§ Considered in Committee.
§ [MR. WHITLEY in the Chair.]
§ Motion made, and Question proposed, "That 350,000 officers, seamen, and boys, Coast Guard, and Royal Marines be employed for the Sea and Coast Guard Services for the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1917."
§ Sir T. ESMONDEWe discussed the other night the question of the pay of midshipmen in His Majesty's Navy, and the right hon. Gentleman (Dr. Macnamara), in replying to my arguments, produced some wonderful figures which, so to speak, knocked the bottom out of my argument. The right hon. Gentleman is, I hope, now in a generous mood. In any case, I want to try to bring him into a generous mood, and with that object I am prepared to treat him generously, and accept all his figures for what they are worth. I am prepared to accept the figures the right hon. Gentleman put before the House with regard to the pay of midshipmen; I am prepared to give him his figures, and at the same time to prove that they are totally wrong. My right hon. Friend the other night told us that the statutory deductions, or the messing deductions, from the pay of midshipmen in the Navy amounted to seven shillings a week.
§ Dr. MACNAMARACompulsory.
§ Sir T. ESMONDEYes. On that most important and fundamental point my right hon. Friend was quite wrong. That was the case before the War, but since the War, owing to the increased cost of living and one thing and another, that automatic deduction has been raised to one-and-sixpence a day.
§ Dr. MACNAMARACompulsory?
§ Sir T. ESMONDEYes. One shilling and sixpence instead of one shilling a day. That is an enormously important matter. The whole question turns really upon that sixpence. The House, of course, does not know very much about these midshipmen. It knows that they are very gallant officers, and makes nice speeches about them, but it does not really know very much about them. Perhaps I should explain the way in which the finances of the midshipmen in the Navy are arranged. It is really a very curious arrangement. The Government pays a midshipman one shilling and ninepence a day. His parents pay the Government for the midshipman fifty pounds a year; so that the State pays the midshipman one shilling and ninepence of its money and get about another two shillings and ninepence from the parents, and then proceeds to pay the midshipman so much a day out of that. Practically it pays the midshipman about three shillings and sixpence. In any case, the right hon. Gentleman the other evening gave us his own figures, and, to be perfectly fair to him, I should like to adopt his figures, and to see how far they go. As I said, the State pays the midshipman 1s. 9d. a day, which amounts to 12s. 3d. a week. I quote from the figures of the right hon. Gentleman. The parents pay £50 a year, paid out weekly by the Government, amounting to 19s. 2d. a week, or a total payment to the midshipman from the Government of 31s. 5d. a week, of which 19s. 2d. is paid by his parents. The right hon. Gentleman told us last week that the compulsory stoppage from a midshipman's pay was 7s. a week. It is not 7s. a week, as I have told the right hon. Gentleman; it is 10s. 6d. a week. Let us see how the thing works out. The midshipman pays 10s. 6d. as his messing allowance a week. His food alone on board ship, one way and another, costs him about 3s. a day. Between compulsory deduction for a midshipman's messing and his feeding, the total amount of his income is reached, 31s. 6d. a week. As I said, his compulsory messing deduction is 10s. 6d., and it costs him 3s. a day to live, which is 21s. a week. So that the total amount of a midshipman's expenditure equals 31s. 6d. per week, or 1d. more than the combined amount of his parents' contribution and the Government's pay to him. That is the position as the midshipman really feels it. Those are the figures of 1474 the midshipman's ordinary average expenditure. In that 31s. 6d. no allowance is made for a number of extras, which, although they are extra, are really part and parcel of the midshipman's expenditure, and for which he has to find the money in some way. In the 31s. 6d. a week I have quoted I have made no allowance for a very necessary thing, tobacco. A number of midshipmen smoke, and there is no reason why they should not do so if they wish, and that adds a certain amount to the weekly budget. Suppose it adds 2s. a week, then they have to pay something for drink, because they cannot drink distilled water, which is the only beverage which their grateful country offers to them on board ship. As I explained last week, it is a wonderful compound of oil, tar, probably, and other ingredients, and that is the only thing allowed on board ship. Suppose that you allow 2s. 6d. a week for drinks; then he has to pay a contribution for his games. It is not very much, but it is very admirable, because, of course, we have come to relise that games are of the first importance—of very much greater importance than people used to think three years ago. We will put that at 1s. a week. Then he has to buy books for the purpose of his naval education. He has to pay nothing to his tutor, as he used to have to do, but he has to pay for his books, scientific, technical, and sometimes rather expensive books, while in addition he has to pay for special note books, which the Admiralty makes and for which it charges the midshipman 1s. a piece. He has to pay for these out of his own pocket. Suppose we say these come to 1s. a week. Then he has to pay for newspapers; they have to make a contribution for newspapers, amounting to perhaps 6d. a week. Then he has to pay for his washing—a very important item. He has to keep himself clean, to have clean linen, and has to pay for the washing of his clothes. He cannot do that much under 2s. a week. There are then three most important contributions which the midshipman has to make. One is the wage of a servant, which amounts to exactly 2s. a week. Then he has to pay 1s. 3d., if he is in a turret, for polishing his gun and keeping the inside of the turret in good order, and another 1s. 3d. if he happens to have the honour of being in charge of a picket-boat.
Those are the deductions which a midshipman has to make, and for which in ordinary circumstances no allowance is made in his pay. He gets 31s. 5d. from 1475 his parents and the Government. It costs 31s. 6d., and, in addition to that, he has to pay somehow another 14s. 6d. a week. That is the ordinary average expenditure, so that whereas he gets 31s. 5d., his total ordinary expenditure amounts to about 45s. a week. Suppose, as we are in war time may easily happen, a midshipman's ship goes into action, and that a German shell comes along and hits the midshipman's mess and explodes. The result of that is that all his mess crockery is smashed to pieces, if nothing worse happens, and in all probability the midshipman's effects are blown to smithereens. What happens is that the damage to mess furniture, crockery, and so forth, has to be largely made good by the midshipmen themselves. The Admiralty pays a contribution, not always an adequate or full contribution, towards the damage which has occurred to the midshipman's outfit. But so far as the property of the midshipman's mess is concerned, they have to a large extent to make good these damages themselves. There are other headings under which a midshipman is liable to an expenditure of an extraordinary kind, or rather of an abnormal kind, but, even under ordinary circumstances, and considering his ordinary expenditure, his pay is nothing like sufficient. Even with the Government allowance of 1s. 9d. a day and his parents' additional contribution, I do not think the average midshipman is by any means in affluent circumstances.
My right hon. Friend will tell me, and I quite agree with him, that a midshipman ought not to have too much money. Everybody will agree, of course, that nobody ought to have too much money. We all agree that too much money is a bad thing, but how much is too much nobody can tell. I do not know, and I never met anyone who did know. I certainly never met anyone who admitted he had too much. We will admit, however, that on general principles it is a bad thing for a midshipman to have too much money, but I do not think 1s. 9d. a day is too much. A private in the Army gets 1s. 2d. a day and his food, and he is housed and clothed by the State. A second-lieutenant in the Infantry gets 7s. 6d. a day. I did not think he got so much, but I find he gets 7s. 6d. a day. But surely the midshipman, with his duties, is at least entitled to half the pay of a second-lieutenant in the Army. I think when the right hon. Gentleman goes into this matter, as I am sure he will with an 1476 open mind, he will realise that something might be done for our midshipmen. I think he will agree, as we all agree, that whatever pay they get they give extraordinarily good value for it. I think we all agree that whenever they have had the opportunity of doing their best to serve their country they have displayed the most conspicuous gallantry, and I hope, in view of the further points I have brought to the notice of the right hon. Gentleman, and in view of the fact that the midshipman has to pay more than the right hon. Gentleman imagined a short time ago, he will consider the matter with an open mind, and give us some guarantee, at all events, that the Admiralty will consider whether some slight addition should not be made to the pay of midshipmen in His Majesty's ships.
§ Mr. HOHLERIt is some time since the right hon. and gallant Member for Dundee spoke, and I confess there was that in his speech which I hoped would have been answered in the course of this Debate, because I cannot doubt that this warning, which he came apparently from the trenches to utter, will have weight with the country. Speaking for myself, I was somewhat pleased to hear that as the First Lord he had done so well, but apparently anything that the present First Lord should say would not by any means placate him. I seem to recollect the speech he made in this House in which he talked of "digging the German Navy out like rats"—a very different tone from that which he adopted to-night. I seem to remember he told us, when First Lord of the Admiralty, that Zeppelins were to be surrounded by aeroplanes like hornets and brought down. He certainly does not seem to have been very successful in that respect. Then my recollection further is that, on leaving, or very shortly before leaving, the Admiralty, he made a speech which, I am quite sure, was a direct attack on Lord Fisher. Lord Fisher had the last word to say in that matter, and I think he said it with great discretion. He said that this was not the time to enter into questions between the First Lord and the First Sea Lord. I very respectfully suggest that for the right hon. Gentleman to come from the front and warn this nation in the way he has, unless he has serious ground, is a little disturbing and unpleasant. It is calculated to do considerable harm, and I do hope that somebody who replies for the Admiralty on the subject of that speech will tell us really whether there is any ground for the suggestion that programmes have been 1477 hung up, that work has not been delivered in accordance with contract, or whether it is something which the right hon. and gallant Gentleman has got on. Is it some intrigue to try and remove from office the present Sea Lord and to get the return for some reason of Lord Fisher to that position? Like any other Member of the public, I have little or no knowledge of the sea or the merits of admirals, but I was very pleased when the hon. and gallant Member for Portsmouth spoke as he did in reference to the matter. I am quite sure it is desirable that the speech made to-night should be fully answered.
I want to address myself to the Royal Naval Air Service. I understood that when there was a Debate a fortnight or some three weeks ago upon aeroplanes the First Lord very frankly said we had not got the guns. He said that we were doing our best to get them, and, speaking for myself, if this country suffers a little from aeroplanes I regret it, but I would rather it suffered than that anything should be needed for our men fighting in the trenches or for our Navy at sea. Therefore, what I want to draw attention to, and what I would like some competent person to inquire into, is what strikes me as being great waste and incompetence. Cases have come under my special observation. I am not going to name any places, becouse it might be said I was giving information useful to the enemy. I want to know whether, in regard to these air stations that we have, what the officers and men are doing, and what they are being paid to do? It is within my knowledge that at a particular station, of which I can give the name, when Zeppelins came over not long since there was no aeroplane, but there was a Maxim gun which was perfectly useless. Subsequently there was an inquiry, and a Lewis gun was sent down. I believe at this very station quite recently they had an aeroplane and an observer, but no pilot, so that you have an aeroplane which is perfectly useless for any purpose. I understand they have an officer there driving about in two motor cars, but what he does with them I do not know. I believe there is another station a little further on where they have no gun or other appliance, and I want to know really what it is we are paying these vast sums of money for. Would it not be infinitely better, as the First Lord frankly told us, to wait until we get these things and train the men meanwhile to some useful purpose? 1478 I have another case which has come under my direct notice, I was at Chelmsford Assizes, and a curious question arose as to whether a case was one of arson or fire by a Zeppelin. Men of the Royal Naval Air Service were interested in the case, and I questioned a young fellow, about three or four-and-twenty years of age, in naval uniform. I have no doubt he had two suits of naval uniform. I do not know what his wages were—I dare say 4s. or 5s. a day. I said, "What do you do?" I discovered that he could not fly, he could not drive a motor or work a serchlight, and he had never been to sea. I do not know whether that state of things exists now, but I could give the name of the place if necessary. Are we being frankly told the position? We must make provision as best we can for this Service after we have provided for the Navy and the Army, but what is the good of having a Royal Naval Air Station which is no earthly use and wasting money upon it? I had another case at Maidstone where in an accident with a motor car a boy was knocked down and badly injured. Who were in the motor car? Two gentlemen in the Royal Naval Air Service, who were speeding along, on the evidence, at 25 miles an hour. A verdict was given against the driver for £150. Why do these men have motors? I know another case in which officers at these stations have £350 and £250 a year, and I have reason to think that all they do is quietly to attend to their business just as in times of peace, and they are serving no useful purpose. I suggest that the Admiralty should take this matter in hand. If you want these men, train them, but do not simply dress them in uniform and call them a Royal Naval Air Service when in truth they are nothing but an expense and a convenient shelter for men who ought to be serving in the trenches or in the Navy.
9.0 P.M.
I suggest that there should be a careful inquiry by some competent officer sent by the Admiralty to these various stations to ascertain what these motor cars are being used for, what petrol they burn; and we should find out who these officers are, what is their competence, and whether they can lay a gun and instruct men. You might save a considerable sum of money in this way, because, with all this expense, we arc suffering damage from the Zeppelins. There is another question which has puzzled me with regard to the dockyard at Chatham. I have had a series of well- 1479 founded complaints from the men as to their treatment. What is their position? More than once I have written to the Secretary to the Admiralty on the subject, and on the 1st of February last he told me that the matter was under consideration. I want to know if that consideration has been concluded. The character of the complaint is that this dockyard, which is fitted with machinery for making munitions has for a long time been running slack, and there has been no overtime. The complaint is that competent mechanics have applied for their discharge from this yard, because outside they can get better wages and appointments as foremen where they can get overtime as well. They have applied for their discharges and they have been refused, and that is within my own knowledge. This is a grave injustice to these men, because they might go to other munition works. Why is it this yard is so slack? I am told that it is proposed to reduce the labour still further, and send the work to different parts of the country and close a number of the shops. I would like to know if that is so. I think that is very wrong. We are taking factories over and controlling them, and we are short of lathes and machinery, and here you have a dockyard which has not worked overtime for months, in fact some of the shops are closed and you have refused these men their discharge. I should like my right hon. Friend to make a clear statement upon his proposals, and to give me an answer to the letter which I wrote as long ago as January last when he replied that this matter should have his consideration.
I now pass on to deal with the question of the men serving in His Majesty's Navy. I wish to raise the case of Lieutenant Hayward. It is a case which I have brought to the notice of the Department on several occasions. I want to let the House know the facts because it is a point of serious importance. Lieutenant Hay-ward was a sergeant-major in the Royal Marine Light Infantry, and for talent and able conduct on the field at Gallipoli, he was promoted to a lieutenant. This promotion was confirmed by his colonel, who by reason, I suppose, of the distance and the difficulty in getting messages home, had never had the promotion confirmed by the Admiralty. Meanwhile the man fought on in the trenches as a lieutenant, and I have papers which show that mess- 1480 ages were addressed to him as Lieutenant Hayward. He is wounded and sent to the hospital, and there he is treated apparently by a French doctor, because the certificate is in French, and he dies in the hospital. In the certificate he is described as a lieutenant, and he is buried as a lieutenant, nevertheless the Admiralty turn round and say, "We will not pension your widow and child as a lieutenant but as a sergeant-major," although the extra responsibility of the duties of his acting as lieutenant was no doubt the very cause of his death. I think that is a scandal of the worst kind you can possibly have, that to a man who has served his country, risen from the ranks and has been killed in that position, you should turn round and say, "We will not give your widow the pension of an officer because the promotion has not been confirmed at the Admiralty." Think what it would mean, for instance, if at the Persian Gulf some man in the Royal Marines, or any other branch of the Service, is killed. It might be weeks before they would hear at the War Office that he had previously been promoted, and yet he goes on fighting for weeks and months, and nothing is heard of his promotion at the War Office. Indeed, that message may not come home for months, and in the meantime the man is killed and you only give his widow the pension of the position he left, and not the pension of the position which he obtained by his gallantry. If a man is killed in an acting position to which he has been appointed by his commanding officer, and for which he has been recommended by his commanding officer, his widow and child ought to be entitled to a pension and allowance on that scale. If it is not done in this case it is a piece of incredible meanness, and I shall take the opportunity of ventilating the matter again and again until we get redress.
I want to say a word on the subject of promotions in the Navy. I raised a question in this House with regard to the artificer engineers, but I did not draft my question as carefully as I should have done. I put a question to my right hon. Friend on 28th September last year. I pointed out to him that he was giving a great number of temporary lieutenancies to the Royal Naval Reserve, whereas the claims of the chief artificers and artificers were being passed over. I intended to frame my question so as to ask that more engineer lieutenants should be appointed from the chief artificers, but it was read 1481 as if I asked that chief artificers should accept temporary appointments. My right hon. Friend, in answering my question, said:
Appointments and promotions in the permanent Naval service are governed purely by the permanent requirements of particular classes of officers in that service, and it is considered that to introduce the system of promoting a man to officer's rank temporarily, which is the hon. member's suggestion, would be very undesirable."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 28th September, 1915, col. 726.]That was not intended to be my suggestion. But what have the Admiralty done? They have done this very thing, only instead of giving these appointments to the men who have borne the burden and heat of the day, namely, the chief artificers, they have brought in men of the Royal Naval Reserve, and have given them temporary appointments. The Order which has been issued says:On the conclusion of hostilities a limited number of engineer lieutenants or engineer sub-lieutenants who have been entered for temporary service in the Royal Navy may be selected for transfer to the permanent list of engineer officers,and so on. Therefore they are doing in regard to the Royal Naval Reserve the very thing which they say is undesirable, and yet they will not do it for the chief engine-room artificers. They are bringing into this Service, of which the chief artificers are the backbone, a great number of men from the Royal Naval Reserve, no doubt gallant men, and they are ignoring the men who have done all the hard work and to whom great credit is due. These men have got an association, and I have asked them to fortify me with some case which I could put as one of great injustice. There is a chief artificer on Torpedo-boat 16. He was recommended by his captain in May last for promotion. That recommendation was forwarded to the rear-admiral at the naval barracks at Portsmouth, but it never got further. Apparently the rear-admiral thought it was a case which would come under Order 287, and he said that on the next occasion the man's name was to be forwarded. As a matter of fact that Order had nothing to do with him. He was too old to be affected by it. That man has been in the Navy four years, doing his duty admirably, and yet a Royal Naval Reservist gets the appointment over his head. He was still serving on the same torpedo-boat when there was an explosion and some damage was done. By his skilful conduct as an engineer and by his assistance three lives were saved and the torpedo-boat was prevented from being put out of action. A recommendation was forwarded, and it 1482 came before the hon. and gallant Member for Portsmouth. He forwarded it to their Lordships at the Admiralty, and the man was highly commended for his service. That case shows the injustice which has been done in the past. It is the case of a man twice highly recommended, first for promotion to the rank of engineer-lieutenant for his ability and skill, and then for his saving of life and for preventing his ship from being put out of action. Yet he is still doing duty as a chief artificer.The men in the Navy feel these things deeply. They have a great pride in their profession, and they look forward to these promotions particularly in a time of war. I do ask that these matters shall be looked into and that these men who have served the Navy for years shall get their just reward and be appointed to these positions. Take, again, the case of the chief gunners. Some time in 1885 there was issued a warrant, under which thirty-one engineer gunners were made gunner-lieutenants. At that time there were something like 800 chief gunners. Now, I think I am right in saying, there are something like 40,000 gunners and chief gunners—those are my right hon. Friend's figures—but all they have got is about thirty-three gunner-lieutenants. There, again, precisely the same thing has happened, only in a rather different form. It is the grossest possible injustice. If a man retires from the Service as a chief gunner then automatically after three years following his retirement he becomes a lieutenant. If he is called back into the Service he gets the automatic rise just as if he were on the retiring pension. They have called back a number of these chief gunners who had retired on a pension, and at least four of them have got the promotion to gunner-lieutenants. I urn glad, of course, that these men have got promotion. I have been urging that more lieutenancies should be given. But the extraordinary injustice is to the men on active service, because when a retired gunner comes back and is given a lieutenancy he is very often junior to the men already serving. In one case a lieutenant so appointed was junior to eighty-nine men on the active list. In another case he was junior to eighty-seven, and in another case he was junior to sixty-six. The trouble at the bottom of it all is that you will not realise that in a great war you ought to give to the acting branch of the Service all the promotions and positions that are open, because you think a man will get a 1483 little more pension for having risked his life. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will look into this matter with a little more care than he had done when he answered the question I put to him upon it.
I want to say a word about dental surgeons. For the life of me I cannot understand why a dental surgeon afloat gets his commission, whilst the dental surgeon ashore gets none. They feel this grievance very acutely. Many of them are comparatively young men, and they are frequently told that they ought to have joined up. They are asked why they are not fighting. Yet they are under the Navy, and the Admiralty for some reason will not give them commissions.
§ Dr. MACNAMARAWhile ashore.
§ Mr. HOHLERIt is extraordinary how faddy the Admiralty can be. I think the whole matter turns on the cost of uniform. A statement to that effect was made by the right hon. Gentleman in answer to a question on the subject put by another Member of this House. It was suggested that the conditions were different, and that one is at sea while the other is on shore. But very often a man is kept ashore because he is deemed to be indispensable, although personally he would like to go to sea, and why on earth should he be treated differently to the man afloat who is given his commission? I hope the right hon. Gentleman will look into this matter also. The points I have raised have by no means exhausted what I should like to say, but I do not desire to detain the Committee any longer. In other branches of the Service no doubt like injustices with regard to promotion will be found to exist. Everybody speaks in terms of the highest praise of our silent Navy. No compliments are too high for what they have done, and the value they are to our lives. They have nobody to voice their grievances here as have workmen at home, or munition workers, and I have therefore the greatest pleasure in doing what I can for them. I submit that they are men who are entitled to everything they can get, and it is up to the right hon. Gentleman to see to it that they do get that which is their just due.
§ Mr. WINGI should like to say in reference to the First Lord of the Admiralty, that so far as concerns cases I have submitted to him I have received 1484 most sympathetic consideration, and I think even the hon. Member for Chatham (Mr. Hohler) will fall in with that view.
§ Mr. HOHLERHear, hear.
§ Mr. WINGI want to raise a question in regard to medical examination. I want to ask if it is possible to ensure that there shall be as great care taken in connection with medical examinations for entry into the Navy, as is taken when pensions have to be declared. There is great care taken apparently in settling whether or not a man shall have a pension. In fact a board sits to consider a matter of that kind. Possibly that is because of the financial importance of the question to the nation. I submit, however, it is exceedingly important that when a candidate for the Navy is passed by the medical officer, there should be some responsibility attaching to that examination. There has been given to men in connection with the Army and Navy a general promise that, providing the conditions are fairly equal, they shall maintain the position from which they previously enlisted. I have had several cases brought to my notice which constitute a very great grievance. Medical officers have passed men who have been in receipt of compensation pay, and, at the same time have been granted light employment. They have enlisted and been passed by the doctor and after enlistment have developed some trouble which probably was existing at the time of their medical examination.
§ Dr. MACNAMARAAre these cases in the Navy?
§ Mr. WINGYes. I will give some to the right hon. Gentleman. The men have been discharged as medically unfit, and when they have come back they have found they could not return to their previous light employment. At the same time they get no compensation from the Navy, and thus they suffer a double penalty. I want the right hon. Gentleman to sympathetically consider these cases, and to make, in regard to them, the concessions which he promised to the hon. Member for Gorton (Mr. Hodge), and at the same time to make it retrospective. I personally shall appreciate his so doing, for I have in my Constituency several men who are interested in this matter. I should like to express on behalf of the men in the small boats their appreciation of the tribute paid to them by the First Lord this afternoon, following as it does the tribute paid by 1485 the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty last week. I feel sure that these remarks will prove an exceedingly great encouragement to the men in small boats with small crews who get very little of the Navy's glory—I do not use that word in a depreciatory sense. They will be a very great encouragement to them. I really rose for the purpose of calling attention to the double penalty which some men have to pay—men who are receiving compensation pay with light employment, who enlist and are passed by the doctor, who subsequently are discharged as medically unfit, who are refused employment at their former work and at the same time get no relief from the Navy.
§ Mr. PRINGLEI desire not to deal with the questions which have been under consideration in the two last speeches that have been delivered, but rather to refer to some wider questions of Admiralty policy which are, I understand, in order on this particular Vote. In the earlier part of the day it seemed to me the attention of the House was withdrawn from the main question of policy to purely personal considerations. We have had personal considerations raised as to the constitution of the Board of Admiralty, and we have had somewhat histrionic suggestions as to changes in the constitution of that Board. The late First Lord of the Admiralty, whose Department from that position is still somewhat a mystery, actually suggested that all would be well in this country, and that people would once more be able to sleep quietly in their beds if that distinguished naval strategist who formerly acted as First Sea Lord returned once more to his former post. It seems to me that all such questions of personal position are calculated to withdraw the attention of the country from much more serious considerations. One of the more serious considerations to which it would have been better that the attention of the country should have been drawn was one on which both the present First Lord of the Admiralty and his predecessor were agreed. The First Lord in his speech referred to the difficulties in regard to naval shipbuilding. He pointed out the great demands which the Admiralty made upon all our shipbuilding yards, not only those dockyards which in normal times of peace were monopolised by the Admiralty, but also those shipbuilding yards which in times of peace were mainly concerned with the production of mercantile ships. He said that while the Admiralty might be 1486 pleased with the results of the efforts of all these establishments, nevertheless the Board of Admiralty could not say that they were satisfied. The late First Lord of the Admiralty followed in a somewhat similar strain, indeed, he was almost alarmist in his tone. He suggested that at the present time those shipbuilding yards which were concerned with the production of the various types of ships required for the Navy were not delivering with the punctuality which was absolutely necessary in the national interest. Both speeches it seemed to me were calculated, I will not say to cause a certain amount of alarm, but certainly of misgiving and anxiety among the people of this country.
We were told also by the present First Lord of the Admiralty that the production of merchant ships was a matter of very great concern at the present time. But if, as he admitted, the present Board of Admiralty could not be satisfied with the deliveries for the purposes of the Navy, it is obvious, in these circumstances, that the yards cannot be called upon to produce merchant ships. If there is a difficulty in regard to the punctual and regular delivery of cruisers, torpedo destroyers, submarines and so on, then it is obvious that it is well nigh impossible, if not entirely impossible, to ask those shipbuilders who in times of peace are building ships for the mercantile marine to divert their energies from the needs of the Navy in order to supply deficiencies in our mercantile tonnage. We all know, of course, that there are serious deficiencies in our mercantile tonnage, and we have been told that in order to supply those deficiencies an effort has to be made in many shipbuilding yards to complete ships which are at present in the course of construction, or which, at least, were in course of construction before special demands were made on behalf of the Navy, so as to make good this shortage. The reasons which have brought about this shortage are obvious to everyone. During the past twenty months of the War we have had a gradual wearing away, as it were, of our mercantile tonnage. It is true that the German Fleet has not presented itself in the open sea up to the present time, but in the earlier months of the War a number of German cruisers were still at liberty in various parts of the world to attack the British mercantile marine, and ever since the last of those cruisers was destroyed there has been a submarine warfare which, though it 1487 has not accomplished the objects of its promoters, has nevertheless been responsible for the destruction of a very large number of British ships. Then there is the "Moewe," which has to its credit—I do not know the exact number, but I think certainly nearly a dozen British ships destroyed, some of very considerable value—and there is no doubt that in the months to come attempts will be made by other ships of a similar class to rival the exploits of that vessel, which have caused, according to the First Lord of the Admiralty, so much jubilation in Berlin.
§ Mr. PRINGLEIt is practically admitted that some others have endeavoured to do it. The extent of their achievements is not known to us. We have obviously from these cuases a very serious diminution in our mercantile tonnage. It is impossible, without some return from the Admiralty or the Board of Trade, to assess the exact extent to which British mercantile tonnage has been diminished by the operation of the submarine warfare and of the commerce destroyers. Therefore it quite obvious that now it is absolutely misleading to boast, as we were in the habit of boasting in the days before the War, that the British mercantile marine represents one-half of the mercantile tonnage of the world. It is even doubtful whether we could make that claim before the War, but it is self-evident that it is quite impossible to make that claim now. To what extent the decrease has gone it is impossible at the present time, without more adequate information, to set any figure. During the latter part of my remarks I have been endeavouring to make the point that the mercantile marine has during the twenty months of the War been considerably diminished as the result of the attrition caused by German submarine warfare and the exploits of the German commerce destroyers.
§ Mr. PRINGLEAnd, as my hon. Friend remarks, as the result of accidents through mines and so on. There has been also the natural attrition due to the ordinary accidents of the sea—shipwrecks owing to storms, accidents through running upon rocks, and so forth. All those things have to be taken into consideration. During all that time there has practically been 1488 nothing done on the part of the shipbuilding yards of this country to replace deficiencies. It seems to me that this is the most important problem which faces the Admiralty. After all, in the days of peace, we were told that we maintain a Navy for a threefold purpose. We maintain it to protect our shores, to protect our Empire, and also to protect our shipping. But if the process goes on which has been going on during the last twenty months, it is possible that we may lose as effectually our supremacy in commercial shipping as if the German Fleet had come into the North Sea and fought a successful battle with our own Fleet. Obviously in these circumstances it must be a matter of the most urgent concern for the Admiralty that nothing in their policy and nothing in their administration should in any way aggravate the unfortunate situation which is thereby being created. If we have to face this constant diminution by attrition, if we have to face also the impossibility of replacing the tonnage lost in our own shipbuilding yards, then surely it is the duty of the Admiralty, in so far as they are using our mercantile ships, to use them as economically as possible, so that there should be available as large a number of ships as possible for the purpose of carrying on the ordinary trade of the country.
§ Dr. MACNAMARAindicated assent.
§ Mr. PRINGLEI should be glad if the assent of the Admiralty was something more than a theoretical assent. I should be glad if, in addition to the theoretical assent to the proposition which I have laid down, we saw some practical evidence on the part of the Admiralty in their use of merchant shipping that they were doing all they could to economise and so to increase the number of merchant ships available for carrying on the commerce of the country.
Attention called to the fact that forty-Members were not present. House counted, and forty Members being found present,
§ Mr. PRINGLE (continuing)I could give many examples of the results which arise from this situation. At present I believe something like 1,250,000 tons have been withdrawn from the British mercantile marine, but that is not the only aspect of the matter which we who are concerned with British interests should bear in mind. The result of these two causes operating 1489 together is that at present neutral countries which in former days only occupied a position of comparative unimportance in respect of commercial tonnage at sea are now advancing by leaps and bounds, and are, to a large extent, taking the place of British ships. Trade routes which in former days were monoplised by British ships are now falling one after another into the hands of neutral competitors. Only the other day, at a meeting of the Cardiff Chamber of Shipping, one prominent firm of charterers in Cardiff, Messrs. Morgan, Walkley and Company, stated that during 1915, of 529 vessels which they had chartered or loaded, only twenty-three were British vessels. Of these 529 114 were Norwegian, 121 were Danish, 101 were Greek, forty-five were Spanish, fifty-five were French—and, by the way, we are requisitioning British ships to meet the needs of the French Government—twenty-three were Swedish, sixteen were Italian—we have also been requisitioning British ships for the purpose of bringing oats to Italy—twelve were Russian, ten were Belgian, four Dutch, and one Roumanian. I think that these statistics, taken from one firm of charterers at Cardiff, prove the extent to which neutrals are entering, as it were, into the inheritance of the Bristish mercantile marine. This is not an isolated instance. The experience of that particular firm fairly represents what is going on, not only in Cardiff, but in many other parts throughout the United Kingdom.
We are, as a result of all the cases which I have mentioned as being in operation, losing our old mercantile supremacy. Instead of having, as we used to boast we had, half the mercantile marine of the world, we are being reduced almost to an insignificant fraction. It is, of course, impossible to say to what extent the Admiralty and other Departments of the Government have called upon British ships by requisitioning. We know that mercantile tonnage has been depleted from a variety of causes, We know that a large number of our merchant ships have been called into the Navy for the purpose of acting as auxiliary cruisers, and patrol vessels. In that capacity they are undoubtedly doing admirable work, but we could have hoped that, in view of the large increase of smaller vessels in the Navy, destroyers and so forth, to which the late First Lord referred, it would have become possible in the course of twenty months of the war 1490 to release a certain number of these auxiliary cruisers for the mercantile work to which they ought in the main be devoted. We know also that a certain number of mercantile ships have been requisitioned by the Admiralty for other purposes which have not been publicly divulged. In addition to that, we have large demands for transport ships and supply ships in connection with our overseas expeditions. I do not think that anybody in this House would complain of the demands made for transport and supply ships for the purpose of the expedition to France, but I think that there is undoubtedly good grounds of complaint that it has been necessary to divert so much valuable tonnage from the work in which it would normally be engaged in order to provide for those distant overseas expeditions in the Eastern Mediterranean, from which no valuable results have up to the present accrued. But if I were to enter into this question it might be objected that I was entering into larger questions of policy which were not relevant to this particular Vote. I do not wish to deal with the policy of these particular expeditions.
It is true that on previous occasions when the requisitioning policy of the Admiralty has been under discussion that the defenders of the Admiralty, who are its spokesmen here, have alleged that the Admiralty have been in no way to blame, that it has been solely their duty to meet and provide for the demands made upon them by the military authorities, and that as they were bound to satisfy those demands, no criticism could be justly laid at the door of the Admiralty. Apart altogether from the question of policy, I submit that in past discussions a very strong case has been made against the Admiralty as to the uneconomic method in which it has used the ships which it has requisitioned. I do not think on any past occasion on which this subject has been debated that any real attempt has been made to meet the case of the critics of the Admiralty. I remember that twelve months ago this question was first raised by the present Secretary of State for the Colonies, who at that time was Leader of the Opposition. He then made a most damaging attack upon the Admiralty in relation to this question of requisitioning. Practically no reply was offered at that time. I remember subsequently when a Debate analogous to that which is going on to-day was opened 1491 by the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Dundee (Colonel Churchill) that instead of meeting the detailed criticisms of the present Secretary to the Colonies, he rode off with a eulogium upon the Director of Transports, whom he represented as the great creative genius who had been discovered by the present War. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman must apparently always have a genius under his wing. In March of last year the genius whom he had under his wing was the Director of Transports, Mr. Graeme Thomson. To-day, now that he is out of office, the genius whom he desires to take under his wing is the ex-First Sea Lord, Lord Fisher. Nobody made any attack at that time upon the Director of Transports, nor has it been the desire of any critic in the course of these discussions to make any attack upon the personality of any permanent Civil servant. We regard, as we are entitled to regard, the First Lord of the Admiralty, and those who share with him the Parliamentary control as responsible for the policy of the Admiralty. We do not, therefore, desire to make any attack upon any permanent officials. At present, to use a common phrase, so long as they do not put their heads over the parapet, we do not wish to snipe them, but if they do put their heads over the parapet, the situation is somewhat different. Under these conditions we are content to snipe at the Secretary to the Admiralty, who is the only Minister present. There are a great many points of criticism to which I say no answer has been given up to the present time. There is the use of colliers, to which the hon. Member for West Toxteth (Mr. Houston) has referred in a large number of Debates. We know that large numbers of valuable ships are being used and have been used for many months during this War practically as coal ships. That is obviously a most uneconomic way of using tonnage, particularly when you remember at the present time how valuable mercantile tonnage is and how difficult it is to get the necessary mercantile marine to carry absolute necessaries to this country. We know that the Board of Trade has been issuing Orders in regard to a large number of things practically prohibiting their importation. Paper has gone, or at least a large proportion of it, and we shall soon be seeing evidence every morning at break-fast of the extent to which our mercantile 1492 tonnage has been depleted in the diminution in the size of our morning newspapers. We know that there has been a great restriction of the importation of wood pulp for the purpose of making paper, and that there are also to be restrictions on the importation of fruit, sugar, wood, and tobacco.
§ Mr. GOLDSTONEVery little on hops.
§ 10.0 P.M.
§ Mr. PRINGLEUp to the present hops have passed without any limitation, much to the chagrin of my hon. Friend the Member for St. Augustine's (Mr. Ronald McNeill), but if this process continues I have no doubt that his heart's desire will be fulfilled. These restrictions on importations are bound to a great extent to increase as time goes on. All these things are the natural inevitable result of the restrictions of tonnage to which I have been referring. They are going to mean a very considerable injury to the industries of this country. I have no doubt that my hon. Friend opposite has not considered that the diminution in the importation of hops will be an injury to the industry in which he is specially interested, but undoubtedly many of the other restrictions upon importations will have the effect which I have described. In these circumstances it is obvious that every effort should be made by the Admiralty to meet the criticisms which have been passed upon them and improve conditions so that no longer can it be asserted of them that they are making an extravagant use of the ships which they have requisitioned. I have referred to the use which they are making of ships which are requisitioned for the purpose of coaling. I have had in my possession, as I said on a former occasion, the record of a considerable number of these ships—I think, something like eighty ships. That record disclosed that these ships, owing to bad management, had lost in the aggregate twenty years time. That is a very serious complaint to make, that ships requisitioned in respect of coaling have been used in this uneconomic way. We have also to complain that ships which have been constructed for one particular purpose or one particular trade have been requisitioned and used for purposes quit different. There have been several instances of ships which were built exclusively as tank steamers which have been requisitioned as transports. I think in regard to four of them that, after being 1493 requisitioned and kept lying idle for a considerable period, they were never used at all. But it was obviously a most extravagant policy to requisition ships which were constructed for a completely different purpose to be used as transports. These are only a few examples of the extravagant and uneconomic way in which these requisitioned ships were managed.
The First Lord of the Admiralty, in the speech which he made a few weeks ago, gave a very interesting but not very convincing defence. He made his defence before the real attack was made. The real attack was made by the hon. Member for West Toxteth (Mr. Houston), and the defence of the First Lord was delivered before my hon. Friend made his speech. In the circumstances the First Lord had a comparatively easy time. It is significant that to-day, when he had an opportunity of dealing with this question, instead of doing so he occupied seventy-five minutes of the time of this House very largely with generalities of very little interest, instead of dealing with particular matters which had been alleged by way of criticism against his Department. It seemed to me that at one point he was endeavouring to suggest that any discussion of this particular subject would be out of order. The First Lord might have said, "It is quite true that ships have been used uneconomically, but that cannot be helped in time of war. We are at war." That is the favourite argument of my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Admiralty. Whenever any criticism is raised to which my right hon. Friend has no answer he gets up and, in eloquent tones, informs the House, "We are at war. War is waste; therefore there must be waste." But I join issue with my right hon. Friend. Undoubtedly there must be waste in war, but there need not be avoidable waste. Our case against the Admiralty is that there has been avoidable waste. Take the case which was given by the First Lord of the Admiralty in the course of the last Debate. He said that a military officer in Lemnos might ask for supply, and, of course, it would be the duty of the Admiralty to transport these supplies. The Admiralty would send out a ship carrying the supplies, and it would arrive at Lemnos in the month of March. But it might be found that it would be two months before these supplies were required by that officer in Lemnos, and consequently this valuable ship containing these supplies would require to lie there waiting the pleasure 1494 of the military officer. Surely, when a responsible Minister of the Crown rises in this House and tells a tale of that kind, it is not sufficient to meet criticism which is made against him. Surely there is a case for some better co-ordination between the two Departments.
The First Lord of the Admiralty said that you cannot have every general a first-class transport officer, or with the knowledge of a shipowner; that a general knows the details of his military art, but that in respect of shipowning he is a child. It must be remembered that many men who have skill in the management of ships have been drafted into the Army during the twenty months of this War, and a far-seeing Cabinet or Department would have taken care that men who had skill in these things would have been drafted to the aid of a military commander, so that cases of wastage such as those I have quoted might have been avoided. No such attempt has apparently been made. Then we know of other cases equally flagrant, where ships which have been requisitioned have gone to several ports, at the first finding that the portion of the cargo which was to be delivered there was at the bottom of the hold, so that the upper parts of the cargo had to be removed before that which had to be delivered could be reached, and the same process was repeated at the second port. All these things could have been averted by judicious management, but judicious management seems to have been a thing entirely neglected. I could have wished to detain the Committee by enumerating a large number of abuses and a large number of instances in which this mismanagement has taken place. I think on the last occasion we debated this question we had a sufficient number of awful examples to satisfy both the House and the country, and the significant thing on that occasion was that no attempt was made either by the First Lord or by the Parliamentary Secretary to dissipate the damaging impression which was created by the speeches which were then made. We are, therefore, I think entitled to claim that a case has been made out against the Admiralty of an extravagant use of the vessels which they have requisitioned, and we have a right to claim that a case has been made out of extravagance, and that the Government must now be required to use the ships which they have requisitioned in the most economical way possible, so that as many ships as can be made available are made 1495 available for the ordinary purposes of the trade and commerce of this country. We know that in regard to coal a large part of the difficulty in coal prices has been due to the shortage of tonnage. We know also that in regard to our Overseas supplies of food, the increase of prices has been very largely aggravated by the great increase of freights directly attributable to the shortage of tonnage. All these things in the main can be laid to the charge of the Admiralty. It is only to the Admiralty that we can apply for any relief in respect of the grievances which I have been bringing to the attention of the Committee. As I have stated earlier in my speech, we see a general drain of our shipping.
§ The CHAIRMANThe hon. Member has been speaking for about an hour, and many parts of his speech he has already repeated two or three times. It is really an abuse of the Rules of the House.
§ Mr. PRINGLEI was nearly drawing my remarks to a conclusion, and I was endeavouring to gather up the general arguments.
§ The CHAIRMANThe hon. Member has done that more than once.
§ Mr. PRINGLEI regret very much to have incurred your censure in that respect, Sir. The conclusion which I wish to draw is the plain and obvious one, that in the circumstances which I have endeavoured to set forth in regard to the position of our mercantile marine, a case has been made out against the Admiralty, as to their uneconomic use of our ships, and in view of that, and in view of their extravagant use of our ships, I submit that it is their bounden duty in the future to see that in so far as they requisitioned mercantile ships they shall be used as economically and expeditiously as possible, so that we may have in future as large a number of vessels as possible available for the purposes of trade and commerce.
§ Mr. RONALD McNEILLI listened with great attention to the effect of the argument just addressed to the Committee by my hon. Friend opposite. It was a somewhat protracted one, but I am certainly not concerned either to assent or dissent from what I understood to be the only conclusion he asked the Committee to draw. I think that the whole of my hon. Friend's speech comes to this, that there 1496 has been on the part of the Admiralty not only some waste in the use they have made of commercial tonnage, but a certain amount of avoidable waste, and I am not concerned to deny either of those propositions. Then my hon. Friend drew the conclusion that it was the duty of the Admiralty to use commercial tonnage as economically as possible for the benefit of the nation. That is profoundly true, and like many other things my hon. Friend said in his speech it appears to me to be not only true but a truism. My hon. Friend in laying the foundation of that not very momentous conclusion, laid down one or two propositions. First of all he said that we had lost a great deal of commercial tonnage owing to the activity of the German submarines. I do not think it required my hon. Friend to tell us that. He also told us that the proportion of the total world tonnage which we used to enjoy, we enjoy no longer. I think that also is a pretty obvious proposition, which did not require very much elaboration. What I was unable to make out from my hon. Friend was where he laid the blame for these things. Does he blame the Admiralty because German submarines have sunk our mercantile tonnage? Does he blame the Admiralty because a large proportion of our world tonnage has gone? I do not understand why he elaborated those various propositions unless he was going to allege that the fault lay with the Admiralty as to the results of submarines.
§ Mr. PRINGLEI thought I made clear that it was in respect of extravagant use of shipping I was speaking.
§ Mr. McNEILLI do not see then why the hon. Member made so much point of pressing those facts on the Committee, if all that that led up to was that there had been a certain amount of avoidable waste. I profoundly wish there were no greater fault to lay at the feet of any Government Department than that there had been a certain amount of avoidable waste. I do not join in the odium which the hon. Gentleman wanted to throw on the right hon. Gentleman when he said that the answer would be that we were at war. I think if that is the answer the right hon. Gentleman is about to give it is a perfectly good answer. It is childish and foolish to suppose that, however reprehensible, as we all agree it is, that there should be either at the Admiralty or anywhere avoidable waste, that we can go through the War without a certain amount of avoidable 1497 waste. When I was listening to those propositions being laid down by my hon. Friend, they reminded me very much of conversations which some of us used to have before the War with my Noble Friend who then represented Portsmouth and who is now Lord Beresford, about these very matters. I am afraid that the genial and breezy humour of my Noble Friend often used to blind Members of the House to the real profound foresight of insight that he has and had into naval conditions and matters of naval warfare. I can quite well remember my Noble Friend often telling us that the result of the great shortage which he always complained of, especially in regard to smaller vessels in the Navy, destroyers and light cruisers, would be that, if we ever should find ourselves at war, first of all that we should not be able to protect, as we ought to protect, our mercantile tonnage in carrying on the commerce of this country along the trade routes, and, secondly, that as soon as war broke out we should be forced to requisition an enormous proportion of mercantile tonnage for Admiralty purposes. Those two prophecies of my Noble Friend have been entirely fulfilled. I cannot say that I can recollect my hon. Friend the Member for Lanark (Mr. Pringle) in those days when those prophecies were made not only in private conversation with personal friends, but in speeches in the House, was to the fore supporting my Noble Friend in calling upon the Government of that time to avoid those evils to which he was so alive, or that he did anything to prevent those evils by the proper methods which were open to him. I wish we had nothing worse to fear and nothing more to complain of than that which my hon. Friend has taken an hour to bring to our notice.
What strikes me as surprising in this Debate is that the Government in the first place allowed Mr. Speaker to be voted out of the Chair and that they apparently are about to allow this Vote to be taken without making the smallest attempt to deal with, to remove, or even to comment upon the very striking speech made earlier today by the late First Lord of the Admiralty. I was wondering when the First Lord came in just now whether he intended to take any steps to deal with that very remarkable speech. I wonder if my right hon. Friend the First Lord or my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary, either of them, in the least appreciates what the effects of that speech are likely 1498 to be in the country to-morrow. What was the purport of the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dundee (Colonel Churchill). His speech might be expressed almost in a single sentence. He said in effect, "I hope the Admiralty are doing their duty, but I wish to heaven I had some confidence of it." I have no doubt the right hon. Gentleman spoke from a serious desire to-do his duty in his responsible position of the ex-First Lord. The effect of his speech has been and will be to implant in the public mind a germ of disquiet. When read and commented upon to-morrow, his speech will cause a great deal of disquiet throughout the country. I am not referring mainly to the very remarkable concluding portion of the speech, in which the right hon. Gentleman called upon the Government—in order, as he said, to give more driving power, which he says it does not possess at present—to reinstate Lord Fisher as First Sea Lord. Is it possible that such a demand as that can be made by a right hon. Gentleman in the position of ex-First Lord and be absolutely and entirely ignored, and passed over sub silentio by his successor and by the whole of the Treasury Bench? I do not intend to recall or to take any part in the controversy which has been echoed in the House this afternoon as to the qualifications of Lord Fisher. I do not belong to either of the factions, Fisherite or anti-Fisherite. I do not possess the inside knowledge of the Navy to express any judgment. But I thought a very extraordinary defence of Lord Fisher was. offered to-day by a Gentleman who speaks with some authority—the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Molton (Mr. G. Lambert)—who tried to make us believe that Lord Fisher had no responsibility for the Gallipoli Expedition. He endeavoured to make that point by saying that at some earlier date Lord Fisher had expressed disapproval of the proposal for that expedition. I should have thought that, instead of lessening, it increased his responsibility, if when the point of time came for the expedition to be ordered he, notwithstanding his private expression of opinion against it at an earlier date, remained a consenting party and retained his position while the expedition was ordered out. Therefore I do not think that particular defence goes very far. On the other hand, I am sure that the statement is perfectly justified that 1499 Lord Fisher is a great naval strategist, that he has rendered immense service to the country in a variety of ways, and that he is a man of great ability, courage, and other admirable qualities. Whether or not a man of Lord Fisher's age—for he cannot be regarded as among the younger members of the community—would really be an improvement upon the present First Sea Lord is a question upon which it would be absolute presumption for me to offer any opinion. But if I think it is presumption on my part to offer an opinion, it is equally presumption on the part of many Members of this House who have offered opinions. I would suggest that that particular question, as to whether or not an individual admiral should or should not be placed in the position of First Sea Lord, with the tremendous responsibility falling upon his shoulders in time of war, is a question upon which we, Members of the House of Commons, are entirely unqualified to give an opinion, and is one of the matters on which we must trust to the Government. My right hon. Friend the First Lord of the Admiralty spoke this afternoon in deprecation of what he called sub-acid criticism. I do not know to what my right hon. Friend was referring when he spoke of sub-acid criticism—whether it was criticism in this House, criticism outside this House, or "where it may be. I notice that members of the Government are rather apt, from time to time, to use somewhat sneering expressions with regard to criticism which they do not venture to define, and which they do not trace to its origin. I remember the Prime Minister on one occasion speaking very scornfully of what he called the whimperers. Whether the whimperers were Members of this House who ventured to address criticism to the Front Bench opposite, or whether it was the iniquitous doings of certain unmentionable members of the Press, I have never been able to determine, and I am equally unable to decide what was meant this afternoon by sub-acid criticism. I cannot help thinking when the right hon. Gentleman (Colonel Churchill) the predecessor of my right hon. Friend got up to address the House that his speech might very well answer to the description of sub-acid criticism, if you take away the "sub-." A good deal of it was sub-acid without the "sub-."
§ Mr. HOUSTONSuper-acid.
§ Mr. R. McNEILLAs my hon. Friend suggests, it was rather super-acid than sub-acid. My right hon. Friend began in this depreciation of criticism by saying, "I wonder where are the people who invent the daily lie, the lie that comes along day by day. Who invents them? "I also would like to know who invents the daily lie. What is the lie? There are from time to time criticisms made, facts alleged, rightly or wrongly, and events stated to have occurred which may or may not be true historical facts, and these, of course, are the daily lie. My belief is that the people who are responsible for the daily lie are the Government, and I will tell the Committee why. I hope no one will imagine that I am suggesting that any member of the Government, that the Government either jointly or severally, give expression to anything that is not an accurate statement of fact. What I do say is this: I thought, when my right hon. Friend was speaking, that with his great cultivation he must be very well familiar with the passage which, I think, occurs in a certain book of the Iliad, describing the way in which rumour grows, how it is borne along. Rumour, which is really the source of the daily lie, is a germ which is killed if it is introduced into a certain antiseptic region of truth and candour, and if the Government were to spread a medium of truth and candour with regard to their proceedings and with regard to actual facts, rumour, which is the mother of the daily lie, would be immediately destroyed, and my right hon. Friend would not be able to come down and complain that the inventor of the daily lie was in alliance with the sub-acid critic. In what way do I say that the Government fails to give us an atmosphere of truth and candour? I am really serious in saying that, if the Government were to treat the country with more openness, if they were to deny false rumours when they arise, if they were to give a greater knowledge of what is actually occurring, these alleged occurrences, these rumours of what is happening, sometimes true, sometimes false, sometimes pessimistic, sometimes optimistic, would at least be reduced to a minimum.
Let me give an example which, I believe, has given rise to this, or, at all events, did give rise at an early period of the War. I do not know whether, after this lapse of time, it would still be audacious on my part to refer to a mishap which occurred off the north coast of Ireland; 1501 but it will be within the recollection of most Members of the House, and certainly of right hon. Gentlemen opposite, that there was such a mishap, that it was hidden from the public, and that it was denied when it was spoken of. It was denied in the hearing of many men, of whom I was one, who had seen circumstantial and illustrative accounts in the American press. I myself put down questions on the subject in this House, and, at the request of the Admiralty, withdrew them from the Paper, protesting that to attempt to keep these matters secret when already widely known in every country but our own was folly. You cannot have that sort of thing going on and not think that people will imagine the same things to-day. You get accounts of this or that disaster, because that sort of incident is living and burning in the recollection of the British public. I heard within the last few days, and it came very circumstantially from a naval source—from an officer who was on board one of the ships said to have been concerned in it—that only recently, I think in the Adriatic or Mediterranean, there was an attack upon a vessel by three German submarines, and we succeeded in "bagging" the whole of those three submarines. I do not know whether it is true or not. But that is how rumour grows. That may be one of the daily lies. I am only showing that it is because those things are said, and nothing is told us by the Government whether they are true or false, that you get these rumours, and very often pessimistic rumours, spread abroad, which is entirely the fault of the Government, and not of any inventor, as my right hon. Friend seems to think.
Let me pass to the Air Service. I am particularly interested in this matter, because I represent a constituency which is particularly open to air attack, and I wish to say again, as I have already said, that, so far as my Constituents are concerned, and I believe the same can be said of all other parts of the country, while they quite naturally are anxious to press the Government in order to get as much as possible done to protect the country against those raids, it does not mean that they are in any way in panic, or in any way intimidated or frightened by what has occurred. But it did surprise me to hear my right hon. Friend, who seems to think it very necessary, with his accustomed courtesy, to say very nice things about everybody all round—his predecessor in 1502 office and others—say he was not even prepared to blame those who before the War had absolutely refused to consider the question of making airships of the Zeppelin type for this country.
I am unable to feel the great charity and tolerance of my right hon. Friend. It is not as if this question was an entirely new one, or that there were no factors which would have enabled the leaders of the nation to come to a decision. In the Debate I quoted Lord Beresford, who, speaking with great knowledge of naval gunnery, said it was nonsense to suppose that you would ever beat Zeppelin attacks with gunnery, because you can only do it by meeting like with like, and Zeppelins and engines with machines of a similar character. No doubt those responsible at that time were acting to the best of their knowledge, but if that knowledge was defective, and they neglected to provide engines of defence which events have proved were necessary for our protection, it is absurd for the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Admiralty to say he has no blame for those who failed to provide these articles. The right hon. Gentleman said that even now it may be that in ten years' time Zeppelins will have become obsolete, or some invention will have been provided showing that they have been very much overrated, but that is small consolation to the people who are suffering because Zeppelins are allowed to come with impunity now owing to our own slackness and want of foresight in the past in not providing means of resisting them. Such a reply seems a perfect mockery of the real question.
My right hon. Friend says that our difficulty was not so much that of making the machines as housing them. I really can hardly believe that the difficulty of making housing accommodation for these machines is a real and sufficient answer. To-day the country is suffering from the annoyance and loss caused by these raids. I do not know whether labour and material is so scarce that it is impossible to house these machines. I know the suggestion was made that the best and safest way of housing airships would be to make dugouts for some of them in the face of some of our Downs. That would not take a great deal of time with the machinery we have, and it could be done, if necessary, by military labour, which is already employed digging trenches. I should have thought that in 1503 this way it was possible in a very short time to have made tunnels in the face of some of our chalk hills were these Zeppelins could have been housed. If that were done it would be a secure way of housing them, and they would be perfectly safe from bomb attacks from over the sea. Although the Government deal with the generalities of the situation in this and other respects, it appears to me that although my right hon. Friend says we cannot go into details, the speech did not touch the main subject, and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dundee has made a speech which will fill the whole country with a certain amount not of panic, but a feeling of disquiet and want of confidence as to whether everything in the Admiralty and the Navy is quite so sound and perfect as they hope and expect it to be. On the top of that speech this Debate is allowed to close without the slightest attempt on the part of the Government to remove that impression.
§ Mr. WATTI do not propose to follow my hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-West Lanark (Mr. Pringle) in the interesting speech which he made, but my theme is the same as his, namely, the injudicious management of the Admiralty in requisitioning trawlers on the East Coast of Scotland. I have drawn the attention of my right hon. Friend to this matter before, and I regret to say that my eloquence has not persuaded him and his Department to desist from this line of action. They are requisitioning these trawlers in very large numbers and are preventing what remains of that fleet from pursuing a calling which supplies my Constituency and the West of Scotland generally with the food which is necessary for them. Again and again the Department has reduced this fleet, till now it is practically imperceptible. If there were no other vessel suitable for the purpose we would agree that they must be requisitioned, but there is another type of fishing boat which would equally well serve the purpose of the Admiralty, and the requisitioning of which would not in any way interfere with the fishing on the East Coast of Scotland and the supply of cheap food. That is the boat called the drifter, which under the present circumstances is quite unable to pursue fishing and is now drawn up on shore to the extent of two or three thousand vessels. That fleet, which is useless at the present time for 1504 fishing, would perfectly well fill the object the Admiralty have in view in requisitioning those trawlers.
§ Dr. MACNAMARADo I understand the hon. Gentleman to suggest that we have confined ourselves to trawlers?
§ Mr. WATTI did not say that the right hon. Gentleman's Department had con-confined itself to trawlers. It has taken some of the drifter type of boat, but it has certainly interfered with the trawler, and it has not called on the drifter to the extent which it might have done. That type of boat would suit the general purposes of the Admiralty, which is generally that of boom protecting. The Admiralty, as no doubt the Committee is aware, have, for the safety of the nation, placed booms at the entrance to many of the harbours, and these booms have to be watched and tended and kept in working order. The drifter type of boat would quite suit for that purpose instead of requisitioning these trawlers which mainly supply the fish from the West of Scotland. That fish, which is the cheapest kind of food at the present time is sold in the Glasgow markets and in the markets generally on the West at something like 3d. per lb. Therefore it is incomparably the cheapest food for the workers. The right hon. Gentleman well knows how many of the West of Scotland workers are employed in doing work for his Department. From one end of the Clyde to the other there are innumerable men working on vessels which his Department needs, and therefore it amounts to this: that he, by the action which I seek to condemn, is depriving those workers of one of their main foods at the present time, and certainly of their cheapest. The right hon. Gentleman might prevent his Department in the future requisitioning or commandeering that particular type of boat, and if it is necessary to utilise some fishing boats for the purpose of boom, protection he might take the drifter, which is useless at the present time for fishing, instead of the trawler.
§ Mr. HOGGEIt is now nearly eleven o'clock, and what has most struck me about this Debate is that although this House prides itself on the British Navy as the bulwark of the safety of the Empire, we have had absolutely no news of that great Fleet. I think that is a very significant fact. I hope to put one or two points upon that issue to my right hon. Friend, because I presume that so many 1505 important questions are still undiscussed the Government do not intend to press for the Vote to-night. This, after all, is a token Vote. We know the House of Commons will give the Navy the money it requires. The money is not required to-night, and it can be got when it is wanted, therefore I hope the Vote will not be pressed for to-night. This is really the important point. We have had the First Lord of the Admiralty speaking for nearly an hour and a quarter, and we have had the ex-First Lord of the Admiralty speaking for the best part of an hour, he having returned from the front where his mind has been cleared of the confusion which was in it when he was at the Admiralty, and from neither one nor the other have we heard a single item of news about the Fleet. We do not in fact know whether it exists or not. That is not fair to the men who man the Fleet. After all the Prime Minister has told us from the Front Bench that at this moment they are in a position with regard to out great Army at the front of actually being able to publish official accounts of what has taken place since the outbreak of war, I put it to the Committee that if we have reached a point in the carrying on of our operations in Flanders with the Army which enables the Government to present to the House and to publish an authentic account of what has been done by out soldiers, why is it that after nineteen months of War we have been told nothing about the accomplishments of our Navy?
With regard to the question of the capture of German submarines, we are sent to sleep by soporific phrases in this House about the fact that we can meet the submarine menace. It is all very well to be told we can meet the submarine menance. I do not want, and nobody would ask for any information which would indicate to our foes how the latest developments of their naval policy were being dealt with, but I respectfully submit to the Committee that we are entitled to know, not only for the purpose of our own information, but for the credit of the men of the British Navy, what they have accomplished, say, in the first six months of actual warfare, and made a statement in this House some considerable time ago that over fifty German submarines had been captured by the British Navy. Everybody listening to me now knows that that number has been exceeded, and far exceeded, since I made the statement, which was never denied. I do 1506 not want to know from the Parliamentary Secretary how many German submarines they have caught or accounted for in any of the mysterious ways in which the Admiralty accounts for them, but surely they have done sufficient now to be able to give the nation a consecutive and precise account of what the Navy has done in that way in the first nine or twelve months of the War. That surely is a reasonable request to make to the Government with regard to that matter.
We have been told nothing of the happenings in the Navy. We heard about the Falkland Islands fight, the Heligoland fight, and one or two other things, but none of the smaller actions in which the greatest bravery has been shown by men whose acts are screened from the British public at the moment, have been reviewed, and I appeal to my right hon. Friend, who has, in addition to a great amount of common sense, some imagination, to realise that the great British public do want to know something about the Navy.
My right hon. Friend's position is this: After all we tell them all we can tell them. We do not want to tell them any more. That is the excuse offered by my right hon. Friend for all the officials under his wing. But the British Navy, after all, is the thing of which we are proudest, and at the moment it is the instrument of war of which we know the least. Surely the First Lord of the Admiralty, who, after all, has got a literary and sometimes even a philosophical touch, could give us some sort of communiqué to the British people, some account up to a certain date of what the great British Navy has been accomplishing. Why cannot we have that? Are we to wait until the whole War is over before we hear a single word of what has been happening to the Navy? I myself have frequently put awkward questions on the Order Paper, and I have never refused to withdraw one of them. I have met the Admiralty every time one of these has been put down. I might not have got the information, but I might have demanded it. If I have that sort of curiosity—I am not an inquisitive person; I do not want to know very much; but if I am that type of person, what about the British public? What about the family associations of the men who are serving in the Fleet? What about the relatives of the sailors? They read great accounts in the newspapers of what the Army has been 1507 doing, and about this general being appointed here and that general being appointed there. We have daily reports now from Headquarters at the front in Flanders, but we have not had since the War began any report about this Navy for which we are freely giving everything they ask in order that it may be maintained. Therefore I ask that my right hon. Friend might, at any rate, consider whether the period has now arrived in the progress of this War when he might give some account of what the Navy is doing.
It is almost impossible at this hour to analyse the speech of the First Lord of the Admiralty or of the ex-First Lord of the Admiralty, though I have analysed them in my notes. But there are one or two points which I think ought to be, made, if I can make them in this short time. And I choose the most important from the point of my own nationality. The First Lord made a great point of the lack of labour, and I presume he had in his mind, when he made that point, the fact that on the Clyde we have probably the greatest output of ships in the United Kingdom, and I think my right hon. Friend will agree that the men on the Clyde at the outbreak of the War worked magnificently in response to the Admiralty. They worked night and day—in fact, to such an extent that they practically physically tired those men in the response they made to the effort to get ready that particular type of ship to which the First Lord referred. A great deal of criticism has been made about those men. I do not think it is fair to them. You cannot expect any single body of men to work at high pressure night and day indefinitely. They made an absolutely magnificent response, as every Member for Scotland knows, and they have been doing excellently since, and will continue to do excellently in the Clyde Valley for the Navy. Those men are not fools. They realise the weapon that is in their hands and the contribution that they must make towards forging that weapon.
It being Eleven of the clock, the Chairman left the Chair to make his Report to the House.
§ Committee report Progress; to sit again to-morrow (Wednesday).
§ The remaining Orders were read and postponed.
§ Whereupon Mr. SPEAKER, pursuant to the Order of the House of the 21st February, proposed the Question, "That this House do now adjourn."
§ Mr. R. MCNEILLAt Question Time to-day I gave notice that in consequence of a reply given to me by the Prime Minister on a question of mine I would call attention to the subject matter of that question upon the Motion for the Adjournment this evening. Since that time it has been intimated to me that, owing to the state of health of the Prime Minister, which we are all very sorry is not perfect, he is unable to be here to take part in the discussion. I therefore at once intimated to the Prime Minister that in the circumstances I should defer raising the question until a time that would be more convenient to him. Therefore I propose, instead of referring to the matter to-night, the subject of which was an allegation made by the Member for the Tottenham Division of Middlesex (Mr. Alden) in regard to some unknown Minister of the Crown, I shall refer to it on the Motion for Adjournment on Thursday, when I hope very much that the Prime Minister's health will be so completely restored that it will be convenient for him to be in his place. If that should not be so, I have no doubt that the Prime Minister, in the two days between now and then, will be able to communicate to one of his colleagues the facts of the case so far as they may be known to him in order that some other member of the Government may be able to take his place in answering the observations which I may have to make upon the subject.
§ Question put, and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at Three minutes after Eleven O'clock.