are. He says first that the Government might make dyes themselves. If the Government had put any such proposal before the House, it would have met with much more serious criticisms than those which have been made, some of which are grounded on fiscal reasons, some on individual trade preferences, some on aversion to anything that looks like a departure from Free Trade, even in time of war. If the Government had proposed

  1689
  that they should start as dyemakers in this admittedly difficult industry, which requires great technical knowledge and business skill to conduct it, would not everyone, my hon. Friend the most loudly among them, have said: "Why on earth are the Government doing such a thing? Why can they not leave such matters to business men?" and I am certain that that judgment would have been endorsed by the whole country. For the Government to have started making dyes themselves at a time of emergency, when you wart the largest output in the shortest possible time, and you cannot risk going into experiments which might miscarry, would have been utterly preposterous. My hon. Friend's second suggestion was that the Government might give bounties on dyes. That would be an extremely bad mode of encouraging the production of the dyes required. You would have to give bounties on all the dyes produced. You would get all manner of dyes that you did not want, and you would have no security whatever that you would get the dyes you did want. You would have to pay bounties for unnecessary things in order to get the things that are necessary. As to imposing a tariff, I can only say that I am unable to understand how my hon. Friend could use the word "consistent" in that particular connection.
  Mr. BOOTH: I meant consistent with the scheme. The scheme will have to have a tariff or it will fail.
  Mr. ROBERTSON: My hon. Friend is indulging in prediction, just as the hon. Member for Hereford (Mr. Hewins) has done. As he expressly avowed, no man in this House can possibly say what the conditions after the War will be, and yet he and all the rest of our critics have predicted in the most confident way what those conditions will be. There has not been a speaker to-night but has told us what is going to happen after the War. The tariff issue I will deal with later. I will turn now to the points raised by the hon. Member for the Kirkdale division (Mr. Pennefather) in his interesting maiden speech. He also criticised the prospectus. But again his evidence and proofs were not at all on the scale of his terms of disparagement. For instance, the hon. Member complained that the prospectus did not mention certain things, and then he said that it did incidentally make mention of one
  1690
  of the very things of which he was speaking. I do not see how a prospectus could, make mention of anything otherwise than incidentally. Then he went on to complain that as regards the salaries to be paid, a minimum was stated—not less than so-and-so—and he asked: "What is meant by 'not less'? Why do you not say 'neither more nor less'? Who is to say whether it is to be more?" I should have thought it was plain to those who are paying the salary are not to pay less, while if they see fit they have power to pay more. The hon. Member dealt at some length with the question of the various elements in the purchase price. My reply is that all that is material to the understanding of the commercial value of the concern, and its bearing on this company, seems to me to be given in the agreement, and the hon. Member has had access to the whole of the agreement. I will only say that the argument as to £90,000 worth of preference shares has no bearing on the case. The extracts in the prospectus indicate the whole sum, to be paid for shares of all kinds.
  Mr. PENNEFATHER: Under clause (b) the prospectus does not communicate the whole sum to be paid. It simply refers to the ordinary shares.
  Mr. ROBERTSON: Is that the ground on which the hon. Member suggested that he thought a supplementary agreement had been made? There has been no such supplementary agreement. I do not understand that particular criticism of the alternative scheme. In regard to the main criticism on option (b), the answer is that what the hon. Gentleman suggested might happen is prevented by option (a). I must repeat the proposition that I made before as to the vendors' position. When the hon. Gentleman put to me various questions I failed to understand that at that moment he wanted an answer. I thought he was putting his statements in a query form, and I hope he will not suspect me of any discourtesy. I thought he was putting in query form a proposition that seemed to me perfectly clear. The wording of the prospectus seems to me to be as plain as it can be made—that for every £1 subscribed the Government would subscribe the same. He asked me if that meant that if £500,000 was subscribed the Government would put down £500,000. The answer to that is "Yes." It never entered into my mind that there could be any other meaning.
  Mr. POLLOCK: Would the hon. Gentleman be quite clear? The point is one of substance. The question is whether or not the Government will pay up £500,000 after 5s. per share—part only—has been paid, or whether the Government will, pari passu, pay up 5s. for 5s., 10s. for 10s., £1 for £1. It is an important matter, and I therefore ask for information. The words are "subscribe for every pound of share capital the amount for which there is a contract paid by instalments." Does it mean "as" and "when" the sovereign has actually been paid up?
  Mr. ROBERTSON: I understood that there was no possibility of doubt as to the meaning of the word "subscribe." At an earlier stage I referred to the letter of the solicitors in which it was pointed out—
  Mr. POLLOCK: Where is that?
  Mr. ROBERTSON: I alluded in an earlier part of the proceedings to the letter of the solicitors in the "Times." The expression "subscribe" I thought was clear. I think it is understood that there was a distinction between "subscribed" and "paid up."
  Mr. POLLOCK: I do not want to interrupt for the mere sake of interruption, but there is a difference between the two, and we are only asking for information.
  Mr. ROBERTSON: If £1 is subscribed the Govenment will subscribe £1.
  Mr. POLLOCK: But if 5s. is paid up will the Government subscribe £1?
  Mr. ROBERTSON: Yes, that is so. The hon. Member went on to say—and here again I tried to give general grounds—that if this money was not subscribed at the beginning and promptly and in large quantities, it would be no use. There is a good deal of force in that line of argument, but I would ask which of the speeches delivered has done anything whatever to encourage subscription? The hon. Member himself will hardly say that his particular line of criticism is likely to bring the people.
  Sir F. CAWLEY: I want to stop it.
  Mr. ROBERTSON: The hon. Baronet has no scheme for providing British colour works in the future?
  Sir F. CAWLEY: Oh, yes, he has!
  Mr. ROBERTSON: The hon. Member went on to say that he hoped we should first abandon the scheme. He says that we ought to provide a better, nobler, and greater scheme, and that if we only came forward with such a scheme we should get the money. My hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract, on the contrary, made a protest against getting any money out of the public purse, and said that the Chancellor of the Exchequer needed all the spare cash he had for State purposes. The hon. Member opposite would like to see a much larger amount spent, but what indication did he give of the basis of his scheme—unless he was merely speaking with something at the back of his mind about tariff? Unless he had some such conception in his mind, I can attach no meaning to his suggestion of the better, nobler, and greater scheme.
  Mr. PIKE PEASE: My hon. Friend suggested that the working capital was too small.
  Mr. ROBERTSON: And made a speech which would prevent anybody giving any working capital at all. [HON. MEMBERS: "No, no!"] The disparagement of this scheme entitles us to demand what kind of scheme is proposed by opponents. No such proposition has been made!
  Mr. DENNISS: Would the hon. Gentleman kindly deal with the sufficiency of capital to carry out the objects of the company?
  Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Gentleman is entitled to make his own speech in his own way.
  Mr. ROBERTSON: I do not demur to the question, but if I discussed in detail every point raised I should not get to the end of the main criticism to-night. On that point I would only say that the sufficiency of the capital is a matter for the business judgment of the business men who are conducting this scheme, and I am not going to say in detail exactly how it can be considered sufficient. The hon. Baronet the Member for Prestwich (Sir F. Cawley) says that no one wants this scheme, and hints that the Government started to make a scheme without any need or urgency. I can only say no such scheme would ever have been touched or dreamt of unless there had been the most urgent demands from what everyone in the House knows to be a widely ramified industry, representing, as hon. Members themselves say, £200,000,000 of capital

  1693
  and 1,500,000 people. It was because of a very loud outcry, of indications of the danger of extreme distress in the future, that we framed the scheme. The hon. Baronet says you cannot get unanimity on this particular scheme. But you cannot get unanimity for any scheme; that is the trouble. There was the previous scheme, which had to be withdrawn because of the unsympathetic treatment, and possibly because of faults.
  Sir F. CAWLEY: I mean that consumers asked to be got out of the immediate difficulty in time of War.
  Mr. ROBERTSON: I understand the hon. Baronet. He asked me to tell him how the scheme came to pass, and why we pushed the scheme, and I am trying to indicate how it came to pass and to deal with his general argument, partly explicit and partly implicit, that something more could have been done to meet the difficulty immediately. I can say, on that head, his mere negative aspersions, for they are not really criticisms, are not well founded. He said everyone knew there were colours in France that might have been had. I had some means of knowing. Perhaps the House, with the aid of a little imagination, will be able to figure for itself what was the possibility of bringing colours from France after the War broke out, when the whole railway system was absolutely upset. As regards the history of this scheme, I think he is aware that we made very early attempts to make arrangements by which the dyes and the colours could be got from Switzerland, and it was precisely because no security could be given, because there was no kind of basis upon which you could provide anything like a continuous supply without establishing a company of that sort, because we found no other methods would suffice, no mere hand-to-mouth or temporary measure would result in any colour supply at all—it was on that score that this scheme was elaborated as it now stands; and I have to say, with regard to all these assertions about getting them more easily, that, so far as I am aware, there was no other way in which colours could be secured.
  To say that no company was necessary is merely to ignore the overwhelming evidence put before the Government that a company was the only way in which colours could be supplied at all. There are large consumers in favour; I know also there are large consumers who do not like the idea
  1694
  at all, of providing for the future; that they would do anything they could for the present, but do nothing to establish this plan of a British colour-making industry for the future. As soon as the War is over, they want to get back to the old relations with the German producer. I know there are large consumers in that position, but what would be the position of the small consumer in the meantime? Any colours that would be bought would be at the mercy of the large consumers. The scheme of the Government is by far the most democratic and practical which has been produced for giving colours on the fairest basis to a large number of users, and the hon. Baronet's scheme would give no such facilities.
  The hon. Baronet (Sir F. Cawley) opposes the scheme as a Free Trader, and hon. Gentlemen opposite oppose it as Tariff Reformers. Possibly between the two the Government scheme may be right. He says that we are using unfair methods and forcing people into the scheme. Is that a fair characterisation of a scheme which says that we require to have capital subscribed by the colour and dye users? That effort will be backed up by so much help from the Government, on the principle that if the trade will help themselves, the Government will help the trade. The hon. Baronet says that is threatening them, and another hon. Member says it is blackmailing. It is the best and the most obvious way of securing that help should be given to those who help themselves. The hon. Baronet the Member for Prestwich also objected to the provision made for the endowment of research, on the score that it was not going to be utilised in a sufficiently public way. The great progress made by the German industries of this kind was made with the expenditure under their own control. It was not the mere giving of Government Grants to universities, although I do not see why that policy might not also be justified.
  Sir F. CAWLEY: But the Germans were spending their own money.
  Mr. ROBERTSON: This money will be spent under the practical control of a business concern, which is the way the German money was largely spent. The hon. Member for London University (Sir P. Magnus) raised a point which I have already dealt with, as to the presence of a chemical expert on the board. I deprecate his line of argument in that connection when he attacks the remark of the President of

  1695
  the Board of Trade to the effect that we want to multiply the number of second-grade chemists. He contends that what we want is a number of chemists of the highest ability—he was contemplating men of genius. We all agree in wanting me of genius, and nobody would limit our wants in that respect. But you cannot count on evoking genius by endowments; whereas you can count on evoking a supply of properly trained men. You may hope to do something by Government expenditure on education. The hon. Member opposite referred to a question which was raised in the last Debate, as to the position a consumer would be in after the War was over if he found he could get his supplies cheaper from another source than from this company. The best I can do is to read once more the actual phrase of this prospectus. Perhaps the hon. Member did not notice the particular expression used:—
  "The referee is to have regard to all the circumstances, including the fair current prices at which dyes are being sold by other suppliers."
  A momentary dumping price would not be regarded by any referee as meaning the current price. I do not think that I can make the case clearer. It is a matter for application of ordinary business sense and integrity. If the hon. Member means to suggest that there will be a continuity of dumping prices against which we cannot fight, I would observe that here again we are in the realm of the prediction which has been so widely indulged in by so many speakers.
  Hon. Members seem to me singularly rash in taking it for granted that after the War German trade will be conducted exactly on the same principles as before. Whatever might be the wishes of individual German traders in the way of resuming trade, it is perfectly conceivable that there might be a new Government policy which would deprive them of that privilege. There is an economic school in Germany which has long recognised that the supplying of dumped goods to other countries is making a present to those countries of national wealth without any adequate return, and, if that school is in the ascendancy, we might be in the position of finding Germany refusing to supply any dyes to this country. I only put it as a contingency—I leave prophecy to other hon. Members—but in that case, if we had not a supply of our own, we should be in a very grave position. This scheme, considered as a scheme from any point of
  1696
  view, cannot mean any vast national loss. At a time when the War is costing such fearful and monstrous sums, though I admit that a considerable sum is being embarked and risked, it is a sum that is not great in view of the needs of the trade being catered for. It is not a great amount to risk in a scheme which has for its object the immediate conservation of a great variety of industries, and the possible provision at the end of the War of a real living industry which may be able to hold its own against even hostile policy of the kind indicated by the hon. Baronet the Member for Mansfield. He left me a little doubt as to his position. He said he was "a Free Trader, but"—an expression which used to be very familiar to us in the controversies of the past. I am afraid that the "but" was to the effect that the German industry would be able to smash any effort we may make. I deprecate this confidence of prediction.
  Sir A. MARKHAM: I shall certainly never, while I am in this House, vote for any trading whatever, directly or indirectly, with pirates and murderers.
  Mr. ROBERTSON: That is a perfectly logical, consistent, and intelligible position, but I was dealing with the matter in the more philosophic form it sometimes takes of claiming that what we must do is to prohibit the importation of these things from Germany altogether. If I could attach any meaning to—I will not say the hysterical—but the eloquent words with which the hon. Member for Hereford closed his speech, he was appealing to us to give an undertaking now that we will prohibit the importation of foreign dyes when the War is over.
  Mr. HEWINS: I said there were various ways. I indicated that way and two others. There are many ways, some of which we practice now.
  Mr. ROBERTSON: I know the hon. Member said there were many ways, but this was the only one he advanced.
  Mr. HEWINS: But I said there were others.
  Mr. ROBERTSON: At any rate I consider this particular one utterly impracticable. If you are to put on prohibition it must be a prohibition either of German dyes only or of all foreign dyes, and if you prohibit all foreign dyes you prohibit dyes which you may be glad to receive, such as Swiss dyes. No one looks forward after

  1697
  the War is over to prohibiting these dyes when trade returns to its ordinary channels. If you do not prohibit all dyes—if you merely prohibit German dyes, all the German producers will have to do will be to cross the frontier into Switzerland and set up their works there. I do not think the hon. Member could have had that in mind, or he would not have advocated this scheme. The hon. Baronet (Sir A. Markham) laid special stress on the point how subscribers were to be dealt with in the matter of priority of supply, and the hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. Booth) also discussed that question. Perhaps I may read that part of the prospectus which comes under the heading of "Priority of Supply":—
  "It must be clearly understood that those dyes which the company can provide will, so long as the supply of such dyes is insufficient to meet the requirements of all classes of consumers, be primarily appropriated to supplying the want of users who are shareholders and have entered into an agreement to take the company's dyes."
  I do not feel myself able to use plainer language than that, and if the hon. Member thinks it unfair treatment I can only leave it to the House to pass judgment on the essential points of a scheme which has been framed to help those who are willing to help themselves. The hon. Baronet asked who drew up the prospectus. There were no promoters. That has been stated more than once. The prospectus was drawn up by the directors in consultation with the solicitors of the company, but I am quite unable to see what bearing it has on the serious issues of the scheme before the House.
  I will now say a few words on the criticisms of the hon. Member for Hereford, whose distinguished position in the economic world entitles him to special notice. What seemed to be his real question was, "What are you going to do with this scheme under the Defence of the Realm Act?" The hon. Member said he had information to the effect that we had in this country all the resources for making the dyes and colours we want. If the hon. Member has that information I can only say that is not information which is accessible to the Government, and my comment on that is that the distinguished personages who gave it to him were very grievously mistaken indeed. We had some means of ascertaining the capacity of the country at large—not, perhaps, an absolute census, but something in the nature of a survey, and our information is to the effect that it is quite hopeless to think of producing the dyes and colours needed by
  1698
  the country by the simple plan of using the factories and institutions already in existence. It could not be done. As regards the possible ancillary use of factories now in operation, the hon. Gentleman suggests the commandeering of certain products of certain factories under the Defence of the Realm (No. 2) Amendment Bill. But as I understand it, that Bill is to have regard to the production of goods for war purposes.
  Mr. HEWINS: You can extend it by definition.
  Mr. ROBERTSON: I think the country would be surprised if we used that Bill for the production of dyes. The hon. Member says we are afraid of the controversy between Tariffs and Free Trade. I should be very glad indeed if we could get back to it, for that would mean that peace had been restored and we were back to the old, familiar, and fairly healthy position of fighting each other on that issue. If there is any point in the controversy that the hon. Member would wish seriously raised, purely from the point of view of this Bill, I am perfectly willing now, as I attempted before, to meet whatever may be in his mind. The hon. Member did nothing beyond telling us that there were a multitude of ways in which you would act, while he specified only one.
  Mr. HEWINS: I specified more than one.
  Mr. ROBERTSON: Perhaps I am doing the hon. Member an injustice, but he gave me only one, which was his suggestion that you would get several millions of money if you would give an undertaking that after the War was over you would prohibit the importation of these dyes. I have already dealt with prohibition. On the general suggestion I am totally unable to see the connection in the hon. Member's mind between the two propositions, that the worst possible way to inaugurate a tariff would be to inaugurate it by promising a tariff on one article, which is his own position, but which is flatly opposed to the position of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. Chamberlain), and then to turn round and say it would be a splendid thing to set up in advance the prohibition of one import. To give such a promise, to commit or attempt or pretend to commit this House to tie its hands for the future, to say that one year, or it may be several years, hence it shall be bound to carry out a prohibition of the import of these

  1699
  articles, is a course that seems to me as disastrous from a Tariff Reformer's point of view as it would be to undertake to impose a tariff.
  Mr. HEWINS: May I ask the hon. Gentleman to explain why the Government establish a scheme of prohibition of their own?
  Mr. ROBERTSON: That was a scheme of prohibition during the War period. Surely the hon. Member does not suggest that the setting up of a whole multitude, of prohibitions—
  Mr. HEWINS: No; I mean this dye scheme.
  Mr. ROBERTSON: Surely the hon. Member does not suggest that the setting up of a whole multitude of prohibitions during war time is the same thing as undertaking to pledge yourself to a system of prohibition in peace time! The two things are as wide asunder as the poles, and stand for two entirely different points of view. The whole policy I have been defending tonight is the same policy I have been defending as a Free Trader. I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract will give me credit for having fought under that flag. He does not reverence the memory of the great Free Traders more than I do. The scheme of the Government is sincerely and confidently defended by me on that basis. The scheme suggested by the hon. Member of a promise of prohibition is a more outrageous thing than the promise of a tariff. It is a proposal for which we could not give a guarantee, for a Parliament might be elected two months hence which would refuse to submit to such a prohibition, and in that case every person who had put his money into that large fund of millions, which the hon. Member says could be raised, would be entitled to demand his money back on the ground that it had been got on false pretences. The Government, as I understand it, will certainly not attempt for a moment to back up or strengthen this scheme by giving such a preposterous pledge as that. The hon. Member must excuse my language in such an expression, because he himself could hardly allude to the Government scheme without calling it impossible or ramshackle, or something of that kind.
  While we have had to-night, I freely recognise, a very considerable variety of voices all hostile to the scheme, they are hostile
  1700
  for very different reasons. The hon. Baronet (Sir A. Markham) is in a totally different position from the hon. Baronet (Sir F. Cawley). They are both against the scheme. Their reasons have nothing whatever in common. They destroy each other. Their reasons equally destroy the position of hon. Members opposite. There is no economic community; there is no political community between these various criticisms. They agree only in disliking this scheme. They also equally dislike each other's schemes. This is the one practical workable scheme before the country. That it has faults I should take for granted in advance. I never heard of a human scheme that had not. But the scheme as it now stands has been the result of an immense amount of patient, careful consideration in which the Government have had the counsel of highly-skilled, accomplished, and experienced business men. If the House in general were prepared to take up the position that some hon. Members do, to the effect that you would do better with no scheme at all, I can only say that if this scheme did not go through it would be a matter for very grave decision indeed what the Government should ultimately do. This is the honest best that we are able to put before the House, and I trust hon. Members will recognise that we have given a reasonable justification of the scheme.
  Mr. HEALY: The hon. Gentleman has convinced me of two things. I think the Government have been unbusinesslike in two ways. First, they should have given the advertisement of the prospectus in all the newspapers. The hon. Gentleman described it as a democratic prospectus. I say a democratic prospectus for democratic newspapers. My other objection to the way in which the Government have acted is that as they put the hon. Member (Mr. Falconer) on the directorate, the hon. Member (Mr. Booth) should not have been omitted. The scheme, therefore, can scarcely command my confidence. They were united, as we all remember, on a famous business committee, and in a directorate like this they should not have been divided. I am very glad, at all events, that this scheme has been introduced. I have known Read and Holliday's for a long time. The late Thomas Holliday tramped Ireland with me fifteen years ago, and I passed a Bill through this House for him. It was for taking over water powers in Ireland. I induced him to buy some property.

  1701
  He was still a Unionist, but he ceased to be so when the House of Lords rejected the Bill I am very glad indeed. It was quite a novelty to hear to-night that the Government have induced Read and Holliday to part with their works, which I knew and with which I was very much impressed. With regard to what the hon. Baronet said in reference to the Badische Works I should say, if we get to Berlin are we not going to get to Baden Baden? I can well understand that the Badische Fabrik might be settled by bombardment which may leave them short for a little time and may leave us short. Therefore, on all these grounds and on many others which I will not enumerate, I am heartily glad that the Government have started this scheme, especially as I can see that once you have started it it is idle to say that it is merely for the War. Money will be invested after peace and I firmly believe the Government have thereby to some extent, at all events, departed from the Free Trade fetish which I have not the smallest respect for.

  MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT WITH THE EXPEDITIONARY FORCE.
  Mr. HEALY (continuing): The House has discussed for a considerable time the case of the soldier and a proper meed of praise has been poured out on them for their work at the front. But I do not think we should be showing ourselves grateful if we forgot those who are absent from this House, or the somewhat ungracious and ungenerous attempt that has been made to deprive them by a side wind and by what I conceive to be an illegality, of the salaries already voted to them by this House. I believe over 200 Members of this House have gone to the War. Nearly every man under forty has gone, and this is the time that the Treasury have selected for the purpose of doing a thing which I will demonstrate is not merely illegal but unconstitutional, and I think I will convince every hon. Member who is open to conviction that, if the Treasury contention be correct there is not a single man, unless a Minister who has been re-elected, entitled to continue to hold his seat in the House, because if the Treasury contention be correct, we who are receiving salaries have been put into the position of Civil servants, and our seats should have been vacated five years ago, and all the great harvest of measures from the
  1702
  Budget and the Parliament Act down to the War Loan which we are voting tonight to the extent of over £320,000,000 were absolutely without jurisdiction, and we are not properly Members of Parliament at all, because the Treasury say we are Civil servants. I think the approach by the Treasury clerks to Mr. Speaker was a degradation. Mr. Speaker presides in many important respects over the finances of this House. It is so laid down in Erskine May. His duty is one of supervision and not one of response and to suggest that he is an officer of the Treasury, or that he is bound to answer communications from the Treasury, to my mind suggests something very near a breach of privilege. The functions of the Speaker with regard to finance are stated at page 592 of Erskine May:—
  "The drafts upon the Consolidated Fund authorised by the Resolutions of the Committee of Ways and Means must not exceed the amount of Supply which has previously been granted for the service of the year, and it is the duty of the Public Bill Office, acting on behalf of the Speaker, to ensure compliance with this rule."
  Then there is a note which says:—
  "The Speaker superintends the procedure of the House—a responsibility which justifies to a certain extent a statement, otherwise unfounded, that the duty thus discharged by the Public Bill Office devolves upon the Speaker himself."
  At pages 594 and 595 there is a statement to the same effect. What does the Treasury do? The payment of Members of Parliament may be right or wrong—I did not vote for it—but, at all events, a Resolution was passed by this House earmarking the fund and declaring how it should be paid. That Resolution was tion was embedded in the Appropriation Act, and I will show in one moment how it was ratified by an Act passed so recently as last Parliament. The Resolution was moved by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on 10th August, 1911. It was in the following terms:—
  "That, in the opinion of this House, provision should be made for payment of a salary at the rate of £400 a year to every Member of this House, excluding any Member who is for the time being in receipt of a salary as an officer of the House, or as a Minister, or as an officer of His Majesty's Household."
  If that be so, what right have the Treasury to say that they will dock a Member of Parliament who becomes an officer in His Majesty's Army? So that you are bound by your own Resolution to pay this money to everybody being Members of Parliament who are not officers of the House or Ministers. That Resolution was carried, and accordingly the Resolution was embodied in the Appropriation

  1703
  Act, which was proposed to the House, first in Committee of Supply, on the 14th August, 1911, and Mr. Emmott being in the Chair—Clause 2, Payment of Members—the Question was put:—
  "That a sum not exceeding £252,000 be granted to His Majesty to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending 31st March, 1912, for salaries of Members of the House of Commons not in receipt of salaries as Ministers or officers of the House, or as officers of His Majesty's Household."
  That Resolution was carried and was embodied in the Appropriation Act of the year. It is not unimportant to bear in mind that, before Mr. Gladstone's day, there never was a practice of printing the Clauses of Appropriation Bills, except the mere Money Grants. If you look at all the Appropriation Acts before Mr. Gladstone's time as Chancellor of the Exchequer, you will find that the Clauses preceding the Appropriation Act were never printed. But we now have—and the importance of this will come in a moment when I refer to the Parliament Act, and the Certificate which the Speaker has to give—Clauses in every Appropriation Act earmarking the amount which is voted by the House of Commons for that particular purpose. And accordingly last year we passed our Appropriation Act declaring that up to the 31st March next this sum, now amounting to about £300,000 a year, was earmarked for the payment of Members of Parliament. More than that, since the War broke out a number of Members joined the Colours, and thereby vacated their seats. They were not aware of the disability which they had incurred, and the Government had, in paving their way, passed an Act not merely to prevent the vacating of the seat, but to legalise the granting of money. The hon. Member for Pontefract said:—
  "But it does seem to me as a layman, that merely to provide that these hon. Members shall be deemed not to have vacated their seats is scarcely strong enough language to convert payment illegally made into a legal payment. At the end of September the Treasury sent out the salaries to hon. Gentlemen who, according to this Bill, were no longer Members of this House, and, indeed, are not now Members. It may be that this Bill puts that right. If so I think it might have done so in more specific terms, because it would be an unfortunate thing if an hon. Member who has accepted a commission and has served at the front were, on his return, to find himself subject to penalties in respect of this payment.
  Sir J. Simon: The hon. Gentleman is quite right, if I may say so, to put the question, because I wish to have this matter cleared up beyond all doubt. I have done my best to consult the authorities at the Treasury and elsewhere, and if I had any doubt at all I should certainly accept his proposal. It can be understood in all quarters as beyond the slightest question that by passing, as I trust we shall do with unanimous assent, the
  1704
  Clause, you, Sir, have put from the Chair, we shall, undoubtedly, by that secure the complete legality of these payments."
  In these circumstances is it not an extraordinary thing that the Treasury should write to Mr. Speaker unquestionably demanding, as if they were the superiors of the people, as if the Speaker was a Civil servant, or amenable to them—demanding that the Speaker should make a list of Members who are at the front, as I understand? Of course, I have not seen the letter, and I hope a copy of the letter will be moved for with the reply of Mr. approached this House—that is, the servant given from the Chair, the Treasury have approached this House—that is, the servant approaches the master to demand from the master an account of particular moneys earmarked by the State for certain Members—and how those Members, and to what extent those Members, have availed of their salaries as Members of Parliament. I only characterise that proceeding as a most extraordinary proceeding. This money was voted by Statute up to the 31st March. Here are the words:—
  "All sums granted by this Act and the other Acts mentioned in the Schedule annexed to this Act, granted out of the said Consolidated Fund … are appropriated, and shall be deemed to have been appropriated as from the date of the passing of the Acts mentioned in the said Schedule, for the services and purposes in the said Schedule expressed."
  What is expressed in the said Schedule? Here are the words:—
  "For the salaries of Members of the House of Commons not in receipt of salaries as Ministers, as officers of the House, or as officers of His Majesty's household."
  Therefore what the House has done, not by one casual Act but by Statute after Statute by a series of formulas, is as much as to say, "Parliament earmarks this money for you, A, B, and declares by Statute that it is so earmarked." What is the explanation of what has happened? I can only imagine that the Treasury have acted in this way because of the provision which was for the first time inserted in the Act of 1870 with regard to half-pay officers. There was a provision in the old Statutes with regard to half-pay to officers which required a Statute to enable the Government to make deductions in certain cases from their half-pay.

  1705
  Accordingly, Mr. Gladstone, for the first time in the Act of 1870, made a series of provisions which now follow in the various Appropriation Acts and which in a different form we have condensed in modern Appropriation Acts what was first enacted in 1870. That provision enacted:—
  "The following regulations shall be observed in respect of the application of any sums granted by this Act or any other Act that may hereafter be passed for the half-pay of officers of Her Majesty's officers, that is to say no person shall receive any half-pay who shall be under the age of sixteen.…"
  And a number of other provisions. The Treasury, according to my view, seek, on a false analogy, to deal with sums already earmarked for a particular service, and to say that they can make deductions from those sums as they could in the case of half-pay officers. I venture to say that they can do nothing of the sort. You passed this payment of Members without Statute. I have time and again protested, and at the time I strongly protested. I thought it was illegal and I think so still, but you did it to avoid interference with the House of Lords by the Appropriation Act.
  Anybody who traces the matter from an historical point of view will, I think, find that it was never intended that the Appropriations should be an enacting Act, and if you now seek to legislate by means of that Act and to legalise what you are going to do, that moment that Act ceases to be a Money Bill, and Mr. Speaker would have to give his certificate that it was not a Money Bill. Therefore, if you are going to deduct from those officers who are at the front moneys voted to them by Parliament you will require a Statute to do it. I do not like to speak with ungraciousness towards my colleagues here, but we who are "old bones" are to be paid and the men who are fighting for us are not. Are you going to go to the executors of Captain O'Neill, of Antrim, who fell at the front, and seek to recover from his executors the paltry three or four pounds that he would be entitled to from his salary as Member of this House. What a position to put Mr. Speaker into, to go to the mourning family. Then you have the £100 per quarter, or whatever it amounts to, paid to men who may have been wounded, and it may be the case of a poor man whose one reliance may have been that this money, at all events, would
  1706
  be coming to him. With this money earmarked, is some Treasury clerk in comfort in Downing Street to be allowed to say this money shall be deducted? If this money is to be taken away from anybody it ought to be taken from us who are here. We are the persons who ought to lose it, not those who are fighting for us at the front. I honour the men who have gone from this House, taking no thought for their life or limb, imperilling themselves for our sakes. Are we now, behind their backs, furtively and illegally, and at the instance of some whipper-snapper in Downing Street, to tolerate proceedings of this kind?
  Above all, is Mr. Speaker, the guardian of our liberties and the protector of our privileges, to be invited to be an assistant and conniver in this transaction? I trust that you, Sir, will uphold the dignity of your great office by refusing to lend yourself to any such proceeding. If the Government have a right to recover this money let them proceed for it in the Courts. If this money should not be paid to Captain O'Neill let them sue his executors or administrators. Let them not try by furtive and illicit proceedings, behind the back and without the knowledge of Parliament, to deprive these men—by whoso exertions possibly some of us may be sitting here in peace—of moneys which they have earned far better than we. There are many Members who, owing to the party truce, find no necessity for coming to the House at all, but they will get their money. Stay in bed and get paid; go to the trenches and get docked! I condemn this entire proceeding. I condemned the original payment made without Statute, and now, the Government finding themselves without provision, this procedure is attempted. I do not blame any Member of the Government. I believe that this was all done by that vague thing called "the Treasury," which we never see. We do not know who they are or anything about them, except that there is some gentleman who, after breakfast, goes to the Treasury and says, "Oh, dock something." They deprived Dublin of its books: that was a splendid thing! I believe that land purchase is to be docked £5,000,000, and there are various other things that we shall hear about in due course. They may be justifiable or not. At all events, those who are here ought to stand up for the rights of those who are not. If this scheme of payment of Members is to be reconsidered, reformed, and

  1707
  revised, it should not take the mean shape of depriving of their due the men who are risking their lives for us at the front.
  The CHANCELLOR of the DUCHY of LANCASTER (Mr. Montagu): In the regrettable absence of the Secretary to the Treasury, it falls to my lot to answer the criticisms of the hon. and learned Member opposite. My right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade remarked some time ago, in regard to another matter, that it was impossible to bring about the millenium in a time of war. It is equally impossible to take this opportunity to try to get rid of the hon. and learned Gentleman's detestation of the Treasury, which he never fails to express. The hon. and learned Gentleman draws for himself a land that he has never explored, inhabited by hard-hearted barbarians at 30s. per week, who, without any instructions from anybody, proceed to do a series of mean actions designed to annoy—particularly his constituents in Ireland. As a corollary he naturally regards it as a grave insult to you, Mr. Speaker, that anybody at the Treasury should have dared to address a letter to you—a proceeding which I venture to say in the ordinary course of business has happened hundreds of times before in the history of this House of Commons. Let me hasten to assure the hon. Member at once that none of the splendidly patriotic, hard-working, and brilliant civil servants at the Treasury were responsible, on their own initiative for that which he condemns so strongly. It was the considered decision of the Government, taken on the responsibility of the First Lord of the Treasury himself, and the clerks at 30s. a week were only those who in the ordinary discharge of their business wrote the letters on behalf of their political chief. I suggest to him that he is wrong in his reading of constitutional rights in this matter.
  There is all the difference in the world between a salary borne on the Estimates and a salary which is laid down by assent. The resolution passed by the House of Commons in Committee merely said the maximum sum to be spent. The Appropriation Act merely said that the sum which the Committee had granted to the Crown should be spent for that purpose and for no other, and the House of Commons has no constitutional right to
  1708
  dictate that any sums must be spent. The Estimates are full from year to year of sums surrendered, although voted by the House of Commons, because they were not required for the purpose voted or because the Treasury—the much maligned Treasury—acting as the instrument of the Crown, had not required the money which the House had put at their disposal. That is the difference between a statutory salary and a voted salary. You may provide, let us say, for the payment of seventy-two second-class clerks at £120, and you may promote one of them to a salary of £350. That leaves seventy-one, and you surrender the extra sum.
  I would remind the hon. and learned Gentleman that the Estimates are published in three parts. The first part is the grant of a sum of money to the Crown which is incorporated in the Appropriation Act. The second and third parts, which alone contain any mention of the sum of £400 a year, are binding on nobody at all, and are merely published for the information of the House. That, I believe, is the strict constitutional doctrine. This was a perfectly constitutional thing to do, and a thing which the Crown had a perfect right to do. Why did we do it? We had the story of the executors of Captain O'Neill, and that purple passage that the hon. and learned Gentleman incorporated in his speech, was—if he will forgive me for saying so—silly. The heroic services of soldiers of the Crown, whether Members of Parliament or others, cannot be measured by the money they will get. We should have to put up a memorial to those who have fallen rather than consider their actions in the paltry terms of money. Why did we do it? Because not only the analogy of 1870, but because the Government had suggested—the Prime Minister told the House so—that the right way of treating Civil servants who volunteered for the front was to keep their places for them, and to ensure that they suffered no pecuniary loss by going to the front. They get their whole salary from public funds—a salary made up of part of their salary which they got for performing services they can no longer perform at the front, and their military pay. It was an enormous improvement upon anything ever done before. No one lost his job; his place was kept open for him, a substitute was found, and he did not lose a penny salary by going to the front.

  1709
  Having laid down this rule—that a man, when he could only perform one public service, was not entitled to receive payment from the public purse for two services, but that you would set an example to all private employers by ensuring that no man lost by going to the front—we thought that, if that was to be the rule, applied to the Civil servant, the House of Commons, which, as the hon. and learned Member said, is the master of the Civil servant, would wish at the earliest opportunity to put themselves in no better position than the Civil servants they employ, and suffer the same deprivation—if it can be called a deprivation—as the Civil servants whom they employ. The House was not sitting at the time. We did our best through the ordinary channels to try and discover what the view of the House of Commons would be, and we came to the conclusion that this thing, which we had a constitutional right to do, would be, we believed, the sort of thing the House of Commons would like to do in putting themselves in the position with regard to salary as Civil servants.
  Mr. BOOTH: Surely the House decided otherwise. The Attorney-General in answer to my question invited the House to give its assent to that Bill, and said if we did so unanimously it would give the unanimous assent of the House to the double payment.
  Mr. MONTAGU: I agree to a man receiving his military pay and his House of Commons pay, but it did not say how much the House of Commons pay was to be. Supposing a man only got the military pay—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] I think if the hon. Member will bear with me he will see there is reason—
  Mr. T. P. O'CONNOR: I did not cry out.
  Mr. MONTAGU: I was referring to the hon. and learned Member for York (Mr. Butcher) who made an ejaculation.
  Mr. RUTHERFORD: I think it was I who was so shocked by what the hon. Gentleman said.
  Mr. MONTAGU: Let me explain what I said, and I think I shall be able to remove the shock. If that Bill had not been passed a man could get the £120, let us say, as his salary as a subaltern, and no money as salary as a Member of the House of Commons. That would have put him in a position we desire to avoid, of suffering
  1710
  temporary loss by being patriotic enough to go to the front. The Bill permitted paying both, but surely it was not to decide he was to get more than he would get as a Member of Parliament. Therefore we took this action, believing it would be the action the House of Commons would approve. It is the action that has been taken with regard to Ministers. The hon. Member for St. George's-in-the-East (Mr. Wedgwood Benn), who is one of the Lords of the Treasury—
  Mr. HEALY: He is excluded from the Resolution.
  Mr. MONTAGU: I know.
  Mr. HEALY: Then why give the example?
  Mr. MONTAGU: I am giving him as an example, but it is not only the Members—
  Mr. HEALY: The Resolution excludes him expressly, and you have no business to bring him in.
  Mr. MONTAGU: I submit my argument is fair. Members of Parliament have been treated in a particular way; it is the same way that Civil servants have been. I say that not because Members are Civil servants, but because the House of Commons would like to treat them as such. There is the case of a Minister whose salary is borne upon the Votes, like the hon. Member for St. George's-in-the-East (Mr. Wedgwood Benn), and others who have been treated in the same way. No single Member has had his salary dropped yet or any deduction made from his salary as a Member of Parliament. The inquiry made from Mr. Speaker relates to the payment which will be made at the end of this quarter.
  Mr. JONATHAN SAMUEL: I would like to know whether the hon. Member for St. George's-in-the-East will draw his full salary?
  Mr. MONTAGU: He will draw the salary that he was getting in the House, minus what would be due to him as military pay. No deduction has yet been made. I agree that this constitutional action which we have taken cannot be taken if the House of Commons does not approve of it. Although there is no constitutional objection to doing it, there was included in those Votes a Parliamentary pledge. That being the case—
  Mr. HEALY: You tried to do it, and you were blocked.
  Mr. MONTAGU: We took action which could not come into operation until three months after. Every hon. Member knew what was going to happen.
  Mr. HEALY: Never until the question was asked.
  Mr. MONTAGU: How can you get information without questions?
  Mr. HEALY: Tricking men behind their backs.
  Mr. MONTAGU: We tried to leave people in the position in which they were, because we misinterpreted apparently—if the hon. and learned Member is a fair specimen of that view—what the House would wish us to do. There are three methods of dealing with the question. The first would be to treat this Debate as signifying the approval of the House of Commons to this measure.
  Mr. HEALY: I disapprove.
  Mr. MONTAGU: The next suggestion is that the salaries of Members should be paid in full this quarter, which is the last financial quarter of the year, and when we come to debate the Estimates for next year we shall then, I hope, prevail on Members of Parliament to treat themselves as Civil servants are treated now, and make a deduction from their next quarter's salary, reducing their salaries from the 31st of March next and taking off enough to reduce their salaries as from the 12th of January. We can pay the salaries in full for this quarter without prejudice for the future.
  Mr. HEALY: You must. You will be mandamussed if you do not.
  Mr. MONTAGU: I am quite willing to leave the question to be decided on next year's Estimates. If hon. Members leave it permanently in this position—that they are free to draw two salaries in full when they can only perform one duty—then they are doing something which Civil servants are not allowed to do. I hope the House of Commons will, if they do not like this method, reduce the salary in the way which appeals to them more when the Estimates come to be considered next year.

  DUBLIN STEAM PACKET COMPANY.
  Mr. T. P. O'CONNOR: I want to call attention to the action of the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company. I am afraid this action will come as a surprise to everybody who has not heard the facts before. For thirty or forty years the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company has carried from Ireland, in its Sunday boats, the scenery of the dramatic companies. Last August they suddenly made up their minds to refuse to carry this scenery any longer. It is quite possible, owing to the large demands upon the company through the military and naval preparations, that they had some excuse of pressure at that period, but the pressure passed away, and afterwards the company still refused to carry the scenery on their Sunday boats. This decision had very serious and disastrous consequences upon the dramatic profession. The great companies producing great spectacular plays have to carry round a large amount of scenery. No local theatre is able to supply the scenery of itself.
  Under the old system this scenery left Dublin on Sunday morning by the City of Dublin Steam Packet mail boat. It got to Holyhead a little after eleven o'clock. At one o'clock there was a special theatrical train, because this is the only company on land or sea that does not cater for this custom and does not facilitate it in any way, and by catching the train the companies were able to reach with their scenery, the same evening Manchester, Liverpool, and even at a later hour for more remote towns like Glasgow, Edinburgh, and London. Therefore, they were able to have their scenery for rehearsals all prepared for the Monday night's performance. Since this happened it is impossible to fulfil an engagement on the following Monday, with the result that all the great heads of the profession with anything like a large quantity of scenery have been compelled to refuse to come to Dublin, and Dublin, according to the statement of one of the leading Dublin papers, is now dramatically being sunk to the position of a small village. I have received letters from Sir Herbert Tree, Sir George Alexander, Mr. Fred Terry, Mr. Lewis Waller, Mr. Henry B. Irving, and many others who say that since this new arrangement came into operation they have been compelled to refuse all engagements in Dublin, Belfast, and Cork. This is a very serious blow at the drama in Ireland.

  1713
  In all the three kingdoms I do not know of any that are keener or take a more intelligent interest in the drama than the people of Dublin. I do not know whether the managers of this company belong to that party known as the "unco guid people," who regard the theatre as the invention of the devil. There may be some such people left in the world, and among certain classes in Ireland, and that may be the reason for this extraordinary performance, but, unless this man thinks it his duty to put down dramatic performances in Dublin, I cannot understand why he has adopted these measures. The matter has been debated a good deal in Ireland. The Press is unanimous. How could any journal in Dublin, Belfast, or Cork do anything but resent the robbing of Ireland in this way of the drama. The Lord Mayor of Dublin has taken action. The President of the Board of Trade, whose absence I regret, especially as I believe it is due to illness, has protested, and I think I may say my right hon. Friend the Postmaster-General is in sympathy with my views. In fact, this company has not a single supporter in the whole world in the extraordinary action it has taken.
  Let me deal briefly with the two excuses they made. The first is that the Post-master-General intervened on the ground that it might interfere in some way with mail delivery. I understand that that statement is absolutely without foundation, and I believe the right hon. Gentleman will confirm that. The second excuse is that this scenery can be brought over by the London and North-Western Company, and actually a statement was made by the manager of the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company that he had made an arrangement with the London and North-Western Railway Company to take over the scenery instead of his own company doing it. The third reason is that the scenery had increased so largely as to be a burden. I understand that, on the contrary, the whole tendency, for commercial and other reasons, of modern stage producers is to diminish scenery as far as circumstances will permit.
  With regard to the suggestion that the London and North-Western Railway Company would do that, and that arrangement had been, made for that, there has been a correspondence between the manager of the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company and the London and North-Western Railway Company, and the latter company has denied in the most emphatic terms that he
  1714
  ever consented to carry the scenery over. I say that this suggested arrangement between the two companies has no existence except in the imagination of the manager of the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company. What are the facts with regard to the London and North-Western boat? They do send a boat on Sunday mornings, but it starts at such an hour that it gets to Holyhead too late to catch the one o'clock theatrical train, and this prevents the companies producing their pieces on Monday in any of the English towns. This boat, in addition, is a cargo boat, its main purpose being to carry cattle and other provisions to the English Monday morning markets. Will anybody suggest that at a time like this it would be wise that the food required in the markets of England should be sacrificed in order to carry over this scenery? In the case of the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company's boat no such sacrifice is required. It is, in fact, impossible for the London and North-Western Railway cargo boat to do it without seriously imperilling the supply of perishable goods to the English markets.
  The only foundation for this statement is that on one or two occasions the manager of the London and North-Western boat did consent to carry scenery, but then the circumstances were exceptional, as he saw a number of unfortunate members of the theatrical profession—men and women—stranded in Dublin and threatened with the loss of engagements through violation of their contract. With the assent of the Custom inspector he did carry the scenery on two occasions, but he has declined ever since, and I think rightly so, to subject the perishable food which he carries to the delay and possible loss which the carriage of the scenery might entail. This is also a question of employment. There were actually sixty unfortunate women in Dublin, members of a musical comedy company. They had a fortnight's engagement in England and Scotland. Their manager was unable to take over the scenery, the results being that he had to break and lose his fortnight's contract and that these unfortunate young women were deprived of their salaries for a fortnight. This was all done in the name of that severe form of religion which regards the theatrical profession as bad for the morals.
  I hope I have only to state the case to carry with me all Parliamentary opinion. All Irish opinion is united upon

  1715
  the subject. The dramatic profession rightly resents this action. This company lives on the mail subsidy. It is the creation of this House. It is largely the creation of the Members from Ireland. On several occasions, because it was an Irish company and a large amount of Irish capital was invested in it, we have defended this company and got the contract for £80,000 or £90,000 a year renewed time after time, but when we find that a company getting this vast subsidy, the creation of Parliament, violates one of its great public obligations as a carrier, I am sure many of us will have to reconsider our position.
  The POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Mr. Hobhouse): The first intimation I got of the dispute that has arisen in connection with the carrying of theatrical scenery from Dublin to this country came to me in a letter from one of the hon. Members for the City of Dublin, in which he made one or two statements which I felt it my duty to investigate. He informed me that the managers of the Dublin Mail Packet Company had refused to carry this scenery, and he went on to say that their reason for the refusal would be divulged only to myself. Upon receiving that letter from the hon. Member I wrote to the manager of the Dublin Steam Packet Company asking him to be good enough to give me some explanation of the statement to which I have just referred. I received a letter from him repudiating entirely the statement. Of course, I do not know what transpired at the interview between the manager of the company and the hon. Member for Dublin. The manager of the company, Mr. Watson, entirely repudiates the suggestion.
  Mr. PATRICK O'BRIEN: Which Mr. Watson?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: Mr. George Watson, I think, not Sir Edward Watson. He repudiated entirely the idea that it was only to myself that he would divulge the reasons for refusing to carry this scenery. Indeed, he went further. He added two statements which, I am bound to say, appear to me to be rather contradictory, one of which was that he put no obstacles in the way of transporting theatrical properties, but he would not give any reason for the decision of the company in these circumstances not to carry the scenery. So far as Mr. Watson is concerned, that is really all I know about this
  1716
  unfortunate dispute. Whether his version of the interview which took place between him and the Member for Dublin is the correct one I have no means of ascertaining, but following on that letter I made some researches into the correspondence which had appeared in the Dublin newspapers on that point, and I am bound to say it revealed a rather remarkable state of facts. My hon. Friend (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) has pointed out perfectly truly that this scenery must leave Dublin the first thing on Sunday morning if it is to get to England in time to enable English managers to open their theatres on the following afternoon, and in the old days it appears that this scenery was transported byroad from Dublin to Kingstown and there put on board a mail packet. The general manager of the company, in one of the letters which he addressed to the local Press, seems to have given as one of his reasons—I think the second, or, at all events, one of the later reasons—for refusing to carry this scenery, that his men were so hard-worked, following on the outbreak of war, during the week, that he was unable to require them to work early on Sunday morning, because otherwise they really got no rest-day in the week. He seems to have put forward also an earlier statement that his real reason for refusing to carry this scenery was that four packet boats of the company had been requisitioned by the Admiralty, and he left it to be inferred that the other boats were not suitable for carrying it.
  These are the four different reasons which have at different times been advanced by the company for this very unfortunate refusal. It seems to have rendered great hardship to the theatrical world in Dublin, or, at all events, that part of the population in Dublin which desire to go to the theatre, and a real and substantial hardship on the members of the theatrical profession. I really have no sort of part or lot in this controversy. It is quite true that we pay a substantial subsidy to the company, but that is given for carrying the mails, and for no other purpose whatever. We have given no directions to this gentleman in respect of the transportation of mails which would in any way interfere with or inflict any penalty on him. He has taken this action entirely upon his own initiative. The reasons which animated him and have led him to adopt this course of conduct are unknown to me, save as they are presented to my hon. Friend and the rest of the Irish world in

  1717
  the newspapers of Dublin. I must confess that, speaking as an Englishman, looking at it merely from the point of view of the ordinary citizen, it seems a regrettable course of action to take. There is nothing in the mail contract which enables me to put any pressure upon him at all to restore the continuation of a state of things which has obtained for a great number of years.
  Mr. TYSON WILSON: How long is the contract for?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: The contract began eighteen years ago, and it comes to an end in March, 1917. At all events, until that time comes, it seems to me impossible for this House to bring any pressure to bear in the matter. My duty is to see that he fulfils his contract for the carrying of mails, and I shall take very good care he does that.

  CHINA AND JAPAN.
  Mr. MOLTENO: I desire to draw attention to a subject which is exciting a great deal of interest in some quarters—that is, the Japanese demands made upon China. We have very little information upon this question, but by a question and answer it does not appear possible for the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to throw very much light upon the position in regard to this important question, but it seems quite clear that demands have been made upon China of a somewhat far-reaching character, and these demands also seem to be of an exclusive character. They demand exclusive privileges in very large areas of China—indeed, so large and in such varied directions that they amount almost to a control of a considerable part of China. It has been very difficult to ascertain exactly what those demands are, and I should like to mention what demands have been made public and what apparently are authentic.
  We were told on the 12th of February last that the concessions demanded from China by Japan are not yet officially published, but they are reported to include the following: In general Japan demands that no part of the China coast and no island of the coast be ceded or leased to any foreign Power. The following special privileges are demanded in the regions named: In Eastern Mongolia, Japan shall have exclusive mining rights; no railways shall be constructed without the consent of Japan; the Japanese shall
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  be granted the right to settle, farm, trade, and purchase land. In South Manchuria, the lease of Port Arthur and the leased territory shall be extended to ninety-nine years; the Antung-Mukden and Kirin-Changchun railway agreements shall be extended to ninety-nine years; the Japanese shall be granted the right to settle, farm, trade, and purchase land. China shall transfer to Japan all mining and railway privileges hitherto enjoyed by the Germans, and in Shantung shall agree to the construction of the railway from Chefoo or Lungkow to Weihsien as Japanese. In the event of foreign capital being needed in Fukien, China shall not grant mining, railway, or dock construction rights to other Powers without the consent of Japan. In the Yangtse Valley, Japan shall jointly control with China the Hanyang ironworks, in which Japan has a large financial interest, the Tayeh iron mines, and the Pingsiang collieries, and China shall undertake not to grant to other nationals mining rights calculated to impair these undertakings.
  Further details were given from New York in a telegram reproduced at length in the "Manchester Guardian" of 22nd February, as follows: Among the stipulations said to have been originally presented and not included in the memorandum handed to the Foreign Legations were the following: That if China employs foreigners as controlling advisers in the police, military and financial departments of the entire country, Japanese shall be preferred. That half of the ammunition and arms hereafter used in China shall be purchased in Japan; otherwise, an arsenal to be established in China employing Japanese experts and materials. That China shall grant Japan the same privileges as other nations to establish missions, schools, and churches throughout the country, with the privilege of propagating Buddhism. That mining concessions conflicting with existing concessions in Hanyang, Yateh, and Pingsiang shall not be granted to other foreigners if the Chino-Japanese Company to be hereafter formed shall disapprove. That certain railway concessions, Nanchang to Chao-Chow-fu, Nanchang to Ku-Kiang, Nanchang to Wu-Chang, and Nanchang to Hanchow, be granted. That foreigners other than Japanese shall be excluded from future railroad, mining, and dock building concessions unless Japan shall give her consent. These demands were summarised by me in the House on

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  Tuesday, 2nd March, when I asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs:
  "Whether demands have recently been made upon China by the Government of Japan to the effect that if China employs foreigners as controlling advisers in the police, military, and financial departments of the entire country Japanese shall be preferred; that half of the ammunition and arms hereafter used in China shall be purchased in Japan, otherwise an arsenal to be established in China, employing Japanese experts and materials; that China shall grant Japan the same privileges as other nations to establish missions, schools, and churches throughout the country, with the privilege of propagating Buddhism; that mining concessions conflicting with existing concessions in Hanang, Tayeh, and Pingsiang shall not be granted to other foreigners if the Chino-Japanese company to be hereafter formed shall disapprove; that certain railway concessions, Nanchang to Chao-chow-fu, Nanchang to Kukiang, Nanchang to Wuchang, and Nanchang to Hanchow, be granted. That foreigners, other than Japanese, shall be excluded from future railroad, mining and dock building concessions unless Japan shall give her consent? The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs replied, "I must refer the hon. Member to the previous answers which I have given on this subject. I may say, however, that some versions that have appeared of the Japanese demands are much exaggerated, and in particular the first and last demands in the hon. Member's question are not correct." My hon. Friend (Sir Ryland Adkins) asked, "Has my right hon. Friend heard from China of these demands as well as from Japan?" The Foreign Secretary replied, "Various communications have been made from different quarters, some of them not very accurate. Will my hon. Friend please give notice of a question." I asked, "Has any demand been made contrary to the Treaty with Japan?" The Foreign Secretary replied, "I cannot add to the answer I have already given."
  Even making allowance for that, those which I have mentioned, which appear to be authentic, seem to be somewhat in conflict with our Treaty with Japan, which provides for equal opportunity for all nations in China and the integrity and independence of China itself. Our treaty, which is dated 12th August, 1905, provides for the preservation of the governing
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  powers of China and the ensuring of its independence and integrity and equal opportunity for the commerce and industry of all nations. These demands appear to be in conflict with this. I would ask the Under-Secretary whether these demands have been put forward with the concurrence and consent of the British Government? I ask that because it is provided by Article 1 of the same Treaty that, whenever any of these rights are in jeopardy, the two Governments should consult one another fully and frankly and settle in common the measures to be taken to safeguard those menaced rights or interests. Again, the second article provides that if there be war, each high contracting party will at once come to the assistance of its ally, and they shall conduct war in common and make peace in mutual agreement. Article 5 of the same treaty provides that neither of the high contracting parties will, without consulting the other, enter into separate arrangements with any other Power to the prejudice of what is described in the Preamble. It is quite clear that common agreement is contemplated between the Allies in regard to questions arising out of the conduct and conditions of this War and that common action is obligatory upon both.
  12.0 M.
  I would ask the Under-Secretary to tell us what demands have really been made upon China by our Ally, and whether they have been made in agreement with us or apart from us, and how far they are in conflict, as they appear at first sight to be, with the articles of our Treaty? No one desires to take up an attitude in any sense ungenerous to Japan, who has rendered such great services to us in this War, but at the same time I would like to know what the position, really is, because it is stated in well-informed circles that China has objected to some or all of these demands on the ground that they conflicted with existing treaties with other foreign Powers. Yet we are told that Japan is pressing all of them. I will not enlarge on the effect of these demands on trade, or the question of political control in great areas in China. The Secretary of Foreign Affairs was asked in this House recently as to when, and the method in which, far Eastern questions arising out of the War were to be put forward for international settlement. He said that no one of the Allies will demand terms of peace without the previous agreement with each

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  of the other of their Allies. Article 2 of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance is to the same effect. Therefore it invites the four Powers for the purpose named in the question. It will appear from this answer of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs that this is hardly the time at which those demands can be put forward. The whole of the circumstances surrounding the demands have arisen out of the War. We have not brought Germany to a condition in which terms of peace can be made, and these should be considered with demands that arise out of the conclusion of the War. I would therefore ask whether it is not the case that these demands should be deferred until that time, because a final settlement is to be made in connection with the end of the War.
  The UNDER-SECRETARY Of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. Primrose): I should first like to express on behalf of my right, hon. Friend his regret that he is unable to be present this evening to answer my hon. Friend himself. My hon. Friend will quite understand the reason when I say that my speech will be strictly limited in area, not only because the hour is late, but because there is not much to say on this subject. I quite understand why my hon. Friend has raised this matter. British commercial interests in China are very great, and he is quite right in seeing that they are in no way neglected. I can assure him that the Foreign Office take the same view that he does and are determined to see that those interests are not neglected. In his concluding sentences my hon. Friend referred to the fact that in his opinion the mere announcement of these demands was contrary to the spirit of the treaty between the Allies, in which they bound themselves not to make terms of peace without the consent of the others. I do not think he is correct in that sup-position.
  These Japanese demands fall into two categories—one category which is by far the largest is an attempt to settle outstanding questions with China, questions which have been outstanding for several years; and the other category, which is much smaller, is an attempt to see what attitude the Chinese Government will take up if Japan formulated certain demands when the War arrives at a conclusion. They are contingent demands, and I do not think that they can be included under
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  the heading of demands which are violating the principle of the treaty between the Allied Powers, that none of us should formulate any demands until the War is over. On the general question I must say that His Majesty's Government have no objection to the expansion of Japanese interests in China, provided that the expansion in no way inflicts injury upon British interests. That is the principle we here laid down for ourselves, because we here admitted that we should not apply for any concessions in China which would affect the South Manchurian Railway. We naturally expect that Japan should show us reciprocity and not apply for any concessions which would affect British interests. As regards the second point, my hon. Friend feels nervous that the integrity of China may be threatened. If there were any reason to suppose that these negotiations between China and Japan could not be settled by diplomatic methods, and if there was a prospect of developments which might impair the independence and integrity of China, no doubt consultations would take place as to what was fair to Japan and as to how that could be secured without impairing the independence and integrity of China, which it is one of the objects of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance to secure. I regret that I cannot enter into the detailed demands of Japan, because I am sure my hon. Friend will realise that demands which were communicated confidentially to His Majesty's Government by the Government of Japan, cannot be communicated at present to this House, but I think I can assure my hon. Friend that the Government is fully alive to the importance of British commercial interests in China, and will do their utmost to endeavour to secure them intact.
  Question put, and agreed to.
  Bill accordingly read the third time, and passed.
  The remaining Orders were read and postponed.
  Whereupon Mr. SPEAKER, pursuant to the Order of the House of the 3rd February, proposed the Question, "That this House do now adjourn."
  Question put, and agreed to.
  Adjourned accordingly at Seven minutes after Twelve o'clock midnight, till Monday next, 15th March.