Commons Sitting of 14 November 1916

Preamble
The House met at a Quarter before Three of the clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.

BAILEY v. SYMONDS.
Petition of Archibald Henry Bailey, solicitor, for leave to the proper officer of the House to attend a trial and produce documents and give evidence in the High Court of Justice.
Leave to the proper officer to attend accordingly.

TRADING WITH THE ENEMY (MISCELLANEOUS, No. 36, 1916).
Copy presented of further Correspondence with the United States Ambassador respecting the Trading with the Enemy (Extension of Powers) Act, 1915 (in continuation of Miscellaneous, No. 11, 1916) [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
DESTRUCTIVE INSECTS AND PESTS ACTS.
Copies presented of Orders numbered D.I.P. 393 to 402, declaring the areas described in the Schedules thereto to be infected with Wart Disease and infected areas for the purposes of the Wart Disease of Potatoes (Infected Areas) Order of 1914 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
DISEASES OF ANIMALS ACTS.
Copy presented of Order 9,801, dated 31st October, 1916, postponing the operation of the two Orders described in the Schedule thereto until the 1st December. 1916 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
COMPANIES (WINDING-UP).
Copy presented of Twenty-fifth General Annual Report by the Board of Trade under Section 283 of the Companies (Consolidation) Act, 1908 [by Act]; to He upon the table, and to be printed. [No. 134.]
SUGAR SUPPLY.
Copy presented of Memorandum issued by the Royal Commission on Sugar Supply as to the distribution of Sugar, July to-December, 1916 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE (DEPARTMENTAL COMMITTEE).
Copy presented of further Report of the Departmental Committee on Approved Society Finance and Administration [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
LOCAL TAXATION RETURNS (ENGLAND AND WALES).
Copy presented of Summary of the-Annual Local Taxation Returns for England and Wales, with an Index for the year 1913–14 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 135.]
CONSTABULARY AND POLICE (IRELAND) BILL
As amended, to be printed. [Bill 120.]"
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS.
  WAR.

    SPITZBERGEN.
    Commander BELLAIRSasked the-Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether Spitzbergen is recognised as belonging to any Power, or whether this country, with its mineral resources, enjoys the benefit of no Government of any kind?
    The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Lord Robert Cecil): Spitzbergen does not belong to any Power and no form of Government has as yet been established there. An International Conference assembled in June, 1914, at Christiania to prepare a scheme for the administration of the islands and the settlement of various questions connected therewith, but found it necessary to adjourn before completing its labours.

  MILITARY SERVICE.

    ITALIANS IN FRANCE.
    Major NEWMANasked the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware that the Italian Government have declared that as from 1st December all residential permissions for Italians of military age in France are void; and, to ensure equality of sacrifice among the Allies, what similar steps does our Government propose to take?
    Lord R. CECIL: The reply to the first part of the question is in the negative. His Majesty's Government are about to address certain proposals to the French Government regarding British subjects of military age in France, and I hope to be able shortly to inform the hon. and gallant Member of the steps which it is proposed to take.

    BRITISH SUBJECTS ABROAD.
    Major NEWMANasked the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he has brought or will bring to the notice of British Embassies, Legations, and Consular offices the undesirability of keeping in their employment British subjects of military age; and will he make his recommendation known to the British Embassy at Madrid?
    Lord R. CECIL: There is no question of His Majesty's representatives abroad purposely preventing British subjects in their employ from fulfilling their military obligations, and I may assure the hon. and gallant Member that such an impression would be entirely unjustified. His Majesty's representatives, including His Majesty's Ambassador at Madrid, have done, and are doing, all they can to explain to British subjects abroad their duties in the present crisis and to facilitate to the utmost of their power the return to this country of such British subjects who desire to volunteer for service?

    MENTALLY DERANGED RECRUIT.
    Mr. FITZPATRICKasked the Secretary of State for War if he is aware that Benjamin Russell, Mountrath, Queen's County, while mentally deranged, left his home and proceeded to Dublin, where he presented himself at the recruiting office in Brunswick Street and joined the Lancashire Fusiliers, and was subsequently sent to Bury, Lancashire, for training; and, as this man was certified to be mentally de-
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    ranged by an eminent local medical man, will he inquire into the case with a view to having him immediately discharged from the Army?
    The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the WAR OFFICE (Mr. Forster): I am sorry that I have not yet received a report of this case. I will communicate with my hon. Friend as soon as my inquiries are completed.

    FARM WORKERS.
    Captain WRIGHTasked whether there are at the War Office any returns showing the number of agricultural labourers who have voluntarily or compulsorily enlisted since the beginning of the War from the various counties in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, respectively?
    Mr. FORSTER: No such returns are in the possession of the War Office, nor could satisfactory returns be obtained with regard to the earlier periods of the War.
    Captain WRIGHTasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture whether there are at the Board of Agriculture any Returns showing the number of agricultural labourers who have voluntarily or compulsorily enlisted since the beginning of the war and the number of agricultural labourers now employed on the farms in the various counties in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, respectively?
    The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of AGRICULTURE (Mr. Acland): Certain approximate Returns have been compiled by the Board of Trade for groups of counties in Great Britain, which I should be glad to show to the hon and gallant Member if he desires. I may add that the War Office propose shortly to take a census of the remaining agricultural workers, when further general particulars will be available.
    Major HUNTasked the Prime Minister whether, in view of the fact that a number of men now in the Army are medically unfit for fighting abroad, and in view of the shortage of agricultural workers, he could see his way to allow one of these unfit men to go back to work on the land for every fit fighting man taken off the land in the future?
    Mr. ACLAND: I will send the hon. and gallant Member a copy of the Circular Letter which explains the scheme of substitution now in force on the lines which he suggests.
    Major HUNTasked the Prime Minister whether, in view of the increasing price of food and of the shortage of agricultural labour, he can now see his way to preventing any more agricultural workers being taken for the Army except those under thirty-five passed fit for actual fighting service abroad; and whether he can now see his way to guaranteeing farmers in the United Kingdom for eatable wheat not less than 45s. a quarter up to December, 1917?
    Mr. ACLAND: In reply to the first part of the question I will send the hon. and gallant Member a copy of the Department's circular, which explains the arrangement which has been made with the War Office for the retention of men engaged in the certified occupations on ordinary agricultural land until the end of the year and of similar classes of men engaged in the dairying industry up to 31st March next. In reply to the second part of the question I fear I can add nothing to my replies to his questions on the same subject on the 12th and 18th of last month.
    Major HUNT: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the question of the shortage of agricultural labour is getting more serious all over the country?
    Mr. ACLAND: Yes, Sir. It is part of my business to be aware of it.
    Captain C. BATHURSTasked whether, in view of the value to farmers, if Home food production is to be maintained, of their horsekeepers, shepherds, and other highly skilled farm workers, and of their lessened value from a national standpoint when employed upon garrison duty at Home or abroad, he will instruct the appeal tribunals to authorise the retention of these men upon the farms if satisfied that they are unfit for more important military duties?
    Mr. FORSTER: Agricultural labourers who, when called up

    (1) are thirty-five years of age or upwards;

    (2) are classified in C2 or C3;

    (3) produce a certificate that their employer is anxious to retain their services;

    are relegated to the Army Reserve for so long as it is necessary to retain them in civil employment.

    STARRED OCCUPATIONS (FISHERMEN).
    Mr. C. WASONasked the Secretary for Scotland if his attention has been called to the fact that fishermen have been withdrawn from the list of starred occupations, and that the compulsory enlistment of eligible men from the Isle of Skerries will entail the most serious results in the island, probably leading to the wholesale deportation of the population to the mainland; and if he will consider the facts that have been laid before him and make representations to the authorities?
    The SECRETARY for SCOTLAND (Mr. Tennant): Fishermen with certain exceptions have been withdrawn from the list of certified occupations. I have received a representation as to the circumstances of the islands of Skerries, which will be considered by the Fishery Board in connection with the calling up of any of the men who are enrolled in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, Section Y. If men from the islands do not so enrol it will be for the tribunals to decide whether or not they should be exempted from military service.

    NATIVE TROOPS (CROWN COLONIES).
    Commander WEDGWOODasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is approaching the Governors of the Crown Colonies with a view to their raising native troops; and, if so, will he so draft his inquiries or instructions that each Governor shall understand both what his quota of new troops is and what is expected of the other Colonies, and not merely ask how many troops he thinks he could raise without trouble?
    The SECRETARY of STATE for the COLONIES (Mr. Bonar Law): It is not desirable to give any particulars of what is being done, but my hon. Friend can rest assured that the influence of the Colonial Office is being, and will continue to be, directed to securing the largest possible amount of assistance in man-power from the Crown Colonies.
    Commander WEDGWOOD: Will not the right hon. Gentleman now adopt the principle of running one Colony against another, so that there may be some competition in supplying black troops for the Empire?
    Mr. BONAR LAW: I have considered the suggestion of my hon Friend, but it is open to soma disadvantages, because the

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    numbers you can get from the different Colonies do not depend entirely on their population. If you were to run one Colony against another, I do not think the object would be attained.
    Mr. HOUSTON: Is the right hon. Gentleman seised of the great importance of increasing the man-power of the Army?
    Mr. BONAR LAW: I have already answered that.

    LABOUR SUBSTITUTION.
    Mr. ANDERSONasked the Prime Minister whether arrangements have been completed between the War Council, the Ministry of Munitions, and the Employment Exchanges by which men of a medical classification too low for effective Army purposes, instead of being exempted or returned to civil life, will be entered at the Employment Exchanges in connection with the schema of substitution; whether such a man will be asked to enter a contract that he will remain in the employment of any firm of employers to which he is assigned by the Ministry of Munitions and for any period during the War, and that he will be liable to be returned to military service should this firm cease to employ him; whether a member of the Shoreditch Tribunal, where this scheme was explained by the military representative, said it was industrial conscription but a good arrangement; and whether, having regard to his pledges in this House that the Military Service Acts should not be used, and should not be capable of being used, for any purpose of industrial conscription, he will say what action he proposes to take in the matter?
    Mr. BONAR LAW: I have received from the War Office a full statement in answer to this question. It is, I fear, too long to read to the House. I will, therefore, if the hon. Member will allow me, circulate it with the OFFICIAL REPORT. [See Written Answers.]

    RELIEF FROM CIVIL LIABILITIES.
    Mr. HOGGEasked the Prime Minister when the decision about Reservists being able to apply for relief from the Civil Liabilities Committee is to be agreed upon?
    Mr. ASHLEYasked the Secretary to the Local Government Board whether
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    Reservists who were mobilised in 1914 are to be brought within the scope of the Military Service (Civil Liabilities) Scheme?
    The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. Hayes Fisher): I have consulted my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and he is prepared to agree to the extension of the scheme to Army Reservists, including Special Reservists.
    Mr. HOGGE: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether that will date from the same date as the others?
    Mr. HAYES FISHER: I will consider that.

    ENEMY ALIENS.
    Captain BURGOYNEasked the Home Secretary whether a notice has been circulated amongst chief constables to the effect that aliens, who are technically enemy aliens but are considered to be friendly to the Allied cause, are allowed to become naturalised and, after a period of three months has elapsed, are eligible for the British Army?
    The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. Herbert Samuel): No, Sir; no such notice has been circulated, and there is no proposal to naturalise persons who are technically enemy aliens with a view to their enlisting.

    ALLIED COUNTRIES' SUBJECTS.
    Sir C. HENRYasked the Home Secretary if he will recognise the desirability of issuing Regulations prohibiting the employment of any person of military age, subjects of any of the Allies, unless he can produce evidence of having offered himself for military service and either has been rejected or else placed in a class which for the time being does not require his services?
    Mr. SAMUEL: I am not yet in a position to state the further measures which will be taken by the Government with reference to this question.
    Sir C. HENRY: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Prime Minister stated the other day that this matter would betaken into consideration?
    Mr. SAMUEL: Yes, Sir. The Prime Minister stated that measures were in preparation. I hope it will be possible to make a statement very shortly.

    WALTHAMSTOW LOCAL TRIBUNAL.
    Mr. RICHARD LAMBERTasked the President of the Local Government Board if he is aware that Mr. W. J. Cooper, of 12, Selborne Road, Walthamstow, presented himself for attestation in December, 1915, and was not accepted; that, upon a receipt of Form W 3299, he presented himself for further medical examination on 12th September, 1916, and was asked to call for re-examination at 2 p.m. on 11th October, and, being then passed in Class C 2, the Walthamstow local tribunal refused to hear his application for exemption on the ground that it had not been lodged prior to 30th September; and, in view of the fact that Mr. Cooper's re-examination was deferred until after this date, whether an opportunity will be given him to present his claim for a hearing before the tribunal?
    The PRESIDENT of the LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. Long): I am in communication with the local tribunal on the subject of the hon. Member's question.

  MESOPOTAMIA CAMPAIGN (SOUDANESE TROOPS).
  Commander WEDGWOODasked the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether any additional battalions of Soudanese troops have been raised in the Soudan during the War; and, if not, why such action has not yet been taken in view of their suitability for fighting in Mesopotamia?
  Lord R. CECIL: No, Sir. For local reasons of a convincing nature, it has not been considered desirable to raise additional battalions of these troops during the War.
  Commander WEDGWOOD: May I ask whether that opinion will be reconsidered or is it to hold good for all time no matter how the conditions alter?
  Lord R. CECIL: I should not like to prophesy that any decision of that character must hold good for all time.
  Commander WEDGWOOD: When was that opinion come to?
  Lord R. CECIL: I should require notice of that. It has been considered for some time.
  Mr. PRINGLE: Are the local reasons likely to be changed?
  Lord R. CECIL: I cannot say.
  Sir EDWIN CORNWALLasked to what extent the Army in Mesopotamia is now being supplied with winter comforts, either by the Government or from private sources?
  Mr. FORSTER: Warm clothing, mackintosh capes, etc., have been dispatched in large numbers to Mesopotamia. I also understand that the Director-General of Voluntary Organisations is in constant touch with Basra, and has supplied and forwarded from time to time all the comforts which he has been asked to provide.
  Mr. BILLING: Are we to understand that large numbers mean necessary numbers?
  Mr. FORSTER: As far as I know.
  Sir J JARDINE: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether limejuice and fresh vegetables are included, especially in garrisons where scurvy is said to have broken out?
  Mr. FORSTER: I do not think that the Director-General of Voluntary Organisations would be responsible for the dispatch of vegetables, and they ought to be supplied by the Regular Army Service. As far as I know, as abundant a supply as we can manage is being sent.
  Sir J. JARDINE: And limejuice?
  Mr. FORSTER: Yes, Sir. Every possible precaution is being taken.

  UNITED KINGDOM AND AMERICA.

    PERMANENT INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION.
    Mr. NOEL BUXTONasked the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether His Majesty's Government have taken steps to fill the vacancy caused by the death of one of the members of the Permanent International Commission created by the Treaty between the United Kingdom and the United States of America, signed at Washington, 15th September, 1914, which is authorized under that Treaty to settle all disputes between the two Governments which fail to be adjusted by diplomatic methods?
    Lord R. CECIL: The answer is in the affirmative.

  GREECE.
  Mr. C. WASONasked the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs

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  if his attention has been directed to a dispatch from M. Venizelos to Principal Ronald Burrows, King's College; and if, in view of the facts there set forth, coupled with the occupation of fresh territory by Bulgarians, dispatching of fresh troops to Berlin, and persecution of Greek patriots, he will consider with the Allied Powers what further steps it is necessary to take for the protection of M. Venizelos and his friends?
  Lord R. CECIL: The answer to both parts of the question is in the affirmative.
  Mr. ASHLEYasked the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the Government still maintain official relations with King Constantine's Government; if so, in what districts of Greece does His Majesty's Government recognise that King Constantine has jurisdiction; and will he state what amount of official recognition has been accorded by the Allies to the Provisional Government under M. Venizelos at Salonika?
  Lord R. CECIL: The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative as regards the Allied Governments, including His Majesty's Government. As regards the second part, the situation changes from day to day, but it may roughly be said that M. Venizelos' authority exists in New Greece and the islands, whereas the Government at Athens retains jurisdiction over Old Greece. As regards the last part of the question, I would refer the hon. Member to previous statements which have been made on the subject. The Government of M. Venizelos is treated by the Allies as the de facto authority in the districts where it is established.
  Mr. ASHLEY: Can the right hon. Gentleman say what advantage there is in continuing the official recognition of the Government of King Constantine?
  Lord R. CECIL: That is rather a large question to be answered in reply to a supplementary question.
  Mr. R. McNEILL: Has the extent of the recognition accorded to M. Venizelos' Government been notified to him?
  Lord R. CECIL: As I understand so, certainly.
  Mr. BILLING: How many Governments in Greece do the Government propose to recognise?
  Lord R. CECIL: There is only one Government in Greece.
  HON. MEMBERS: There are two!
  Major HUNT: Does the Government here not recognise two Governments?
  Lord R. CECIL: I do not understand that M. Venizelos regards himself as revolting from the Government of the King.

  MESSRS. JURGENS.
  Sir H. DALZIELasked the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he has official information to the effect that Messrs. Jurgens or any of their allied companies in Holland have been called upon to pay fines by the Netherlands Overseas Trust for supplying goods to Germany; and can he state the total amount of fines that they have been called upon to pay?
  Lord R. CECIL: On 15th September, 1915, a fine of 300,000 florins was imposed on Messrs. Jurgens by the Netherlands Overseas Trust, because a quantity of cotton seed oil originally imported by them was exported to Germany by other firms into whose hands the oil had come. The Trust state that Messrs. Jurgens themselves had nothing to do with the illicit export. They had taken all possible precautions, but were the victims of a breach of confidence on the part of a broker who negotiated the sale of the oil to unscrupulous firms with a view to export. Messrs. Jurgens were, however, fined as being the original importers.
  Sir H. DALZIEL: May I ask whether it is the case that they made £75,000 out of this deal and whether the Government are still anxious that they should be allowed to buy British properties in Nigeria?
  Lord R. CECIL: I have nothing to do with Nigeria, and as to the other matter I am not aware.
  Sir J. D. REES: May I ask if it is not the case that the chief factory of Messrs. Jurgens is actually in Germany and not in Holland?
  Sir H. DALZIEL: Five of them!
  Lord R. CECIL: I should like notice of that question. I do not think that is an accurate statement.

  ARMY ACT AMENDMENT ACT (COMMITTEE OF INQUIRY).
  Mr. HAZLETON: asked the Secretary of State for War whether he has yet received the Report of the Committee set up as a result of the passing of the Army Act Amendment Act of this Session; and whether he will inform the House of its conclusions?
  Mr. ASHLEYasked the Secretary of State for War whether the Court of Inquiry set up under the Army Act Amendment Act has arrived at any conclusion on the subject which it was directed to investigate; and, if so, will he state what its opinion is and the decision thereon of the Army Council?
  Mr. FORSTER: The Report has not yet been received.
  Mr. ASHLEY: Can we not at any rate have an Interim Report which deals with the young Irish soldier? I will put down another question.
  Mr. HAZLETON: Can the hon. Gentleman say what is the reason for the delay?
  Mr. FORSTER: I am afraid I cannot.
  Mr. PRINGLE: Can the hon. Gentleman say how long it is since they finished taking evidence and hearing the speeches of counsel?
  Mr. FORSTER: I should require notice.
  Mr. PRINGLE: It is three months.

  DECEASED SOLDIERS' EFFECTS.
  Mr. BUTLER LLOYDasked the Secretary of State for War if his attention has been drawn to the fact that dead soldiers' belongings are constantly lost or stolen on the way back to England; and if he will take every possible step to prevent this, and thus save loss to the near relatives of these gallant men?
  Mr. FORSTER: I would refer my hon. Friend to the reply which I gave on 2nd November to the hon. Baronet the Member for Bath.

  PRISONERS OF WAR.
  Sir E. CARSONasked the Secretary of State for War whether he has any in formation regarding the general condition of British prisoners of war who have fallen into the hands of the Ottoman Government?
  Sir E. CORNWALLasked the Treasurer of the Household whether he is now in a position to give fuller information with regard to the British prisoners taken at Kut-el-Amara; whether all have been traced; whether the United States Minister has visited their camps and, if so, what reports have been received; and what arrangements now exist to ensure regular and prompt arrival of consignments of any comforts dispatched to them from this country or from India?
  Mr. JAMES HOPE (Treasurer of the Household): From every hostile Government, except the Turkish, we have been able to obtain satisfactory lists of prisoners of war; but notwithstanding all our efforts and those of the American Embassy at Constantinople, we have failed to-obtain any but the most incomplete lists of our officers and men in Turkish hands. Apart from those who were taken prisoners in the Gallipoli operations, some 12,530, including, of course, Indian prisoners, we believe, surrendered at Kut-el-Amara, but by means of information received up to the present from the Turkish Government we have been able to identify only 1,923; and to this must be added another 764, of whom we have heard by means of private letters and other unofficial communications.
  In all other hostile countries prisoners of war camps have been visited by members of the American Embassy concerned, but a similar concession has always been strenuously opposed by the Turks. It is, therefore, impossible to give any assured information regarding our subjects in Turkey, but from all we can learn we have reason to fear that the conditions are very far from satisfactory, and that the mortality in certain cases has been heavy. There are also indications that our men have suffered severely on their way from Kut to places of internment. Moreover, we have grounds for fearing that our men are short of clothing, but every endeavour is being made by the American Embassy and Consular officials to meet this want by local purchases. A request to the Turkish Government to allow supplies of clothing to be sent in a neutral ship to some point in Asia Minor has been accepted only on the condition that the distribution shall be made by the Turkish authorities, which, again, is contrary to the practice in other countries and is open to obvious and grave objection. Up to the present we have been compelled to rely on the provision of clothing from

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  local sources, supplemented by the dispatch of parcels from this country to those whose whereabouts is known; but the receipt of any parcels appears to be very uncertain. We have every reason to believe that the American authorities, through whom alone we can act, are doing their best under very difficult circumstances, but it would be idle to deny that the present situation is unsatisfactory in the extreme. We have recently again drawn the attention of the United States Government to the extreme urgency of the case.
  Sir E. CARSON: Will my hon. Friend take care that from time to time any possible information is given to the country in reference to these prisoners?
  Mr. HOPE: Certainly.
  Mr. ASHLEYasked the Treasurer of the Household what are the number of German military prisoners of war in British hands, and what are the numbers of British prisoners of war in German hands; and will he state whether there are any cases of German wounded prisoners of war who have been detained in British hospitals for a period of two years?
  Mr. HOPE: The number of German military prisoners of war in British hands according to the latest Returns is:

  Army officers

  …

  …

  833

  Army Men

  …

  …

  42,082

  Navy officers

  …

  …

  133

  Navy Men

  …

  …

  1,982

  45,030

  The corresponding number of British prisoners in German hands including Colonial and Indian forces is:

  Army officers

  1,027

  Army Men

  28,737

  29,764

  Navy (including Naval Division) Officers

  52

  Navy Men

  1,285

  31,101

  We have no knowledge of any German wounded prisoners of war having been detained in British hospitals for two years.
  Mr. LOUGH: Does that include the prisoners taken yesterday and the day before?
  Mr. HOPE: No.

  SOUTHERN BALKANS (ALLIED OPERATIONS).
  Sir WALTER ESSEXasked the Secretary of State for War whether he has in hand, and hopes soon to lay upon the Table, any further Report of the Allied operations in the Southern Balkans; when does he expect to be able to table such a Report; and to what latest date of the operations may it be expected to refer?
  Mr. FORSTER: A dispatch from the General Officer Commanding the British Forces at Salonika dealing with the operations in that theatre to 8th October has just reached the War Office. It will be published in due course, but I cannot now state any date.

  GROVE PARK CAMP, LEE.
  Sir W. ESSEXasked how many men are at present encamped at Grove Park Camp, Lee, and for how many is dry-floored and rainproof shelter provided; and whether the men have any regular drills or other occupation helpful to them in a military sense?
  Mr. FORSTER: As I have stated already in answer to the hon. Members for Burnley and the Bridgeton Division of Glasgow, the men at Grove Park are not encamped but in houses or billets, which are dry-floored and rainproof. The men are recruits, and are being trained each day in their military duties.
  Sir W. ESSEX: Will the hon. Gentleman tell us how long it is since they were taken out of camp?
  Mr. FORSTER: Speaking from recollection, I think about ten days.

  HAY PRICES.
  Mr. LUNDONasked the Secretary of State for War why it is that the price of Irish hay has been fixed at a rate of 12s. 6d. per ton lower than that allowed in England and 5s. lower than that allowed in Scotland; is it that the War Office believe Irish hay to be in any way inferior to English or Scottish; and will he take steps to have equality of prices all round?
  Mr. FORSTER: Irish and Scottish hay in the earlier months after harvesting contains more moisture than English hay.

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  Allowance is made for the "dryage" (evaporation of moisture) at percentages in the months of January, February and March. The "dryage" in the case of Irish and Scottish hay allowed is double that allowed in the case of English hay. This system automatically brings the prices paid in Ireland and Scotland up to those paid in England in the later months of the crop year. The difference of 5s. in price between Irish and Scottish hay has been fixed with the consent of the Irish trade and with the concurrence of the Advisory Forage Committee in Ireland.
  Mr. LUNDONasked what quantity of hay was purchased in Ireland last year and the aggregate amount paid for the same; and will he give the quantity and aggregate amount paid, respectively, in England and Scotland?
  Mr. FORSTER: This information is not available, and as its preparation would involve undue expenditure of time and labour, I hope my hon. Friend will not press for it.

  INJURED SOLDIERS (BADGES).
  Sir J. LONSDALEasked if any badge can be issued to dispatch riders and other soldiers who are injured other wise than by wounds whilst in the performance of their duties?
  Mr. FORSTER: No, Sir; it is not proposed to issue any badge for accidental injuries.
  Mr. BILLING: Will the same apply to flying officers injured while flying, possibly in the face of the enemy, but not necessarily wounded?
  Mr. FORSTER: I should like to have notice of that, but I think the same rule would apply.

  NAVAL AND MILITARY PENSIONS AND GRANTS.
  Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKEasked the Secretary of State for War whether an officer passed as fit for military service, and who after a time is invalided out of the Service or is asked to resign on account of ill-health, is eligible for a pension if the ill-health from which he suffers is not due to a wound but to a disease aggravated by his service; and whether the position is the same for officers serving abroad as for officers serving in the Home forces?
  Mr. FORSTER: If the officer's earning power is appreciably impaired by his war service he is entitled to pension or gratuity, whether the aggravation of his disability was caused at home or abroad.
  Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: If it is caused by disease, would it be treated the same as if caused by wound?
  Mr. FORSTER: Yes; he is entitled to pension or gratuity, under ordinary circumstances, whether his disability is caused by wound or disease. There is, as the hon. Gentleman knows, a special wounds' pension or gratuity.
  Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: Will the hon. Gentleman answer the last part of the question?
  Mr. FORSTER: I have.
  Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: Whether the position is the same for officers serving abroad?
  Mr. FORSTER: I said it does not matter whether the disability was caused at home or abroad.
  Mr. HOUSTON: Is a pension granted for disability from enthetic disease?
  Sir J. JARDINEasked the Secretary of State for War as regards the separation allowance of 5s. 1d., Government share, made to Mrs. Martha Wilson, widow, of Kirk Yetholm, in the county of Roxburgh, mother of Sergeant George Wilson, No. 4954, 1st King's Own Scottish Borderers, if he will make inquiry into the adequacy of this amount, and as to whether, before making his estimate of this widow's dependency, the district pension officer made any inquiry of her personally to ascertain what amount her son used to give weekly before mobilisation or enlistment; whether, as a matter of fact, it was about 24s.; and whether, as Mrs. Wilson is a cripple, and has no other means of support, he will increase the present allowance of 8s. a week, made up of 5s. 1d. Government share and 2s. 11d. necessary allotment from soldier's pay, to a more adequate amount?
  Mr. FORSTER: This claimant has already appealed against the original assessment, and, after reinvestigation by the pension officer, expressed herself to him as satisfied with the new assessment of 8s. a week. If she now desires to bring forward fresh facts, it is open to her to appeal in the regular way to the Appeals Committee.
  Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTTasked on -what principle deductions from the disability pension of a discharged soldier, in order to refund debts or over-issues incurred before his discharge, are sanctioned in cases where the pension is over 10s. a week, in view of the fact that the man who has been granted a full disability pension of 25s. a week is not supposed to have any more total income than the man who has been awarded a pension of 10s. a week, which is calculated as being sufficient when added to his earning capacity to make 25s. a week; and whether he will consider the advisability of putting an end altogether to these deductions?
  Mr. FORSTER: The pension is a certainty; the difference between pension and 25s. is not necessarily actual earnings week by week, but assessed earning capacity. I think my hon. Friend will recognise that to ignore this distinction might lead to hardship in individual cases. I fear these recoveries cannot be altogether dispensed with.
  Mr. SCOTT: In view of the fact that these pensions afford no margin over what is necessary to support life, can the hon. Gentleman say what these wounded soldiers have to do when these deductions are being made?
  Mr. FORSTER: I have pointed out to my hon. Friend on a previous occasion that the deduction is made in very small weekly sums, and I do not think that any real hardship arises.
  Mr. SCOTT: Has the question of abolishing these deductions been considered?
  Mr. FORSTER: Yes, it has; and I find that these recoveries cannot altogether be dispensed with. I wish they could.
  Mr. ANDERSONasked the Financial Secretary to the War Office whether he is aware of the hardship inflicted on numbers of soldiers and their dependants by the want of proper business methods of the paymaster in certain districts; whether he is aware that occasionally demands are made on dependants for the repayment of sums alleged to have been overdrawn amounting to many pounds; and, since many of these mistakes are due not to any fault on the part of the applicant, but to lack of system or incompetence on the part of certain paymasters, will he say what steps it is proposed to take?
  Mr. FORSTER: I would refer my hon. Friend to the answer which I gave on, 26th October to the hon. Member for West Bradford.

  ROYAL AIRCRAFT FACTORY.
  Mr. R. LAMBERTasked whether the Royal Aircraft Factory, Farnborough, is a controlled establishment; and, if not, whether the War Office has power to prevent a man from getting his discharge and obtaining work elsewhere?
  Mr. FORSTER: The War Office has the power mentioned in the second part of the question, under an Order made by the Minister of Munitions under Section 7, Munitions of War Act, dated 14th July, 1915.

  BRITISH CONSULATE, SALONIKA.
  Sir H. DALZIELasked if the daughter of the clerk to the British Consulate at Salonika was sent home by the military authorities at Salonika; and if she has been allowed to return in defiance of the opinion of our intelligence officers in Greece?
  Mr. FORSTER: The lady to whom the hon. Member doubtless refers was permitted to return by the General Officer Commanding the British troops at Salonika. I am not aware of the opinion of the intelligence officers in Greece.
  Mr. HOGGEasked the Secretary of State for War if he is now in a position to state what action the Government intends to take about increasing the amount of separation allowance?
  Mr. FORSTER: No decision has yet been reached.
  Mr. HOGGE: Can the hon. Gentleman say if they have done anything at all about coming to a decision?
  Mr. FORSTER: They have done something; they have been considering it.
  Mr. HOGGE: In order to speed it up, I will refer to this on the Adjournment to-night.

  DISTURBANCES IN IRELAND.

    MR. ARTHUR GRIFFITHS.
    Mr. LYNCHasked the Secretary of State for War whether he can state the

    561
    reason for the arrest of Mr. Arthur Griffiths; how long he has been in detention; whether any charge has been preferred against him or whether it is intended to prefer a charge against him; whether he is aware that Mr. Griffiths took no part whatever in the Dublin rebellion; and whether, in view of the effect on public opinion in Ireland, he will take steps to secure the immediate release of Mr. Griffiths?
    Mr. FORSTER: I regret that I am not yet in a position to reply. I will communicate with the hon. Member as soon as I get an answer to inquiries addressed to Ireland.

    PENAL SERVITUDE SENTENCES.
    Mr. BYRNEasked the Home Secretary if any of the Irish prisoners have been removed from Dartmoor or Portland; if so, will he state the names of the prisoners removed and their destination; and if he has yet considered the advisability of allowing them to write and receive one letter a week?
    Mr. SAMUEL: Three prisoners, Edward de Valera, Richard Hayes, and J. D. Fitzgerald, have been removed to Maidstone Prison. In answer to the second part of the question, I would refer the hon. Member to the general reply I am giving to Question No. 102.
    Mr. O'SHAUGHNESSY: Can the right hon. Gentleman say why they have been removed?
    Mr. SAMUEL: For disciplinary reasons.
    Mr. BYRNEasked the Home Secretary if he will review the sentences inflicted on the two boys, Derrington and Crenigan, Irish prisoners, sentenced by courts-martial in Dublin; if both boys were under seventeen years of age when sentenced, and have now six months of their sentence completed; and if he will consider the boys' ages and order their release?
    Mr. FORSTER: I have nothing to add to the answer given the hon. Member on 13th July. That answer applies to the case of Crenigan as well as to that of Derrington.
    Mr. BYRNE: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Home Secretary told me on that occasion that the question of the treatment of the boy Derrington would receive further consideration; and, having regard to the boy's age, can he not consider his release?
    Mr. FORSTER: I will look into it.
    Mr. HAZLETONasked the Home Secretary how many persons sentenced by courts-martial for connection with the recent rebellion in Ireland are now undergoing penal servitude; in what prisons are they confined; and the number of such prisoners in each?
    Mr. SAMUEL: The number is 123, and they are distributed as follows:

    Dartmoor

    …

    …

    …

    …

    …

    62

    Portland

    …

    …

    …

    …

    …

    57

    Maidstone

    …

    …

    …

    …

    …

    3

    Aylesbury

    …

    …

    …

    …

    …

    1

    123

    Mr. O'SHAUGHNESSY: Was it for breaches of discipline that the three prisoners were removed from Dartmoor to-Maidstone?
    Mr. SAMUEL: I should like notice of that question.
    Mr. HAZLETONasked the Home Secretary whether the prisoners undergoing sentences of penal servitude for connection with the recent rebellion in Ireland are allowed any intercourse with each other or are under strict rules of silence; whether they are allowed the use of writing materials other than slates and slate pencils; how often may they write-and receive letters; and how often may they receive visitors?
    Mr. SAMUEL: I have had the general question of the treatment of these prisoners under consideration, and now that they have completed, or almost completed, six months of their sentences, I think some relaxation of the conditions may be conceded. In penal servitude prisons there are no classes corresponding to the First, Second, and Third Divisions in local prisons; but prisoners of industry and good conduct pass through successive stages, each stage being marked by the grant of some relaxation or privilege. I propose to group the Irish prisoners under penal servitude in one prison apart from all ordinary convicts and to give them the privileges of the later stages. Those who are accustomed to literary work have already been given facilities for writing on other than political matters, and will be allowed to take their compositions with them on discharge. They will now be allowed monthly visits and permission to-write and receive letters at intervals of

    563
    one month, and association at certain fixed hours, with permission to talk together so long as quiet and good order is maintained. These concessions will, of course, be conditional on good conduct. I further propose that the Irish prisoners under sentence of imprisonment in Wormwood Scrubs should be removed to another prison and should receive similar treatment.
    Sir W. BYLES: Is it not time to set these men free?
    Mr. BYRNE: Is it not time to set free the one Irish lady now in internment?
    Mr. SAMUEL: That does not arise out of this question.

    CIVIL SERVANTS.
    Mr. DILLONasked the Home Secretary what was the reference to the Commissioners who were sent to Dublin to deal with the cases of Civil servants suspected of complicity with the recent insurrection; what was their method of procedure; on what principle they acted in recommending that certain officials should be dismissed; whether any record of their proceedings has been kept; and whether that record will be published?
    Mr. SAMUEL: The reference was "to consider the cases of the Irish Civil servants who have been suspended from their duties owing to their suspected complicity with the recent rebellion, and to advise how they should be dealt with." As regards procedure, the Commissioners say:
    "Everyone was informed of the terms of reference and was told that he was at perfect liberty to decline to answer any of the questions put to him. Every Civil servant was made acquainted with the nature of the charge against, or suspicion held regarding, him, and he was encouraged to tender the fullest explanation he could in respect of either or both. "We afterwards compared his verbal statement to us with the departmental, military and police documentary evidence placed at our disposal, and, when it seemed necessary or advisable to do so, we called for further information from or confirmation by the authorities cited."
    No formal record of the proceedings has been kept, and it is not proposed to make any publication. The cases were dealt with in the same way and on the same principles as other cases of serious misconduct would be dealt with in the Civil Service generally.
    Mr. O'SHAUGHNESSY: Can the right hon. Gentleman say on what evidence or statements some of these men were dismissed from the Post Office?
    Mr. SAMUEL: No, Sir.

  MILITARY SUPPLIES (IRELAND).
  Colonel CRAIGasked the Secretary of State for War, in reference to his appointment of a Special Commissioner to investigate whether the War Office would be justified in establishing receiving depots in Ireland in connection with tenders for military supplies, whether he will bear in mind that the vast bulk of such tenders come from Ulster, and that consequently Belfast has a stronger claim to be considered for the establishment of a receiving depot than any other centre?
  Mr. FORSTER: The instructions given to the hon. Member for the Loughborough Division of Leicestershire were to inquire into and report on the facilities in Ireland for contractors who desired to tender for War Office contracts, and also to inquire into and report on the resources of the whole of Ireland, with a view to seeing what further supplies to meet War Office requirements could be obtained from that country. My right hon. Friend will bear in mind every representation made to him in considering the question of the establishment of a receiving depot in Ireland.

  "TANK" PHOTOGRAPHS.
  Mr. ASHLEYasked why British newspapers are forbidden to publish pictures of the famous tanks, in view of the fact that photographs of these engines of warfare have already appeared in the "New York Times," the "New York Tribune," the "New York World," and other Canadian and American newspapers?
  Mr. FORSTER: The question of releasing for publication representations of these engines of warfare is now under the consideration of the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, British Armies in France.
  Mr. ASHLEY: As we are not allowed to see these photographs, can the hon. Gentleman say why the military censor passed these photographs for transmission to America?
  Mr. FORSTER: I do not know that the military censor has passed them.
  Mr. ASHLEY: Then may I ask, if the military censor did not pass them, why we should not see them, seeing that the Germans must have furnished the photographs to the Americans?
  Mr. FORSTER: As I told my hon. Friend, it is a matter for the Commander-in-Chief in France to settle. He is now considering it.
  Mr. HOGGE: If the Germans and the Americans have seen them, why cannot we?

  BRITISH AND RUSSIAN FORCES.
  Mr. OUTHWAITEasked the Secretary of State for War whether his attention has been drawn to the fact that, at a recent gathering in London, a disclosure was made of the total of the British forces in the field and a proportionate estimate given of the Russian forces in the field; and can he say whether this information was supplied by the War Office to Lord Northcliffe?
  Mr. FORSTER: I have consulted the Army Council, and I am in a position to say that, whatever information was disclosed at the gathering referred to, was not given by the War Office.
  Mr. OUTHWAITE: Do these disclosures made constitute a breach of the Defence of the Realm Act?
  Mr. FORSTER: That does not arise out of this question.
  Mr. OUTHWAITE: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that I have provided the Secretary of State for War with the figures disclosed by Lord Northcliffe and provided by a person present, and does the War Office attach no importance to the disclosure of these sensational facts?
  Mr. FORSTER: I was not aware that the hon. Gentleman did inform the War Office.

  TROOP RATIONS.
  Commander WEDGWOODasked whether the rations for the troops at the front have been reduced as follows: Tea, five-eighths of an ounce to four-eighths of an ounce per day; bacon, three ounces to two ounces per day; and cheese also; if so, why is the reduction made; and does it apply also to troops in this country?
  Mr. FORSTER: As far as I know, the scale of rations has not been reduced; the second and third parts of the question, therefore, do not arise.
  Commander WEDGWOOD: Will the hon. Gentleman make inquiries about this, because I have the facts?
  Mr. FORSTER: If my hon. and gallant Friend would give me something to go upon. I have made inquiries, and, so far as I know, the scale has not been reduced.

  EAST AFRICAN OPERATIONS (DISPATCHES).
  Colonel YATEasked the Secretary of State for War whether, considering that it is not proposed to publish at the present time the whole of the dispatches relating to the operations in East Africa during the years 1914 and 1915, he will, at any rate, consider the question of publishing those portions of the dispatches giving the names of officers mentioned for distinguished service by the commanders concerned?
  Mr. FORSTER: I would refer the hon. and gallant Member to the "London Gazette" of the following dates:—

  18th February, 1915.

  22nd January, 1916.

  3rd June, 1915.

  2nd February, 1916.

  23rd June, 1915.

  15th March, 1916.

  6th September, 1915.

  28th March, 1916.

  24th July, 1915.

  30th March, 1916,

  29th October, 1915.

  26th June, 1916.

  23rd December, 1915.

  SERVICE AT THE FRONT (STRIPE OF HONOUR).
  Mr. W THORNEasked the Secretary of State for War if the Government have considered a proposal emanating from a number of men serving at the front to the effect that every soldier who has had six months service at the front should receive a stripe of honour on the same principle that the soldiers receive a stripe when they are wounded; if he is aware that the principle is accepted by the French Government and extended to their soldiers; and if he intends taking action in the matter?
  Mr. FORSTER: I would refer the hon. Member to the reply given on 20th July to the hon. and gallant Member for the Isle of Wight.

  MILITARY INQUIRIES (BIRMINGHAM).
  Mr. SHERWELLasked the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware

  567
  that Brigadier-General Grove, the officer in command of the Warwick and Midland district, has issued a questionnaire to four justices of the peace in Birmingham, who are members of the Society of Friends, demanding among other things information as to their private subscriptions, and requiring them to produce for inspection their cheque books and bank pass books; if he will say under what Regulation of the Defence of the Realm Acts this action has been taken; and whether the demand has been made with his knowledge and sanction?
  Mr. KINGasked the Home Secretary whether he is aware that a number of citizens in Birmingham are being visited by detective officers and required, among other things, to produce for inspection their cheque and bank pass books; will he say under what Defence of the Realm Regulations or other authority can persons against whom no charge has been preferred have a request of this nature imposed upon them; and whether this inquisition into the private affairs of citizens has been instituted by the Home Office as part of a plan to be extended elsewhere?
  Mr. FORSTER: Inquiry is still being made, and if it is found that the officer acted on his own responsibility as indicated by the question the desirability of his replacement will certainly arise.
  Mr. SHERWELL: Has any intimation been sent to the four gentlemen to whom this question refers?
  Mr. FORSTER: I cannot answer.
  Mr. HOGGE: If it is found to be this officer's fault, will he be promoted?
  Sir E. CARSON: Would it not be better not to condemn this man until the whole facts are known?
  Mr. FORSTER: I entirely agree with my right hon. and learned Friend, and that is why I am making inquiries before taking any further action.
  Mr. PRINGLE: But could not the representative of the War Office say now whether any authority has been given by the War Office itself?
  Mr. FORSTER: I think I can answer that question in the negative.
  Mr. PRINGLE: Then it must be the officer himself.

  CREMATION (WESTERN FRONT).
  Mr. BILLINGasked whether, having regard to the mortality on the Western front, he will take the advice of the highest scientific authority and consider the advisability on purely hygienic grounds, of cremation rather than burial of the men who have laid down their lives for their country?
  Mr. FORSTER: After consideration, it is not proposed to take any action with regard to cremation. I may mention that this question was fully considered by the French authorities, who decided against cremation.

  MOTOR CARS (UNFIT FOR SERVICE).
  Mr. BILLINGasked whether, in view of the disquieting statement that officers whose duty it is to condemn Government motor cars as unfit for service are buying in, or causing to be bought in at bargain prices, sound and expensive cars for their own private use, he will consider the advisability of having all Government property sold by public auction and will abolish the present system of private tender?
  Mr. FORSTER: I am not aware of the disquieting statement to which the hon. Member refers. If he will bring any specific instances to my notice, I will have them investigated at once.
  Mr. BILLING: If I do will he also consider the advisability of selling all Government property by public auction and not by private tender?
  Mr. FORSTER: I will.

  IRISH GUARDS (CATERHAM BARRACKS).
  Mr. KEATINGasked the Secretary of State for War if he is aware that a recent recruit from the extreme West of Ireland with an imperfect knowledge of the English language joined the Irish Guards, Caterham Barracks; that whilst being questioned on parade by Lieutenant Onslow he failed to understand, and innocently dropped into his native tongue; that the officer asked the sergeant for an explanation, and, on being told that the man was speaking Irish, ordered him to

  569
  be placed in the guardroom and subsequently sentenced him to seven days' confinement to barracks; that the case has aroused indignation amongst the Irish Guards; and will he take steps to transfer this officer to some other regiment?
  Mr. FORSTER: This man came to the Guards Depot as a recruit for the Irish Guards from the recruiting office at Edinburgh, and I do not know whether originally he belonged to the extreme West of Ireland. He was reported for being idle at his duties. On being questioned whether he had any excuse regarding the matters for which he was reported, he replied in Gaelic. He was subsequently heard to say in English vernacular that "he had pulled his company officer's leg by speaking in Gaelic," and he admitted telling his comrades this when he was questioned. He was charged with irregular conduct in the company orderly room in answering to the company officer in Gaelic language and afterwards boasting to his comrades of doing so. For this he was awarded three days' confinement to barracks. My hon. Friend will see that the facts are not as stated in the question. No action is contemplated.
  Mr. KEATING: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the information I have obtained is from a source equally reliable with the source from which he has obtained the information which he has given to the House, and is it not quite possible that the facts are not as the hon. Gentleman has stated them?
  Mr. DEVLIN: Will the hon. Gentleman send out a circular and ask if there is some sense of humour in the Army?

  FRIENDLY ALIENS.
  Sir E. CORNWALLasked the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware of the dissatisfaction in many parts of London at the presence of so large a number of friendly aliens of military age who are taking the position of men of British birth called to the Colours; and whether effective action to deal with this situation will at once be taken?
  Mr. SAMUEL: I would refer my hon. Friend to the reply given on Thursday last, on behalf of the Prime Minister, by the Secretary of State for the Colonies to the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy Burghs.

  LEATHERHEAD MILITARY HOSPITAL.
  Sir H. DALZIELasked the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that certain wards at the Leatherhead Military Hospital are in charge of a German doctor named Reichwald; whether, owing to the objection of several soldier patients to being put under a German doctor, he is now always spoken of as Doctor Richie; and whether his father, who was agent for Krupps in England, is now interned?
  Mr. FORSTER: This hospital is not a military, but a V.A.D. hospital. The visiting staff of such hospitals are appointed locally and not by the War Office. Dr. Reichwald is a British subject by birth, and is, I understand, known by his own name. His father is not interned.

  IRISH BATTALIONS.
  Sir J. LONSDALEasked whether, with reference to the announcement that Irish recruits will, as far as possible, be posted in the first instance to the Irish Regular battalions in preference to the Irish Service battalions which have been raised during the War, he will give an assurance that no recruits raised specifically for the battalions comprising the Ulster Division will be posted to Regular battalions not included in that Division?
  Mr. FORSTER: This is done as far as possible, but I cannot give the general assurance which the hon. Member requests. The hon. Member will realise the necessity for keeping up the Regular Irish battalions.
  Colonel J. CRAIG: May I ask whether a man who desires to enlist voluntarily and expresses a desire to join one of the units of the Ulster Division will be allowed to do so?
  Mr. FORSTER: As far as possible, but I am afraid that I cannot give a guarantee.
  Colonel CRAIG: Does the hon. Gentleman not see that if some arrangement of this sort is not made it will prejudice recruiting very much in Ulster?
  Mr. FORSTER: Yes; I think we may say that we are very fully alive to the difficulty, and I can assure my hon. and gallant Friend that I should only be too glad to give him the guarantee if I could.

  WOOL PURCHASES.
  Mr. ELLIS DAVIESasked the Financial Secretary to the War Office whether his attention has been called to the protest of the Welsh National Agricultural Council against the breach of faith on the part of the Government in departing from the bargain entered into with the farmers to pay 35 per cent. advance on the 1914 wool prices; and whether he will have an inquiry made into the matter?
  Mr. FORSTER: I have received a copy of the resolution passed by the Welsh Agricultural Council and have requested the council to submit the grounds on which their allegation is based. The central price list for home-grown wools was drawn up in July last by the Central Advisory Committee for Wool Purchase on the basis of the average prices ruling in June and July, 1914, with the addition of 35 per cent., and local prices have been fixed by local advisory committees on the basis of the Central price list, with the necessary modifications to adapt it to the particular local conditions. If the hon. Member can give me specific cases where the prices so fixed have not been observed, I will cause inquiries to be made.
  Mr. DAVIES: Is not the complaint more that the price paid for the wool now is 35 per cent. in excess of the price paid two years ago?
  Mr. FORSTER: I think that is the complaint. If my hon. Friend or the Welsh National Agricultural Council could give me one or two specific cases I could look into it, and I could then find out more definitely where the grievance is.

  FOOD SUPPLIES.

    POTATOES.
    Captain DONELANasked the Financial Secretary to the War Office the amount of potatoes shipped from Ireland by or for the Government during the present season?
    Mr. FORSTER: I am informed that 2,424 tons of potatoes have been shipped from Ireland by the War Department during the present season.
    Captain DONELAN: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that owing to the shortage all the potatoes grown in Ireland this year are required for home consumption?
    Mr. FORSTER: The whole potato question is engaging our very careful attention.

    PRODUCTION IN UNITED KINGDOM.
    Mr. PENNEFATHERasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture whether the steps taken by his Department since the outbreak of the War have resulted in any increase of food production in the United Kingdom; and, if so, what is the extent of such increase?
    Mr. ACLAND: There are no statistics which would enable the increase in the total quantity of food to be measured, but some indication may be obtained from the annual returns of crops and live stock. Thus the average of the two wheat crops of 1915 and 1916 in England and Wales was about 400,000 quarters mores than the crop of 1914, while the total number of cattle increased by 340,000, and the total number of sheep by 700,000 between June, 1914, and June, 1916. On the other hand, there has been a reduction by some 50,000 of cows and heifers and a reduction of about 300,000 in the number of pigs. The production of potatoes was also less both in 1915 and 1916 than in 1914. Generally, however, it may be said that the production of food in the United Kingdom has been well maintained in the face of very great difficulties, and within the conditions which were imposed by circumstances the Board believe that the steps they have taken have contributed to this result.

    CHOCOLATE MANUFACTURE (USE OF MILK).
    Sir PHILIP MAGNUSasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture whether he can give any in formation as to the extent to which milk is now used for various manufacturing purposes, especially in the manufacture of chocolate; whether he is aware that in the Severn Valley, where a large amount of butter and cheese was formerly made, the milk is now extensively bought by a firm of chocolate manufacturers, who daily collect it in motor trolleys, and thus lessen the supply for domestic purposes, preventing milk from being used not only in the making of cheese and butter, but in feeding calves and pigs on the residual whey and skimmed milk; and whether the Board propose to take any action to prevent this uneconomic use of milk?
    The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. Runciman): My hon. Friend has asked me to answer this

    573
    question. I am informed that the firm of manufacturers to whom the question alludes will this year follow their usual practice of suspending the use of fresh milk for manufacturing purposes in the months of December to February.
    Sir P. MAGNUS: Has the cost of milk increased owing to the use of milk for this purpose?
    Mr. RUNCIMAN: I cannot answer that question.
    Captain BATHURST: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the agents of chocolate firms have only recently commenced purchasing farmers' milk—which used formerly to go into the villages—at higher prices than the local purveyors could afford to pay?
    Mr. RUNCIMAN: I cannot say. The question refers to a particular firm, about which I made inquiry.

    EXPENDITURE ON LUXURIES.
    Mr. LYNCHasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether the Press Bureau will communicate to the Press of this country a message that, at a time when the poor are enduring privations and making great sacrifices, it is inexpedient to call attention to the luxuries of rich and privileged people, and that therefore all mention should be suppressed of the menus of official banquets or the presents given at fashionable weddings?
    Mr. SAMUEL: No, Sir. If there is unnecessary expenditure on luxuries, I think it is a good thing that the Press should- draw attention to it.
    Mr. BILLING: I will call attention to the subject on the Adjournment.

  CARE OF CHILDREN.
  Mr. ANDERSONasked the Financial Secretary to the War Office whether his attention has been drawn to the number of cases recently in which the children of soldiers have been killed whilst their mothers were at work; whether this matter has been the subject of comment by the Southwark coroner; whether the problem of mothers of young children being driven to wage-earning has been aggravated by the fact that the rise in food prices and the general rise in the
  574
  cost of living has reduced the purchasing value of the present scale of allowances,, pensions, and other payments; and whether he proposes to take any steps to make it possible financially for the mothers to remain at home with their children?
  Mr. FORSTER: No, Sir; I have no in formation to show that there is abnormal mortality from this cause.

  ARMY PAY OFFICE (YORK).
  Mr. BUTCHERasked the Financial Secretary to the War Office whether the-war bonus of 4s. a week is not yet being paid to the temporary civilian clerks in-the York Army Pay Office; and whether he will take immediate steps to set this right?
  Mr. FORSTER: The necessary instructions, which leave the General Officer Commanding to exercise discretion according to local circumstances, were issued more than a month ago, and the matter is now in the hands of the local authorities.
  Mr. BUTCHER: Will my hon. Friend alter and simplify these conditions so as to make the grant of this bonus a reality?
  Mr. FORSTER: I think my hon. and learned Friend knows that the question at issue is the local rate of wages in the case of temporarily employed clerks. It is a matter which has to be adjusted locally.
  Mr. BUTCHER: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that in the majority of cases, according to my understanding, this bonus never reaches the man at all?
  Mr. FORSTER: No, I am not aware of that fact.

  INCOME TAX (AGENCIES).
  Mr. STEWARTasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, in view of the fact that certain firms resident outside the United Kingdom, selling their goods through agencies in this country, often invoice their goods at such a high price to their representatives that no profit appears in their books on this side, although the transactions are really profitable, the Inland Revenue can see their way to assess such agencies for Income Tax upon a percentage of their turnover, in view of the fact that competing British

  575
  firms have to bear full Income Tax which their foreign competitors are able to evade?
  The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER (Mr. McKenna): I may remind my hon. Friend that Section 31 of the Finance (No, 2) Act, 1915, was introduced largely with the object of meeting the class of case he appears to have in mind and I may refer him more particularly to Sub-sections (4) and (5).
  Mr. BILLING: In view of the excess profits made throughout the whole of the country, will the right hon. Gentleman consider the advisability of making an inquiry into the whole question of excess profits?
  Mr. McKENNA: The Excess Profits Tax has no bearing on the question on the Paper.

  IMPORTS PROHIBITED.
  Sir J. WALTONasked whether, in order to conserve our financial resources, His Majesty's Government will prohibit all imports not required for the prosecution of the War and the national life?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: A large number of prohibitions of importation are already in operation. These have been imposed mainly with a view to saving tonnage, but I shall be happy to consider any definite suggestions for further restriction which the hon. Baronet may care to send me.
  Mr. HOUSTON: Is my right hon. Friend aware that nearly every ship that leaves the United States for this country leaves with empty space?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: I am not sure whether every vessel does, but a good many instances have come to my knowledge recently of that having been the case.
  Mr. HOUSTON: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there are at present twenty steamers lying at a certain French port waiting for discharge, and that they have been there for ever so long?

  GERMAN AND AUSTRIAN BANKS.
  Mr. BUTCHERasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether there is any reason for continuing the employment of the German managers and clerks who are
  576
  still employed at the Deutsche Bank, the Dresdner Bank, and the Disconto-Gesell-schaft Bank; and whether the time has come for taking the affairs of such banks wholly out of the control of the former managers and placing them under the complete control of Sir William Pleader?
  Mr. McKENNA: The employment of these persons will be discontinued at the earliest possible date; but for the practical reasons explained in the answer I gave to the hon. and learned Member on 24th October it is not possible to do so at once.
  Sir E. CARSON: Is it not a fact that these banks are advertising in America that they are still carrying on business in London?
  Mr. McKENNA: I have seen a copy of an advertisement from which it appears that the London branch is named amongst other branches of these banks. I can only assume, inasmuch as the London branches have been closed since August, 1914, that the advertisement is a mere repetition of an old advertisement.
  Sir H. DALZIEL: Can my right hon. Friend say whether we can have the advantage of seeing the correspondence which, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he has been carrying on with Lord North-cliffe?
  Mr. SPEAKER: That is another question which does not arise.
  Mr. BUTCHER: Will the right hon. Gentleman now take steps, seeing that the business has come to an end, to sell the business premises in London?
  Mr. McKENNA: I have already answered that question on a previous occasion.
  Mr. BUTCHER: What is the answer?
  Mr. BILLING: As the right hon. Gentleman has stated that these banks are being wound up in the interests of British creditors, will he publish the names of the British creditors?
  Mr. McKENNA: I do not know whether the Report which the Comptroller is shortly about to make and which will be laid before the House will contain the names of the creditors, but, if it does, of course the information will be available.
  Mr. BILLING: Will the right hon. Gentleman see that it does?
  Mr. McKENNA: It depends upon the number of creditors. It may be a very voluminous document.
  Mr. BUTCHER: Why cannot these business premises be sold?
  Mr. McKENNA: If the hon. and learned Gentleman will put down a question, I will give him the same answer again.
  Mr. BUTCHERasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will lay upon the Table of the House a copy of the new licence granted or about to be granted to the Deutsche Bank?
  Mr. McKENNA: Yes, Sir.
  Mr. BUTCHERasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether the winding-up of the affairs of the two Austrian banks in London, namely, the Anglo-Austrian Bank and the Oesterreichische Laender Bank, has yet been completed; if not, what still remains to be done; what is the amount of the outstanding liabilities of each of these banks to creditors other than alien enemy creditors; and whether, so soon as these liabilities have been paid or provided for, he will revoke the licences granted to them?
  Mr. McKENNA: The answer to the first part of the question is in the negative. The work still to be done by these banks is of the same character as that which remains to be done in connection with the winding-up of the Deutsche Bank, the nature of which was explained in the statement circulated by me on the 26th October. The Anglo-Austrian Bank has discharged all its liabilities to British, Allied, and neutral creditors. The Oesterreichische Laenderbank, however, is still indebted to British, Allied, and neutral creditors to a considerable amount. Neither bank has discharged its liabilities to the Bank of England. The answer to the last part of the question is in the affirmative.
  Mr. BILLING: Is it the intention of the Government to let these banks trade in this country after the War?
  Mr. McKENNA: Every step is being taken to close all connection between these banks and their British customers. More than that at present obviously I cannot do.
  Mr. RUPERT GWYNNEasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, in view of the close relations and agreements existing before and since the out-
  578
  break of war between the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation and the Deutsch-Asiatische Bank, and the prejudicial effect of the same upon British interests and British prestige in the Par East, His Majesty's Government will now take steps, by legislation or otherwise, to prevent German influence being similarly exercised in future, and by requiring, inter alia, that the direction and control of all British banks or financial syndicates engaged in the business of public loans for foreign countries shall be vested exclusively in British subjects, native-born?
  Mr. McKENNA: No evidence has come before me that the relations which have existed between the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation and the Deutsch-Asiatische Bank have had a prejudicial effect either upon British interests or upon British prestige in the Far East, or that German influence has had an opportunity in this connection of being exercised to the prejudice of British interests. The service of Chinese Government Loans by the British Bank is beneficial to the bank and the British bondholder, and any alteration of the arrangements now in force would probably benefit German and injure British interests. I am not, as at present advised, prepared to introduce legislation of the character suggested in the latter part of the question, the most probable effect of which would be to transfer a large part of the business in question to foreign institutions.
  Mr. GWYNNE: Are we to take it that the right hon. Gentleman is going still to encourage alien enemies trading with these banks?
  Mr. MCKENNA: If the hon. Gentleman will read my reply and examine it carefully, he will find it a complete answer to his question.
  Major HUNTasked (1) the Chancellor of the Exchequer of what value to the British Empire are the German and other enemy banks; and to what extent is it necessary to continue such banks other than in a liquidation which is intended to end the existence of the businesses; and (2) the President of the Board of Trade what part of the businesses now carried on by the German and other enemy banks could not be carried on if and when the businesses were put formally into liquidation?
  Mr. McKENNA: The German banks have been closed for business since the outbreak of war. The work necessary for clearing up the situation which arose on the closing of the banks consisted in the collection of outstanding debts, the payment of liabilities to non-enemy creditors, the handing over of securities to non-enemy owners, and the scheduling of enemy securities for vesting in the Public Trustee. Any measures short of these would leave the connection between the German banks and their customers unbroken. It is not sufficient to bring the immediate business of the banks to an end—that was done in August, 1914: it is necessary also to sever the link between them and their British customers. A full Report by the Controller is now being prepared and will shortly be laid before the House. I would add that what has been done in the case of these banks amounts to liquidation, and no business is being carried on by them which would be stopped if they were put formally into liquidation.
  Mr. PRINGLE: Does that answer cover all the information given in the letter to Lord Northcliffe, which the right hon. Gentleman refused permission to publish?
  Mr. McKENNA: I do not know to what letter the hon. Gentleman refers.
  Mr. PRINGLE: The lettter referred to in the "Times."
  Mr. BILLING: Will the right hon. Gentleman say whether it will be laid on the Table of the House?
  Mr. SPEAKERThe hon. Member is abusing his privilege of asking supplementary questions.

  NATIONAL SCHOOL TEACHERS (IRELAND).
  Mr. HUGH LAWasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is now prepared to grant an increase of war bonus to the Irish national school teachers and to place the women teachers in this respect upon an equality with the men; and whether he is further prepared to extend such bonus to meet the case of retired teachers?
  Mr. McKENNA: After consultation with my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary I find that the position of the women teachers in Ireland is such as to justify the payment
  580
  to them of war bonus at the same rates as have already been announced in the case of the men teachers. As regards the last part of the question, I can add nothing to my reply to the hon. Member for South Kilkenny on 26th October.

  DISCHARGED SERVICE MEN (LAND SETTLEMENT).
  Mr. WILLIAM YOUNGasked the Secretary for Scotland (1) what practical steps, apart from the Small Holdings Colonies Act, the Scottish Office has taken to deal with the settlement on the land of discharged Service men who are desirous of taking up rural life after the War; and (2) whether the Scottish Board of Agriculture has developed in detail any proposal for the effective rural colonisation of Scotland after the War; and will he say what sum of money has the Board of Agriculture for Scotland now available for the purposes of establishing small holdings under the Small Landholders Act of 1911?
  Mr. TENNANT: The matters referred to in both questions are receiving my attention in consultation with the Board of Agriculture for Scotland, but I am not in a position now to make any definite statement. After meeting claims maturing during the current financial year the Board should have an approximate balance of £200,000 available for land settlement and other purposes.
  Mr. HOGGE: Can my right hon. Friend say when he will be able to give the Scottish Members the return with regard to the Duke of Sutherland's offer of land?
  Mr. TENNANT: I hoped we would be able to lay it before now, but its preparation has taken some time, and it is still in the hands of the printers.
  Mr. RAFFAN: Has the right hon. Gentleman obtained any estimate of the number of men who desire to settle on the land after the War is over?
  Mr. TENNANT: No; if my hon. Friend can give me an estimate based on any intelligible principle I should be only too delighted.
  Mr. RAFFAN: Is it not the fact that inquiries have been made through commanding officers among the men at the front already, and are not those figures available?
  Mr. TENNANT: I do not know whether they are available, nor do I know whether they are reliable, but I will consult with the officers.
  Mr. YOUNG: Will the right hon. Gentleman be able to make a statement soon?
  Mr. TENNANT: I hope to be able to make a statement in due time.
  Mr. OUTHWAITE: Has the right hon. Gentleman received a resolution passed at a Glasgow Conference demanding the taxation of land values, and does the right hon. Gentleman propose to take any notice of that suggestion?
  Mr. TENNANT: I cannot really say whether I have or have not.

  "CONSCRIPTION OF WEALTH."
  Mr. LYNCHasked the Prime Minister whether, in view of the possible prolongation for a long period of the financial strain, he will consider the advisability of legislation tending to what is known as conscription of wealth in this country?
  Mr. BONAR LAW: I have been asked to give the reply of my right hon. Friend. I have already had occasion to point out in reply to a similar question that considerable steps have already been taken in this direction, since the outbreak of war, by means of heavy increases in direct taxation. For the present, I am unable to anticipate what further financial measures it may be necessary to adopt during the War.

  QUESTIONS TO MINISTERS.
  Mr. FELLasked the Prime Minister if his attention has been called to the increase in the number of starred questions put every day to Ministers, exceeding 200 sometimes; and, seeing that certain Members are repeatedly putting down the full number of eight questions each day, will he consider the suggestion of limiting the number of questions to two or three for each Member?
  Sir STEPHEN COLLINSasked the Prime Minister whether, notwithstanding the extension of time given for questions, a large number from day to day cannot be replied to, and the number of questions is still increasing, he will consider the advisability of recommending an alteration
  582
  of the Standing Orders, so as to allow, say, but three questions per day to each Member?
  Mr. BONAR LAW: I am, as I have several times stated to the House, fully aware of the labour thrown upon Ministers and their Departments by the large number of questions addressed to them, but I doubt if the suggestion contained in these questions would receive general support and I hope that the evil will be remedied by the patriotism and good sense of hon. Members.
  Mr. PRINGLE: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that if his suggestion had been adopted it would not have saved twenty questions to-day?
  Mr. FELL: Is there no remedy which can be suggested to enable more questions to be directed to Ministers personally?
  Mr. BONAR LAW: It is obviously a matter for the consideration of the House of Commons rather than the Government. What we wish is to avoid giving extra trouble to the Departments much more than to Ministers. But I can do nothing until the general sense of the House takes that view.
  Sir J. D. REES: Will the right hon. Gentleman take the general sense of the House as soon as possible?

  "STRENGTH OF BRITAIN" MOVEMENT.
  Mr. BILLINGasked the Prime Minister whether he has received an appeal issued by the Strength of Britain Movement, signed by the representative brainpower of the nation, demanding the abolition of strong drink for the duration of the War; and, if so, will he say what action he proposes to take?
  Mr. BONAR LAW: The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative. With regard to the second part, the Government, as at present advised, are not prepared to adopt this suggestion.
  Mr. BILLING: Will the right hon. Gentleman see fit to advise the Strength of Britain Movement to discourage the expenditure of the sum of £50,000 in advertising a thing of which the Government disapproves?
  Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member must give notice of that question.

  SWISS SUBJECT.
  Captain BENNETT - GOLDNEYasked the Home Secretary if the attention of the authority dealing with such questions has been called to a person named Posen, of German origin, who until a few days ago has been residing at the "Albany," Piccadilly, and has now moved to a hotel in the West End; whether the authorities are aware that this person has now adopted the name of Post instead of Posen, and that he has been in the habit of using a private motor car, the chauffeur of which is also a German who, before the War, was in the habit of accompanying Posen on his frequent visits to Germany; and whether, in the circumstances, as it is reported that Posen is trading as a British subject, he will cause inquiries to be made about both of these persons of German origin?
  Mr. SAMUEL: I am informed that Mr. Post, formerly Posen, was a Swiss subject who became a naturalised British subject in 1898. His chauffeur, an Alsatian, fought for France from the beginning of the War till November, 1915, when he was invalided out of the Army, and returned to his employment with Mr. Post. He is a French citizen.

  INTERNED GERMANS (REPATRIATION).
  Sir J. LONSDALEasked the Home Secretary how many German civilians now interned in this country will be repatriated under the arrangement with the German Government for the exchange of civilian prisoners over forty-five years of age; how many have elected to remain in this country; and if those who refuse repatriation will be kept in internment?
  Mr. SAMUEL: It is estimated that the number of interned German civilians over forty-five who wish to be repatriated will prove to be about 2,400; and the number of those who do not about 1,800. Some of these may be repatriated nevertheless, and the remainder will be kept in internment.
  Mr. R. McNEILL: Are steps going to be taken to prevent these people who are being repatriated now from coming back after the War?
  Mr. SAMUEL: That does not arise out of this question.
  Colonel YATE: How many prisoners are we to receive from Germany in exchange for these 2,000?
  Mr. SAMUEL: That question should be addressed to my hon. Friend the Treasurer of the Household.

  SHOPS (EARLIER CLOSING ORDER).
  Mr. JOWETTasked the Home Secretary whether he has received a request from the United Kingdom Association of Retail Newsagents to receive a deputation on the subject of the Early Closing Order for Shops; and, if so, having regard to the representative character of the body referred to, will he grant their request?
  Mr. SAMUEL: I received such an application from the association before the Order was made. They asked that the hour might be fixed at eight instead of seven and that the sale of newspapers might be brought within the operation of the Order. The first part of their request was met by the amending Order of 27th October, but it would not have been desirable, especially in present circumstances, to prevent the sale of newspapers after eight o'clock. No further request for a deputation has been made, and as at present advised I hardly think any useful purpose would be served by my receiving one.
  Mr. THOMASasked the Home Secretary whether, hitherto, the employés on the underground railways were able to purchase during working hours from their mess-rooms such things as cigarettes, tobacco, soap, and chocolate, but that owing to the Early Closing Order the sale of these goods is now prohibited after eight p.m.; in view of the fact that these articles were only supplied to members of the staff, whether it was his intention to apply the Early Closing Order in such a case; and whether he can see his way to allow the former practice to continue?
  Mr. SAMUEL: I have made inquiry as to the conditions under which these mess-rooms are carried on, and understand that they are provided for giving the employés facilities for meals during the intervals allowed for the purpose. In the circumstances, I think the sales would be exempted from the Order.

  COCAINE SUPPLIES COMMITTEE.
  Mr. RAFFANasked the Home Secretary whether he can now state the composition of the Committee which it is proposed to set up to consider whether supplies of cocaine are to continue to be available for dental purposes and the proposed terms of reference to the Committee?
  Mr. SAMUEL: Yes, Sir. The members will be:

  The Eight Hon. Charles Hobhouse, M.P., who I am glad to say has consented to act as chairman;

  Mr. Stanley Baldwin, M.P.;

  Professor Bayliss;

  Mr. James O'Grady, M.P.; and

  His Honour Judge Ruegg.

  The terms of reference to the Committee will be "to consider the authorisations granted for the use of cocaine in dentistry and to advise whether or not they should be continued or modified, and if continued in what cases and with what conditions."
  Mr. RAFFAN: Is it quite clear that under the terms of reference inquiry can be made as to whether the use of cocaine should-be continued to registered dentists as well as to unregistered practitioners in dentistry?
  Mr. SAMUEL: Yes, Sir.
  Mr. HOGGE: Will the use of cocaine by unregistered dentists continue until this Committee has reported?
  Mr. SAMUEL: Yes, Sir.

  MUNITIONS.

    T.N.T. POISONING.
    Colonel Lord HENRY CAVENDISH-BENTINCKasked the Home Secretary how many workers in the United Kingdom have, in the last six months, died from T.N.T. poisoning, and how many of these have died from inhaling poisonous fumes?
    The UNDER-SECRETARY Of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. Brace): The number of deaths for the six months ending 31st October is forty-one. It is impossible to say how many of these were caused by inhalation of fumes; there is now reason to think that absorption through the skin is the chief danger; and there may be absorption of poison by both channels in the same case.
    Lord H. CAVENDISH-BENTINCKasked the Home Secretary whether his attention has been called to the evidence given by the staff superintendent of the works at the inquest on Emily Winifred Brannon, who died from T.N.T. poisoning in a North Midland city, to the effect that the atmosphere in the place in which she worked was charged with fumes which it was undesirable to inhale; whether he has considered the probability that an adequate system of exhaust ventilation has not yet been installed; and whether he proposes to take any action in the matter?
    The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of MUNITIONS (Dr. Addison): A system of ventilation designed to exhaust the fumes from the point of origin has already been installed in the factory, and is said to be working satisfactorily. Also a system of mechanical ventilation is being installed which will effect ten complete changes of atmosphere per hour. In connection with this matter, a strong Committee was appointed a short time since by the Ministry, after consultation with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department, to examine the problems arising out of T.N.T. poisoning both from the mechanical and medical points of views and to make recommendations to the Ministry. Much useful work has already been done by this Committee, and the recommendations so far made have been adopted by the Ministry and are being put into effect. The Noble Lord will recognise that many of the problems which arise are entirely new, and in some cases difficult of scientific investigation. He may rest assured that such steps as may be found to be necessary will be taken without hesitation.
    Colonel LOCKWOOD: Is it a Departmental Committee?
    Dr. ADDISON: Two members are in the Department, but most are experts from outside.

  PEACE PROPOSALS.
  Mr. DAVID MASONasked the Prime Minister whether he will give a day for the discussion of the Motion regarding the termination of the War and the proposals of the Imperial German Chancellor, standing in the name of the Member for Coventry—["To move, that, in the opinion of this House, and in view of the repeated statements of the Imperial

  587
  German Chancellor that Germany has been, and is, prepared to discuss the termination of the War, a Commission should be appointed for the purpose of carrying out that object"]?
  Mr. BONAR LAW: I am unaware that the German Chancellor has proposed any terms of peace that are not based on a recognition of German victory, and I am convinced that the overwhelming majority of the House agree with me that no useful purpose would be served by such a discussion at the present time.
  Mr. MASON: I beg to give notice that I hope to raise this question to-morrow evening on the Adjournment.

  FOOD PRICES.
  Mr. HEWINSasked the Prime Minister whether he will give an early day for the discussion of the Motion standing in the name of the hon. Member for Hereford and other hon. Members?—
  To move, "That, in the opinion of this House, it is the duty of the Government to adopt further methods of organisation to increase and conserve the national food supply, and so diminish the risk of shortage and serious increase in prices in the event of the War being prolonged."
  Mr. BONAR LAW: I will deal with this when I state the business of the House.

  SECRET SESSION.
  Mr. BILLINGasked the Prime Minister whether he will arrange for the holding of a Secret Session of this House so as to give him an opportunity of satisfying Members that there is no justification for the belief that German influence operates in the government of this country?
  Mr. BONAR LAW: I hope that it is not necessary to hold a Secret Session in order to convince the House that the Government are not traitors to their country.
  Mr. LYNCH: Is there not a great advantage occasionally in a Secret Session, because one can speak with more candour than usual?
  Sir H. DALZIELasked the Prime Minister the number of Members who
  588
  should signify their desire for a Secret Session before he will give his consent to the proposal?
  Mr. BONAR LAW: I am considering the desirability of holding a Secret Session and am in communication with the hon. Members interested.
  Colonel CRAIG: Will the small knot of pro-Germans be excluded?

  MRS. SCARLETT SYNGE.
  Major NEWMANasked the Treasurer of the Household whether he has had any report from or interview with the Hon. Mrs. Scarlett Synge, D.P.H., who has recently arrived in this country from a tour of inspection of the British prisoner of war camps in Germany; has he any knowledge of why the lady was granted such special facilities by the German Foreign Office; and, if he has read it, is her report, which has been sent to every Member of this House and which describes the condition of comfort prevailing at Wittenberg and other camps, borne out by official information, at his disposal?
  Mr. HOPE: The answer to parts one and two of the question is in the negative. I am informed that the report in question refers to the conditions of the camps nearly a year ago, and at least, as regards Wittenberg, it is not borne out by official information.
  Mr. OUTHWAITE: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that this lady was a member of the Medical Mission to Servia, that she stayed with her Servian patients until the town was captured and everyone else had fled, and that, in consequence, the German Government gave her permission to inspect the camps?
  Mr. HOPE: I have heard that stated, but I have no confirmation of it.

  ENEMY BUSINESSES.
  Mr. R. MCNEILLasked the President of the Board of Trade whether his attention has been called to the list of companies and firms which have been gazetted by the Government of the Commonwealth of Australia as enemy companies and firms; whether he is aware

  589
  that the list includes the following companies and firms, namely: S. Albrecht and Company, Australian Metal Company, Australian Thermit Company, Julius Blau and Sons, August Blumenthal, A. Berwin and Company, Bosch Magneto Company, Bohler Brothers and Company, Colonial Casing Company, Continental Caoutchouc and Gutta Percha Rubber Company, Export and Import Company, Falk, Stadelmann, and Company, Foreign Agency, German Australia Steamship Company (Deutsche-Australische Damp-schiffe Gesellschaft), Thomas Goldschmidt, Gemeinhardt Hunsdorfer and Company, Grice, Grice, and Son, Hamburger and Company, Hammar and Company, G. Hardt and Company, Kirchner and Company, W. B. Ledeboer and Company, Lehmann and Company, Henry R. Merton and Company, Merton Metallurgical Company, Norddeutscher Lloyd, Polack Tyre and Rubber Company, Poldi Steel Works, Reiss and Company, Conrad William Schmidt (F. A. Glaeser), Eugen Schroder, Siemens Brothers Dynamo Works, Standard Woollen Company, Steffens and Noelle, Sterling Telephone and Electric Company, Stevedoring and Shipping Company, Tudor Accumulator Company, Union Electric Company, Union Electric Company of Australia, Usines Electrochimiques the Hafslund, Williams Foster and Company and Pascoe Grenfell and Sons, Welsbach Light Company of Australia, and A. Wulfing and Company; whether any and, if so, which of these companies and firms carry on business in this country through branches or agencies; whether any of them have contracts with the Government; and whether the Government intend to continue doing business with companies or firms declared to be enemies in Australia, or to permit them to continue trading in the United Kingdom?
  The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. Pretyman): I am sending the hon. Member a list of the companies and firms referred to in his question which were known to have been carrying on business in this country either directly or through branches when the Trading With the Enemy (Amendment) Act, 1916, was passed. All those cases which are within the provisions of Section 1 of the Act have been dealt with either by requiring the business to be wound up or by vesting the enemy interest in the Public Trustee for sale to British subjects. I am having inquiries made to ascertain the
  590
  position of any of the remaining firms which may be carrying on business in this country.
  Sir E. CARSON: Can a company or firm be an enemy in a Colony and a friend here?
  Mr. PRETYMAN: I suppose it may depend to some extent upon the conditions under which the persons were carrying on the business and upon the ownership in the two parts of the Empire.
  Mr. McNEILL: Will the Government publish the list of the firms which have been declared enemies in any of His Majesty's self-governing Dominions, in order that people in this country may avoid trading with them?
  Mr. PRETYMAN: I will consider that.
  Colonel GRETTONasked the President of the Board of Trade how many enemy companies and businesses ordered to be wound up have in fact been wound up to date; how many such companies and businesses remain to be wound up; and how many controllers are employed under the Board of Trade in winding-up enemy businesses.
  Mr. PRETYMAN: In approximately half of the 362 cases in which orders have been made requiring enemy businesses to be wound up the winding-up is complete apart from the collection of some outstanding book debts. One hundred and seventy-six controllers are employed in the winding-up.

  HONG KONG AND SHANGHAI BANKING CORPORATION.
  Mr. GWYNNEasked the President of the Board of Trade whether any definite undertaking has been required of, or given by, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation that for the future no Germans, whether native-born or naturalised, shall be appointed directors of the corporation in Hong Kong; whether any naturalised Germans are still members of its advisory committee in London; and, if so, what are their names?
  Mr. PRETYMAN: No such undertaking has been required of or given by the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. One of the members of the London Committee of the bank was a naturalised British subject of German origin, but he has resigned.
  Mr. GWYNNE: When?
  Mr. PRETYMAN: 2nd November.
  Mr. GWYNNE: This year?
  Mr. PRETYMAN: Yes.

  H. R. MERTON AND COMPANY, LIMITED.
  Mr. GWYNNEasked the President of the Board of Trade whether the shares of H. R. Merton and Company, Limited, held by the Metal-Gesellschaft at the commencement of the War have since been acquired by H. R. Merton and Company; and if a certain interest in these shares is now held by German-born subjects in this country, so that the German influence has only been partly eliminated?
  Mr. PRETYMAN: I am informed that out of the total number of 29,029 shares of Henry E. Merton and Company, Limited, acquired from the Metal-Gesellschaft and the Metallbank by British subjects 2,675 shares were acquired by six naturalised British subjects of German origin. One of these shareholders was naturalised in 1907 and the others before 1903. In addition to the above, 1,501 shares were purchased by naturalised British subjects subsequent to the exchange.
  Mr. GWYNNE: Is my hon. Friend going to put an end to this farce of transferring shares from one German to another?
  Sir E. CARSON: Is not the result that the shares are really with Merton's still?
  Mr. PRETYMAN: With Mertons?—yes, certainly.

  SALE OF FOODSTUFFS.
  Sir J. WALTONasked whether, with a view to reduce prices and to prevent waste, His Majesty's Government will limit and regulate the sale of foodstuffs?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: I hope to make a statement to-morrow regarding the measures which it is proposed to adopt.
  Mr. W. THORNE: Is the right hon. Gentleman not aware that in many of the poorest districts the purchase of food is regulated by the economic conditions of the people?
  Mr. HOUSTON: Will the right hon. Gentleman impress upon the Admiralty, the Ministry of Munitions and our Allies the absolute necessity of less wasteful use of British ships and thereby increase the supply of food and decrease the price?
  Mr. SPEAKER: That is in the nature of a speech.

  COAL FREIGHTS (WALES AND IRELAND).
  Mr. LUNDONasked the President of the Board of Trade what was the estimated cost of shipping in the case of coal taken from Wales to Ireland in the years 1914, 1915, and 1916?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: I am unable to furnish an estimate of the nature suggested by the hon. Gentleman, but some indication of the increased cost is afforded by the rates of freight on coal from South Wales to Dublin at the beginning of August in the years in question, which were as follows:

  August, 1914

  …

  …

  4s. 3d.

  August, 1915

  …

  …

  6s. 6d.

  August, 1916

  …

  …

  13s. 6d.

  RABBIT SHIPMENTS.
  Mr. W. THORNEasked the President of the Board of Trade the reason for shipping 6,000 tons of rabbits from Australia to arrive here in April, May, and June when there is practically no trade whatever for them, when at the same time the New Zealand refrigerators were full of sheep and lambs awaiting shipment; and whether he will state the number of sheep and lambs in the refrigerators of New Zealand on 1st January, 1st February, 1st March, and 1st April of this year, respectively?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: I have always been anxious to encourage the trade in frozen rabbits, as they constitute an acceptable food for the poorer classes of the population of the United Kingdom. The possibility of diverting Australian ships to New Zealand is dependent upon a variety of circumstances, all of which have to be taken into consideration. I am not able to give the exact statistics which my hon. Friend desires, but the following figures,

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  showing the mutton and lamb in store in New Zealand, may be sufficient for his purpose, namely:—

  Tons.

  On 8th January, 1916

  …

  14,143

  On 29th January, 1916

  …

  22,801

  On 26th February, 1916

  …

  33,030

  On 1st April, 1916

  …

  45,814

  I am glad to be able to inform my hon. Friend that this accumulation of old stocks has since been cleared away.
  Mr. RAFFAN: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether fresh rabbits would not be as good as frozen rabbits, and, if so, whether he will remove the restrictions imposed by the Game Laws?

  CIVIL LIBERTIES CONFERENCE, CARDIFF.

    MOTION FOR ADJOURNMENT.
    Colonel CRAIG: On a point of Order. Mr. Speaker, may I ask whether you can suggest the best way in which this House can express its thanks to the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil (Mr. Stanton) for breaking up pro-German meetings?
    Mr. THOMAS(by Private Notice) asked the Home Secretary whether he proposed to take any action in consequence of the breaking up of a conference in Cardiff to discuss civil liberties, and to take such steps as would prevent a repetition of incitement to riot through the public Press and on the platform, and thus preserve the right to meet in public to discuss questions of national importance?
    Major-General Sir IVOR HERBERT(by Private Notice) asked the Home Secretary whether he received a telegram sent to the Home Office after a meeting of citizens held at Cardiff on Friday evening last warning him of the certainty of serious disturbance if the advertised meeting of the so-called Council of Civil Liberties were held on the following day, and whether he would state his reasons for disregarding that and previous warnings, and for failing to prohibit a meeting calculated to offend public feeling and provoke the breach of the peace that actually occurred?
    Mr. STANTON: I was unaware that any question would arise. I am yet young and strange to the procedure of the House. I looked at the Order Paper and did not notice anything there. However, expecting that someone who knew more than I
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    do so far as the games are concerned here, would raise this question, I think I am entitled to a little privilege, and I would like to ask you, Mr. Speaker, the House, and whoever is responsible for these things—whatever has happened, whatever has gone wrong—whether you are also aware of what has appeared in the Press that they threaten us in Merthyr with another of their pro-German meetings, and whether you are aware that we will not tolerate it, whatever the consequences? Also whether you are aware that whilst we were friends with some of them in the old movement we are not going to be hounded out of what we believe to be our rights as Britishers by a crowd of pro-Germans, who, if they come to Merthyr, will be dealt with whether you deal with them or no?
    Mr. SPEAKER: I was not aware of any of these things.
    Mr. SAMUEL: On Friday last I received a letter from the Chief Constable of Cardiff relating to the conference proposed to be held on Saturday, the 11th instant, in which he wrote that he did not state that he had reason to apprehend that the holding of the conference would give rise to grave disorder and thereby cause undue demands to be made upon the police; a patriotic demonstration would be held in Cathays Park simultaneously with the conference, but he was taking measures to prevent any clashing of the different parties.
    In the local Press on Wednesday a letter had appeared from the gentleman who was organising that demonstration disclaiming all intention of attempting to break up the conference, and saying that they intended to rely wholly upon a legal and constitutional method of conducting their protests to the end. He had written in similar terms to the chief constable.
    On Friday I received a telegram from the chief constable saying that information had reached him that morning that the dimensions and probable temper of the counter-demonstration at Cathays Park simultaneous with the conference would be such that he apprehended they would give rise to grave disorder and would thereby cause undue demands to be made upon the police. He recommended an Order under the Defence of the Realm Regulation 9a, prohibiting the holding of the conference at Cory Hall.

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    On Saturday morning I received the telegram to which the hon. Baronet's question refers sent on behalf of a meeting over which he had presided. The conference was to be an indoor meeting; it had been organised some weeks in advance, was to be presided over by the president of the South Wales Miners' Federation, and attended by two hon. Members of this House. Its underlying purpose, in my opinion, was such as would undoubtedly give offence to the great majority of the population of Cardiff, as it would, I believe, to the people of any other locality in this country, but its objects were not in themselves illegal.
    It has been repeatedly stated that the Government does not propose to use the powers of the Defence of the Realm Acts to interfere, so far as it can be avoided, with the expression of opinion on matters of policy. Even if some disorder results when a small minority places itself in open opposition to the sentiments of the nation at large, that is preferable, so long as the disorder is not of a grave character, to the minority being able to assert that the Government uses its powers to suppress meetings by force of law and to prevent views attacking the Government's policy from being expressed. On a careful review of all the considerations, on the one side and on the other, I thought it inadvisable to prohibit the holding of the conference.
    In answer to the hon. Member for Derby, I may say that the police at Cardiff are not under my direct control. From the reports sent to me by the chief constable, I gather that they used their utmost endeavours to secure order in the circumstances.
    Mr. THOMAS,Member for the Borough of Derby, rose in his place, and asked leave to move the Adjournment of the House for the purpose of discussing a definite matter of urgent public importance, namely, "the circumstances under which a conference was broken up in Cardiff last Saturday, and the failure of the Home Office to give satisfactory assurances to protect the right of citizens to meet to discuss questions of national importance," and the pleasure of the House having been signified, the Motion stood over, under Standing Order No. 10, until a quarter-past eight o'clock this evening.
    Mr. THOMAS: Is the Home Secretary aware that the organisers of this conference have announced their intention to hold a similar conference at Merthyr Tydvil?
    Mr. SPEAKER: That question can be raised this evening.

  REGISTRATION OF BUSINESS NAMES BILL.
  Mr. STUART-WORTLEY(by Private Notice) asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade whether he proposes, at an early date, to proceed with the Committee stage of the Registration of Business Names Bill, and whether he has any statement to make to the House about it?
  Mr. PRETYMAN: I propose to ask the House to adopt the suggestion made by my right hon. Friend on the Second Reading of the Bill that there should be a pro forma Committee stage for the purpose of inserting the Government Amendments; if the Committee agrees to that course that the Bill should then be reported and recommitted to a. Committee of the Whole House. This will not advance the Bill, but enable it to be reprinted and will greatly facilitate the Committee stage, whilst leaving every point still open for discussion in Committee. If the House is pleased to assent to this course being taken I hope we may take the Committee stage of the reprinted Bill on Thursday.
  Mr. LOUGH: Are we to understand that the Government propose to allow a Second Reading Debate on the proposal to recommit the Bill?
  Mr. PRETYMAN: It is entirely in the hands of the House. The pro forma stage can be taken by leave of the House. There will be no discussion upon that, but I understand that when the Bill is recommitted every item in the Bill will be open for discussion in the ordinary way.
  Mr. LOUGH: Having regard to the importance of the Amendments, does the hon. Gentleman not think it fair that there should be time for a short discussion?
  Mr. BONAR LAW: The proposal made by my hon. Friend (Mr. Pretyman) is for the convenience of the House. The necessary discussion can take place on subsequent stages.

  SUPPRESSION OF NEWSPAPER, SKIBBEREEN.
  Mr. DEVLIN(by Private Notice) asked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether it is a fact that the "Southern Star" newspaper, Skibbereen, county Cork, was suppressed yesterday, and the plant seized; what was the reason for this action on the part of the authorities; and whether, in view of the indignation which this suppression has created, the paper will be permitted to at once resume publication?
  The CHIEF SECRETARY for IRELAND (Mr. Duke): The seizure in question was made by the competent military authority because of the publication in the paper of statements intended, and likely to cause, disaffection. Whether and when the paper is to resume publication must depend upon the degree of gravity of the offence and the likelihood of its recurrence.
  Mr. DILLON: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether it is a fact that the paper was suppressed by Sir John Maxwell because it supported the Irish party?
  Mr. DUKE: I am quite satisfied that that is not the case. I have not a copy of the paper here, but I have seen the paper, and the matter in respect of which it was suppressed had nothing to do with the support of any party. They were direct incitements to disloyalty.
  Mr. DEVLIN: If the right hon. Gentleman suppresses a paper, is he not obliged to state in the House the specific grounds upon which he has suppressed it?
  Mr. DUKE: I got notice of this question after mid-day to-day, and I telegraphed to Ireland in regard to it. I have not got a copy of the paper, but I have seen it, and I shall not hesitate to state the grounds when the opportunity arises.
  Mr. DEVLIN: When an extraordinary course of this character is taken, is it not incumbent upon those who take that course to communicate the facts to the right hon. Gentleman as the representative of the Government in this House?
  Mr. DUKE: If the hon. Gentleman will raise the question he will find that this matter was dealt with in a perfectly regular way.
  Captain DONELAN: Can the right hon. Gentleman say on whose report this action was taken?
  Mr. DUKE: I cannot give the details of this matter without having the necessary
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  papers and documents before me. I do-not want to make any inaccurate statement. I have no doubt that an opportunity will be found for a full statement of the matter.

ORDERS OF THE DAY.

  BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
  Mr. STUART-WORTLEY: May I ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies what is the business for to-morrow and Thursday?
  Mr. BONAR LAW: To-morrow opportunity will be given for a discussion of Food Prices on the Motion standing in the name of the hon. Member for Hereford (Mr. Hewins), and others.
  On Thursday, we shall take the Committee stage of the Registration of Business Names Bill, and the Report stage of the Constabulary and Police (Ireland) Bill.
  Sir E. CARSON: Can the right hon. Gentleman give any indication when we are to discuss the question of man-power?
  Mr. BONAR LAW: No, I cannot name any specific date for that purpose yet.
  Sir E. CARSON: Any approximate date.?
  Mr. BONAR LAW: Nothing more. I hope it will be at an early date.

BOARD OF PENSIONS BILL.
The PAYMASTER-GENERAL (Mr. A. Henderson): I beg to move, "That leave be given to introduce a Bill for establishing a Board of Pensions, and for purposes connected therewith."
The Bill which I ask leave to introduce aims at the consolidation of pensions administration and the simplification of procedure under a new Government Department, namely, the Board of Pensions. This Bill transfers the work of four Departments in so far as it relates to disability pensions paid from public funds. These Departments are: War Office, so far as officers' disability pensions are concerned, the work which goes on at the Tate Gallery; the work done in connection with the Chelsea Commissioners; the work of the Army Pay Issue Department at Baker Street; and the supplementation work of the Statutory Committee.
An HON. MEMBER: Does it include the Navy?
Mr. HENDERSON: The Navy is not included, except so far as supplementation is concerned. I ought to make clear that at this stage it is not proposed to take over the Army service and campaign pensions, nor is it proposed to take separation allowances. These are now administered by the War Office. They number something like 2,250,000. They will expire on the termination of the War, or immediately on demobilisation, and it is thought that to upset the existing arrangements for a temporary period would be a mistake. It is not suggested either that it need take over the first payment of Admiralty pensions and allowances. Before I explain the constitution, duties, and powers of the new Board, I want to give the House the reason why the Government consider that such a measure as they ask leave to introduce is necessary. To put the position in a sentence, they have come to the conclusion that to continue several Departments, dealing with different branches of what is essentially an indivisible piece of administration, with consequent overlapping and lack of uniformity and delays in payments, was most difficult to defend. Such a system, or may I say want of system, meant that no one was responsible. There was no directing or coordinating control, and no authoritative representative answerable to Parliament. Just as the time when help was most needed for the soldiers, just at the time when the beneficent public was most anxious to assist the soldiers, they were left in ignorance as to the proper authority to whom they had to apply for a pension, and they were disappointed and perplexed in not being able to locate blame for the delay that so frequently happened, and when their cases were not fairly and promptly dealt with. It is no exaggeration to say, as I had reason to find out during the period I have been chairman of the Chelsea Commissioners, that there is a growing want of confidence in our present methods of dealing with the pension question. The Government, therefore, are of opinion that an improvement can be effected, and that this can be done best by exchanging the disadvantages of separation for the advantages of co-ordination.
Apart from the facts which I have mentioned, some improvement in pensions administration is essential, if only to enable us to deal more effectively with the progressive increase in the number of

643
cases, and the work which those cases involve. I may give a few figures which I think represent the position. Take, first of all, the number of cases, and the work which those cases involve. In January, 1916, in connection with the War Office Disability Section, there were 644 cases, involving 3,000 letters. In October, 1916, there were 1,145 cases, involving 4,943 letters. It is estimated that in March, 1917, there will be 1,242 cases, involving 6,000 letters. Take the Tate Gallery, which deals with widows and dependants' pensions and gratuities. In January, 1916, there were 9,700 cases, involving 16,500 letters. In October there were 17,000 cases, involving 46,000 letters; and it is estimated that in March next there will be 35,500 cases, involving 120,000 letters. In the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, there were in January, 1916, 4,507 cases, involving 25,000 letters. In October, 1916, there were 25,335 cases, involving 122,182 letters; and it is estimated that in March, 1917, there will be 60,000 cases, involving 190,000 letters. In the Central Army Pay Issue Department, Baker Street, in January, 1916, there were 13,000 cases, involving 34,324 letters. In October, 1916, there were 29,458 cases, involving 531,350 letters. In March, 1917, we estimate that there will be 50,000 cases, involving 1,062,000 letters. These give a total of cases which will have to come under this new Department, as 27,551 in January, involving 77,824 letters; 73,538 cases in October, involving 705,277 letters; and it is estimated that next March there will be 146,244 cases, involving 1,378,500 letters.
Mr. HOGGE: That does not include letters of complaint.
Mr. HENDERSON: It includes letters of complaint, and a very large number of letters which were absolutely necessitated by the correspondence that must go on at present between all the sections before they are co-ordinated. I may give some further figures. The staff which has been doing the work in the War Office, officers' disability section, amounts to thirty. In the War Office, Tate Gallery section, it amounts to 309, in the Chelsea Hospital to 595, in the Central Army Pay Issue Office to 960, and in the War Office Statutory Committee Disability Section to 58, making a total staff which is to be taken over immediately the Bill
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becomes law of 1,952. I may make a further observation in regard to staff. I find, from numerous letters which I have-already received from Members of Parliament, that there are many candidates for posts. There is an impression outside that when this Bill becomes law we begin, de novo with a clear field and that we shall have to make provision for the entire staff that will be required. I desire to emphasise the point that we have now almost 2,000 of a staff, and I should be very much mistaken indeed if the new conditions of work do not enable us to reduce the staff, or, at any rate, to do a much larger amount of work with the staff which we have at present. Therefore, I want Members and the general public to realise that there is very little use sending letters in regard to candidates who want posts, because we hope that we have sufficient for some time to come.
The figures which I have given not only show where we stand, but, I think, entitle me to say that it will be some years before any substantial and permanent reduction in the amount of work may be expected. Surely then, if that is so, it is of the greatest importance that our pensions system should work smoothly, speedily, and effectively, so that the public may feel satisfied that the money which they provide for their officer and soldier heroes is being properly administered. I will now say a word or two with regard to the constitution, duties, and powers of the new Ministry. The Board is to consist of a president, and three members named in the Bill. I am aware that this proposal to have a Board may be the subject of criticism. I think that I have already seen that Members of this House have indulged in criticism of this method of procedure. There is a feeling that if we have a Board it will mean divided responsibility. There is also a feeling that a Board may retard rather than assist the progress of this work. I do not share that view. On the contrary, I am convinced that by advice on questions of policy, and in maintaining proper relationships between the new Board of Pensions and the several Departments represented by the other members of the Board, such a Board can serve a very useful purpose. Perhaps I ought to make clear that it is the intention of the Government that the President of the Board must be held responsible to the

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House for the administration of the new Department. I also want to make clear that the Board of Pensions has to concern itself exclusively with, and be responsible for, all military pensions except Service pensions?
To enable the Board to discharge its functions the Bill transfers certain powers, which I should like to give to the House. These are the powers and duties of the Commissioners of the Royal Hospital for Soldiers at Chelsea with respect to the grant and administration of disability pensions other than "in" pensions. The "in" pensioner is the old pensioner who comes into the hospital and resides there, and that work is going to be done, as for a very long time, under the responsibility of the Commissioners. It is entirely different work, the duty being really to provide the man with a home. The Bill transfers all powers, except those connected with the "in" pensioner, the powers and duties of the Army Council and of the Secretary of State for War's Department with respect to pensions, grants to officers who have been wounded, or soldiers, to their widows, children, and other dependants other than Service pensions. Further the powers and duties of the Statutory Committee under the Naval and Military Pensions Act, 1915, so far as they relate to the supplementation of pensions and grants administered by the Board of Pensions, except the power to supplement such pensions out of funds not received from moneys provided by Parliament. In other words, the Statutory Committee retains its powers practically untouched except so far as what they have done in supplementation, and I will deal with that a little later on. [An HON. MEMBER: "All their powers really!"] I hope hon. Members will not prematurely come to a conclusion with regard to the powers of the Statutory Committee. If they refer to Clause 3 of the Naval and Military Pensions Act, I think they will find the Committee have a great amount of further work to deal with.
Mr. JONATHAN SAMUEL: There is a very important point which I think should be cleared up. Is it proposed by the Government to withdraw the grant of public money to the Statutory Committee, and is it expected that that Committee will depend on voluntary subscriptions?
Mr. SPEAKER: I think it better for hon. Members to allow the Minister to give his explanation.
Mr. HENDERSON: I thank you, Sir. I think it would be better if hon. Members will allow me to do that. I shall have abundant opportunities before the Bill passes through all its stages to satisfy my hon. Friends who are interested in special phases of the work. Some exception may be taken to the limit and nature of the work which the Board of Pensions is to undertake. It may be urged that the problem of the disabled soldier goes much deeper, for instance, than pensions, and that a satisfactory permanent solution can only be found by a comprehensive handling of the whole question of which the pension forms but a part, and, in the judgment of many, not the most important part. I frankly admit the force of that argument. I am fully convinced of the importance of co-ordinating, as far as it is possible, cure after care, training, employment, and pensions; and if all these could have been brought together and administered under one roof, with one controlling head, the different sections of the work could have been fostered and developed on lines most conducive to the efficient solution of the entire problem. But, however desirable this arrangement may be, the Government have reluctantly come to the conclusion that, having regard to our present circumstances, it would be most difficult to secure.
This must be obvious if we consider the magnitude of the problem at this stage,, the pre-occupation of the Government services on war work, and the almost insuperable difficulty of securing such a trained staff for the purposes of carrying on every phase of this work as would be required. Moreover, there is the difficulty of housing. I know something of this question, because, at Chelsea, our work is very much hindered at the moment by lack of proper accommodation. There would be great difficulty in securing a building wherein we could house, under one roof, the staff necessary to carry out all the phases of the work to which I have referred. I would ask the House to remember for a moment that we have now a staff of 2,000, and to realise what would be necessary if we are to add to that the staff required for the other phases—cure after care, training, and employment—and to bear in mind also the position as to pensions alone

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before the end of the War, if the number of cases should increase in the same ratio as they have done during the past year. While, therefore, I have the strongest possible desire to see the whole thing properly handled under one Department, I feel that the Government have come to a right decision in seeking to perfect pension administration and leaving the other phases of the work where they stand at present.
Apart from those practical difficulties to which I have already referred there are other considerations which must not be overlooked. For instance, there is no small amount of expert opinion in this country in favour of cure after care and training taking place before the soldier is discharged and during the period of military discipline. If this policy were adopted, and in my opinion there is much to be said in favour of it in the interests of the men themselves, then a strong case can be made out for close co-ordination between pensions and employment. May I make a further observation as to the relation of cure after care and training to pensions. The experience I have goes to prove that only when the pension has been permanently fixed and guaranteed to the soldier is the soldier, speaking generally, prepared to take kindly to training. The men are not prepared to allow either the State or an employer to take any advantage of them if they feel so disposed. May I give a brief extract from a letter I received the other day from Professor Thomas Oliver, of New-castle-on-Tyne. Owing to the liberality, the very great liberality, of the daughter of a former much respected Member of this House—the late Mr. Joseph Cowen—owing to her great munificence they have been able to start a home or institution for training purposes in that city. They began with great expectations, but I find from Professor Oliver's letter that they feel themselves in the same difficulty as that to which I have just referred. He writes:
"The difficulty the trustees of the Home had to contend with and which has prevented the institution fulfilling the wishes of the trustees is the widespread feeling amongst discharged soldiers that if the men enter a home and receive a training and succeed in getting work the amount of their pensions will be reduced. It would be of the greatest assistance to the trustees if you could give them an authoritative statement that in no case shall the pension of a soldier disabled through wounds received in the service of his country be reduced in consequence of his ability to add to his income."
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The French experience was exactly the same as that described in the extract I have just read. I would like to put the House in possession of what I consider to be a very important statement contained in a report I received a little time ago from Lord Esher. The report said that at first about 80 per cent. of the men refused re-education for fear of losing their pension. The Government has removed that fear by the definite assertion that the amount of a man's pension depends not upon his earning power, but upon the extent. of his incapacity resulting from his disability.
Mr. HOGGE: This Government has not said that.
Mr. HENDERSON: I am speaking of the French Government. As to what our own Government is going to say, that will be the subject of our attention later on. It seems to me the extracts I have just read do show that it would be most difficult for us to enter upon a great scheme of after care and training until we first settle the very important principle of how education and re-education is going to affect the pension of the recipient. In connection with this question of after care and training, I think the House would like to know something as to the future relations between the Statutory Committee and the Board of Pensions. I was interrupted a moment ago by the suggestion that when we took away supplementation the work of the Statutory Committee would be at an end. That is a mistake, as I think I can show. I have quoted the powers we are going to transfer from the Statutory Committee. I should like now to point out that the Statutory Committee retain the power to supplement separation allowances, service pensions, and pensions to officers' widows so far as those pensions are determined by service. This form of supplementation to which I have just referred can be done either from private or from public funds. I want to make that perfectly clear, and I may say in passing that the public funds here referred to are the public funds about which the hon. Member for Stockton (Mr. J. Samuel) seems a little concerned, the public funds that have been promised by the Treasury, and an arrangement is to be made whereby either the whole or part of that money is going to be continued at the disposal of the Statutory Committee.

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Further, with regard to their powers, they will deal with disability pensions to officers and men, grants to widows and children and other dependants of men, pensions to officers' widows, so far as they are determined otherwise than by the service of the officer—these the Statutory Committee will only have power to supplement out of private funds. There are a lot of things they have been able to do and will be able to continue doing out of private funds, but I hope that a good deal of the supplementation which my hon. Friend has in his mind will be made unnecessary by the scheme I trust to be able to introduce to the House at a later stage. The powers resting with the Statutory Committee when this Bill becomes law will comprise the power to make advances on account of pensions, grants, or allowances, the power to administer voluntary funds, and the power to make provision for the care of disabled officers and men after they have left the Service, including provision for their health and training, and securing them in employment. Unless a change of policy is meant and the War Office take this work entirely into their own hands it seems to me that the only authority, except the War Office, which will be able to continue this highly beneficent work must be the Statutory Committee. That work may be continued either out of funds that will be left to them by the Chancellor of the Exchequer or from any funds that they care to collect from other sources. Arising out of this question of the relationship between the Statutory Committee and the new Board there comes the question of local committees. This is a very important question. I do not mind confessing to the House that the more I have gone into this question during the past few months the more fully I am convinced that, after you have proper coordination for questions of principle and questions of policy, the more you can decentralise, the more you can work through properly constituted and thoroughly representative committees, the more efficient will the work be done. Therefore, as there are some 300 of these local committees already in being, created by the Statutory Committee since it was set up nine months ago, I hope to look very carefully into the position; in fact, I may say I have already discussed this question with representatives of the Statutory Committee, and I think we will
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be able to come to some satisfactory arrangement whereby the position of local committees may be further improved.
Sir NORVAL HELME: And extended?
Mr. HENDERSON: I was going to say there is a feeling that in the setting up of local committees the urban element. as against the rural element, has not received that consideration to which those concerned considered they were entitled. They feel that they ought to have certain powers. There is a feeling that in relation to populations of 30,000 and 35,000, where the urban district is so vastly different from the element in the surrounding county, that the urban element, as I said a moment ago, has not been properly considered. I am going to take that up with the Statutory Committee. I am confident that I will experience from them the same reasonableness that I have experienced during the negotiations that have gone on during the past few days, and that I shall be able to make arrangements satisfactory to the local authorities who have, up to the present moment, felt dissatisfied. Before concluding, I think I ought to say that I have purposely avoided dealing with the questions of scales and payments. These, as the House is fully aware, have to be made under Royal Warrant. I have had every reason to examine over and over again the powers and conditions established by these Royal Warrants, and I confess to the House that there is much in them that provided me with anything but satisfaction.
An HON. MEMBER: Burn them.
Mr. HENDERSON: I am advised to burn them. I have many a time been advised to scrap them. I want to promise this: That they shall receive my earliest attention, once the Department. is set up. I can assure the House that the new Board will carefully review them in the light of the experience that we have obtained since I took over the chairmanship of the Chelsea Commissioners. It will give me the greatest possible pleasure, at a later stage, and with the assent of the Prime Minister, to put fully before the House all the improvements that I think ought to be made in our scheme. I have already discussed the matter with the representative of the

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Treasury, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and I think he recognises, as I do, that there is room for improvement. It is our intention, immediately the ministry has been created, to go very fully into the matter with the intention of placing the pensions administration of this country, as promptly as ever we possibly can, in a position much more satisfactory than it can be claimed to be in at the present moment. I therefore beg leave to move to introduce the Board of Pensions Bill, and I can only say that I will be prepared at a later stage to place the fullest information at my disposal before the House.
Mr. ELLIS GRIFFITH: I am sure we have listened with very great interest to the first speech of the right hon. Gentleman in his new office. We all congratulate him upon the appointment to that office. We wish him every success in the performance of the very arduous duties that lie before him. I am quite Sure of this, that he brings to bear upon the office, not only a strong hand, but also—which is of equal importance—a humane heart. If my information be correct, his advent to Chelsea has already resulted in reforms which are really very far-reaching in their importance to the country. He has said that some such Bill as this is necessary. No doubt that is so. But I venture to say to the House to-day that of all post-war problems that concern us, this is by far the most important. I am bound to say, speaking for myself, that I hear a great many discussions on post-war problems that seem to me to depend almost entirely upon the result of the War. The whole problem is different according to the peace that we get. Sometimes, I am afraid, so far as these questions are concerned, some of us are apt to jump before we come to the stile. This, however, is not one of those problems. Whatever be the result of the War, this problem will confront us. The right hon. Gentleman from his official position, quite rightly, has made no estimate. I am not bound by such reticence. When you take what I think is a moderate view of the results of this War, in killed and wounded, I myself much fear that this Bill will concern a figure somewhere between one-eighth and one-fourth of the population. When we look at it from that point of view it is a stupendous problem. When we remember that some of these pensioners will, we hope, live for
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another half-century, it is quite obvious that the duties of the office will astonish even the right hon. Gentleman himself. The right hon. Gentleman has very rightly divided his speech into machinery and policy. Let me say a word or two about machinery. The right hon. Gentleman is now paymaster. As paymaster he found his way to Chelsea. Now he is going to be chairman of this new Board. He has got under him three vice-presidents whose names are not in the Bill.
Mr. HENDERSON: They are members of the Board.
Mr. GRIFFITH: Well, I understand that this Board of which the right hon. Gentleman is chairman, with three other members whose names are mentioned in the Bill, but which the right hon. Gentleman thinks it not necessary to divulge at the present moment—
Mr. HENDERSON: I will tell the House. The three members of the Board are the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty, the Financial Secretary to the War Office, and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board.
Mr. GRIFFITH: I think we might as well have them.
Mr. HENDERSON: I thought everybody knew.
Mr. GRIFFITH: I am not in the political secrets of the House, and therefore I did not. I do not want to be unduly curious about these throe Gentlemen and their relationship to the right hon. Gentleman himself. We were not certain, from what the papers said, who was to be chairman, and who were to be members. But let that pass! What I want to know is why this is called a Board? There is the Board of Trade, the Board of Education, the Board of Agriculture, and many other Boards. So far as the Board of Education and the Board of Trade are concerned, although there are nominal members of these Boards, they are not merely members of the Boards. If my memory serves me rightly, the Archbishop of Canterbury is a member of the Board of Trade, but he does not find time to devote all his energies to that Department! As I understand it, this Board is in some way different to a Board of that kind. There are four members, and there is one chairman. I do not want to be unduly curious, but these questions will

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have to be answered: Are the four of coequal authority on the Board? The right hon. Gentleman said he was responsible. I understand that. So long as he is chairman he has got to be responsible, but is he supreme on the Board? That is the real point. Or is it simply a question like this: Suppose there are three present, two on one side, and the chairman on the other, does he adopt the view of the two, and then in that way become responsible to the House?
Mr. HENDERSON: Subject to the Cabinet, the Minister is responsible.
Mr. GRIFFITH: I do not doubt that. You cannot help being responsible. Responsibility is a thing you cannot divest yourself of so long as you are chairman. The moment you cease to be responsible you cease to be chairman. But what I want to know, and what I think the House is entitled to know, is whether these four gentlemen are men of equal authority, the chairman to speak for them whether he agrees with them or not, so long as he retains office, or whether these three gentlemen are, in his own words, to give advice, which is so much pleasanter to accept than dictation, as the right hon. Gentleman knows. I understand from his speech—I did not know how it may be—that he has got these three gentlemen to advise him. Does he follow their advice if he, thinks it right, and rejects it if he thinks it wrong? As I understand, the chairman must be the supreme and only authority for the Board. We ought to understand this point with perfect clearness. Judging by the right hon. Gentlemen surrounding the Paymaster-General, there is a meeting of the Board now.
Mr. HENDERSON: They are all here.
5.0 P.M.
Mr. GRIFFITH: Yes; and if I may say so, they seem to be in perfect amity and concord, but the right hon. Gentleman (Dr. Macnamara) and the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Forster) who flank the right hon. Gentleman on the right side, and the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Hayes Fisher) who is on his left are evidently half-timers. [Laughter]. I do not mean that disrespectfully at all. They do a great deal of work. They have other work of an important character. I do not know whether I would not have been more pleased if the right hon. Gentleman himself had been a whole-timer. I am afraid he, too, is a half-timer. He is still, so far as I know, Labour Adviser to the Government. That
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is a very important office, especially at this juncture. All I submit to the House is that these gentlemen really cannot do this great work unless one of them devotes at least the whole of his time to it. If it be found, upon reflection, that they cannot be relieved of their other functions, I think it is important for us to consider whether the Government might not see their way to, at any rate, appoint an Under-Secretary of State who would be able to devote his whole time to this matter. I was very glad, as I am sure we shall all be glad, to learn that the new Board with its nearly 2,000 servants is to be under one roof. I do not think the right hon. Gentleman said so in so many words, but I have no doubt that if it be found possible he will do his best to assimilate the Departments, and bring them as near together as possible in their practical working.
Mr. HENDERSON: May I say that matter has been very carefully considered. We are hoping to obtain a building which will take all the sections I have referred to The building will be complete, we hope, by about April or May next year.
Mr. GRIFFITH: I think that it is an assurance which the House, I am sure, will welcome, for it is one of the objects I am certain that we all had in view. The situation, then, as far as the constitution of the new Board is concerned, is this: The Admiralty stands out as far as the flat rate is concerned. I must say I think that is a pity. There may be reasons for it. The right hon. Gentleman very rightly, if I may say so, did not enter upon that, because I have no doubt his colleague on the right (Dr. Macnamara) will defend it. I do not doubt that there may be much to be said in its defence. There are considerations of sentiment, and tradition, and service to make the Admiralty stand aside, and there may be the fact that they are only about 300,000 as compared with 3,000,000 or more on the other side. It may be, too, that in the majority of cases they are long-service men. The Admiralty will put up the case that all the circumstances are different. At the same time, for the sake of uniformity, I do think it is a pity that the Admiralty did not see its way to come into this scheme, and I hope it is not yet too late for the right hon. Gentleman the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty to reconsider the position. It does seem to me a pity that

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we should in time of war speak of Departments. My right hon. Friend the President of the Local Government Board knows the dfficulties. I do not know them of my own knowledge, but I am quite sure from what I know of him that he has had great difficulty with the different Departments. He looks after the tribunals. The War Office says, "We want men." The Board of Agriculture says, "We want men." The Board of Trade says, "You must not take the men who are in certified occupations." Then my Friend the President of the Local Government Board has somehow or other, with ingenuity, to frame regulations for the tribunals, so that they may obey all the different Departments. It is the same here. The Admiralty talks about these pensions as if they were Admiralty pensions. It is not an Admiralty pension; it is a State pension. Why cannot they come into the State scheme? Why cannot the Admiralty sacrifice some sentiment and some service, and throw all its energies into this scheme, the purposes of which are national and Imperial, and do not concern any particular Department at all What I do not understand is this: If the Admiralty stands out as far as the flat rate is concerned, why does it not stand out so far as the supplementary rate is concerned too? How can it have its sanctity and traditions of service for the one and not for the other? Why does it not say, "We cannot trust these other people either as to the supplementary scale or the flat rate"? It is true there is money in it. That is another matter, and makes them conform to the very thing they dislike. I do hope the Admiralty will come into this scheme, and that if they do not I am bound to say I think it will be more satisfactory for the Admiralty to stand out of the scheme altogether. I think it should be either in for all purposes or out for all purposes. The House will have an opportunity of expressing its opinion upon that matter, and if the Admiralty finds that the House expresses a strong opinion, I have no doubt the right hon. Gentleman will yield gracefully and come in.
Let us come now to the other Departments which it is proposed to amalgamate. I understand it is only the Admiralty that now stands outside as far as this branch of the subject is concerned. With regard to Chelsea, I understand that the duties of Chelsea are absorbed in the new Board. Somebody will be replying for the Gov-
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ernment, and I would like to know whether the personnel of Chelsea remains. I have looked at the personnel of Chelsea, and I think it is rather ill-adapted for the present position. I think there are twenty-four members, and there are three paid officers. I have looked through the list, and I would like to know what the quorum at Chelsea is. The right hon. Gentleman has been there and no doubt he can tell me. I have a grave suspicion as to the number of the twenty-four people who are able to attend. That will be obvious if you will look at their names. They have much more important duties to perform. I should like to know how far the personnel of Chelsea is retained in this amalgamation scheme. I hope that the equivalent of the Chelsea Commissioners will consist, not of soldiers and sailors alone, but of business men, of employers, and members of the trade unions, and, indeed, men representative of all classes of the community. What we really want in these matters is that the business element should be much more prominently associated with the duties. At present the right hon. Gentleman has not said anything about the methods now pursued in respect of Chelsea. As he knows—he will correct me if I am wrong—at present the War Office deals with all officers' pensions. It also deals with the pensions to the dependants of all private soldiers actually killed in the War. It is only the disabled men who go to Chelsea. When a disabled man goes to Chelsea, what they determine there is his earning capacity. I think it would be very interesting to the House to know not merely the change of machinery, but.—and this is the real point—what is to be the driving force of the new machinery. If the new machine goes on the same lines as the old machine, we shall have the same grievances as before. I understand that the present procedure is this—
Mr. HENDERSON: May I correct the right hon. Gentleman? The question of the test of earning capacity was not settled by the Chelsea Commissioners. It was settled by the Select Committee set up by this House, whose Report was presented to the House and accepted by a majority of it.
Mr. HOGGE: No, no!
Mr. HENDERSON: By a majority.
Mr. GRIFFITH: I will not go into these matters now. If the House did say it

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was in favour of that, all I can say is that if it was asked again to express its view, I think it would say it is not in favour of it. I read myself a letter which the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Henderson) printed in the newspapers, in which he cast some doubt on that matter. However, let that pass. This is the procedure now: the man goes to Chelsea, and the doctors examine him and judge of his earning capacity, and, as I understand it—the right hon. Gentleman will correct me if I am wrong—if a man be totally disabled he gets 25s. per week; if he is only half disabled, then he will get 12s. 6d.
Mr. HENDERSON: It depends on the limb lost.
Mr. GRIFFITH: That is settled for a certain time. When he comes back to Chelsea a second time, they ask him not what his earning capacity is, but what does he actually earn. And I am quite sure that the right hon. Gentleman will be very anxious to scrap that question as far as Chelsea is concerned, because, as he said quite frankly, it does really interfere with the man's willingness and anxiety to earn money if it is to be taken into account. in revising his pension.
Mr. HENDERSON: Perhaps I may satisfy the hon. Member on that point, because, so far as the Chelsea Commissioners are concerned, I think they scrapped that question at my first meeting. It was only when it was found that we could not scrap the Warrant as a whole, and that we must be governed by the Warrant until we had had it replaced, that the Chelsea Commissioners felt they were bound to consider what they regarded as a very bad test until we got a new Warrant. I think I made it clear in my speech that I am contemplating a new Warrant at a very early date.
Mr. GRIFFITH: I am much obliged to the right hon. Gentleman. That is as important a statement as we have heard during the course of the whole Debate. If we had only had that one statement, the Debate would have answered a very useful purpose. I hope I may remind him of another thing that will shortly be important. I do not know how many meetings he attended, but if he goes on at this rate, and we have such progress after every meeting he attends, I think we shall have a great number of reforms before long. I understand they are now issuing certificates as final. I hope that at the next
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meeting he will discourage the issue of any such certificates as final, because really in respect of these disabilities there is no finality about them. It ought to be possible always to reopen them.
Mr. HENDERSON: They are always open to that.
Mr. GRIFFITH: I may take it then that they are not final. Of course I was not quite aware of the real effect of the Chelsea terminology in this respect. There is one grievance in mentioning which I am sure I will have the sympathy of the right hon. Gentleman. At present, as I understand it, service pensions are included in disability pensions. If it be not so it is well worth while for the Government to have an opportunity of clearing up these things. The point is this: if a man for long service, say, twenty one years,. gets 8d. or 1s. 3d. a day pension, that is taken into account in his disability pension. If that is so, it certainly ought not to be. I think we will all agree about that, because really it is exactly the same thing as if you went into a house, and took money from it, and said to the occupier, "You have this much, this 8d., 10d., or 1s. or whatever it is, and we shall take it." This is really the money the man has earned for long service, and it would be ridiculous, preposterous, and absurd, as well as unjust, to take it into the calculation. I ought to put one other matter. I am feeling I am having the sympathy of the right hon. Gentleman so much that I am encouraged to go on. That other matter is this: The question of whether the illness was due to or aggravated by service? This is a very important point. I only just want to say a word or two about it, because it is an obvious one Of course it is very difficult for a medical man to decide how far a man's condition is due to or aggravated by service. With regard to the voluntary service man, it might be said to him, "When you asked to join the Army you held yourself out as fit." There is something to be said against him on that ground, but there is nothing to be said in regard to the conscript, because he has been taken against his will. You have said to him, "You have to join the Army, and we take you." But I would remind the right hon. Gentleman that both the volunteer and the conscript were passed by medical men, and I am told that more than 10,000 have had to leave the Army on account of medical unfitness.
Mr. HENDERSON: Fifty thousand have one out without any pension.
Mr. GRIFFITH: These men have broken down under the strain. Their hearts have gone wrong or something of that kind. The curious thing is that these men who were found fit to join the Army, the moment they are discharged lose their separation allowance—of course, quite rightly I do not complain about that— and all they get is half of £2; that is a sovereign, and 17s. 7d. for a suit of clothes. I am sure there is not a man in this House who would like to be a party to any scheme that would make such a state of affairs as that possible. Here is the case of a man who comes out to fight, offers himself to serve his country, gives up his capital—for his health is this man's capital; it is his power to earn and make money—he gives up that to his country, and then he goes back and gets the half of £2 as a gratuity, and 17s. 7d. for a suit of clothes. I am quite sure that this is a state of affairs which the right hon. Gentleman will be very anxious to remedy at the very earliest moment. I would make this suggestion to him. In most cases with regard to disabled men who go to Chelsea there are doctors who say whether the man's condition is due to, or aggravated by his service. It is impossible for a man to decide that unless the man knew his pre-war condition. There are no data for those doctors at Chelsea. I do not say whether they are right or wrong, but I do say they have not got the information to make it possible for them to form any opinion, and, as an hon. Member here says, they do not ask for it. I submit that it is only elementary justice that when a tribunal of doctors comes to the conclusion that a man's condition is not due to, or aggravated by his service, that at least the doctor who passed him for service, and his own doctor who knew him before that, should be asked to come and give evidence.
Then, having gone to Chelsea, and the Chelsea authorities having determined and awarded the pension, the man goes on to Baker Street. I am sure I do not want to say anything about the Baker Street Organisation. I understand quite what is to be said. They are organised in a hurry, and there are great difficulties. But I am sure that the House would be very anxious not to have a renewal of the long queue of injured men waiting outside Baker Street. We know there have been very serious delays in Baker Street administra-
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tion. I heard of one case where five letters and a prepaid telegram were sent, and no notice was taken of them. When the attention of the authorities was called to that case they said they could not lay their hands on any of the letters or the telegram. Those things are very unfortunate. You do not condemn an organisation by one case of that kind; but one of the great advantages that I think will accrue from this amalgamation or absorption in one building is to make such a delay as that impossible. It will be a very valuable thing to have old Chelsea on one side of the building and the new Baker Street on the other, so that a man can pass from one to the other and eventually reach the place where he takes out his first drift money. I am bound to say I think that that will be a great thing for the men. There was one other matter about which I was not quite clear from the explanation we had. One of the difficulties of a Coalition Government with no Opposition is that no one has a chance of knowing beforehand the nature of a Bill that is to be introduced. But I make no complaint of that. The question I refer to is the position of the Statutory Committee. I found it a little difficult to gather from the way in which the right hon. Gentleman, necessarily not the very full way, explained the matter, how the question now stands. As I understand it, the Statutory Committee is to be left all the duties it now has except the duty it had of saying what the supplemental pension is to be. That is what I understood generally to be the position under the Bill. I quite agree with the right hon. Gentleman that, apart altogether from fixing the supplemental pension, there are very important functions for the Statutory Committee to perform. I hope, as he hoped, that the Statutory Committee will do its work and will do it in conjunction with the local committees all throughout the country. I think myself that there is only one way, and there is only one way, of making this pension scheme a success, and that is to have a strong central body with all these local committees throughout the country who alone know the local facts. I do not know now quite who is going to settle the supplemental pension.
Mr. HENDERSON: I tried to make that clear. Any supplementation the Statutory Committee have done out of public funds I hope we will be able to do by the Board of Pensions. In other words, instead of a man going to Chelsea and getting the

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whole or part of a flat rate, and then going on to a Statutory Committee, or, as in some cases, being sent from one Department to another, we hope that one decision will cover his entire case. That is what we propose to do. The Statutory Committee is going to be kept, and powers to be taken for that purpose, as an Advisory Committee to the new Department, and, in fact, the Bill provides not only that it should be an Advisory Committee, but if there should arise circumstances to make it necessary for us to devolve upon it certain powers we possess, we have the power to do so.
Mr. HOGGE Mr. HOGGE made an observation which was inaudible in the Reporters' Gallery.
Mr. HENDERSON: The Statutory Committee as it now consists may be the Advisory Committee.
Mr. GRIFFITH: I should think twenty-seven rather too many to advise. But these are Committee points in the main, and I will not dwell upon them now. As I understand the matter, what the right hon. Gentleman has just said is a very important consideration. He has mentioned that, instead of doing the matter in twice, it will be done in once, and that instead of old Chelsea plus the Statutory Committee, the equivalent of the new Chelsea will do the whole thing at once. I think that is a very great improvement, and I think we ought to be very gratified at that aspect of the Bill. It seems to me that, in that event, what are called supplemental pensions are gone or are superseded by the new arrangement. The result I have no doubt will be, and I for one am gratified, that the men will get in the first instance higher pensions. There are cases which are very familiar to right hon. Gentlemen opposite. There is the case of the widow with two children who gets 10s., plus 5s., plus 3s. 6d., totalling 18s. 6d. In the country in a case of that kind you allow 4s. 6d. for rent, and that only allows 14s. for sustentation for the home. It may be said that the woman ought to go out and work. I think the woman ought to stay at home and look after her children, and I think she would be doing much better work for the State in doing so than in trying to get some extra amount in wages. My view is that there is one test for the minimum pension, and that is that the minimum pension in each case should be sufficient to
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keep the members of the family concerned in a state of physical efficiency. That is the least thing we can do, and the Statutory Committee might well take in hand various other matters. There is one matter to which the right hon. Gentleman referred, voluntary funds, which is a very important matter. I understand he is going to commit voluntary funds to the care of the Statutory Committee. I am not quite sure whether that is a good plan or not.
Mr. HENDERSON: I do not commit them. I do not take the power from them. They have the power now to raise what voluntary funds they can. They have been doing so, and as to the amount they have raised I am not informed. But I propose to leave them the power to go on with that kind of work, if they get the voluntary funds.
Mr. GRIFFITH: I was referring to the funds that had not been collected by the Statutory Committee but by local county organisation, and, of course, the Statutory Committee has no right over them. I know of one county, Pembrokeshire, which has almost an ideal system in this respect. It has raised over £12,000 in twelve months by voluntary contributions. It has made contributions of £2,000 each to the Red Cross Fund and the National Fund, and it also prepared, upon recommendation from district committees, to make lump sum payments in these early cases. In a matter of that kind you would have to rely on local voluntary effort. When a man comes home he may want furniture; he may have lost his previous home and require new furniture, or he may want to start a small business. That is where you get in touch with these voluntary agencies, and I am sure it is all for the good that the Pensions Board should consider them favourably and advise them on every possible opportunity. The essentials, I think, have been attained in this Bill. The essential is, first of all, a strong central authority to look after the work. The second is, that when disabled men are discharged a pension or State contribution shall immediately follow that discharge without delay and without hindrance. Everybody is, I know, interested in this matter, but there are some Members in the House who have not the same responsibility as others. There are certain Members who have not taken part in recruiting. Their responsibility is

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less. But all of us, and nearly all of us in the Chamber at present have done so, who have taken part in recruiting owe a personal responsibility to these men. I feel quite sure that neither the country nor the House would be gratified unless we do full justice and full generosity to the men who have fought and protected us in this War.
Mr. HOGGE: I am sure we all congratulate the right hon. Gentleman upon the clearness with which he has analysed the conditions as they exist and upon the criticisms which he has offered upon this Bill. I do not propose at this stage to make anything in the nature of a long speech with regard to the introduction of this Bill, as obviously we should all prefer to see the Bill in print before we offer criticism which we might regret afterwards. But there are one or two points which I think ought to be understood clearly before the Bill is printed and which affect the future, not only of the question of pensions, but other cognate questions. I will mention one that has not been referred to at all. As the House is aware, when a man joins the Army he is entitled to apply to the Civil Liabilities Committee for certain relief in regard to rent, rates, insurance, educational fees, and so on. In practice what has happened is something like this, that in the case of the men who joined the Army in the early days and whose wives and dependants adjusted themselves to the conditions that obtained on account of the small separation allowance, when they applied to the Civil Liabilities Committee they received much smaller grants than the wives and dependants of soldiers who have been conscripted, and who, during the days when the voluntary men have been fighting, have been receiving the benefit of increased wages. That is to say that the wives and dependants of those who have made sacrifices get less than the wives and dependants of those who have been taken last. What is going to happen is this, that when those people come back and are restored again to ordinary industrial conditions a great many of them will be in need of help from the State. There is the man with the small business and the wife and family have broken up the home and gone into rooms. It will be absolutely necessary, in my opinion, to retain all the functions of the Civil Liabilities Com-
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mittee so that at that moment the help of the State may be at hand for those people. I want to ask the Paymaster-General whether the Cabinet or this small Board which he proposes to set up have taken into consideration at all this question of Civil Liabilities—whether, for instance, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board, who is to be one of the members of this new Board of Pensions, and who speaks for the Government in this House on this subject, represents the Civil Liabilities Committee as well as the Statutory Committee on the new Board? Probably the Paymaster General can tell us at once whether the question of Civil Liabilities is included at all within the scope of the Bill.
Mr. HENDERSON: It has been decided that the Civil Liabilities Committee should continue its work as heretofore without any connection with the Board of Pensions.
Mr. HOGGE: I am very much obliged to my right hon. Friend. I can quite understand the Cabinet coming to that decision with regard to the giving of grants up to the period of recruiting men for the Army and Navy, but I am putting a fresh point which I hope the Board will take into consideration.
Mr. HENDERSON: I think I ought to make the point clear. I endeavoured to make it clear that we are trying to do pensions work pure and simple. We are not taking separation allowances. I think the work of the Civil Liabilities Committee might be described as supplementation of separation allowance, or a kind of super separation allowance, and, therefore, that work, in the first instance not coming under the Board of Pensions, we do not think we should interfere with the Civil Liabilities Committee.
Mr. HOGGE: I am obliged to my right hon. Friend. It is an arguable point as to whether the increase is a super-separation allowance or a super-pension. It certainly would be a super-pension in the case of a widow of any soldier requiring to find a new home and new surroundings after the man had been killed in the War, if in receipt now of Civil Liabilities Allowance. However, I do not press the point except as to how far the Board has decided to extend the scope of their operations. It was said in the speech of the Paymaster-General that the question of Service pensions is to be reserved

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to the War Office, and is not to come within the scope of the new Pensions Board. I should like to be quite clear on that point, and to know exactly why that decision should be come to. After all, this new Pensions Board is going to deal with the whole question of pensions. Why should the War Office, as a separate Department, seek to keep within its control the service pensions of these men? Why should it not be all under the one institution? A man in receipt of his service pension is entitled now to use both Chelsea and the Statutory Committee. Even if the War Office retain the right to deal with the Service portion of a man's pension he will again have the right to go to the new Board for supplementation of his Service pension. There you are introducing just one of the little things that create all the correspondence to which my right hon. Friend referred.
Mr. HENDERSON: A man will not have to go to the Board of Pensions for his supplementation, because that is one of the forms of supplementation which is reserved.
Mr. HOGGE: Exactly; but then he will be drawing his Service pension from the War Office and his disability pension from the new Board. That will be drawing pensions from two sources. Is that not making two places to which that man shall go or write, and does it not show how the correspondence will be increased? I do not make very much of it, because, as a matter of fact, all of us in this House have had to grow up with the subject of pensions during the War, and I am not surprised that the Paymaster-General does not know sometimes any more than I or somebody else. In trying to make a way through the mass of Army Orders dealing with the question one is reminded of Topsy, who "growed up." This pension scheme has grown up during the War, and I should like to meet the man who knows every point of it thoroughly.
An HON. MEMBER: You are advertised as such!
Mr. HOGGE: I am sure my hon. Friend who says that I am advertised as such regrets that he is not so advertised. At any rate, one of the most foolish questions put to the Paymaster-General was the question of the hon. Member as to whether the Government would deprive this Committee of money as supplementation of pensions. As that supplementation is a
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Government Grant, it is quite obvious to the meanest intellect that money would not be taken away from the Committee. With regard to the Admiralty, the only thing the Admiralty will have to do with this new Board is the kind of assistance that a naval man now could get from the Statutory Committee In that case, I want to know what the representative of the Admiralty is doing on this Board at all What right has the Admiralty to have any opinion on this Board at all if that is all the function that is to remain to them? I agree with my right hon. Friend that this House will be wise to insist on one of two things—either the Admiralty must go clean out or it must come clean in. If the Admiralty is going to insist upon running its own flat-rate pensions, then the best thing to do is for this House to give the Admiralty greater elasticity, so that they can give every sailor, and every dependant of every sailor, the equivalent in that flat Admiralty is going to insist upon running application to the Statutory Committee. I am perfectly certain the House will make a mistake if they do not decide. I would prefer that the Admiralty should come in, but if it is determined that the Admiralty are going to stop out, then let them stop out altogether, and let us have an Admiralty system of pensions under the roof of the Admiralty dealing with everything a sailor and his dependants can get; and, on the other hand, a War Office arrangement of pensions under one roof dealing entirely with soldiers; but do not let the new President of the Board of Pensions be interfered with at all by any official representing the Admiralty, if the Admiralty are not going to bring in their flat rate of pensions as well as the other.
There is another point I want to make, and it is a very important one. The Paymaster-General will recollect, and I think the House will recollect, that the War Office have actually determined upon a scheme whereby all soldiers will be retained in the Army until the Army has exhausted upon those men the medical and scientific ability which resides with the Army authorities. At any rate, the Secretary of State for War only the other day, in reply to a question, stated that the War Office were considering a scheme of that kind. He gave us to understand, I think, that General Sir Alfred Keogh, who is the authority on this question. had submitted a Report, and he led the House to understand—I may be wrong, and I should be glad to know exactly where we

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are—that the War Office had practically made up their mind to take up that position. I am making that point for this reason: If—and I think it is the right thing to do—the War Office retain under military discipline all men until they are fit, or as fit as they possibly can be, to be restored to civil life, it is obvious that some part of the large part of the functions of the Statutory Committee go. That is to say, you do not want the War Office looking after the care, training, and, may be, employment—certainly the care and training of soldiers—and at the same time any Committee of the Statutory Committee taking up that same work.
Mr. HENDERSON: I think my hon. Friend is making a deduction from the statement of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War that is not fully borne out by the language used. It is true that the whole subject is under consideration. No decision has yet been reached, I think, by the War Office, and certainly not by the Cabinet. I believe that what is contemplated is that training may be begun while the later stages of the cure are being effected, but I do not think there is any intention of carrying the training to the extent it might be carried if the work was taken up by the War Office or left to be carried out by the Statutory Committee or any other authority. It is a sort of introductory stage, while the later stages of the cure are effected. So far as I am aware, there is no intention at present of going beyond that.
Mr. HOGGE: I am, of course, only asking in order that the position may be cleared up, because it is obvious that if the War Office were making a clear-cut line, you might have the War Office, while caring for men, actually training them towards some new employment, and as part of the function of the Statutory Committee is the care, training and employment of men, it is also obvious it would be a duplication of work. I only want that to be borne in mind in view of discussion we may have in Committee on the Bill. There are only two other points to which I want to refer this afternoon. One is with regard to the use that is going to be made of the local War Pensions Committees. I am one of those people who believe in expressing what we want to do in pensions in a very short way. I think we want pensions controlled nationally at
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the centre, and, as far as possible, civically at the extremities. That is to say, you want responsibility both in the national administrative body and in the body in the municipalities. I hope that in the scheme the local War Pensions Committees will not be destroyed, but that they will be used for carrying out the intentions and purposes of the Central Committee which it is proposed to set up here in London. There may be some changes in those Committees. I dare say hon. Members have ideas with regard to salutary changes in those Committees, but the main function will remain. The last point I want to make is in the form of a very simple suggestion. I put it to the Prime Minister in a question the other day, and he replied that it was receiving favourable consideration. It is the question raised by my right hon. Friend as to whether pensions are final, and the new Pensions Minister said that it did not mean final, and that the pensions could be revised at any time.
Mr. HENDERSON: Perhaps I did not make it sufficiently clear. It is quite true that the word "final" is used, but it is used under the supposition that circumstances do not change. After all, it may be in the interest of a man himself. A wound may be healed and then break out again, and we have to leave the right to the individual to ask for his case to be reopened, and if the circumstances have changed we have to abandon the word "final" and have the case re-examined. That is in the interest of the soldier.
Mr. HOGGE: I was thinking in Borne cases that you had pensions actually reduced, but here is a point I want to press upon my right hon. Friend As he knows, many who go through this War will come back strained and stressed in very many ways. It will not be possible many times for those men to locate the disability from which they are suffering, any more than the doctors will. In other words, the disability may be produced seven or tea years after. It is limited by seven years now in the papers that we have. I make this suggestion—I do not know if it is original or even praiseworthy or practicable—but I would like every man, both in the Navy and the Army, to have a nominal pension, so that he would have the right at any moment to raise the question of his pension being revised. I do not care how small the pension is, and it might be only a penny a day, but

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it would put the man in the position of having a pension, and if after the course of years his disability merged he would then be entitled to go to the new pensions authority and say, "Here am I; the wound I am recovering from is directly attributable to my service in the Army, and may I have this small pension revised?" My suggestion may be impracticable, but you have already limited it to seven years, and if his disability merges in the eighth year he is not entitled to a pension. Probably it will be said that you must draw the line somewhere, but possibly you might meet it by putting every soldier who has his disability paper in possession of a piece of paper that entitles him to go at any moment and put in a claim for a pension. I hope my right hon. Friend will take that point into consideration I know it is a new suggestion, but I do not want him to reply offhand, and I shall be quite content if he turns it over in his mind, as I want to preserve this right to any soldier or sailor should his disability be traceable to the effect of the War, and I want him to be able to go for pension in spite of any limitations which are upon such pensions now, I wish my right hon. Friend every good luck in the task to which he has put his hand. He was good enough to say in his speech something which was very frank, but very true, that the public were beginning to lose confidence in the administration of pensions. I am sorry to say that that is very true, and it is a good thing to have a Pensions Minister who realises that and is not afraid to say it in the House of Commons. I would also like to say that if my right hon. Friend enters upon his task with a firm determination to administer the subject of pensions generously, quickly, and effectively, I am certain there is no piece of work to which he has ever given his attention out of which he will get more satisfaction for himself.
Sir HENRY CRAIK: I congratulate the hon. Member for East Edinburgh (Mr. Hogge) on the constant interest which he has shown in regard to this question, but perhaps he will allow me to criticise what he has accomplished on one or two points. The hon. Member has repeatedly within my hearing in this House raised questions as if they were perfectly new which have been under the most careful consideration of the Statutory Committee.
Mr. HOGGE: That is quite likely with all of us, and my hon. Friend is now going to say something that I said last week.
Sir H. CRAIK: I think the hon. Member might give the Statutory Committee credit for having studied these questions, and not receiving all these suggestions as if they had dropped from the sky. One point the hon. Member raised was as to the differentiation between those who had enlisted in the Army voluntarily and those who had waited until compulsion was in force. If the hon. Member will believe me, I can assure him that there are many difficulties which I am sure, if he attended in the same room with us, would puzzle him, in coming to a settlement. But we have come to a settlement on this point. We have been in correspondence with the Treasury, and this very day we had proposals in regard to our suggestions from the Treasury which makes me certain that we shall come to the settlement of a very difficult point indeed. It is not because the matter has not been considered, but because, perhaps, we are better aware of the real difficulties than the hon. Member can be. The hon. Gentleman spoke of the absurdity of payments not being made together. That is another point to which we have given the most earnest attention, and we find no difficulty, either with the Admiralty or the War Office, in making the-arrangement which would be most convenient to the recipients of pensions. With regard to the care and training, and the part the War Office play in that, the hon. Member spoke as if this was a perfectly new question.
Mr. HOGGE: No!
Sir H. CRAIK: I am afraid the hon. Gentleman does not understand what is the crux of the difficulty. Are you not to submit these men to a certain discipline? I have found sometimes that discipline is most helpful to them. It is not quite so easy to continue Army discipline, even for his own benefit, to a man who has been discharged from the Army. It is really a matter of arranging some method by which you are to prolong as far as possible a wholesome discipline, and this is not a very easy matter. In approaching the Bill which the right hon. Gentleman has introduced, there is one point upon which all parts of the House will be agreed. If this Bill will in any way help the soldier and the sailor, or their dependants, in their difficulties, if it will

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improve their position, and enable the nation more generously to discharge the duty which it recognises, I am certain that it will not only be welcome by all hon. Members of this House, but by the nation itself, as well as by our soldiers and sailors. As regards the part which the right hon. Gentleman himself is to take in the work, I have nothing but welcome, and I wish him God speed in any work he has to do in this connection. I am also perfectly prepared to agree with the right hon. Gentleman in a good many of his reasons for the co-ordination which this Bill proposes, and, if that co-ordination will help, it has my hearty support.
We had a Bill dealing with this subject less than a year ago. I would like to ask are we certain that the guidance which we were then given was wrong, and that it is necessary now to pluck up by the roots the whole of the plant which you then put into the ground? Only a year ago you passed a Bill, and you are now coming here and asking for a complete reversal of the principles upon which you constructed that measure, and is it likely that such conduct on the part of the Government does not give rise to confidence in the minds of hon. Members of this House? It is no use concealing the fact that this Bill, as indicated by the right hon. Gentleman, however far it goes, in its centre and at the core is a reversal of the principle which you established only last year. That is a very serious question for the House and for the Government. I am sorry when a question of this sort, which is so serious, is under discussion, the House is so sparsely attended, and even the Treasury Bench has only a single representative upon it. What was the central point of the original Pensions Bill of 1915, which was the result of the deliberations of the Select Committee? That Select Committee had to deal with the complicated question, how to unite together the fixed and definite flat-rate pensions with an extra measure of generosity to be dealt out to meet special circumstances. You could not raise the flat rate everywhere without an extravagance which would have been unjust to the taxpayers; but it would at the same time be irksome and justifiable for the pension to have been constantly confined and kept down to the flat-rate pension. Therefore there was a complete principle set forth in the scheme of the Committee, and it was embodied in the Bill, and it is that outside
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the War Office and the Admiralty, outside all the definite and prescribed rules which were to have a universal application, you were to have another authority coming in to act upon its own discretion, free from all political influence, a composite body responsible to the nation, which would be able to add, as circumstances seemed to justify, to the flat rate of pension. That surely was clearly and well thought out, and was a self-evident principle to follow.
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Of course, the Statutory Committee certainly was not political, for it was composed of all sorts of elements, representing every section of society and every shade of political opinion. It could not act absolutely on its own free will, because it was obliged to come to terms with the Chancellor of the Exchequer as regards funds, but otherwise it was free to act with a greater measure of generosity than was possible to a Government Department where circumstances seemed to justify it. Are we in the Bill which the right hon. Gentleman has laid before us preserving that important principle of an outside, non-political, and non-official authority to revise the pensions granted according to strict and unchangeable rule? That is not what the Bill presumes, and I really would like to press this point upon the right hon. Gentleman. Instead of that principle, you are putting the whole of the pensions into the hands of those who will be bound by official rules, however good and just the direction of the right hon. Gentleman who has introduced the Bill may be; those who must submit the rules annually to Parliament; those who will make estimates corresponding to those rules—an office that will be subject to all the rules and limitations of the Comptroller and Auditor-General, and that will not be able at its own discretion to alter the rules in order to meet special circumstances. The whole system which the Select Committee proposed and which the Bill of 1915 constructed is now vanishing under this Bill, and you will have all the pensions settled by one official body. I do not think that is for the advantage of the men or their dependants. It is a serious breach in the continuity of the system you have established, and it will require very strong justification indeed before it is approved by the nation when it comes to understand what is really meant by the Bill. Canada, the most important of all our Dominions, has taken the very opposite course. Canada has seen right to establish a Board

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independent of political parties and independent of the Government to be the administrator of pensions, and it is a serious matter for our own Government, having established an independent and non-political Board, to proceed now to destroy it in its most essential point. It is all very well to say that a great deal is to be left to the Statutory Committee. I was inclined rather to smile when the right hon. Gentleman gave us that formidable list of functions which, though taking several words to describe, are really very little indeed in substance. We are not to supplement pensions except through voluntary funds. How much of voluntary funds is it probable that a sensible public will put into the hands of a statutory committee which has been deprived by the Government of the power of supplementing pensions out of public funds? It seems to me an absolutely impossible proposal. From those public funds which were assigned for the purpose only two or three weeks ago, the Statutory Committee is not to be allowed to supplement pensions.
The Statutory Committee apparently is to have a fund put into its hands, not to supplement pensions, but to give pensions where the State has absolutely denied them. I understand that this is the case. When the War Office and the Admiralty and the new Pensions Minister have all equally agreed that no pension can be allowed under any circumstances, then the Statutory Committee is to come in and say, "Oh, yes, but we are to have some money allowed us from which we may give a pension in such a case." Is that really a reasonable and a sensible proposition? We are not allowed to come in as a non-official body to supplement those hard and fast line pensions which may be established by warrant, but we may come in to establish new pensions where the future Pensions Minister, the War Office, and the Admiralty are all alike of the opinion that no pension whatever is to be granted. I really cannot understand it, and I trust somebody on the Treasury Bench will be able to give us some explanation of what, as it stands, appears to be a perfectly inexplicable proceeding. The Statutory Committee, this independent body which was established, after all has accomplished something before this new system takes its place. It has established no fewer than 300 local committees. It has drawn up two sets of regulations, regulations for supplemental pensions and regu-
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lations for supplemental separation allowances. It has realised by hard practice, and by dealing with the facts of the case as they came before them, new difficulties. Is it wonderful that in the original draft of these regulations the Statutory Committee did not foresee all the difficulties which arose in working, and which, along with the Treasury, have been very satisfactorily dealt with? The enormous complication of the question is far greater than hon. Members who criticise us seem to realise. I undertake if any one of those hon. Members, either the hon. Member for East Edinburgh (Mr. Hogge) or my hon. Friend beside me (Mr. Barlow), will come for half an hour into one of our Committee Rooms that I will puzzle him with one of the questions and leave him in a state in which he will find himself absolutely unable to offer a solution either one way or the other.
I would urge upon the right hon. Gentleman that there should be some means of keeping on foot the two concurrent ideas of a bureaucratic and official rate of pensions and an outside non-official authority which is to give in special circumstances and in special cases where it seems in their discretion necessary an additonal pension. I quite agree with all that the right hon. Gentleman has said as to the necessity of co-ordination. We have seen the difficulties ourselves. He gave us a whole list of reasons why this co-ordination was necessary. First of all, it was to prevent overlapping. I cordially agree with him that the prevention of overlapping is necessary. It was to give authority to representation in this House. I cordially agree there also, and I am certain that the Statutory Committee will be most happy to accept the right hon. Gentleman as their authority and representative in this House. I also cordially agree with him as to wrong methods requiring correcting. If he knew how hard we had fought some of the strict and rigid terms of those Royal Warrants and how we had longed for authority or for legislative power in our own body to revise and overturn those rigid rules, he would know how cordially we welcome that statement. I am perfectly certain that co-ordination in the hands of the right hon. Gentleman will be very useful indeed. I like his controlling power; I like his assimilating power; I like the power to be in his hands of correcting errors, but I do think that he is following a wrong course by taking

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over himself and into a new and fifth organisation some part of the execution of the work. It would be far better for him to stand above and aloof from the executive. It will be very difficult for him to take into his own hands a certain portion of the executive work and then to coordinate along with that the work done by three or four other bodies all equally subservient to him. It would be far better, and I think he would find it an easier piece of work and a more smooth piece of work, and that he could bring it more surely into his reins, if he simply took the controlling power into his own hands and left the executive where it is. He is leaving the Statutory Board alive in some particulars. I do not attach so much importance to that as he does, but I, in common with all the rest of the Statutory Committee, will be happy to go on.
There will be no more co-ordination now than there was before. I am afraid that the result of his Bill will be to bring in a new agency where there are already too many. It will not give him so much controlling and co-ordinating and directing power superior to all the executive authority as I would have liked to have seen him obtain. Instead of that he is making himself one of those coordinating powers. I do urge the right hon. Gentleman to try if he cannot maintain the principle set up by the Select Committee of an outside authority non-political, always subject to his control, to direct the exercise of that generosity over and above the legal pound of flesh secured by the rules of the Services which I am perfectly certain the nation wishes to exercise and which the Statutory Committee has attempted in its existence hitherto to realise in as liberal and as broad a spirit as possible.
Mr. J. SAMUEL: I desire to congratulate my right hon. Friend upon his appointment and upon his statement. I am quite certain if he brings the spirit which he has expressed to-day into his work that many beneficial results will follow. I must confess that it is difficult for any Member to speak upon this subject without seeing the contents of the Bill. Although the statement was explicit, there were many things in which up to the present appear to me to be very complicated and to require further elucidation. In the first place, I should like to ask whether this new Board controlling the pensions is to number more than four,
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because although these four Gentlemen upon the Front Bench are most able men. it does appear to me to be very extraordinary while we thought, when setting up the Statutory Committee, the number should be about twenty-nine—they were increased from about twenty-one to twenty-nine—
The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. Hayes Fisher): Twenty-seven.
Mr. SAMUEL: And while they were simply dealing with matters of very minor importance in comparison, that the whole of the work of the future pensions of disabled soldiers should be decided by the four men who are to constitute this Board. All I can say is that I rather agree with the right hon. Gentleman who spoke from the Front Bench. It appears to me that the duties these gentlemen have to perform will certainly require—if we are to have that expeditious and speedy solution of which the right hon. Gentleman speaks—that the size of this Board shall be enlarged, and that they must sit daily and continually to decide the very important points which arise in connection with the fixing of the disablement pensions. I understand that the Pensions Board is going to take over the work which is now carried on at the Tate Gallery—the work connected with the pensions of widows which does not present very many difficulties, if matters are straightened up, because the pensions for widows and children are on a flat rate, and therefore the pensions come automatically at the end of twenty-six weeks.
The pension of the dependants, however, presents some very serious complications, which will require very great consideration on the part of the Board. In many cases the pensions of the mothers, sisters, and other dependants of the soldiers, are inadequate. A vast amount of correspondence has taken place between the local authorities, Members of Parliament, and the heads of the department at the Tate Gallery. I have myself had something to do with the correspondents, and have seen them personally. I must not complain about the treatment of these pensioners, but I do say that if this Board of four members are going to consider the disablement pensions and also the dependants' pensions which are not flat pensions, the work will be enormous, and certainly I think the Board, with certain alterations, ought to be very much enlarged. The question of the disablement

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pension is certainly a very wide one, and the dissatisfaction in the country which exists at the present time is with the Chelsea Commissioners. I understand that the right hon. Gentleman, in his statement, stated that it is proposed practically to abolish the fixing of these pensions by the Chelsea Commissioners, and to transfer the work of fixing the disablement pensions to the new Pensions Board. I do not quite understand, but at least I have learned, since the discussion that has taken place, that the disablement pension fixed by the Naval Department is not to come within the four corners of the powers of the Pensions Board. That seems to me to point to a very extraordinary state of affairs. I know that there is very little trouble with the Admiralty; I am bound to say that. Still I think that, in the interests of co-ordination and simplification, it would be very much better if the whole of the pensions question were transferred to this Pensions Board, so that there might be uniformity of treatment throughout. I rather agree with the criticism of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Anglesea (Mr. Ellis Griffith), and I cannot understand why a representative of the Admiralty should become a member of the Board, and that cases connected with the Admiralty are not to be considered by that Board. It looks to me as if they may be anticipating a transfer, but there can be no co-ordination or simplification if the Admiralty continues to decide these important points in future.
I come now to the special point on which I desire to address the House, and that is the work of the Statutory Committee. I took some little part in the discussion in the House of Commons when the Statutory Committee was created. We had very great hopes that the Statutory Committee would fulfil the expectations that were formed of it, but I am bound to say that the Statutory Committee, right from the very beginning of their work, have caused very great dissatisfaction in the country, because they have never up to the present time trusted local authorities to do this work. That is really the crux of the whole difficulty of the Statutory Committee. They have tried in every possible way to thwart the intentions of the local committee. I believe myself that the nearer you can bring all these questions to the notice of the public through local committees, the sooner you will settle these great problems in the localities. I want to make one or two suggestions; I do not
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know whether my right hon. Friend will consider them. Personally, I have no complaint to make about my own town. We have had a local committee working there since 1st July. They have done excellent work; I am bound to say that; they are a most representative committee; I have no complaint to make about the constitution of that committee, and they have dealt with no less than 1,250 cases in the course of three months. I have maintained all along that you must bring the local people before the local authorities, and you must trust the local authorities to look at these great problems in view of the fact that there is so much dissatisfaction in the localities, especially about our disabled men.
The Naval and Military War Pensions Act gives the right to any man, woman, or child to make application to the local pensions committee either for pension, separation allowance, or dependence allowance, and this system is giving the utmost satisfaction, because people can go direct to the local pensions committee, who at once deal with their applications. I may say that, so far as my own correspondence on this subject is concerned, it has practically dropped, because the people now are trained to go day by day to the local pensions committee, and that committee inquires about their position, receives information from them, and then enters into correspondence on their behalf. I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman one or two questions in regard to the Statutory Committee. I understand that the Statutory Committee is to retain the supplementary grants which the local committees have been receiving since the Statutory Committee came into operation. We voted £1,000,000, but before that reached them they received £1,000,000 from the Prince of Wales Fund, and the local committees received payments from that sum up to 1st July. Since then the money has come from the Grant made tinder the Naval and Military War Pensions Act. This money is now paid out in the form of supplementary grants—that is to say, granted in the shape of additions to the rent paid by the dependants between 4s. and 8s. It is now paid in the form of a supplementary grant, and it is paid through the local committee.
I understand also that the Statutory Committee is to retain the power of granting supplementary pensions. The supplementary pensions involve many important points, for the reason that the

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pensions are very often inadequate. Widows or dependants go before the local committee, who have the power to investigate their cases and make their recommendations to the Statutory Committee, who, in turn, make their recommendations as to the additional supplementary pensions. I should like to ask my right hon. Friend this question, which is really a very important one: I understood him to say that the Statutory Committee were to retain the power of paying the supplementary grants and also of dealing with the supplementary pensions through the local committees, but the latter were to raise funds as voluntary funds. I should like to know what became of the recent agitation in London and the municipalities, and among the county councils, all unanimous in their statement that they would not distribute voluntary grants to these people, and that it must be State money. I venture to submit that you cannot raise money in the voluntary sense now. The people have subscribed something like £6,000,000 to the Prince of Wales Fund, and, at this time, it seems to me that the fairest way is that every man in the State, whatever his means, ought to pay his proportion of the taxes towards this fund. I would point out that we have a very large number of rich men in every town who escape when money is contributed in a voluntary sense. The Chancellor of the Exchequer came down to the House of Commons and what did he say? There had been a Grant of £1,000,000, and the right hon. Gentleman stated that he was going to make a further Grant, bringing the whole Grant up to £7,500,000. Further, the right hon. Gentleman promised to bring in a Bill dealing with this very object of giving a Parliamentary Grant of no less than £7,500,000 towards three things: One was to pay the supplementary grants; the second was towards the supplementary pensions; and the third was towards the scheme for disabled soldiers. May I ask what has become of all this money?
I would like to ask this question, for the matter must be faced. We have had local committees set up, and there has been this deliberate statement, which is within the knowledge of every member of those committees, that all this money is coming from the State. We have been told that the money is not to be raised in a voluntary sense, and that money raised in a voluntary sense for local funds is to
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be retained in the localities. But, as I understand it, this new Board is going to increase the pensions of the dependants and the disabled soldiers. If that be so, there is no need for any supplementary pensions. We ought to satisfy ourselves on that point, because if the supplementary pensions were to be paid, then that money coming from the State should be distributed on a settled policy in the country. People will not depend upon charity or on money subscribed voluntarily. Therefore, upon these points I was very much surprised to find, after all this agitation and after all the trouble at which we have been to persuade the Government that the people are resenting this charitable aspect of the grant of this money, that we have come back to the old problem and are to fall back upon the original intention of the Naval and Military War Pensions Act, namely, to depend upon voluntary gifts and not upon State money.
Mr. HENDERSON: I cannot allow my hon. Friend to state the position in the way he is doing. I think I can claim that there was nothing in my speech to justify that suggestion, rather, the contrary. I tried to show that, instead of having a pension decided under two authorities, the first a flat rate and the other a supplementation, both being paid out of State funds, we are going to do it in one decision, and therefore we must be going to do it out of State funds.
Mr. SAMUEL: I quite agree that you are going to pay a flat-rate pension out of State funds.
Mr. HENDERSON: That is not a correct representation of the case. I hope the hon. Member will accept it that, if we give a decision, we are not going to give a decision that half the money should come from the State and half from voluntary funds. The whole of the money will come from public funds.
Mr. SAMUEL: Let me put the case in this way. The question I have to ask is this: What power is retained by the Statutory Committee to pay supplementary pensions?
Sir RYLAND ADKINS: None.
Mr. HENDERSON: I think I made it perfectly clear that they were going to retain the power to supplement separation allowances and that they could supplement those separation allowances by special grants either out of private funds

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or public funds—the funds the hon. Member has referred to, that is, the special Grants that were agreed to be made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I think I also made it clear that they were not going to have the right to supplement any pension that was paid under the Board of Pensions out of public funds, whatever they choose to do out of private funds.
Mr. SAMUEL: That brings me to the question I have already asked. Is it understood that this new Board will increase the pension up to the level of the pensions now paid, plus the supplementary pension?
Mr. HENDERSON: I must ask the leave of the House to intervene again. I thought I had made it perfectly clear that I was not dealing with scales and the whole question of payment. I promised the House, with the consent of the Prime Minister, at an early date, to present a revised scheme that would involve the scrapping of the old Warrants, and I expressed the hope that hon. Members would defer criticism until that scheme was before the House. After all, we are dealing with machinery to-day. I said in my speech that I purposely refrained from dealing with all questions of scales, that I was going to have them reviewed in the light of experience, and that I hoped that I would be able to make some fresh proposals. Surely it is a new thing that before a Ministry has been created and the Minister is appointed he should have to go through the matter as if he had been appointed for a year. I hope the hon. Member is not going to place me in that position.
Mr. SAMUEL: I am certainly not going to place the right hon. Gentleman in that position. I am glad he has made this statement clearing up the point. Of course, I defer to my hon. Friend near me because I know the hon. Member for Middleton (Sir R. Adkins) knows everything about these matters. He is in a position to know, and I am not, therefore I ask for information so that I can advise my people. I shall leave that matter until we get it cleared up. The next point to which I should like to call attention is that of the care and training of officers and men. Unless I have wrongly interpreted the speech of my right hon. Friend, I understand that the care and training of officers and men is to be left in the hands of the Statutory Committee, and that the
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cost of the schemes is to be raised more or less out of public funds or voluntary funds. I should like to see the schemes worked out locally. I should like to see some scheme formulated so that you can get your county councils or borough councils, if necessary, linked up in the different localities, so that they can work out schemes for the training and care of these officers and men. That is what ought to be foreshadowed either by this Board or some other board. Further in every case you ought to have some connection between the discharge of the wounded man at the hospital and the local committees, so that the local committees can see after that man when he arrives. The trouble is that the local committees are ignorant of the arrival of these men. [An HON. MEMBER: "That is a detail."] Yes, it is a detail, but it is a very important one. I believe that very much of this trouble would be mitigated if you could link up the discharge of these men with the local committees so that the local committees could look after them. I am very glad to see the Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board here because I am dissatisfied with the work of the Statutory Committee with regard to the formation of local committees. I have evidence that there is a great deal of it which is partial and unfair to the local authorities. If the Statutory Committee is to be continued I should like to see its work linked up with the Pensions Board as a big sub-committee working under it and being under its control. I should like to see the Statutory Committee, if it is to continue, place greater confidence in the local authorities. By all means give London its proper powers, but do not send down inspectors to the local authorities to instruct them to do things which mitigate the powers of the local authorities. That is being done at present. All these things cause such unrest among the local authorities that there is great distress as to the policy and method of the Statutory Committee. They have brought it upon themselves, and until they alter their policy that unrest will continue.
The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the ADMIRALTY (Dr. Macnamara): Before I come to the question immediately before us, which is, after all, one of administration, I want to make, if I may, two or three general observations. Of course, we all cordially agree that those who defend the Flag by land and sea

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have the first claim upon our gratitude. If they are broken by the effort they make on our behalf no obligation can be more sacred than the obligation to succour and care for them. If they fall in our cause the same is true of our duty to minister to the needs of those they leave behind. We are all agreed upon that. Speaking generally—I must say this notwithstanding the Debate of to-day—the scales Parliament has approved for separation allowances for wives and children and other dependant relatives, the provision made for disabled soldiers and sailors, the pensions provided for the widow and orphan, the placing of a very large sum of public money at the disposal of a public authority charged to see that the possible inapplicability of flat rates to the widely varying conditions in civil life of those who are now fighting with the armed Forces of the Crown may be met to some extent by supplementary grants, and, finally, the commission laid upon the Civil Liabilities Committee to give special assistance in matters of rent, insurance premiums, house-purchase instalments, school fees, and so on, in cases where serious hardship would be caused on account of inability to meet financial obligations by reason of having undertaken military service—I say emphatically that all these things show how seriously Parliament has sought to reflect the national sentiment and to discharge an obligation which I have deliberately and properly called a sacred obligation.
Only those who are familiar with the way in which the State discharged its obligations in the past can fully appreciate the enormous advance represented by the provisions made to-day. Hon. Members have said —I have said—that we are not going to have repeated the spectacle of the war-worn veteran with his row of war medals sweeping a crossing and invoking the charity of the benevolent. On that we are all agreed. I go further. I say that with the provision now made there is no reason why this spectacle should recur. Notwithstanding all that, frankly I am always glad, if I may say so with respect, when the House discusses this problem. It cannot be better employed. Every time we discuss it the warm sympathy of hon. Members and their practical acquaintance, as the result of representations made to them first-hand, with the necessities of the case, add to our knowledge, and, I hope, improve our adminis-
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tration. But the House, very properly, devotes itself to the weak spots., therefore the real truth about the whole field of operations is apt to be obscured and a wrong impression is, to some extent, created. That is a pity, because it looks as if we are really not appreciating our duty in regard to this sacred matter. I feel so strongly about it that I am not disposed to apologise for reminding the House and the country quite shortly and in a most summarised form of the nature of the present provision as a whole. Take the separation allowances to sailors' wives and children. They are quite new. There was no separation allowance in the Navy before this War. For soldiers' wives and children they are on a scale which is more generous than in the past, and are not now limited by the "marriage on the strength" condition of eligibility. Before this War the War Office was paying 1,100 such separation allowances to wives and children. They cost £35,000 a year. I imagine that the House has some idea of the revolution caused by the recognition of responsibility involved in the striking out of the "marriage on the strength" qualification of eligibility.
As regards dependants —mothers, fathers, sisters, and other relatives—this provision is quite new. We had nothing like it before. With regard to widows and children, you must remember that before this War to be eligible as a soldier's widow the woman had to be married on the strength when her husband was alive, and the pension she then received was 5s. for the lowest rank and 1s. 6d. for each orphan. The fact that she had to be married on the strength while her husband was alive, otherwise she was not eligible, very rigidly narrowed the award. I wonder whether hon. Members have any idea how rigidly that did narrow the award. They know the new rates both for widows and orphans. They know how favourably they compare with the rates of the past. They know, further, how much more liberal, after all is said and done, the grants to the soldiers and sailors, partially and totally disabled, are, increased as they are for the first time in the case of married men. In the old days, married or single, no distinction was made in these disability pensions. Beyond all this comes the Statutory Committee. Good as these flat rates of allowances and pensions are and enormously as they have improved upon the past, cases of hardship will arise owing to

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the extraordinary conditions of the present War under which there are serving with the armed forces of the Crown men whose social conditions in civil life vary in the widest possible way, the men whose varying conditions in civil life cover pretty well the whole social field. What did we do about it? We appointed a Statutory Committee with local committees having the local and intimate knowledge which State Departments cannot hope to have. Over and above the flat rate provision, costing many millions of money a year for the War period, we gave that Committee in effect another £5,000,000 or £6,000,000 of public money. It prepared scales of supplemental grants for applications to proper cases. Hon. Members have had those scales in the two sets of draft Regulations prepared by the Statutory Committee in their hands. They may not agree, no doubt, with every detail of those Regulations, naturally, but, as regards the purpose behind them and the painstaking their preparation must have involved, they represent to me very remarkable State documents indeed. I can assure the House there was nothing like it in the old days. Over and above all this there is the Civil Liabilities Committee at work in the field of operations for which it is responsible.
I at once admit delay in settling cases. In the enormous pressure of claims and the inability of poor people to find their way through the maze of official regulations for the first time, I am afraid that has been inevitable. Decisions based upon existing warrants and Orders that failed to give satisfaction there may have been. Views may and do differ on questions of attributability, degree of impairment, and whether contracted in or aggravated by military service, or neither. I admit that many complaints fall under these categories. Officials whose discretion is strictly limited and prescribed by definite hard and fast rules and regulations may have given awards that seemed to lack generosity and breadth of spirit. What can they do? They have the Exchequer and Audit Department at their elbow all the time. But with this provision before me and bringing to every consideration of the problem a mind disposed to criticism, because of old associations and old affections—and they are as dear to me as any other Member of the House—I say that, broadly speaking, I am satisfied in the main that the desire of the country has been fairly met by this provision. It may
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here and there need review in the light of experience certainly. The Paymaster General has told the House that it will get it. Of course it will get it. Satisfied as I am in the main with the measure of State assistance rendered, I am not less gratified, and no one could be, by the way the men themselves seek to meet their responsibilities. Look at these simple and eloquent facts. The men of the Navy are sending home to their wives and other relatives every month from their pay £775,500. They have £1,264,000 now in the Naval Savings Bank, as against £300,000 before the War, and, of course, they have other investments in the Post Office Savings Banks and elsewhere, and the officers and men of the Fleet have between them invested in War Loan and Exchequer Bonds over £100.000.
Having said that, let me come to the Bill. What we are here mainly discussing is, by common consent, administration. Those who call for a separate State Department and Minister for this work do so because they want prompt, smooth, uniform handling of cases. They want to avoid overlapping and waste, they want this State aid to go to the right place by the readiest process, and of course they want quick appreciation and recognition of the places where modifications, even of this provision, may prove in the light of actual experience to be necessary, and they say, "In view of the enormity and perplexity of the problem created by the War, the only way to get this promptitude, uniformity and co-ordination, this reduction of delay to a minimum, is to take it right away from the War Office and the Admiralty, and create a new Department ad hoc, with a Minister directly responsible to Parliament. It is a very attractive proposition. It seems a perfectly simple way out, and it seems at once to give aboslute recognition to our proper sense of the nature of our responsibilities. Do not let anyone imagine, however, that the creation of the most perfect machinery is going to solve all these problems. Human problems are never solved by machinery alone. You want much more than the most perfect machinery. You want large hearted, sympathetic men and women to work upon it, with human patience and human kindness, and that you have got and will get. But even then, whatever your machinery, do not let anyone suppose, human nature being what it is, that there will not be any more complaining.

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This ad hoc solution, in so far as this Bill adopts it, appears to be inevitable in the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Were it not for those circumstances, to be quite frank, I should oppose any form of divorcement of this function from the Army and the Navy.
That is not a mere narrow, Departmental view. In my view it is the duty of the Secretary of State on the one hand and of the First Lord of the Admiralty on the other to direct, to administer and to preside over the care of those who serve them, even when they have ceased to be effective fighting units. To me that is an ideal deeply rooted in sentiment and service tradition. I speak quite sincerely when I say that it is very dear to me, and I am quite sure it is dear to every officer in command; but, of course, I have to face facts, and if the work is so enormous I may have to sacrifice my ideal on the altar of practicability. The great complexity, the novelty, the enormous volume of the problem as affecting the New Army, throw me back as a practical man on the ad hoc solution for the Army, so far as it is adopted in this Bill, and I at once admit that what I may call the sentimental and service nature of my objection to this divorcement of function does not lie at all strongly when I contemplate the case of the New Army. Further, to the extent that it does lie, the Government proposals meet it by retaining to the War Office the long service pension. The Army is really now largely a civilian Army. Its military record and associations, though glorious to a degree, amazingly glorious in the circumstance—I am never tired of contemplating with pride the way the newest battalion of every regiment thinks only of living up to the highest traditions of the oldest—are not so long-standing and professional as in this case to make my objection to divorcement of function at all serious. Its long-service pensions are few, its War disability pensions, its war problems of all kinds, are many. Therefore, if I may speak my own thoughts for what they are worth, though frankly I do not like this divorcement, it is in this case, and as proposed by this Bill, probably the best thing to do in the circumstances, and it is put to us in such a way in this scheme as to conserve for the military Service those responsibilities which permanent Service conditions and relationships demand should not be severed and put apart.
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Let the House consider how different is the case of the Navy. Do not for heaven's sake say, "Here comes a mere Departmental marionette, dancing at the bidding of a narrow officialism, who is simply anxious to aggrandise his own office," because it really is not so. If I thought handing this work over to this new civil authority would improve matters I should be its strongest advocate. My duty to those I love and respect would compel me to that course. We are a comparatively small family. We are a long-service family. War has not seriously altered the fundamental basis of our existence. Certainly we remain, as we always have been, a fairly homogenous family. It is true we have recruited for the War only through the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and the Royal Naval Division, but war has not brought with it, as regards our personnel, the changes and expansion which it has to the Army. It has not seriously strained our machinery. Our life service pensions are, and will be, please God, many. Our war disability pensions, our widows' and orphans' pensions, are, comparatively speaking, not many. We have no regimental depots wholly unrelated in many cases to the man's domicile, through which our documents have to come and go, as is the case with the War Office. All our work is done under one roof. All Service records are under that roof. The final naval medical authority is there. You simply walk across a corridor with your facts about a case, and all the other relevant facts are at your disposal on the other side of the corridor. The work is done by men, one and all, imbued by the fine sentiment that the Lords Commissioners of the Navy are the little fathers of the Fleet, and that their responsibility towards the sailor and those he leaves behind does not close when he is laid aside and broken, or when he has passed away. It would be, I am deeply convinced, a very serious sterilisation of the function which we are all proud to carry out if we, the Commissioners of the Navy, were to have divorced from us the care of the disabled sailor and his widow and orphans when he has died in our service. That is the heart of my plea. I speak for others as well as myself when I say that it has been at all times, and particularly during the strain of the War, a real solace to have been called upon to bear this responsibility. I know that my view is fully

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shared, not only by the Sea Lords and the civilian members of the Board, but by the Accountant-General and his officers, by the Director of Greenwich Hospital and his officers, and also by all naval officers of the Fleet and by men of the lower deck themselves. Further, being a little family, and fully recognising that our responsibility does not close at the moment when the sailor is no longer an effective fighting unit, we have, as I say, under our roof, the most precise and detailed information of the man's Service career and medical history. Of course, we have always been glad, and shall always be glad, we have always been ready, and shall always be ready, to receive assistance from the Statutory Committee and its local committees, and, indeed, from any other responsible body, to enable us more equitably to make our rewards.
The House properly wants to cut down delay to an irreducible minimum. Separation for us means delay. We should still have to keep our records and pass them on to the new Board. If it were not expeditious in its movements—and I ought not, in all honesty, to suggest that with my right hon. Friend (Mr. Henderson) as its president—we should stand helplessly by as the result of a delay for which we were not responsible and over which we should have no control. I do beg the House in this matter to let well alone. I beg the House not to break an ancient and fine tradition. It involves differentiation of treatment, but differentiation fully justified in the circumstances. The two Services are now themselves fundamentally differentiated. I may be asked, What about uniformity and co-ordination? As to that I would say that we have always been at the greatest pains to consult beforehand the War Office in regard to the Regulations to be set forth in the Royal Warrants and Orders in Council, respectively. If it is thought necessary that there should be still closer co-ordination, pooling of information and of administrative experience, we should be only too ready to lend ourselves to its development. Certainly, if for no other reason than this, a representative of the Board of Admiralty may very well find a place on the new Board, as the Bill proposes. That will help us both. Of course, the criticism that you cannot make an effective Board out of four men already fully engaged was certain to arise. That is the half-timer criticism. Look at it. The President is already engaged on this work as Pay-
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master-General. It will simply give him more control and more direct executive responsibility; and quite right too. Two of the other three members will probably have less to do in this respect, because the Board will take over some of the work they are now doing. The third, myself, will simply go on with the Admiralty part of it, if the House will let me, as I have done for nearly nine years now, and for the rest I shall be brought into direct touch with the new Board, which will certainly be good for me and my work, and may, it is remotely conceivable, be not without value to the new Board.
After all, this is a problem of day by day practical administration. It is all very fine to talk of root and branch methods, of getting everybody under one roof by a stroke of the pen and all that, but you must have regard to existing methods and institutions and adapt and use their experiences. We want the thing well done, even if the shibboleth of brand-new uniformity is not theoretically satisfied in the scheme of this Bill. I may be told that differentiation in the method of administration I am advocating may lead to overlapping and waste. With great respect I would say that those who may advance that argument are under a confusion of thought. That there has been overlapping and waste I do not deny, perhaps to a serious extent. But that is not because of duplication of awards from public funds by the Admiralty on the one hand and the War Office on the other. They are so rare as to be quite negligible. Neither can it arise because of duplication of awards by the Admiralty on the one hand and the new Pensions Board on the other. Overlapping and waste arise because the local dispensers of private and public assistance from other than Parliamentary Votes are not always fully aware of what the recipients are already receiving or are entitled to receive from the public purse. Therefore, it is very necessary to keep the distinction well in mind, because the argument in favour of an ad hoc authority to prevent overlapping and waste is directed to a quarter in which overlapping and waste do not and cannot exist. I would most certainly insist that all those charged with the administration of funds of any sort for the relief of soldiers and sailors and their relatives should be kept closely informed each as to what the others are doing. Even if all the arguments I have advanced were not at my disposal. I have to point this out,

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that the Army problem is surely quite big enough and quite novel enough for this new administration to make a start with. It will have its hands pretty full with that problem alone. For the mere sake of symmetry and a nicely designed piece of new machinery—which some of my hon. Friends think is the one and only solution for all the many difficulties of this most complex problem—do not overload the thing by piling on that which is well and properly done elsewhere. I am afraid I have unduly kept the House, but I thought it desirable to have our case fully stated at the outset. I repeat my appeal to the House to let us alone. I repeat it on service grounds' and on sentimental grounds. I repeat it in the full confidence that I am not asking the House to establish and maintain inefficiency; quite the contrary. If I thought the interests of the men who serve us so loyally and the interests of their dependants would be better served by a change, conscience would compel me to advocate it. I do not. Therefore, with the utmost confidence, I appeal to the House to let well alone.
Mr. MONTAGUE BARLOW: I must begin by congratulating the right hon. Gentleman upon two things—first of all the tactful ingenuity with which he used this Bill as a peg on which to hang certain preliminary remarks; and, secondly, the very able and skilful defence he made of what I venture still to think, in spite of the excellent case he has presented, is one of the grave defects of the Bill now presented to the House. I cannot pretend to criticise his defence with the same skill with which he put it forward. He has at his disposal not only great personal ability, but great resources of information. But may I draw attention to one or two points which strike me at once, as an amateur from an Admiralty point of view, but as a professional from the pension point of view. Our case a priori is that this pension work is civilian work. It is not fighting work. The work of the great fighting departments is to win the War, and everything which relieves them of the burden of this purely civilian work— agitating, irritating, minute work—is a benefit to them as fighting departments. Let me come to his defence. He says, "Yes, but the problem is different for the New Army and, so to speak, for the old Navy. The problem is so different for the Army because you have enrolled instead of three or four hundred thousand
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men five millions or six millions of men; while in the Navy, although the numbers have increased, they have not increased in anything like the proportion of increase in the Army. The Navy, therefore, remains a long-service institution. The right hon. Gentleman admitted, however, that they have taken into the Navy a considerable number of short service men. Then, on his own showing, the Admiralty have to come in with the arrangements of the new Board in regard to supplementary pensions. Therefore they are not standing out altogether. Under those circumstances they run a risk, and I think it is rather an unpleasant risk from a Departmental point of view, that they may have to refer a case which has been denied a supplementary pension by the Admiralty to a Board presided over by he Pensions Minister for the decision of the Board. That is not a satisfactory state of affairs. The Admiralty are not standing out for all purposes.
Dr. MACNAMARA: They go to the Statutory Committee now.
Mr. BARLOW: I know you do, but my point is that it must be aye or no, whether you go in or stand out of the Bill. You are going into the Bill for certain purposes, because the Board is to have the presence of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty upon it. You are going into the Bill because, for the purpose of supplementary pensions, if a supplement is-denied by the Admiralty the case may have to go to the Board for consideration. There is another point of practical importance, and that is where I think the Admiralty have not really appreciated our position. We have set up now in the country these local committees and it is admitted that whatever policy is set up in London, the administration of that policy has got to be carried out locally. Surely when you set up these new Committees they will acquire experience, and they will be able to tap all the sources of information in the community. They are entirely a new factor. Why should you by what you do in connection with the Admiralty exclude your disabled men from sharing in that advantage? If you stand outside the new Board's arrangement I am afraid that is what you are going to-do.
Dr. MACNAMARAdissented.
Mr. BARLOW: I hope not.
Dr. MACNAMARAmade an observation which was inaudible in the Reporters' Gallery.
Mr. BARLOW: Then you are standing outside the arrangement which is governed by the Board, and you have two authorities dealing with the Statutory Committee. Then you are in awful trouble. If the contention of the Admiralty is, "We are going to have our control of the Statutory Committee, as well as the Board presiding over the Statutory Committee," then it means confusion worse confounded. However, I hope the case is not so bad as it appears. All I suggest to the Admiralty is this: Do not do anything—we all sympathise with the effort to secure for your men prompt treatment by payment of pensions at once—to cut out your disabled men who, after all, are the great body of men you have got to consider from the assistance of the Statutory Committee.
Coming to my general criticism of the Bill, I do not wish it to be supposed that it is directed in any way against the Government. There have been curious rumours during the last few weeks, that if one ventures on any criticism he is supposed to want to destroy the Coalition. Far be it from me to suggest anything of the kind. I hope that any criticism offered by those of us who are associated with the Pensions Committee group in the House of Commons may be of a helpful and not of a destructive character. It is very difficult for us to criticise with the Bill not before us. In saying that I do not wish to detract in any way from the very clear statement of the Paymaster-General. I could not understand why it was misunderstood by some hon. Member speaking behind him. But without details of the Bill it is very difficult to direct intelligent criticism. So far as the Bill promoted unification I extend my support to it. It is doubtful whether in any circumstance you could have straight off a complete new system of unification. You have got your 800 people in Baker Street, your 600 at Chelsea, your 200 at the Tate Gallery, and so on. With these bodies in working order it would be very difficult in any circumstance to unify straight away, and I welcome as a step in the right direction what we have got to-day in the way of unification. That does not mean that I am satisfied or at all convinced that we shall not have to take further steps in the future. The test of your machinery in all these matters—I suggest that that test has not been kept sufficiently to the front in some
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of the speeches made to-night—is this: is it going to be of real assistance to disabled men, to widows, dependants and everybody else who has to come to the State for assistance under these provisions? If your machinery is not going to assist them, if it is a mere question of Departmental adjustment contrived to find a way out of conflicting personal Departmental squabbles, I do not care a button for it. All I care for, and the only reason I have taken up this pension business, is that we must do everything we can to assist the people who come to the State for payment of pensions.
We shall still have, I am afraid, six or seven authorities to whom application may be made. Many of us find our postbags every morning burdened with letters of complaint; letters from people saying that they have written to this and that Department and cannot get answers and do not know where to go, or from whom to get provision made for their cases: yet you are setting up a new authority. Therefore I am very doubtful whether the Bill in its present shape does very much, except from the one point of view which the Paymaster-General put very clearly, namely, that he hoped to get the flat-rate pension and the supplementary pensions made both at the name time practically: and I agree that that would be a great matter, but except to that extent I am rather afraid that this proposal as at present put forward, instead of easing the burden for those for whom we care so much—the dependants, children and wives of these men—is going to increase the burden, because for certain purposes it will mean an additional authority, to which application must be made.
In reference to the exclusion of the Admiralty, I am very sorry that the Admiralty, generally speaking, have taken up the line which they have taken. I can assure those interested in the Admiralty, and those having had experience in that gallant service, that our only object in venturing on this criticism is to help those whose interests they have so much at heart. The Admiralty—I must say I was surprised—have proved slightly obstructive hot only with regard to this policy, but as to the Air Board of which I have heard. I think that it is an unfortunate attitude for them to take. As to the Statutory Committee, the Bill, if the papers are to be trusted, has altered its shape in a Protean kind of Way several times within the last few days, and

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I am not quite certain even now what the position of the Statutory Committee is. At one time it seemed to be going to be invited to commit a sort of administrative hari-kari, and to submit to murder or suicide. Now it appears to be going to be kept alive in a state of half-suspended animation. I see that the Paymaster-General shakes his head, and I shall be glad if I find that it is really going to be kept fully alive. Taking the Act of Parliament of 1915, it appears to me that the powers of B and C in Section 3 are going to be taken over by the Board and that all the rest of the powers are to be left to the Statutory Committee. If that is so, then I agree that there is very substantial work for the Statutory Committee left to do. I would like to clear up one point. If I am wrong, no doubt the Paymaster-General will correct me. He spoke of a delegation. As I understand what he meant was this: There is no delegation of powers A, D, E, F, and so on, but only a delegation of B and C. These are taken over by the Board and may be redelegated to the Statutory Committee as a permissive matter and by consent of the Board. If it is to that which he referred when he used the word "delegation, then I understand—
Mr. HENDERSON: What I wanted to convey to the House was that we could not think of trying to organise new local machinery. There are over 300 committees now in existence. It might be necessary for us to delegate certain powers in order that we might get use of that local machinery. It is to bring ourselves into close contact with the Statutory Committee, and through them with all these local committees, that these words are included.
Mr. BARLOW: I think it is as I suggest, that you assume to yourselves the powers B and C under the Act, and then take power to yourself to redelegate those powers to the local committee, because you say they have got splendid machinery and you want to make all the use of it that you can; but all the other powers, A, D, £, F, and so on, remain with the Statutory Committee and there is no question of delegation with regard to them. The Statutory Committee case was put very well by my hon. Friend on my right. It is in a somewhat different position from a Government Department; it is an outside body, an independent body, according to its own supporters an extremely indepen-
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dent body, and it has advantages which perhaps a Government Department has not. I hope that it has the advantage of having bowels of compassion, which sometimes a Government Department has not. To that extent I shall be very glad if it is possible to keep it alive. After all, the machinery that we are discussing to-day will come round in the end always to the same old test—is the machinery which we are going to set up going to be effective for getting these great problems solved?
There are two outstanding things which appear to be crying needs. I have got a whole bundle of cases here. I will not trouble the House with them. I am one of those people to whom the Member for Anglesey (Mr. Ellis Griffith) refers who have special responsibilities in regard to this. I was largely instrumental in raising the Salford brigade, and these men naturally apply to me. All the cases which I have got here are those of men from the battalions with the raising of which I was connected, and naturally they apply to me for help. The two outstanding difficulties are these: First of all there is the question of gap, of the interval between the time of a man's discharge and the pension. That is getting better, though I have still got two or three bad cases here. But although we have those bad cases the position is getting better. But the two things which are really crying out for settlement are, first of all, the whole question of disablement. We have heard of plans and schemes, but we do not know where we are. I had the pleasure recently when in Paris of visiting the Grand Palais. Many of us knew it in the old days as the home of art and beauty, but I think that no more beautiful work has ever been done or put into the Grand Palais than is being put into it at this moment. If any of you want to see a description of the work that is done there you can lead it in the "Times" this very morning. That is the work of the disabled men who are trained there.
They are trained first of all to special machines. Then gradually they are turned on to working machinery, so that they not only get back the use of their limbs, but they get back the use of their limbs in connection with the learning of a new trade. It is a most wonderful work, and anybody who has not seen it has no idea of the extraordinary development to which things have got in France. I have not had the pleasure of seeing: the Ecole Joffre at

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Lyons, where I understand the most admirable work is done. The French seem to be very far ahead of us, so far as the whole policy of treating disablement is concerned. In every street through which you walk in Paris, and in other French towns you find the shops full of work turned out by wounded soldiers. When I came home I went through the leading thoroughfares, I looked at the leading shops and did not find a single specimen of work turned out by the labour of wounded soldiers who have learned a trade in the manner in which trades are taught in the Grand Palais. What I want to know is: Is this new Board going to produce the great scheme for which we are all waiting? That scheme must have three things. It must have some method of keeping the men under the control of the military authority or the naval authority during the time of treatment—with their consent, if necessary. I was challenged by an hon. Member to point out how it could be done. The difficulty cannot be insuperable because they do it in France, and if it is possible to do it in France, as we are very much in the same position, it ought to be possible to do it here. They keep the men under discipline while going through the Grand Palais.
Arrangements have been made for men in my Constituency who have been discharged to go to the hospitals, but, if the treatment is irksome or unpleasant, possibly they drop going for one day, and next week, if it is rather damp, they do not stir out of doors, and so on. We must, with the men's help, avoid making the treatment intermittent. Anyone who has had anything to do with treatment of the kind knows that the essential thing is that it should be not intermittent, but continuous, as otherwise valuable time is lost and the treatment may become ineffective. The first condition, therefore, is that the man must be retained under reasonable control while being trained. The second is, that you must have the best orthopaedic doctors. The Army has got them, and they cannot be obtained elsewhere. You cannot get on withont them. Then you must have the local committee, and it is from the point of view of having the assistance of the local committee that I venture to suggest to the Admiralty that they should come in and make use of the advantages which I have indicated.
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The second crying need is the cases of men who have been in the Army whose health has broken down. I know many such cases. I have got two very touching cases here. One is the case of a man with eight children and another that of a man with nine children. None of these children are capable of earning. One of these men developed asthma, and the other got lung trouble. I should have thought it obvious to anyone reading the history of what they went through; the fact that the hutting was not satisfactory, that they were in tents, that the accommodation was not good, and that they were exposed to bad weather, that they got these diseases from the cold and damp to which they were exposed in the course of their training, and I should have thought it obvious that these were cases for which there was a responsibility on the part of the nation which was clear as daylight. These men are unable to do any work. One of them got a light job but was unable to keep it. The nation has taken those men's lives and it is clear that their illness was due to the fact that they were exposed to these conditions in the Army. If our new scheme will assist us to get a remedy for that state of things, then I say "God speed" to it at once. Some questions of detail have been raised about what exactly the new Pension Board is to be and what authority it is to have. But we need not discuss them until we see the Bill. I hope it will not be necessary to set up any very elaborate Department with an elaborate staff. At a time like this it does not seem to be desirable to spend any very large sum of money or to have a big array of secretaries.
Let me conclude with one word of warning. Pensions are going to be a great question in this country during the lives of all of us here and during the lives of others who come after us. Do not let us make any mistake. Several countries have had very unfortunate experiences in regard to the question. In some the pensions question has become a political question. It has been made a matter of contested elections, and the pressure put upon popular representatives over the matter of pensions has been enormous. I hope we shall try to escape from that. I do not wish to say anything that can be deemed to be of a controversial character. But it has come to my attention that one party has been issuing notices saying that applications for pensions are to be made

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to its Parliamentary Committee. I deprecate that most strongly, because it is not playing the game, and if that kind of trouble is going to start now, Heaven knows what kind of morass we are going to fall into. Though I feel strongly that the pensions question is such a big question, though I feel there must be someone responsible to Parliament and able to speak in the matter, I am not at all sure that in the end we shall not do well to adopt the precedent of the Canadian Parliament or that of our own Parliament in connection with the Port of London Authority. We have set up, in connection with that authority, a semi-Government Department, and I am not certain it would not be better to do something of the same kind here. I enter this as a sort of caveat or note of warning for the future. With regard to the Bill, I have not criticised it very severely to-night, but like others, I reserve the right of freer criticism when we have the pleasure of seeing the measure in print.
Sir NORVAL HELME: I am sure the House will recognise that the Government have met the general feeling in the country by the introduction of the measure outlined to-night with the object that the system of pensions shall be well administered and generously provided. The speech of the right hon. Gentleman showed us how thoroughly and fully he has considered the question of desirable improvements. But it appears to me that the establishment of a Board is open to question. We recognise the ability of the three right hon. Gentlemen, whose names it is proposed to associate with that of the President. We also recognise that they are already very well administering the great work of their Departments. But it seems to me, and to others, that if a Department in itself was established and the President left to regulate its business after the fashion of other Departments of State, with, if necessary, an under-secretary, then the time of the responsible Ministers in the other Departments would be left free to deal with the various important issues they have to consider day by day. Of course, they could be called in for consultation when necessary in the way that is done at the present time between different Departments when matters arise affecting them. May I hope, therefore, that this point will receive attention, and that it will,
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together with the important question of leaving out the Navy, have the careful consideration of the Cabinet.
We admit that the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Admiralty has made a very strong appeal to the feeling of the House. We recognise that the position of the Navy is altogether driierent from that of the Army, and if, as I understand, the flat rate of pensions, both in the Army and in the Navy, will be dealt with in the first instance by the two great Departments themselves, then why should the Admiralty not be content to allow those men who require further assistance and special consideration—especially as the claims of each individual man will have to be dealt with locally—to have their cases dealt with by one responsible head, whose duty it will be to deal with all the allowances made to both soldiers and sailors. I hope the Government will leave this matter to the unfettered judgment of the House. In the meantime, we do not desire to challenge the opinion of the Government, except by way of argument; we do not want to go into the Lobby against it, because of our confidence in it as a great national instrument for carrying the War through. We desire to support them in every way. But we would ask them to consider this question.
I wish to make some reference to the allusions of the right hon. Gentleman to the work of the Statutory Committee. That Committee has been constituted to carry out very important duties, and to act through local committees. They are, of course, allowed a certain amount of discretionary power in respect of the populations in urban districts below the 50,000 limit. But it is because of the duties of these local committees that I am putting forward my plea. The duty of the local committees, in the first place, is to inquire into cases and report thereon with recommendations. They collect and furnish information to the Statutory Committee, and at the same time they furnish applicants for grants and separation allowances with information and advice. They make provision for grants to disabled officers and men after they leave the Service, including prevision for health, training, and employment, and the successful administration of these additional pensions must depend on the amount of knowledge of each case. We hold that sound administration would carry the establishment of committees

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with such powers further than is now allowed. The Statutory Committee has seen fit to increase the number of local committees when appealed to in the public interest. But a feeling of disappointment has arisen in the country because of the very few places below the 50,000 limit that have been entrusted with these powers.
A deputation from the Municipal Corporations Association waited on the Statutory Committee recently, and the matter was discussed in this House on the Vote for the Vice-Chairman's salary, so that the whole question has been before us in one form or another. Since then a meeting has been held of the smaller authorities, and a request sent to the Prime Minister that he would receive a deputation in order that the smaller authorities may press upon him, before the introduction of this Bill, these arguments, and invite a more generous consideration of them. But now that we have had from the right hon. Gentleman so generous an acknowledgment of his feeling in respect of the devolution he thinks it may be necessary to carry still further, I rise to express to him the thanks of the smaller urban authorities, and to suggest, as I understand he will be willing to do, that they shall have an opportunity of putting before the Government their view. I hope, then, these views will receive the consideration which we think would enable them to make a further development in the successful administration of this very useful Bill, the introduction of which I heartily welcome.
Mr. WARDLE: I desire to say only a few words on this occasion. I welcome very heartily the introduction of this Bill as a great step in the right direction. It does not go quite so far as I would have liked, but as far as it does go, I think it is a very great step towards the simplification of the machinery with regard to pensions, and I hope it may have the result, which the Secretary to the Admiralty suggested in his eloquent speech, of carrying out what is the undoubted intention of Parliament, and that is, that all our soldiers and sailors, and their widows and dependants, shall be treated in the manner this House desires. There can be no question that the House of Commons, during the whole crisis of this War, has faced the question of pensions and separation allowances in a broad and generous spirit. Where it has been lacking has been in the machinery, in the
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delays, and in the inconveniences which have occurred before the recipients have got the benefit to which they have been entitled. It has been not only delay, but there has been dissatisfaction with the amounts which have been granted, amounts which many of us deem to be absolutely contrary to the intentions and desires of Parliament. I beg, therefore, to say that, so far as I am concerned, we welcome the simplification and unification which this Bill will produce. In regard to the Navy, I do not know that I feel very keenly about it. But the right hon. Gentleman, I admit, has, in regard to this Bill, rightly referred to the great traditions of that Service; to the close feeling and association there is between the men in the Navy and the administration itself. I am bound to confess that I receive very few complaints indeed, amongst the numberless complaints I have received, in regard to the pensions or allowances of the Navy. I should like also to add that on a committee on which I sit which deals with disabled men, I find the Navy very broad and very generous in their treatment of the men. They are always the first to welcome any increase or innovation, and always ready to assist their men in any way they can. I want, in regard to the Navy, to raise one particular point which is not quite clear to me. So far as I can gather, the Navy intend to keep the flat-rate pension in their own hands. Any supplemental pension which is granted to a member of the naval forces must be got from the Pensions Board.
Dr. MACNAMARA: Not necessarily.
Mr. WARDLE: All I am anxious is to find out whether or not there is to be two bites at the cherry. If there is, I think it is a weak point in that particular portion of the administration. Where a supplemental question is at stake the decision should he taken at once, and the whole question should be considered and settled, if possible, by one authority. Whatever the grant, I know it will have to be brought under review; but in regard to the Pensions Board itself, I should like to say that I hope we may gather from the speech of the Paymaster-General that it is the intention of the Government, when they once grant a pension, not to have it constantly under review, changing and chopping it about, so that those concerned do not know what they are likely to receive. If the Paymaster-General agrees, as I think he did from his speech this

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afternoon, with the French system, that once the pension is settled it is settled for all time, then that will be well, and a great many problems which are agitating the mind of the pensioner, and which are very disconcerting to men who are getting pensions and earning something extra, will be solved. It is an indefensible system that a pensioner who is able to earn an extra few shillings per week should have his pension continually reviewed and for the advantage due to his extra earning capacity taken away and transferred to the State. I hope we may gather from the speech of my right hon. Friend that it is his intention, and the intention of the Pensions Board, to put an end to that.
We cannot criticise the new scales until we see them. There is just one other point I want to raise. I do not know whether, under the new arrangement, it is under the Pensions Board or the Statutory Committee, but there has been so much delay in regard to this matter that I am bound to raise it on the present occasion. I am connected with a committee that deals with limbless men. It is an enormous problem. The committee has taken upon itself and is carrying out a scheme of training for the men both at Brighton and Roehampton. While the men are with us we have no complaint to make. We deal with their training. They are under military or naval discipline. There are, however, a number of these men, when they come to leave us, for whom we cannot get, either from the Statutory Committee in London or from the Pensions Board, a grant to continue for them their training' until they are fitted to return to industrial life. We have put this problem before the Statutory Committee in London. They have made certain arrangements and agreed to them, and these agreements have not been carried out.
Mr. HAYES FISHER: May I interrupt my hon. Friend for a moment to say we have only just received from the Treasury their sanction to the financial arrangements which we have been asking them to make and which, naturally, they had to take some time to consider? We have just received and considered it to-day. I think it will be found to be satisfactory.
Mr. WARDLE: What the right hon. Gentleman has said brings me exactly to the point that I wanted to ask as to the Statutory Committee. They had money
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granted to them for dealing with the question of the disabled men and their training, and it seems to myself and to the committee a very strange proceeding that it should be necessary to go to the Treasury to ask their consent to a scheme for dealing with the training of these men in. London. This matter has been going on for six weeks, two months, three months, and we have had to find the money to pay for the training of these men in London. This expense ought to have been borne by the Statutory Committee. I am very glad to hear from the right hon. Gentleman that the trouble has been got over, and that the scheme, which I hope we may be permitted to see at a very early date, is now in a satisfactory position. I should like simply to say once more how glad I am that this whole question of pensions is to receive more drastic treatment. I hope we shall hear less of delays and troubles in the future now that my right hon. Friend has been put in charge of these proceedings. For my part, I rather welcome the idea of a Board. I think it is big enough. It is not too big. I should deprecate a large committee. I think it would tend to delay. The fact that we have a Board consisting of four Gentlemen in close touch with all the Departments, and all the problems arising out of them, will certainly tend to a solution of the problem in a much quicker manner than has hitherto been the practice.
Colonel YATE: I listened to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Admiralty with great interest. I will not attempt to follow him in his eloquent dissertation on the war-worn veterans, or his remarks in regard to the details of the pensions administration; nor will I attempt to follow him in all his cogent reasons as to why his particular Department should not come within the operations of this Bill. I suppose that his example will now be followed by the other Under-Secretaries, by the Under-Secretary for War and the Under-Secretary for the Local Government Board, who will each of them in turn doubtless give cogent reasons why their Department could not come within the new sphere of operations. What I would like to say, and the only thing I want to say at the present stage, is that, so far as my knowledge goes, and so far as I can gather the constitution and procedure of the new Board, I am opposed to it root and branch. Look how we stand! We have got a Cabinet Minister who is put in as

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President of this Board; a Cabinet Minister who is a party politician, and is removed or goes out of office with every change of Government, and who also will be liable to change with every shifting of Cabinet Ministers. There can be no permanent administration while a Cabinet Minister of that sort presides over this Board. Similarly, in the case of the three Under-Secretaries, the Admiralty, War Office, and the Local Government Board, they all are busy, morning, noon, and night in their own Departments. At present they have more than they can do. They have no time to give to the details of the administration of the Pensions Board. They also are party politicians. They also come out with every change of Government. There is no permanency in the administration. Not only that, but it seems to me that in constituting this Board you are engrafting on the British Constitution what in America they call "graft." We have been warned against it by my hon. Friend the Member for Salford, who told us that already he had noticed that one political party was issuing notices that applications for pensions were to be made through them. We must try and put down this system. Personally I see no reason why we should not have an entirely independent pensions authority in charge of the pensions, and why such an authority should not be represented in this House just as are the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. I object entirely to the political touch which is given to this Pensions Board.
HON. MEMBERS: No, no!
Colonel YATE: I do. I object, and object entirely!
Dr. MACNAMARA: Why?
Colonel YATE: The right hon. Gentleman asks me "Why?" He himself objects to come under the Board, and he objects to me saying that I, too, object to the Board. I object to it root and branch. If this Pension Board is constituted as suggested it will be a great departure from our constitutional practice.
Mr. BUTCHER: This question is a deep and urgent one. It is likely to become much bigger and much more urgent in the future. Therefore, we are wise to consider and settle as early as we can the best and most useful machinery for administering this great problem in the future, and for doing our duty to the men who are suffering and dying for us. I
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agree with what has been said in favour of a Board. It is the duty of the people of this country and of us who represent the people to do all we can for these men. As the right hon. Gentleman has said, there can be no more sacred obligation upon the State and upon us who help the wheels of the State to go smoothly than to provide for the men who have been disabled in fighting the battles of their country, and in providing for the dependants of those men who have fallen in the fight. Our duty is not merely to provide for these all upon a generous scale, but to see that the provision, whatever it is, is received by those who are entitled to receive it as promptly and as swiftly as possible. I have, I confess, seen—because I am glad to say a great many of my Constituents and friends of my Constituents are fighting at the front—a good many cases in which there has been very great delay in providing an adequate pension for the dependants, or for the men themselves. There are, I think, probably two reasons why that delay occurs. The one is on account of the complexity of the rules under which the pensions are allotted, and the other is, it may be, on account of the inadequacy of the present machinery. We know that to-day these various offices are overworked. The Pay and the Record Offices are overworked. They have a difficult task to administer, and, like every other human being, they make mistakes. I myself have come across some very bad cases where men who have been disabled have not got their pension for two, three, or four months. If machinery is going to be set up which will prevent these delays, or, at all events, reduce them to a minimum, then it deserves our most hearty support.
8.0 P.M.
As to the precise constitution of the Board and the functions allotted to it, I should not like to pronounce a final opinion until we see the Bill. I believe, however, so far as I have been able to gather from this Debate, that it is a step in the right direction. At any rate, it will go some of the way to produce that unification which is absolutely necessary if the machinery is to work smoothly. The right hon. Gentleman the Paymaster-General told us, if I understood him aright, that one of the first duties of the new Board would be to produce a new scale of rates. If that is to be one of their first duties, it makes it all the more important that the constitution of that Board

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should be the best we can devise. I should be out of order to discuss the question of rates, but perhaps I might be permitted, by way of illustration, to suggest one thing to the Paymaster-General upon which a reform is necessary, and that is on the question of whether what are known as double pensions should be allowed. I cannot for the life of me understand why, when a man has earned his pension in the Army, when he rejoins and goes out to fight again, and when he comes back after that second period of fighting, and has earned a new pension, he should not be entitled to that new pension as well as to the one he has earned previously.
Mr. HENDERSON: Hear, hear!
Mr. BUTCHER: I am glad to gather that I have the full assent of the Paymaster-General to that suggestion. My hon. Friend the gallant Member for the Leicestershire Division (Colonel Yate), and also the hon. Member for Salford (Mr. Montague Barlow), referred to the question of whether it was possible that this Board might become a political instrument. I suppose every man in this House would agree that nothing more disastrous could occur than that the administration of pensions in our country should become a matter of political favour or influence. I do not take the somewhat gloomy view that was taken by my hon. Friend, but I do hope that great care will be taken in the constitution of this Board, now and in the future, to eliminate from it every political tendency which might make it possible that that should be done, because after all, the question of pensions is a national question, and it deserves to be administered in a national way for the benefit of the men and women who are entitled to them.
Mr. RAWLINSON: I wish to make one suggestion. I understand the whole of this scheme is for the benefit of those who have served in the Army and Navy. Would it not be a graceful matter to say that all appointments made under this Board should be given, as far as possible, to those who have served in the Army and Navy, and in the case of those female assistants that we are told are very much needed in the way of typewriters, that as far as possible they should be given to relatives of those who have served their country either in the Army or in the Navy?
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It is a question I have asked once or twice in the House, and I have properly received the answer that until the matter was brought forward by way of a Bill it could not be dealt with. There is a strong feeling on this point in the country, and, quite apart from a question of justice, it would be a great act of grace that the Army and Navy should receive any appointments necessary under this Bill.
Mr. HENDERSON: It is only by leave of the House that I can say a further word or two, and I have risen more for the purpose of making an appeal to the House to allow the Bill to be introduced before 8.15; but I should like to make one or two observations first. In regard to the political charge which has been made, the hon. Member for York (Mr. Butcher) very properly pointed out that two hon. Members opposite, the hon. and gallant Member for Leicestershire and the hon. Member for Salford, introduced this point very strongly. It seems to me that we have taken the most direct course, short of cutting this work completely out of the control of Parliament, in having a Board upon which there are two members of one party and two members of two other parties.
Colonel YATE: That will not last for ever.
Mr. HENDERSON: At any rate, it will last for the time being, and I am not quite sure whether our views might not be affected by the particular party that is in power when the present Coalition ceases; but I think we have taken a step in the right direction by having a mixed Board, and that is one of the reasons why I think a mixed Board will be continued. If we had attempted to divorce all pension work from the control of the House of Commons we should have had the strongest possible protest, and I think rightly, for this reason: Some of the Members of this House took the most active part in recruiting, and is it to be said that we went forward on every platform in all parts of the country and appealed for men to recruit and that when it came to be a case of being wounded, disabled or incapacitated, we said, "This is no part of our work; we are going to transfer this to a Board over whom you will have no control whatever?" That is a doctrine to which I could not possibly subscribe. As for the charge of grafting, I think I am voicing the opinions of all shades of party politicians in this House when I say that the last thing we want to see introduced into this

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country is that referred to by the hon. and gallant Member (Colonel Yate), but I see no trace of it in the Bill that I have the honour on behalf of the Government to submit to the House to-day. Grafting, I hope, will be long foreign to our system of politics in this House. The other word that I want to say is on a practical subject. There is an apprehension that the Board is not going to do the work that the Bill claims for it or brings under its control. I do not agree. I think the Board will do the work, but I want to make it clear that the Board cannot do the work if the idea that has been expressed from one or two quarters is to be carried into effect. For instance, it has been suggested that we want to be careful with regard to efficiency. Well, you cannot have efficiency in my opinion if you are under-staffed, and I am not going to be any party to setting up a new Department and beginning it under-staffed in numbers or in capacity, and I want to make it perfectly clear that I could not be responsible for a Department that was so organised. The hon. Member for Anglesey (Mr. Ellis Griffith) brought before the House a point that we ought to have an Under-Secretary who would devote his whole time to the work. That is exactly what WE propose to do. We are not going to run this Department in any other way than the other great Departments of the State are run, and I hope we shall have an efficient and devoted Under-Secretary appointed who will devote the whole of his time to the pensions work, and I think that in this way we shall be able to show that what I believe the country expects we shall do will be very properly done, and that is to care in the very best possible way for all those who have offered their lives on the altar in the interests of the country in the desire to win this War. I hope we may now be given permission to introduce the Bill.
Mr. SHERWELL: I do not rise for the purpose of preventing the Government from getting leave to introduce the Bill before 8.15, but I would like to say one word on the subject to which we have just listened from the Paymaster-General. I am one of those who feel considerable pleasure in the fact that the right hon. Gentleman has been appointed to this Department. I should have felt more reassurace if I could have been satisfied at the same time that with his assumption of this office his other duties in the Cabinet
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in the way of Labour Adviser will cease, because I am quite convinced, despite the assurance he has just given that an efficient Under-Secretary will be appointed, who will devote his whole time to this office, that the Chairman on this Board or the Pensions Minister must be at leisure to devote the whole of his time to this most preoccupying and important work. Therefore I sincerely hope we may have, before the Bill which it is now desired to introduce passes beyond the control of the House, some assurance from the Prime Minister that the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Henderson) will be released from other duties to which he is now devoted. I will only say this in reference to what the hon. and gallant Member (Colonel Yate) said a moment or two ago. There is some force in his objection. I entirely dissociate myself from any suggestion of graft in any arrangement that is here proposed. I do not lend countenance to that, but there is some force in the suggestion that the arrangement which is now made by the appointment of a non-party Board is good so far as the life of the present Parliament is concerned, but that it may be liable to those fluctuations in the ordinary course of political experience, which must be liable to those fluctuations, to which he alluded, and therefore there is a little more weight to be attached to that particular objection than I think the right hon. Gentleman the Paymaster-General has attached to it. There are other points, but I will not press them now, because I am anxious not to hinder the Government getting their Motion. We are greatly reassured by the creation of this Board, but we are reassured chiefly because we hope that it will put an end to those difficulties in administration which have detracted very considerably from the advantage of the pensions which the Government have already promised to the nation.
Question put, and agreed to.
Bill for establishing a Board of Pensions and for purposes connected therewith ordered to be brought in by Mr. Arthur Henderson, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Dr. Macnamara, Mr. Forster, Mr. Hayes Fisher, and the Solicitor-General. Presented accordingly, and read the first time; to be read a second time Tomorrow, and to be printed. [Bill No. 122.]

REGISTRATION OF BUSINESS NAMES BILL.
Considered in Committee.
[Mr. WHITLEY in the Chair.]
The CHAIRMAN: I understand it is the pleasure of the Committee that this Committee be taken pro formâ, and that the Government Amendments be made.
Bill considered in Committee, and reported; as amended, recommitted to a Committee of the Whole House for Tomorrow, and to be printed. [Bill 121.]
The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.

CIVIL LIBERTIES CONFERENCE, CARDIFF.

  MOTION FOR ADJOURNMENT.
  It being a Quarter-past Eight of the clock, and leave having been given to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 10,
  Mr. J. H. THOMAS: I beg to move, "That this House do now adjourn.'
  I fully recognise that it is a delicate and a difficult task to deal with a question where one is personally involved, but I desire to make it perfectly clear that in taking the stand which I am this evening, I am guided not by any personal interest, because whatever my personal views were I am quite satisfied that this House ought to deal with the issue as one of principle and not one of persons. There are two important principles involved in the incident to which I am about to refer. The first is freedom of speech, and the second is the protection of the law of this country against any threats of violence or riot. With regard to the first we are being told, and I myself have supported the idea, that unless the Allied cause is triumphant in this great world conflict, liberty will seriously be in jeopardy. But I submit that, so far as this country is concerned, we have won the liberty we enjoy today by very many years both of agitation and sacrifice, and this House ought to be the very last to do anything or encourage any proceeding that would destroy absolute liberty of speech in this country. With regard to the second
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  point, speaking as a trade union leader, I can conceive of nothing more dangerous, nothing more disastrous to the best interests of this country, than for this House of Commons, by voice or vote, to give any encouragement whatsoever to mob law or rioting in this country, because we must not look at the issue involved in the mere incident of a difference of opinion, and we must not examine the question merely because of a difference in connection with this War, but we have got to keep it clearly in mind that there have in the past been occasions when hundreds of thousands of men have been engaged in industrial disputes, and in which we have seen thousands of men-fighting for what they believed to be their rights, and where we have seen men struggling against oppressive conditions and knew that their wives and children were starving. If we are going to allow mob law to rule, if we are going to encourage direct incitement to riot, then there is absolutely no safeguard either for law and order or even property in this country. It is because I believe that Saturday's proceedings will encourage that and because I believe it will make it more difficult for responsible trade union leaders who may be engaged in industrial disputes to conduct those disputes in a peaceful way that I submit to the House that they should give no countenance or tolerate for a moment the incident that occurred last Saturday at Cardiff.
  There was a conference called under the auspices of the National County Council for Civil Liberty, and in spite of what may be said to the contrary, I am going to submit that, whether we agree with the objects or not of this body, it is a body composed of some of the best citizens in this country. It is a body composed of men who disagree with the War, and composed of men who not only agree with the War, but who have rendered yeoman service to the country in her hour of trial. No one would challenge the patriotism of Dr. Clifford, Dr. Horton, and the Bishop of Hereford. No one would suggest that any of those three men were entitled to be called traitors, and no one would suggest that those three men would say anything that would give countenance or support to our enemies at this moment. But whilst they are men who disagree as to the objects of the War for and against, they are all united in saying that, whilst they are prepared to

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  crush German militarism, they are not prepared in that process to substitute English militarism in its place. The conference was called, as I say, by this particular body by a summons to each branch meeting. Let it be observed that there was a circular issued to the whole of the trade unions. They were invited to elect delegates at their stated branch meetings, and those delegates were elected on the specific instructions of the members. There was at that conference 220 delegates representing trade union branches, thirty-seven delegates representing trades councils and labour parties, 100 representing Socialists and peace societies, and thirteen representing religious organisations, sixteen representing co-operative societies, and twenty-nine representing women's societies or a total of 415 delegates, representative of 196,843 members.
  Mr. W. THORNE: Will you say what trade unions received circulars?
  Mr. THOMAS: Yes, I will; and if my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham will not be quite so impulsive, he will have the opportunity of replying to anything I say without interrupting.
  Mr. THORNE: You made the statement that a circular was sent to trade unions, and I want to know what trade unions.
  Mr. THOMAS: Then I will answer. The circular was sent to every trade union in Wales, including your branches, if you had any, and out of the composition of those there were sixty-two branches of the railwaymen's union, and eighty-seven of the miners', and numerous ones of the transport workers', and there were various labourers' unions, and there was the seamen and firemen, and Captain Tupper. Therefore, I repeat again that the constitution of the conference was as representative, was as democratic, and was selected in precisely the same way as conferences that have elected my hon. Friend and others to positions that they hold in the movement from time to time.
  Mr. THORNE: Including yourself.
  Mr. THOMAS: Exactly, and, therefore, because it includes myself and you, I thought there would be mutual agreement. At all events, having explained the constitution of the conference, and the body that called the conference, I am now going to submit the resolution that I
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  myself was to move, because I am going to deal for the moment with my connection with the conference, and any other resolution is here and can be quoted. The resolution that I was down to move, and, incidentally, in spite of what has been said to the contrary, did move, reads as follows:—
  "That this conference holds that military compulsion has already involved industrial compulsion, and endangered industrial conditions, and demands that this invasion of the rights of labour at once cease, and that guarantees be given for its non-recurrence."
  There is no Member of this House who would challenge my right to move that resolution, and especially at Cardiff, because, curiously enough, last Tuesday, a day in which, as I shall be able to show, there was organised opposition, and mob law being preached, I had to settle a threatened strike in Cardiff which dealt with this: Five men were released for military service, one of them being a married man with five children, while twenty-seven single men were kept. No one would object to the release of a married man if he were a junior man in the service, but there was a suspicion as to the reason for releasing him and the four others. On investigation it was shown that the reason he was released was because his name was given as that of the leader of a strike that took place three weeks before, and the men who knew this, and suspected it, said that, "If this is what we are fighting for, and if this is how men are to be driven into the Army, we will make a fight right away against it," and I prevented at Cardiff the dispute taking place, and got the man's card released. Therefore, I repeat, if anyone was entitled to move the resolution I have named, it was I. When, in addition, I remind the House that, in spite of all the guarantees that we were given during the Debate on the Conscription Act that no industrial compulsion was intended, 152 cases in the railway systems alone have been sent to be dealt with by the tribunal, again I am entitled to say that there is no apology needed for making a stand to stop this kind of thing.
  At all events, that being the resolution that I was called upon to move, the bonâ fides of the conference never being challenged, I submit to the House that we were at least entitled to have had an opportunity of presenting our case. What happened? Immediately it became known that this conference was to be held, the "Daily Express"—and I mention the "Daily Express" because I shall have

  715
  something else to say about it in a moment —devoted a column to show why this meeting should not be allowed to take place. A gentleman by the name of Captain Atherley Jones led the opposition. He announced that he came up to London, and whilst in London made efforts to persuade the authorities that the meeting should be abandoned. Apparently he failed, and, therefore, he organised a counter-demonstration on the night before the meeting. He announced in support, in addition to the lord lieutenant of the county, my hon. Friend the Member for South Monmouth, Lord Rhondda, and various other members with whom I will deal in a moment, but so anxious were they to ensure its success that the aid of a private secretary to a Cabinet Minister was invoked, and on Thursday night there was touting round this House to get speakers for Friday's demonstration, all, of course, with a view of ensuring a great reception at Cardiff. The "South Wales Daily Press" was very anxious that no one who could attend that meeting should be denied the privilege, and arrangements were made for an overflow meeting. I do not know whether it was the names, or whether it was bad organisation, but there was no need of the overflow meeting, and, indeed, I am assured, half the hall where the meeting was held was empty. The meeting, however, was held, and at that meeting, I am going to submit, there was a direct incitement to violence. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Anglesey (Mr. Ellis Griffith) did what everyone who knows him would expect him to do. He is a very able lawyer and knows the Defence of the Realm Act, and I should say that he gave the benefit of his legal advice without fee to the other speakers by clearly indicating to them what they ought to do. At all events, he took what I think was the fair and constitutional course of saying that if there was disagreement, at least these people were entitled to be heard without interruption. But he was followed by the hon. Member for Merthyr (Mr. Stanton), who declared that he would do all in his power to prevent the conference being held, and invited the audience to join him. He was supported by a gentleman of the name of Captain Tupper.
  Major NEWMAN: A trade unionist.
  Mr. THOMAS: I am sure my hon. Friend and member will be delighted to find himself in company with this excellent trade unionist before I am done. At all events, Captain Tupper, referring to the conference to be field at that day,, said:
  "They want free speech well. I will give them free speech."
  and with this he created much amusement by taking off his coat and continuing his speech in his shirtsleeves. I do not know whether the object of taking off his coat was to convince the chairman that he had his shirt on. At all events, at least, he thought that it would be necessary to lay emphasis on the position. Then at that meeting the hon. Member for Merthyr (Mr. Stanton) went on to say:
  "If I have my way they will never hold the meeting in the Cory Hall. It the police are there to interfere, let them. If I have a following, I am prepared to prevent these people getting inside the doors by all means short of murder."
  [HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"] I know there are differences of opinion as to why he should have drawn the line at murder. At all events one can only conclude that he is not so violent as some people. These statements were made on Friday night. This deliberate and clear attempt was made and indicated on Friday night, and I am entitled to ask whether the character of individuals must be taken into consideration by the police authorities. For instance, I can quite conceive that the-police may say if certain individuals make a statement that there will be no danger, that there will be no need to interfere and they may say something in the heat of the moment that cannot be entirely ignored. In order to show whether there is any substance in that point of view I want to examine for a moment exactly what happened previously. Captain Tupper some few years ago brought the whole of Cardiff out on strike. Wales was almost paralysed, and I was asked to go down from London to see if I could effect a settlement. When I arrived there I found Cardiff at a standstill, mob law ruling, and shipowners and coalowners, who were so prominent on Friday night, were calling upon the Home Secretary for protection. Against whom? Against Captain Tupper and Lord Rhondda, who was then Mr. D. A. Thomas, and incidentally who lent his support to Friday night's meeting by a very interesting letter, and who was made chairman of the owner's side. I was made chairman of the-men's side, and Lord Rhondda, notwith-

  717
  standing that Wales was paralysed, women and children starving, and all the works at a standstill, said:
  "It can go on rather than I will allow Captain Tupper to be in my presence."
  Lord Rhondda's signature with mine is borne on the document that settled that strike, and I was howled at because I ordered the men back. Does that not indicate changed circumstances? [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"]
  Captain BURGOYNE: You were not a pro-German then.
  Mr. THOMAS: Is the inference that I am a pro-German now?
  An HON. MEMBER: Let us hear the rest of your speech.
  Mr. THOMAS: I have addressed one hundred recruiting meetings, and Sir William Robertson seven weeks ago last Saturday personally asked me to go to Wales. And why? Because he said:
  "We are on the eve of an offensive. I am persuaded that Wales is going to strike to-morrow night and you are the man that can stop it. Will you go?"
  And I went. I went without police protection, and I faced the hostility of thousands of my own men in Cardiff and prevented the strike. That is the best answer to the jeer of the hon. Member opposite. Let me develop it a moment. When this incident which I have mentioned was taking place, the "Daily-Express" was dealing with it, and they were dealing with Captain Tupper, and this is what they said:
  "Captain ward Tupper, the Socialist agitator, now stands before the country branded as a fraudulent imposter. The action for libel which he brought against the 'Express' last February claiming a £,000 damages in the vain hope that he might prevent the unmasking of his career of deceit and duplicity has now, after nine months, been dismissed by order of the High Court of Justice for want of prosecution.".
  Then the right hon. and learned Gentleman who is now the Attorney-General found it necessary to deal with him himself, and on going into Court he said:
  "What I have to say as representing—"
  Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: (Mr. Whitley): I think I must point out that any Motion for the Adjournment of the House must be connected with some administrative act of the Government, something the Government has either done or left undone. Of course, anything relevant to show why they should have acted is in order.
  Mr. THOMAS: I am showing the character of the man whom they allowed to break up this meeting, and surely I can
  718
  only prove that by the records, and I am now attempting to do that by quoting what the Attorney-General, who is a Minister of the Crown, said in dealing with this man. He was not then a Minister of the Crown, but he is now and is therefore a member of the Cabinet.
  Major HAMILTON: He was not a member at that time.
  Mr. THOMAS: I have repeated that five or six times. This was his description:—
  "Our whole case is that this man is a vile, dangerous, and fraudulent imposter, and that whilst pretending to be an enemy of capital he is really a bankrupt company promoter."
  Mr. Justice Phillimore, in dismissing the application, said: "His speech was most dangerous, wicked, and inflammatory. He also emphasised how much it was to the public advantage that a man like him should be exposed." There you have the patriot who saved the country on Saturday last.
  Major HAMILTON: We are at war.
  Mr. THOMAS: I will deal with that point. There you have the man whom the "Daily Express" lauds on Saturday morning as the hero who saved the Empire. Let us see whether there is any justification for the suggestion that he has changed since we are at war. Less than six weeks ago he himself wrote to the National Transport Workers and asked them to send their secretary to Cardiff to threaten a strike against the shipowners for the employment of Chinese labour.
  Mr. THORNE: Perfectly justified.
  Mr. THOMAS: "Perfectly justified," my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham says. What becomes, then, of this claim of his burning patriotism to save the country?
  Mr. THORNE: Chinese labour.
  Mr. THOMAS: He is a member of the Seamen and Firemen's Union. How he became so the "Daily Express" cannot even tell. The seamen and firemen had a dispute with the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway a few weeks ago. Their men went on strike, and the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company, instead of conceding terms or responding to my request that arbitration should be appointed, employed blacklegs, and gave them exemption cards from the military. Captain Tupper met me in the Lobby with his president, Mr. Havelock Wilson,

  719
  and asked, to use his own phrase, that "Hell should be raised on this issue." I am not going to make any great reference to the speech of the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydvil (Mr. Stanton), except to say that I prefer the hon. Member for Rhondda, "Mabon" (Mr. Abraham), who could give us some illustrations of how, when Wales on scores of occasions has been threatened with industrial disruption, people who have contributed nothing towards a settlement in the board room have come outside and tried to hound out those who have effected a settlement with the employers. Someone says it is not quite true!
  Mr. STANTON: It is not true at all!
  Mr. THOMAS: Very well, you will be able to deny it. The records of the South Wales Press and of the men on that bench now will substantiate and prove everything that I have said. Here you have two statements made by people who had no regard for law and order, but who were most concerned in what appeared for the moment a little cheap popularity and notoriety. Whatever opinions there may be with regard to the War, there can be no justification and no excuse for what took place at the meeting. When I arrived at the Cory Hall it was full, and I challenge contradiction when I say that there were not two people in that hall who dissented in any way from the meeting.
  Mr. STANTON: You would not let the others in.
  Mr. THOMAS: If my hon. Friend were an accredited delegate of any trade union now like he used to be, he might have been a delegate at that meeting, but now no one will have him.
  Mr. STANTON: Not likely!
  Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: I think it right to make an appeal at an early stage. This is a serious matter. It can be discussed withont any personal reference, and I hope it will be.
  Mr. THOMAS: You will observe that I never made any personal reference until I was interrupted. When I got to the hall it was full, and it looked as if there would be no disturbance at all because the Press at that time indicated that so far as the counter procession was concerned the police had made arrangements for it to be diverted so as not to come into conflict with the meeting. The stewards went to
  720
  shut the door, but the police told them immediately that they would not allow the doors to be closed. That is reported in the Press and admitted. I submit, if there were a genuine desire to see the meeting carried on and conducted properly, that the police at least when they knew the hall was full ought to have allowed the stewards to shut the door. [An HON. MEMBER: "Was admission by ticket?"] Yes, admission was by ticket. With the exception of the delegates everyone was admitted by ticket. I submit therefore that there can be no justification for the police refusing to allow the doors to be shut. They not only refused to allow the doors to be shut. I myself, in spite of what has been said to the contrary as to bolting from the platform, was the last man, practically, who left the platform and the hall.
  I went to the steps outside to address those who were there. The police even then, instead of preventing anyone getting to the hall, actually opened the way, and allowed the procession, headed by various individuals and plenty of flagons, to reach the door of the hall. I submit that the police ought to have taken action. I believe that they grossly failed in their duty, and I regret to say that I believe, also, that the crowd were directly encouraged, and that they wanted to see the meeting broken up. But I go beyond that, and I submit that if that is to be the action of the police in Cardiff they will be faced with a very serious situation in the future. I am not going down to Wales to help the police. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"] Yes; it is all very well for hon. Members to say "Hear, hear!" but only last week, you may not be aware —because we asked the Press to keep it out—there were two disputes in London in which 3,000 men were concerned, and, if law and order are to rule, how can you hope to control these men if such proceedings as these are allowed? How can you expect leaders of great trade unions to say to the men, "You must be peaceable and quiet"? The police in Cardiff directly encouraged and incited them on. It is because I believe that this thing must be stopped, because I hold that last Saturday's proceedings were a disgrace, that I submit to the Home Office that they themselves ought to have given instructions.
  I know something will be said to the effect that there was at the meeting those who are opposed to the War. It is quite

  721
  true; but have we reached the stage when we are to deny liberty of conscience to the people of this country? I profoundly disagree with some of my friends who were there. I disagree with my Friend the Member for Leicester on the War, but is there any man who dare ever say that he is actuated by any other motive than the dictates of his conscience? Will anyone dare suggest that he makes any advantage or profit out of his attitude? Everyone knows perfectly well that it is easy for a man to swim with the stream, but it is difficult to go against it. Whether we agree with the Member for Leicester or not, he is at least entitled to respect for having the courage of his convictions, and, if our cause is a good one, as I believe it is a good one, we ought not to deny him or anyone else the right of free expression of opinion. It is because this has been done, because I believe it to be contrary to the public interest, because I believe, if it is allowed to continue, you are going to have trouble with your food-price meetings when they are held during the coming winter, and when you will be dealing with these problems, that I submit to the House that, much as one may regret what has occurred, there is no shame upon those of us who took part in Saturday's proceedings, but there is grave reflection not only upon those who are responsible for inciting to riot, but, unfortunately, upon those who so far forgot that they were Members of the House of Commons.
  Mr. R. LAMBERT: I beg to second the Motion.
  9.0 P.M.
  Mr. STANTON: I do not propose to take up a very long time in what I have to say. I myself believe the House will quite appreciate the fact that the hon. Member for Derby is more used to this business, and has taken up a long time. Much has been said about my respected friend Mr. Tupper, and others, but how many times have these people who complain that they were not allowed to express their views in full freedom, or set forth their conscientious views upon the War, helped to howl and cry us down when we have held meetings in support of the War? In the town of Sheffield, where we held a meeting in order to assist in the prosecution of the War, the Member for Attercliffe was present, and those conscientious objectors and others all joined to cry us down.
  Mr. ANDERSON: The statement has been made that I was a party to some interruption that took place at a meeting in Sheffield. I state in this House that I knew nothing at all about that meeting, and I would not be a party to anyone interrupting freedom of speech in this country. I absolutely repudiate the charge, which is without foundation.
  Mr. STANTON: Whether it be false or true I will not take up the time of the House to discuss. At any rate I was acting upon information I received, and which was supposed to be the fact. However, not only in Sheffield but in my own Constituency, during the period that I was endeavouring to get men to join the Army under the voluntary system, we discovered that the agents of those people, of their trade unions and branches and lodges, were moving in and out the crowd, and doing everything possible to poison the minds of the men against joining. They did everything they could to discourage them, and everything they could to break down our meetings. Only a few weeks ago we held a meeting in the market place of the town I represent, which was interrupted. These people held a meeting in the Workmen's Hall, and there were present some hon. Members below me, No one interrupted them; their meeting was perfectly quiet, it was held in perfect order, and they got on with the business for which they met, whatever it was. That is what took place in the district to which I refer, and the majority of us knew very well that all the time mischief was going on, but still we did not interfere with them. However, we did nothing to interfere. They did not hesitate to come to our meeting. It was, of course, an open meeting in the market, where they tried to howl down my friends and myself. They did not quite succeed, because we were too strong for them. The same thing has been experienced in Merthyr Tydvil and other places, and all that has been in spite of what the hon Member for Derby has told this House time after time. He has said, "Have I not gone to a hundred recruiting meetings? Did I not go down and help you put an end to a certain strike? See what a good boy I am!" It is that all the time. I have pointed out before that in spite of what he said he was doing a Blondin business. He was saying something here, and going out during weekends saying something else. The hon. Member for Derby would make a strong

  723
  speech in places where the people were warlike, but where there was the slightest shade of I.L.P. colour he would kow-tow to them He has boasted what a peacemaker he has been. He has pointed out that Captain Tupper is an adventurer, and that I have been responsible for many things, and that I am a sort of stormy petrel in the coalfields. Before the War I was a fighting man, and I did something more than the hon. Member for Derby did. I had the full confidence of my men, and I could have it to-day.
  The only quarrel has been the War Some hon. Members are against what has been done at Cardiff. May I point out to the House that there was nothing else to do. We had already written to the Government, or our friends at Cardiff had done so. It was the feeling of everybody that this was not a meeting for the expression of just opinions upon the War, where one man would say that we ought to end this War, or that there should be an International Board of Arbitration, or ask why we should waste money upon this or that. We could understand that, because, on the other hand, you could express the opinion that we have got the enemy on the run and meant to keep them on the run, and intended to go on hammering them. I can understand that as one who has been penalised from time to time for saying too much, and who no doubt will be penalised again. I entered my protest and joined with the other citizens at Cardiff as I would with any other people who are not ashamed to declare their beliefs, and put an end to the people who are pretending to help, who say they are only too anxious to do everything they can and who are prepared to prevent strikes and all other things. Look at the resolutions that were to be moved at Cardiff; look at the people who were going to move them, and look at the record of these people right through the War. It is asked, "Do you suggest so-and-so about the hon. Member for Leicester?" I do not suppose that he wantonly says things, but we are perfectly right and justified in believing that Germany, realising that she is down and practically out, will spend millions of money apart from what she will spend in providing shells, and is already doing so in supplying the most unscrupulous agencies in this and in other countries in order to bring about an end to this War. I say that there are men here possessed of
  724
  means and capital whose interests are as much in Germany as they are in this country. They are men who are afraid to lose something they have got there. They are men who have not hesitated to do all they can, never minding their consciences, to-provide their pockets in the future with what they are usually after. [HON. MEMBERS: "Name!" and "Who are they?"] You may have the names another time.
  This was not a meeting of an ordinary kind where there was merely a pious expression of opinion which anybody might accept. It was a meeting of notorious pro-Germans and pacifists—people who have not helped, but hindered us in this War in every way they could. They will not fight themselves and will not, if they can. help it, allow anybody else to fight. They are men who unblushingly from time to time have disgraced their manhood, and the women among whom they have lived with their wicked and shameful utterances. It was sufficient to cause trouble anywhere. What the Cardiff people did is what the people of Merthyr Tydvil are going to do. Seeing that they have failed in Cardiff—and they did fail splendidly and magnificently—we in Merthyr Tydvil have been threatened with a meeting. They came to do things. It was a ticket meeting, and the gallery was open for 6d. a time to their own people. We know what happened afterwards. It does not matter where the hon. Member for Leicester went or where the hon. Member for Derby went or certain hon. Members here. At any rate they were conspicuous by their absence soon after. The point I wish to emphasise is that we were justified in what we did. Is it the business of the Government to stand by and back up a crowd of traitors—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, oh!"]—absolute traitors to our Flag and our country, as against the men who have fought for that Flag, who have their sons at the front, and who are doing all they can to try to win this War? I have always been as much opposed as any man to warfare, but I realise that in this case it is quite another story. We were not to blame for the War; we had nothing to gain by it; but now we are in for it we have got to make a strenuous fight. There is nothing to be gained from these people who are going around doing this kind of thing. I remember when Sir John Rees mentioned a ease to Sir John Simon. [HON. MEMBERS: "Order, order!"] I mean that a

  725
  question was put to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Walthamstow (Sir J. Simon) as to whether it was true, as had been stated, that pro-Germanism was rampant in Wales. He said he had no knowledge of it. I noticed that the right hon. Gentleman had been from time to time with these people. This kind of thing has been going on, and will continue, as long as these people are pandered to and petted by hon. Members of this House and the Government. We have heard much about them and the trade union cause, but we know that the miner, the railwayman and every other class of worker, is as loyal as any man.
  These people threaten that they are coming to Merthyr Tydvil. I would respectfully point out to the House that if that is done, then there will be trouble again. I claim no special privilege because—possibly it is my misfortune—I happen to be a Member of this House. In the old days I was a fighter, when the hon. Member for Derby never counted much as a fighter. In the days of war I am still a fighter. I can be a man of peace when there is a reasonable chance of being peaceful. I am prepared to do my best and stand by the country in its hour of danger, and I am not going to tolerate these people coming into our midst, poisoning the minds of our people and creating all the mischief they possibly can. There is a much greater danger and menace than some people would realise. Do not think it is a secret to most Members of the House. I think another matter has been treated too lightly. These people are pleading that the Government should take in hand the people responsible for doing such a dreadful deed as I and Tupper and other friends who were with me on Saturday. We accepted our own risk. We knew the people we were dealing with and they showed their pluck by the stand they made. I am delighted to discover, however, that there is after all a bit of fight left in some of them. The chairman, a respected member of the South Wales Miners' Federation, sent me a challenge through the Press that he will fight me the best of ten rounds. There is hope for them. He thinks he can scrap a bit, but the others did not show it when we were on the job. It is not the first time that either I or Tupper have been on the warpath, and it may have been on other occasions when the coal owners, the shipowners and others would say, "To Hades with these people," but to-day it is rather
  726
  a different platform. We are not out today looking for trouble one with another particularly. We are out to try to cement the position, to play the old British ticket as Britishers on the same platform. We want to win this War. We do not want to squeak and cry out. We do not want to look out for the faults of our friends or our opponents. We -want to try to do those things which will tend towards victory and make it more secure, by playing the game loyally and by not holding these sham conferences—call them peace conferences or what you like, they smell just the same. If I am to lose my liberty, if there should be a warrant out for me or Tupper, both of us have been somewhere before and are quite willing to go again. If we have to go, we shall only go where a larger number than I see below me here ought to be.
  I should like to point out another thing which is unjust and unfair, however much our friends might have disagreed with our methods, which of course were rather drastic as far as they were concerned. I deny absolutely that there was any waving of flagons or anything of the kind. It is absolutely untrue, and the hon. Member (Mr. Thomas), in my opinion, deliberately makes that statement for the purpose of winning some wretched bit of sympathy from heaven knows what quarter. It is untrue. I saw no flagons there. There ought to have been, perhaps. So much for that. There is a chance even yet. Let these people do what we say of the Germans. If the Germans go back to Germany, we shall not be shelling or bombing them around the trenches or around the neighbourhood of Flanders or elsewhere. If these people wish well to the country, let them stay at home in their own constituencies, where they dare not hold a meeting, instead of going to other places where, of course, they are strange, and where they are able to shine a little bit. I know some of them. They have never been so very ready to do anything on the nod, and although, perhaps, it is not for me to say, I can prove that they are having money from Germany—there is German money shifting around. I can judge by the hoardings, and by the money that is being spent, and it does not come out of the sixpences or shillings of the delegates who paid to get in there. We want to be loyal citizens and to play the game, whatever we may have been, but we ask the House to believe that we were only actuated by the most honest motive

  727
  as Britishers. We want to win the War, and we believe these people were treacherous in what they were doing, and we went there at any risk to put an end to it, and none of us are sorry.
  General Sir IVOR HERBERT: I have listened with very great attention to the speeches which have just been delivered on the question, I believe, that this House do now adjourn, but I have failed hitherto to gather that there was any reason for the Adjournment unless perhaps it was in the suggestion that a few well-contested rounds between the hon. Member (Mr. Stanton) and some other Member of the Labour party was about to take place outside. I can quite understand that such a prospect as that would make us unanimous at once. I think your ruling, Sir, given at an earlier period of the proceedings, was that when a Member moves the Adjournment of the House on such an occasion as this, it should be with a view to bringing to notice some act of omission or commission on the part of a Member of the Government. With the exception of a suggestion in the last few sentences of the speech of the hon. Member (Mr. Thomas) I can only find that the grievance he entertains was that some person—he did not mention the Government—had given encouragement to the police at Cardiff to break up a meeting at which he was to be a speaker. I do not think that any evidence was adduced in support of such a statement as that, and the impression upon my mind was that he suggested that the crime committed by the Home Secretary was that he had encouraged this breach of the peace. That accusation seems to me to be made on a very flimsy basis altogether, and it is certainly not one which would enable me to support a Motion for the Adjournment. If he had left this matter to me, I could have made a better case against my right hon. Friend. However, I am entirely with my right hon. Friend because I could not possibly support a Motion for the Adjournment on such a flimsy pretext as that which has been presented to us. The Home Secretary certainly seems to have been unfortunate. He has failed to please anybody. He failed to please the gentlemen who were going to hold the meeting because their meeting was broken up, and they accuse him now of having assisted in breaking it up. I believe there is no foundation for such an accusation. He has certainly not pleased any of the population
  728
  of Cardiff or the majority of the population of the valleys of Monmouthshire, who tendered evidence long before the meeting took place that it was such an offence to their feelings that it could not fail to lead to trouble, and who therefore thought that he ought to make use of the special power given to him under the Defence of the Realm Act and stop any meeting being held altogether. That he did not do. Strange to say, having failed to please every party there, I think he has failed to please himself. I gather that from the answer which he made to me and the hon. Member for Derby this afternoon, in which, speaking of the meeting to be addressed by the hon. Member for Derby, he said:
  "Its underlying purpose, in my opinion, was such as would undoubtedly give offence to the great majority of the population of Cardiff, as it would, I believe to the people of any other locality in this country."
  That was his opinion. If it was his opinion that the offence to be caused by that meeting was so great as to excite the most vehement opposition of the majority of the population, how was it that he managed to salve his conscience so far as not to take any action against it Why did he allow the meeting to be held? Again he provided the answer, It is not the purpose of the Government to interfere
  "so far as it can be avoided with the expression of opinion on matters of policy."
  I suppose there must be some marvellous hidden virtue in that limitation, "so far as it can be avoided." I wish he would explain it. We are always being faced with suppression of opinion. In the House of Commons I do not think that we are allowed very free expression of opinion on matters of policy. The, fact that a Coalition Government exists—it is a very good thing that it does exist, and I support it—is proof positive that there can be no very free expression of opinion on questions of policy. I am not aware that under existing conditions the great organs of the Press are allowed very free expression of opinion on matters of policy. The House and the country have been warned by the Prime Minister, and we were reminded again to-day by the Colonial Secretary, that it was best to keep off discussing vague terms of peace. All these limitations are put upon expression of opinions in Parliament and in the Press; but when a few gentlemen and a lady of German origin go down to Wales to discuss these very matters of vague peace proposals which are declared to be dangerous and undesirable, and certainly do not awaken

  729
  any response in the hearts of the people of South Wales, then, forsooth, all interference is to be avoided, and they are to be allowed the freest expression of their opinions. When there is an admittedly strong feeling, as the Home Secretary has admitted, it is simply playing with the public safety not to put in force under the exceptional conditions which exist in time of war those exceptional powers which are given to the Home Secretary to prevent the possibility of conflict taking place. I should be the last person in the world in normal times to stop a meeting. On the contrary, I have always said, "Allow people to let off their steam as much as they like; it does them good, and it does not do anybody else much harm." But these are not normal times. These are very dangerous times. We should not in normal times entrust to a Minister such powers as are given to the Home Secretary under the Defence of the Realm Act if we did not know that the times are dangerous, and that we intended those powers to be used. Therefore, I think I could make a very fair case against the Home Secretary.
  I should like to say something as to the feelings of the people in South Wales on this matter, but before going into that, may I say a few words of a personal character, indicating how I came into this affair at all? It was represented to me from many persons at Cardiff and in the neighbouring coalfields of Monmouth and Glamorganshire that this meeting had been advertised, and that it was causing a very strong feeling amongst the people of that part of the country. There is no part of the country which has made greater personal sacrifice than the miners of South Wales. There is not a house in that country and in my own Constituency that has not got relatives and friends at the front; many, alas! will never be seen again in their homes. The War has come deeply home to the people of that country, and they do not see and they will not look at any idea of bringing this War to an inconclusive peace. They fully appreciate the eloquent and weighty words that fell from the Prime Minister at an early part of this Session. That is the feeling which exists throughout that part of the country, and then they find that certain hon Gentlemen who do not go to their own constituencies to preach the sort of doctrine they were going to preach at Cardiff, come down to Wales, which is, I admit, a turbulent part of the
  730
  country. We are somewhat hot, like our own coal, and there is always the element of trouble there. These gentlemen come down there to spread an insidious poison. That is the feeling all through that part of the country. I got communications from many of my own Constituents, and from people in Cardiff, and eventually I had an invitation from Cardiff to take the chair at a meeting of protest which was held last Friday evening. That meeting was one of orderly protest. It protested in emphatic terms, namely:
  "That this meeting of the citizens of Cardiff protests against an agitation in favour of a premature and false peace as calculated to create dissension in a time of national crisis and to advance the interests of the enemy; it asserts its belief that an enduring peace is only attainable through unflinching adherence by the British Empire to the common cause of the Allies, and pledges itself to support any action the Government may deem necessary for the vigorous prosecution of the War until a final and complete victory is assured.'
  That resolution was carried unanimously by as large a meeting as I have ever seen in the city of Cardiff. It is in the concluding sentence that they wished to express what they considered to be of vital importance at this time, and that is that measures must be taken to keep the War going and to prosecute it with vigour. They fully recognise, as everybody in this country recognises, that we have not yet reached the limit of the efforts that we can make. We may have to demand further sacrifices from the people, and certainly the people of South Wales are fully prepared for those sacrifices. It was a large meeting, whatever the hon. Member for Derby may say. It was held in the largest building in Cardiff, and that building was crammed full. It was as full as I have seen it at any of the large meetings which I have ever attended, and I have been at some very notable ones, where the friend of the hon. Member (Dr. Clifford) was the principal speaker. That resolution would not have been adopted unless they had understood that further demands might have been made upon the people of this country. One of the objects of this insidious propaganda, which has been carried on, was to create an opposition to those measures necessary for the defence of this country. Letters have been addressed to the Home Secretary, I understand, with regard to this meeting. He had been warned, I believe, by the hon. Member for Cardiff some time ago that if this meeting was allowed to go on it would only end in disorder. We do not wish—the people of Cardiff do not wish—that there should be any appeal to mob law. Everyone realises that mob law is the last thing which we

  731
  should wish to bring forward at the present time. Therefore the hon. Member for Cardiff requested and urged that the powers of the Defence of the Realm Act should be made use of and that all meetings should be stopped. It would be far better to have all meetings on one side or the other forbidden than to have these unseemly conflicts in the public streets of the city.
  I think that I have made a good case against my right hon. Friend of lâches in his duty of Home Secretary, as one who has occupied his high position in order to prevent the possible appeals to mob law, who is invested with special powers in order that peace may be maintained within our bounds during the time we are engaged in war abroad. Those are not the grounds upon which the House is asked to adjourn. I am afraid that I could not consent to such a Motion as has been made by the hon. Member for Derby except on some such grounds as those which have been put forward. I will not venture upon that sacred ground which has been trodden by hon. Members on the opposite side. I am not sufficiently versed in the controversies in which the Labour Party are interested; but I know the working men in South Wales, and I know them well; I venture to say that I know the miner in South Wales as well as anybody, even my old Friend the right hon. Member for Rhondda (Mr. W. Abraham), and I can say this, that there is no feeling in the hearts of any of those men for any of that doctrine which was to be preached at the Cory Hall. To-day they have one idea: They have sent me here to express it, That is, to demand of the Government at all times that they should use the utmost earnestness and vigour for the prosecution of this War, and use the strong hand which is given them to maintain peace and order here, so that we may fight and defeat the enemies of the Crown.
  Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALD: The speech which we have just heard accuses the Home Secretary of weakness, and, consequently the hon. and gallant Member would be inclined to go into the Lobby against him if it were not—
  Sir IVOR HERBERT: No; that is not the position.
  Mr. MACDONALD: Were it not for reasons which we have in mind in moving the Resolution, I think that that actually
  732
  represents the hon. and gallant Gentleman's position. The hon. and gallant Gentleman says he knows South Wales. Ho says, "I can assure this House, I can assure the Home Secretary, that there is no echo for those opinions in South Wales. I can assure this House that my Constituency is so loyal that it sent me here in order to make certain declarations. I can assure this House that not only my own Constituency but Cardiff has got no support to give to those resolutions," and yet, with a lack of logic and something more which is somewhat unusual from the hon. and gallant Gentleman, "therefore," he says, "the meeting ought to be forbidden." Surely the hon. and gallant Gentleman when he took the chair at that remarkable meeting on Friday, with the duty imposed upon him to be the custodian of law and order—he was made Lord Lieutenant for that purpose—might have defended that law and order with a certain amount more of heart and strength of voice and strength of reason than he did. The hon. and gallant Member cannot get away from this fact, that he, a Lord Lieutenant of a county in Wales, took the chair at a meeting where riotousness and disorder were plainly and visibly advocated and appeals were made to all the passions of the people of Cardiff—and passion is very strong just now—and yet in those circumstances the hon and gallant Member, as a Lord Lieutenant of an adjoining county and an official custodian of law and order has not a single word of protest to make at that meeting against the lawlessness which was advocated. For that lawlessness the Home Secretary must put a large amount of responsibility on the shoulders of the hon. and gallant Member.
  On this occasion I hope the House has not lost the significance of the speeches which have been delivered. We have had extraordinary appeals and extraordinary statements, and the impression that one gets from the Debate, and more particularly from the speech of the hon. and gallant Gentleman, is bound up in these words, "If anybody disagrees with me, then he should not be heard." Perhaps the hon. and gallant Gentleman will allow me to say this. However much he may talk about a premature peace, I say he cannot be more opposed to such a peace than I am. The hon. and gallant Member has claims that because the majority are with him, then all the talk of peace is premature, and anybody who holds a different view to himself ought to keep his mouth

  733
  shut. If the notions of liberty thus given expression to by the hon. and gallant Member are the notions of liberty entertained by the Government, then I submit the Government are not fit to be the custodians of liberty in this country at the present time. As a matter of fact, we are entitled to say that the sentiments expressed by the hon. and gallant Member are exactly the sentiments which make a premature peace inevitable. I know the policy the hon. Gentleman has in his mind. I do not ask him to agree with me, but I do ask him and other hon. Gentlemen to be Englishmen, to be prudent, fair-minded men.
  I contend that men can honestly disagree with their views. Some hon. Members think apparently that is impossible. I hope the majority of the Members of this House do not take that view. I say that hon. Members can quite honestly disagree with them, that they are entitled to put forward a reasonable statement of their case under circumstances which are perfectly legitimate and perfectly legal, and that they could thus contribute ideas which would influence the mind of the country, and which would make peace when it comes not premature, and not even patched-up. That, at any rate, is what I have tried to ascertain, and that is what was the intention of the conference at Cardiff. Our charge against the right hon. Gentleman is not that he encourages these things. My hon. Friend never made any such accusation. All we said was that this meeting was broken up, and that the hon. and gallant Member took the chair at a meeting called for the purpose of securing the break-up of the conference. A most insulting telegram was sent to the right hon. Gentleman by one of the chief speakers at the hon. and gallant Member's meeting, demanding that our meeting should be stopped. The right hon. Gentleman quite rightly refused to listen to it. Up till now, at any rate, the Government has not associated itself with mob law. The meeting was held, and it was broken up. We asked the right hon. Gentleman to-day if he proposes to do anything to protect similar meetings in the future. He gave us an unsatisfactory reply, and that is why we are moving the Adjournment of the House. What was the purpose of the conference? My hon. Friend read a resolution which he was going to move. I will read one which I was groins to move. It is:
  "This conference views with alarm the recent projected invasion of liberty of person, subject and
  734
  opinion in this country, and demands the immediate restoration of the traditional rights of British citizenship."
  What was offensive to the citizens of Cardiff in that? What was offensive to the patriotic miners who sent the hon. and gallant Member to this House to represent them? Let me read another resolution:
  "That this conference holds that the administration and defects of Conscription in this country have proved a national disaster, and calls on the Government to review and correct the administration of the Act in regard to conscientious objectors—"
  [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, oh!"] Why not? This House has put it into the Act. We are perfectly entitiled to ask the Government to carry out the decisions of this House whether hon. Members agree with them or not. It is only right we should do it, and the House has sanctioned our doing it. The resolution continues:
  "and domestic hardship—"
  Do hon. Members sneer at that?
  and to guarantee that there shall be no further extension of the Act during the War—"
  Is that wrong? Is it wrong to ask there should be no extension of the Conscription Act during the War? [An HON. MEMBER: "Yes!"] If that is the case we have not far to go in order to get an example of a certain type of person who is supposed to be fighting the battle of liberty in this country. But, to continue the Resolution:
  "and an immediate return to an entirely voluntary system on the conclusion of peace."
  Put it at its worst, the resolution is a mixture of wrong and right. But let me take the fourth resolution, which is perhaps the worst of all, from the point of view of prejudice. I do not want to be misunderstood. What I mean is that this resolution is the easiest upon which to raise prejudice:
  "This conference is of opinion that the time has arrived when the object for which this nation entered on war may be secured by negotiation—"
  [An HON. MEMBER: "Pompous flapdoodle!" and "How do you know it?"] This resolution was drafted for the purpose of being put before the Cardiff Conference. What is the use of breaking up meetings which, according to hon. Members, are only held for the utterances of pompous flapdoodle? There must be an application of means to the end. There is no use whatever in putting enormous and dangerous machinery into operation for the purpose of preventing a piece of pompous flapdoodle. The resolution continues:
  "and therefore urges the Government to seek the earliest opportunity of promoting negotiations with a view to securing a just and lasting peace—"

  735
  There is no vacillation about the nature of the peace that is in the minds of those who drafted the resolution.
  "and to assure the Government of its unqualified support in any step it may take to bring this War to a satisfactory and honourable end."
  That is the worst resolution of them all. [An HON. MEMBER: "Moved by whom?"]
  Mr. RUTHERFORD: Will the hon. Gentleman allow me to ask whether or not these resolutions were moved?
  Mr. MACDONALD: The hon. Member, I think, knows the answer to that question.
  Mr. RUTHERFORD: I do not.
  Mr. MACDONALD: The resolutions were not moved because there was no opportunity for moving them, and we are moving the Adjournment of the House instead. These were the resolutions.
  Sir IVOR HERBERT: To prevent any misunderstanding, may I ask is it a fact, as certainly it was reported, that that last resolution was to be moved by a German lady?
  Mr. MACDONALD: When the hon. and gallant Gentleman was making his speech I made a note of that assertion with a view to dealing with it. Then I thought I would not. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] But the assertion is quite untrue. [HON. MEMBERS: "Name!"] The name of the person down to move the resolution was Mrs. Swanwick. I am perfectly certain that the hon. and gallant Gentleman is mistaken, and that no one will be sorrier than himself at having given currency to this rumour.
  Mr. THORNE: How long has she been in the labour movement?
  Sir IVOR HERBERT: I would like this point to be cleared up. I merely said that it was a statement which had been made.
  Mr. MACDONALD: The basis of the statement is that this lady happened to be born in Berlin. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, oh!"]
  Mr. DILLON: Where was Lord Milner born?
  An HON. MEMBER: Where was Cassel born? [HON. MEMBERS: "Good old Cassel!"]
  Mr. MACDONALD: Hon. Members appear to believe rumours that lead one to quote the old adage, that a man who is born in a pigsty is a pig. The point of all this is that nobody asks this House to agree to these resolutions. That is not the question. The question before us is this: Is the Government going to suppress opinion? That is all. That is the whole point. Is the Government going to allow a minority—a very small minority, for I agree with a large part of the speech of the hon. and gallant Gentleman—to speak? We cannot help it. It is a most unpleasant thing to do what my hon. and gallant Friend says some of us are doing, a most unpleasant thing, I assure the House. Nevertheless, in doing it we feel we are doing a service to the country which is going to be fruitful, both during the War, and still more fruitful, particularly at the settlement of peace which is going to follow the War and the years that come after that. We may be wrong. Hon. Members may say I am wrong. I am just exactly in the same position as other hon. Members in that I have got to follow the dictates, as they, of my own reason, and do the best I can. What happened here was this: These resolutions were sent out to branches of the trade unions, to co-operative societies, and so on. Those delegates to whom my hon. Friend refers were not elected by these societies until they considered the resolutions and the subjects of the resolutions. Those people came to Cardiff, not merely 415, as my hon. Friend says, but 449.
  Mr. STANTON: A cooked lot.
  Mr. MACDONALD: It may be a cooked lot. It is all very well for hon. Members to say "a cooked lot." We have here incidentally, I suppose, the representatives of the religious denominations, and then we get the lot.
  Mr. STANTON: There were thirteen.
  10.0 P.M.
  Mr. MACDONALD: My hon. Friend says that there were thirteen of these. So that we see that this condemnation is not absolute. The point is this: that these resolutions were sent out, and those people were delegated to come and represent the various societies to which they belong. Any amendment was in order. The fullest play would have been given for discussion. There was not a single resolution of those four that would have been passed under any system of closure-

  737
  There was no delegate present who desired to put a point of view that was essential to the resolutions or to express hostility to those resolutions that would have been suppressed by the chairman. The conditions were absolutely free. Yet the hon. and gallant Gentleman thinks the Government ought to have suppressed the meeting. It is very curious that the facts do not correspond with the statements made to this House. There is a question about the meeting. The hon. and gallant Gentleman knows perfectly well that a very large place of worship was taken. I was told that it seats about 3,000 people.
  Mr. STANTON: Three thousand five hundred when it is full.
  Mr. MACDONALD: According to the "South Wales Daily News," a paper which was in favour of the protest—I am now quoting—
  "Major-General Sir Ivor Herbert, Baronet, M P., presided over an audience of about 600 persons."
  I myself saw several people who was present, and who came to see me, and the highest estimate of this meeting was 900. The description of the hall says that it was not quite half full. I am sure I would not say anything against my hon. and gallant Friend, but I give the information I have, and part of it is printed in a friendly paper. He will not dispute that arrangements were made for an overflow meeting. Then my hon. Friend knows that the advertisement appealed to the patriots of Cardiff to roll up in their thousands. They did not do so, even on my hon. Friend's admission. What can be said for that? Surely that at the very best there was indifference. They did not care. They stayed at home. The only effect of the meeting was to stir up the element which displayed itself on the Saturday afternoon. Why was this done? I think it was largely owing to the regulation which the right hon. Gentleman has issued. Consider the situation now? We are in a minority now, I admit. The emotions of the day are rather rough-shod emotions. We will put up with them. I hope hon. Members are not going to forget the future. Hon. Members have been reminded that the day may not be far distant when disorder may not be in favour of what they themselves are in favour of at the moment. This House knows perfectly well that so far as we influenced
  738
  opinion and action before the War it was always in opposition to anything that was disorderly, anything that was simply wild and furious and irrational. I hope it will be encouraged to continue in that spirit right through. Once a disorderly mob is recognised by people in authority and of influence it is going to have its way under all sorts of conditions, and it may be that the hon. and gallant Gentleman may find cause to repent associating with the people he associated with on the platform on Friday night. Now the position is this: Under the Regulations which the right hon. Gentleman has issued a meeting is advertised. We may not want to make it a public meeting. We may simply want it to be a meeting of friends, of supporters who want to discuss things together, who want to lay their heads together to talk about things in which they are commonly interested, partly from the point of view of national interest as they understand it. All that is necessary is for somebody to assemble and make a row, or to come from the place where the meeting is to be held and to interview the officials at the Home Office, and be told by them that they are not going to suppress the meeting, then to go back and begin to stir up an agitation in the newspapers. In every town in the country, as hon. Members know perfectly well, there can be got together one or two hundred people whose emotions are not quite of the most desirable character and not always those with which people care to be associated. We know that perfectly well. All that has got to be done at the present moment is to get up this emotion to make this cry, to tell lies about the promoters of the meeting, to misrepresent their opinion, to assert that the purpose of the meeting is something hidden and sinister, and then the meeting is broken up or is prohibited. That is the position in which free speech, free thought, and free exchange of opinion stands at present. I do not believe that any Member of this House wants that state of affairs. I listened the other day to a very interesting speech made by an hon. Member, in which he talked about how the War was to be ended. Surely it is all to the interests of this nation that all possible honest and instructive and intelligent opinion regarding political problems created by the War, the political problems that will have to be faced immediately the War is over, may be considered from an independent and a fresh

  739
  point of view. The only thing that this House and the Government ought to insist upon is that the meetings shall Be held in a legal way, that the opinions expressed shall be honest opinions, and not deliberately directed towards national weakening or national destruction. I have never asked to be exempted from any such rule as that, and I never will ask to be exempted from any such rule as that, but I do ask simply that hon. Members should allow differences of opinion and not insist upon judging honesty by a coincidence with themselves and an agreement with what conclusions they come to. These problems are very difficult problems, they are going to be very big problems, and they are going to be very critical problems, and I appeal to this House not to associate itself in any way whatever with the incidents of Saturday that were deplorable, that should never be allowed to be repeated in this country as long as this country professes to be the friend of liberty and the home of free speech, free thought, and free publications—incidents which really put a black thumb-mark and an insult on the men who are fighting for us at the present time, and which are a disgrace to the country.
  The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. Herbert Samuel): I have listened with great attention, of course, to this Debate, and have been waiting for the criticism of the Home Office to develop. Hitherto I have found nothing to answer from those who have brought forward this Motion. The hon. Member who has just spoken, and the hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Thomas) have not indeed attacked me for anything that I have done or left undone, but have criticised me on the ground that at some future date I might leave them without protection to which they might be entitled. I am forced to the conclusion that the mention of the Home Office in the Resolution which is now before the House is little more than a peg, if I may so express it, on which to hang discussion on the recent events in Cardiff. The only serious criticism that has been addressed against the action of the Home Office has been, indeed, from the hon. Baronet opposite (Sir Ivor Herbert), who, at the same time, finds himself in complete disagreement
  740
  with the proposer and seconder of the Motion. He, indeed, raised a large question of policy, the question whether, in time of war, the minority which opposes the War or its continuance—and there is always such a minority, though never, perhaps, so minute a one as there is in this country at the present time—whether that minority should be prevented by the Executive from expressing its views in public. The hon. Member for Leicester (Mr. Macdonald) said that he thinks that he and his friends, by the course that was adopted, are rendering a service to the-nation. I cannot conceal my own convinced and emphatic opinion that they are-on the contrary rendering grave disservice to this country and to the national cause. When they speak of entering into Peace negotiations now, in order to secure an immediate and honourable peace, the vast majority of hon. Members of this House know that what they would consider honourable the nation at large-would consider the grossest dishonour and we are convinced that we cannot secure a peace at the present time without surrendering many of the great objects for which we are contending, and for which our men have died. There is a simple test. If the hon. Members were to succeed in their propaganda, if they were to carry with them a large part of the population, if their followers were to number, let us say, a fourth or a third of the whole country, who would be most encouraged, our Allies or our enemies? That is a simple test, but no one can, doubt that should the hon. Members' propaganda be as successful as till now, happily, it is unsuccessful, it would carry discouragement to the hearts of our friends and joy to the hearts of our enemies. There can be no doubt about that. But that is not the question we are discussing to-night, which is, whether even in these circumstances the Government would do more harm or good to the national cause by using the powers of the law, by using the powers of the policeman, by using the goaler, to suppress the expression of the opinion of this minority. I believe that a movement of this kind, if it were driven underground, would assume a formidableness that it has not yet attained and is not likely to attain. Unseen, it would become more sinister, and would be thought to possess dimensions which it would otherwise not be thought to possess. If they

  741
  have liberty to show themselves we can see how insignificant they are, and the nation can tell who are the men who are helping to win the War, and who are the men who are hindering. Further, I hold the view, and have always held the view, that an Executive Government in a democratic country such as this ought not, even in time of war, to assume to itself the right of determining when the opposition to its own policy should be allowed to be expressed and when it should not be allowed to be expressed. Our tradition now for many generations, which was upheld during the Crimean War and during the South African War, was not to use the powers, the legal powers, of the Executive to suppress opposition to the policy of the Government of the day. But it has always been held also, in time of peace as well as in time of war, that the right to hold public meetings is not absolute and unqualified. It has never been recognised either in this House or in the Courts that any man at any time may speak where he will on any subject. The most typical instance and the instance most often quoted is the case of some religious propagandist, a Protestant preacher who speaks in a strongly Catholic district, and gives rise to breaches of the peace, or a Catholic who desires to convert the inhabitants of a strongly Protestant district. It has always been held that freedom of speech must be qualified in a case such as that. When this matter was discussed at the time of the Boer War on a Motion for Adjournment in the year 1900, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, then in Opposition, laid down very clearly the doctrine that the right of free speech cannot be regarded as being wholly unqualified by conditions and circumstances. The case arose very clearly some months ago, not long after I had the honour to assame my present office. Am organisation with which some hon. Members are connected, the No-Conscription Fellowship, and a little committee, the Stop-the-War Committee, which I think is now dead, and one or two other organisations, proposed to hold a great meeting on Peace Sunday in Trafalgar Square, and there was no legal power at that time to prevent them doing so, I was told by the Commissioner of Police in the most emphatic terms that in the temper of the population of London such a meeting held that day in that place would infallibly result in a most serious riot. That is the origin of the Defence of the Realm Regu-
  742
  lation which for the first time gives the Secretary of State power to prohibit meetings if grave disorder, imposing undue strain on police and military, is to be anticipated. I cannot refrain from saying to my hon. Friends that the proposal to hold that meeting in Trafalgar Square was most ill-advised. It was a provocation to London, and it compelled the Government to make the Defence of the Realm Regulation which is now amongst those Regulations. That Regulation imposes on the Secretary of State a new responsibility, and a heavy one, one most difficult to fulfil, and a responsibility which none of his predecessors have ever had to bear. He has to judge each case as it comes to him on its merits. Under that Regulation the Trafalgar Square meeting was prohibited, and not a word of protest was raised in any form—not a word. Hon. Members recognised that it was necessary to limit the right of free speech, that the circumstances compelled it, and no one in this House or out of it, and not one of those newspapers that support this policy, criticised my action in prohibiting that meeting, under the new powers then assumed. But it is a new duty, and, as I say, one most difficult to fulfil. I have had seven requests from various parts of the country to prohibit meetings on the ground that they would give rise to serious disorder. I went into the merits of each case, and I declined, on the general ground which I stated at the beginning of my remarks, to intervene in any one of those cases, and in none of them, as the event showed until this case, which is not included in the seven, was there any disorder of a serious character. With respect to the Cardiff demonstration, here was a conference held, not in some great public place like Trafalgar Square, but in a hall obtained for the purpose. It was to be a ticket conference, its composition purported to be of a representative character, although one may have some doubt how far, as a matter of fact, miners' lodges had really in any representative fashion sat down deliberately to elect persons to-take part in those discussions.
  Mr. STANTON: That is right!
  Mr. SAMUEL: I am quite sure the president at the conference, who is the president of the South Wales Miners' Federation, did not attend in his official capacity.
  Mr. R. MACDONALD: He never said so!
  Mr. SAMUEL: The hon. Member who moved spoke as if they were backed by the whole body of the Welsh Miners' Federation.
  Mr. THOMAS: The hon. Member said nothing of the kind. The hon. Member said that an invitation was sent to the branches and that delegates were elected in the usual way, and will the right hon. Gentleman make the same statement with regard to the railwaymen?
  Mr. SAMUEL: The hon. Member quoted the figure of 196,000 people who were at the back of the conference, and one was naturally entitled to assume that, as the members of the South Wales Miners' Federation almost tallies with that figure, he was referring to them.
  Mr. THOMAS: On a point of Order. Is the right hon. Gentleman entitled to say that I gave any figure approximating to the South Wales miners when I quoted the railwaymen, the miners, the transport workers, the seamen, the co-operative societies, and the Trades Council?
  Mr. SAMUEL: I am quite willing to accept the hon. Member's assertion. I do not wish to misrepresent him, but I think the impression left upon many hon. Members besides myself was that he regarded, or he represented, the conference as being, at all events, in some degree representative of the South Wales miners, or a very large proportion of them. However, I had to deal with the conference that purported to be in some degree representative of considerable bodies of trade unionists in South Wales, which was to have been addressed by two hon. Members of this House, and was to have been presided over by the President of the South Wales Miners' Federation, and, after a most careful review of all the circumstances, I thought on the whole it would be better even if some disorder took place—and I did not anticipate it would be anything in the nature of a grave riot or disorder that would involve risk to life or limb—even if there were some disturbances, it would be better to face that than to suppress this conference by Executive action, with the result that the British Government throughout the world would have been declared to have been imitating the policy of its enemies, and preventing any freedom of expression of opposition to its
  744
  policy. So far with regard to that aspect of the question which was dealt with by the hon. Baronet.
  If a meeting is to be held, and is not held for any illegal purpose, it is undoubtedly the duty of the local police authority to protect that meeting, and, so far as its force allows, to maintain order outside the hall. As to the duties of the local authority inside the hall, the practice differs in different localities, but the duty to maintain order within its proper sphere, so far as its force allows, has been laid down by every Home Secretary speaking at this box, and as clearly as any by the late Sir Matthew White Ridley in connection with the disturbance of anti-war meetings at the time of the South African War. Some hon. Members have spoken as if there were a direct responsibility upon the Home Secretary. That is not so. He is not the police authority anywhere out-side the Metropolis. The police is managed by the local authority. It obeys the orders of the local authority. The Home Secretary's power is limited to causing its efficiency to be inspected, and on receiving a certificate of efficiency, to enable the annual police grant from the Treasury to be paid.
  The question of whether or not there ought to be more centralised police control has often been argued. It was considered by a Committee consisting largely of Members of this House in 1909, and that Committee came to the unanimous conclusion that it was not advisable to alter the existing regime, and that police questions were properly to be regarded as a matter of local government. They said:
  "We believe that the right of public meeting would be best safeguarded in the future as at present by leaving the responsible police authority of each locality to determine the practice most suitable to the very varying circumstances with which they have to deal, and with which, on the whole, they have very successfully dealt in the past."
  I am quite sure that the hon. Member for Derby would be the first to protest against any proposal in any matter relating to the management, discipline or control of the police in the town which he represents, if the Home Secretary were to venture to put an interfering hand into the doings of the Watch Committee of that corporation. With reference to the Cardiff police, the responsibility then rests with the Watch Committee of Cardiff. They were fully alive to the facts of the situation with reference to the conference and meeting to be held last Saturday. The Chief Constable had given the matter the

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  closest possible attention for some weeks past. He had seen the promoters of what was called the patriotic demonstration, and he had forbidden them to carry out their original intention to march their procession past the Cory Hall where the pacifist conference was to be held. The Cardiff police force, like other police forces, is largely depleted because many of them have patriotically joined the Army, no fewer than about seventy constables having joined from Cardiff—a very large proportion of the police force of a town of that size. The Chief Constable, in order to deal with the situation of last Saturday, had instructed the half of the whole of his available police force to be on the spot or to be close at hand in reserve in case any serious disturbance should arise, and he himself was at hand ready to take action if necessary. The question has arisen about the interference of the police with the efforts of the stewards to shut the doors at a moment when it seemed that some persons endeavoured to force in their way from outside. The Chief Constable reports to me on the question as follows:
  One of the stewards made an effort to close the outer door of the main and only reliable entrance to or exit from the building. As there were a number of men and women leaving at the time, and as a state of commotion existed, the police officer in charge very prudently, in the opinion of the Chief Constable, refused to allow me doors to be closed."
  That is the reason why they took that action. The Chief Constable further reports:
  If they (the stewards) had sought the intervention of the police it would have been given."
  No request, the report says, was made by the stewards at the hall to help them to bar the door or to shut out the persons who were coming in, and if such intervention had been sought it would have been given. The Chief Constable further says:
  "If, however, the police had intervened the crowd, in its temper, would have become unmanageable, and grave disorder would have taken place. The course adopted by the police prevented any injury to life, and not one injury requiring medical treatment was reported to the police."
  The hon. Member for Derby made use of one expression which I confess I heard with great surprise, particularly since it was supported by no proof; it was a mere assertion unsupported by evidence. He said:
  "The Cardiff police directly encouraged and incited to mob law."
  That is a very grave charge to make against the police. All the graver when no facts of any sort or kind are adduced to
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  support it. I cannot refrain from saying that I regard that as a most unfair statement to make against a body of men who I am sure were only anxious to do to the full the duty which devolved upon them. I do not know that there is anything more for me to say. I have seldom heard of a Parliamentary occasion being used for criticism of the Government with less substance behind the attack, and the only opposition to the action of the Home Office comes from an hon. Member who is equally opposed to the views of those who have made this Motion. As to the future, we must judge each case, as we do now, on its merits. It is impossible for me to guarantee in all cases and at all times, especially as the police forces are so-depleted owing to the War, that every pacifist meeting shall remain undisturbed. It is no lack of sense of duty on my part, and no lack of sense of duty on the part of the police authorities, but circumstances, like those of the Trafalgar Square meeting, may be such that in the present temper of the nation no Minister could honestly say that he would guarantee every meeting should be held without disturbance, because the only way to enforce it would be to invoke the aid of the military, and that I am quite sure my hon. Friend would not for a moment suggest. Every Home Secretary is always reluctant in cases of civil disturbances to ask the military authorities to send troops, but at a time like this, when our Army is fighting against a foreign enemy, to bring in a military force in order to protect pacifist meetings against interruption is clearly a course which it is utterly imposible for any Home Secretary to adopt. Subject to that qualification, the Home Office and the police authorities will do their best within the measure of their powers to prevent mob law, and to secure that freedom of speech which even in time of War the Government of this country has, however, tried to maintain.
  Mr. ANEURIN WILLIAMS: I must say that I think it is very regrettable that the Home Secretary should have sat down without one single word of condemnation of those who broke up this meeting.
  Mr. MORRELL: I venture' to support what my hon. Friend has just said. There have been many meetings broken up before in this country, but I do not think that we have ever before had a meeting attended by hon. Members broken up by another hon. Member, who boasts of the

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  fact, and says that he is going to do it again with the full approval of Members opposite, and without one word of disapproval or dissociation from the Member of the Government who is responsible for law and order in this country. For my part, I believe that one of the greatest functions of the House of Commons is to preserve freedom of speech in this country, and it is profoundly regrettable that hon. Members opposite should applaud an hon. Member who comes down and boasts that he has broken up a meeting, a perfectly orderly meeting, which was being addressed by other hon. Members. I do not think that they are doing any good to the House of Commons. An hon. Member who breaks up a meeting addressed by other hon. Members is dishonouring the House of Commons and dishonouring himself. I am very sorry that any hon. Member of this House should dare to support another hon. Member who has disgraced himself as this hon. Member has done.
  Mr. STANTON: I am not a traitor like you.
  Mr. PRINGLE: I think my hon. Friend (Mr. A. Williams) has been somewhat unjust to the Home Secretary. The Home Secretary, if not in express terms, did implicity condemn the action of the mob in breaking up this meeting. He himself by his action took the view that this was a perfectly legal meeting, that it was perfectly within the competence and within the legal rights of British citizens to meet in a hall to discuss the situation of this country in relation to the War, and to state their views, whatever they may be, as to the conclusion of the War. They are many invitations issued from various points of view at present in regard to the conclusion of the War. For example, only last week I received through the newspaper post a copy of a periodical called "New Europe," and in that paper there was an article called "Reconstruction of Europe." There was set forth what, according to the view of the writer, was the state of Europe that was to follow the War. I do not wish to enter into details at this stage. But it is said that many share the opinion that Germany ought to be forced back to the Rhine, that Austro-Hungary ought to be dismembered, and Armenia to be a separate kingdom, and it expressed a policy which no sane man interested in the future civilisation of Europe would advo-
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  cate. I believe there is no harm done in having the right to advocate it; I do not mind its being advocated. But if these things are advocated, then I say the Government should allow views of another kind to be advocated—views which suggest that it is possible to make with the Central Powers terms of peace far more moderate than are proposed. That is a matter on which every man, whatever his views on the War, should be allowed to express his opinion, and that is all that is being asked for. I think it is extremely valuable both in respect of this meeting and in respect of similar meetings in the future that the Home Secretary has announced in the House of Commons tonight that, so far as he is concerned, there will be no Executive action on the part of the Government to prevent the expression of reasonable and patriotic opinion in regard to a rational and lasting settlement of the terrible conflagration which at the present time covers the whole of Europe. Therefore I welcome the statement of the Home Secretary. I hope that in spite of the clamour of the junior Member for Merthyr and the hon. and gallant Member for Monmouth, the right hon. Gentleman will not be swayed from that position. The only regrettable feature on this occasion is that much of the disorder—I do not think the disorder amounted to very much—might be prevented if the minority who decade to hold a meeting themselves took measures to carry out their meeting successfully. I was one of the minority during the South African War, and once or twice I took part in meetings which were then held under considerable difficulties, but in every case we succeeded in holding our meeting and in preventing the crowd from getting in. The only thing that I regret is that the people who held this meeting were not more successful in holding it. But the blame is thrown on the police, and while I am dealing with the police I would like to refer to a statement which the Home Secretary made on behalf of the Chief Constable of Cardiff. It seems to me that the statement was rather inconsistent, and I am rather surprised that a logical man like the Home Secretary should have read it. I should have thought that he would have seen through its totally contradictory nature. The first part of the statement was that it was impossible to close the doors, because at the time there were some women and children coming in. It is very funny how women and children always come in in these matters. Then

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  he said that undoubtedly the police would have closed the doors if they had been asked to do so, whether there were women and children or not.
  Mr. SAMUEL: That was subsequently.
  Mr. PRINGLE: That was after the crowd had got in.
  Mr. SAMUEL: There were two incidents. First of all, there was the incident where the stewards tried to close the doors, and the police said they must let the people out and not allow the doors to be closed. And some time afterwards, some minutes, as I gather from the Chief Constable's report, the crowd came.
  Mr. THOMAS: The newspaper report says that the police refused to close the doors, as they knew their business best.
  Mr. PRINGLE: I am not quite sure whether the Home Secretary's subsequent explanation really improves matters. Are we to understand that at the time the stewards asked for the doors to be closed there was no crowd there, but that there were one or two harmless women and children who wanted to come out, and that the only desire of the steward was to prevent the women and children going out? I should naturally have thought he would have allowed women and children to come out of a pacifist meeting so that they should not be contaminated by these false views. But apparently it was the view of the Chief Constable of Cardiff that the women and children should be kept in the meeting. [HON. MEMBERS: "No, no !"] Of course, they were allowed to come out. That was the main consideration. Therefore, when the crowd came up they were willing to shut the doors. Why was it not done? I suppose it was because the crowd were inside at that time. At least, that is the only intelligible explanation.
  Mr. STANTON: The doors were closed.
  Mr. PRINGLE: The hon. Member for Merthyr says the doors were closed.
  Mr. STANTON: Yes, when we got there.
  Mr. PRINGLE: Ultimately we arrive at the truth. Apparently the women and children were allowed to go out, and then the doors were closed when the hon. Member for Merthyr got there. Mark that the Chief Constable of Cardiff says that he would have closed the doors, which, apparently, were closed. My right hon. Friend should really write to the Chief Constable to ask him for a revised report, or, at least, to take into consultation into him the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydvil, who, being on the spot, and being the chief actor in these proceedings, will give him a true account and enable a true account to go forth as the version of the Executive. In the circumstances—[HON. MEMBERS: "Divide!"]—it is not necessary to divide —it is unnecessary to continue this discussion. It has been valuable in that it has evoked from the Home Secretary a definite statement of policy, which is of extreme value in maintaining the traditional character of the Government of this country in allowing the utmost liberty of speech in the discussion of matters of public policy.
  Mr. THOMAS: I ask leave to withdraw the Motion.
  Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
  Whereupon Mr. SPEAKER, pursuant to the Order of the House of the 22nd February, proposed the Question, "That this House do now adjourn."
  Question put, and agreed to.
  Adjourned accordingly at a Quarter before Eleven o'clock.