Commons Sitting of 8 June 1917

Preamble
The House met at Twelve of the clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.
MILK (DEPARTMENTAL COMMITTEE).
Copy presented of Interim Report of the Departmental Committee appointed by the President of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries on the Production and Distribution of Milk [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
INTERMEDIATE EDUCATION (IRELAND).
Copy presented of Rule appointing Places of Examination, 1917 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS.
  WAR.
    RUSSIA (SOCIALIST CONFERENCE).

      STATEMENT BY LORD R. CECIL.
      Mr. KINGasked the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the Russian Government has now concluded a convention with the British Government that citizens of military age are to be mutually conscripted for military service?
      Mr. TREVELYANasked the Under secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether any convention has yet been signed between the British and Russian Governments as to conscripting British subjects in Russia and Russian subjects in Great Britain; whether any further negotiations on the subject have taken place with the Russian Government since the revolution; and, if so, whether they have been continued with the present Foreign Secretary, M. Tereschenko?
      The MINISTER of BLOCKADE (Lord Robert Cecil): The answer is in the nega-
      494
      tive, but negotiations on the subject are proceeding.
      Mr. KING: Are they likely to mature rapidly, or are they only in such an early stage that plenty of time can be given for the Bill that stands in relation to them?
      Lord R. CECIL: I think it is very important that the Bill should get through as soon as possible.
      Mr. TREVELYAN: Have these negotiations been continued since?
      Lord R. CECIL: Yes.
      Mr. BLAIRasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if Mrs. Pankhurst has received her passports to proceed to Russia; and, if so, does her journey involve any expenditure of public money?
      Lord R. CECIL: The answer is in the negative.
      Mr. SNOWDEN: Does that apply to both parts of the question—to fares as well as the passports?
      Lord R. CECIL: No passports have been applied for, so far as I know.
      Mr. STANTONasked the Under secretary of State for Foreign Affairs why his Department granted passports to the hon. Member for Leicester and to the hon. Member for West Bradford to go to Russia?
      Lord R. CECIL: The War Cabinet, after very careful consideration, decided that it was desirable to issue these passports if applied for, because the Russian Government had strongly and repeatedly expressed the desire that the representatives of the minority as well as of the majority of working-class opinion should be allowed to visit Petrograd, and have expressly mentioned the Independent Labour Party as one of the bodies which they desire to have that opportunity.
      The War Cabinet were advised by those most qualified to express an opinion, including our Ambassador, Sir G. Buchanan, and Mr. Henderson, that a refusal would lead to very serious misconception among our Russian Allies, and would cause great discouragement to those in Russia who were most anxious to carry on the struggle for freedom with the fullest energy. If the passports are issued, they will be for Petrograd.
      They are not intended to enable the holders to attend or take part in any inter-

      495
      national conference at Stockholm, and still less to communicate directly or indirectly with enemy subjects at Stockholm or elsewhere, and it is only on this express understanding that the passports will be issued. I understand that representatives of the views of the great majority of the working class may also apply for passports to go to Petrograd, and these also will be issued if asked for.
      Commander BELLAIRS: Will the Foreign Office demand from these hon. Members a written agreement that they will not take part in any other conference at Stockholm or elsewhere?
      Lord R. CECIL: That is a mere detail. This is a matter in the hands of the War Cabinet, and not specifically in the hands of the Foreign Office, but every reasonable and proper precaution in that direction will be taken.
      Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALD: If these conditions are accepted, may I ask the Noble Lord whether his intention is that at Stockholm we may hold conversations with such persons as Mr. Bran ting, or whether that is precluded under the conditions laid down by the War Cabinet?
      Lord R. CECIL: As I understand, the conditions are that there shall be no communication, direct or indirect, with enemy subjects. I do not know whether it is possible to define it more exactly than that, but that is what is intended. Mr. Branting, as the House is well aware, is not only a highly respected statesman in Sweden, but he is by no means hostile to the Allied cause.
      Mr. OUTHWAITE: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates at Petrograd are carrying on communications with the enemy, and that these delegates therefore—
      Mr. SPEAKER: That does not arise out of this question in any way.

  GOVERNMENT EMPLOYES (KINGSTOWN).
  Mr. BYRNEasked the President of the Board of Trade if he is aware of the conditions of employment in the Irish Lights Department and Board of Works at Kingstown; if he is aware that the total wages and bonus to labourers in the
  496
  Irish Lights Department is 25s. per week; if he will state the wages and bonus paid in England by Trinity House to English or Welsh labourers doing similar work; if he is aware that the wages paid to labourers under the Board of Works is from 20s. to 23s. per week; if he will state the wages paid to Board of Works labourers in England; if he will state whether these men will receive the war bonus of 5s. recently awarded by the Conciliation and Arbitration Board to Civil servants; and, if so, when will it be paid and from what date?
  The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. G. Roberts): I am only able to answer this question so far as it relates to the employés of the Irish Lights Commissioners and the Trinity House. The practice of these authorities is to pay the labourers employed by them the current local rate of wages and war bonus. These men are not, therefore, entitled to participate in war bonus granted to classes of employés whose wages do not vary in accordance with the current local rates.
  Mr. BYRNE: In order to prevent labour troubles in Ireland, will the hon. Gentleman take immediate steps to level up the wages?
  Mr. ROBERTS: The wages and conditions of those employés in Ireland come under the jurisdiction of the Board of Trade for consideration.
  Mr. BYRNE: Will they be paid at the same rate as in England?

  PETROL SUPPLY.
  Mr. HANSONasked the President of the Board of Trade whether the regulations issued by the Petrol Control Committee on the 6th June respecting the issue of special permits for motor cars to be Jet for hire for certain specified purposes in accordance with Section (c) of Regulation 8 GG of the Defence of the Realm Regulations cancel the orders issued by the Board of Trade on the 24th of May last; whether these regulations are now final and the apparent conflict of jurisdiction and authority with respect to the issue of permits and licences is now at an end; and whether the prompt issuance of special permits may now be relied upon in order" to avoid further delay, inconvenience, and loss to the public.
  Mr. ROBERTS: Both of the notices referred to by the hon. Gentleman were issued by the Petrol Control Committee who act on behalf of the Board of Trade. The issue of permits is being proceeded with as rapidly as possible.
  Sir J. SPEAR: Would it not be possible, under these regulations to issue notices to the owners of motor-cars who have them for specified purposes rather than that they should be in the newspapers, while in the meantime offences are committed inadvertently?
  Mr. ROBERTS: In a reply I gave yesterday I stated that this was a point for consideration, and it will be borne in mind.
  Sir J. SPEAR: I did not hear the reply yesterday.

  FOOD SUPPLIES.

    MILK.
    Mr. ANDERSONasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food whether the Advisory Committee on the Milk Order has recommended an increase of 3d. per gallon on the price of milk as from 15th June; whether this recommendation has been made as the result of pressure from farmers in the South of England; whether he has received representations from the Cheshire Milk Producers' Association that, in view of the present supplies of summer milk, such increase in price would not be warranted at the present time; and what is the intention of his Department on this question?
    The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of FOOD (Captain Bathurst): The Advisory Committee on Milk included in their Report a recommendation that the price of milk should be increased by 3d. per gallon as from the 15th June. This recommendation was based upon the evidence, not only of farmers in the South of England, but also of those in the Midlands and in Scotland. A resolution to the effect indicated in the question has been received from the Cheshire Milk Producers' Association. The recommendation referred to was not approved by the late Food Controller, and no action has been taken on it. I am not in a position to state what may be the views of the new Food Controller on the subject.

    MEAT.
    Mr. ANDERSONasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food, whether his attention has been called to the fact that the profits of the British and Argentine Meat Company, an amalgamation of James Nelson and Son and the River Plate Fresh Meat Company, have increased from £67,000 in 1914 to £411,000 in 1916 after paying Excess Profits Duty; whether, in the same period, flanks of chilled or frozen beef have increased in price by 120 per cent, and breasts of frozen mutton by 167 per cent.; whether he is aware of the discontent caused by such profiteering; whether his Department is prepared to apply a definite policy to establish the public interest over private interests; and whether he proposes to take any action in the matter?
    Captain BATHURST: I am informed that the profits earned by the British and Argentine Meat Company are approximately as stated; they represent a return of about 20 per cent, on the capital of the company. The average increase on pre-war prices was, on 1st January, 1917, for thin flanks of chilled or frozen beef, 101 per cent., and for breasts of frozen mutton 122 per cent. I am aware of the discontent caused by the rising price of meat, and I hope and believe that the steps which are now being taken to check it will prove effective.
    Mr. ANDERSON: Will the hon. Gentleman give us some indication of what these steps arc?
    Captain BATHURST: The effect of the Order already issued is to stop all unnecessary intermediate transactions between the farmer and the consumer, and to limit the profits of the wholesale dealers in meat. I have already announced to this House that it is proposed to fix maximum prices for meat, but beyond that it would be unwise indeed for me to go at present. Of course, as the House is aware, there is no Food Controller with effective powers in existence at the present time.
    Mr. ANDERSON: Is the hon. Gentleman also aware that the figures I have given here, as to the increased prices of meat, are the latest figures issued by the Board of Trade?
    Captain BATHURST: Yes; I can find no fault with the hon. Member's figures. I believe them to be, at any rate, approximately accurate.

    POTATOES
    Mr. PENNEFATHERasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food whether any restrictions will be placed upon the lifting for sale of new potatoes before certain dates, or below a certain size, with a view to preventing the consumption as a luxury of immature potatoes, which if allowed to increase to a larger size would provide more abundant food?
    Captain BATHURST: The placing of restrictions upon the lifting of new potatoes before certain dates is attended with difficulties, as potatoes ripen at different times in different districts. This is also a policy of doubtful advantage, especially in view of the fact that present prospects indicate an abundance of potatoes when the main crop becomes available. I think I ought also to mention that in many districts where these early potatoes are lifted other crops will be sown on the same ground.
    Mr. BYRNEasked the quantity of potatoes at present held by the military authorities in Ireland; are they storing more than they require; and the quantity which has become bad and unfit for use owing to insufficient attention in storing?
    The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the WAR OFFICE (Mr. Forster): The quantity of potatoes now held in Ireland is 300 tons, which axe required to meet Admiralty demands. They are in splendid condition, and I am informed there has been no loss on Government purchases of the 1916 crop, either through insufficient attention or want of storage or any other cause.

    DAMAGE TO CROPS (IRELAND).
    Mr. GINNELLasked the Vice-President of the Department of Agriculture (Ireland) whether he is aware of complaints prevalent throughout Ireland of the unprecedented amount of damage done to crops this season by crows, rooks, and daws, now more numerous than ever, owing to the restrictions on guns and ammunition; why the Department has not, in the interest of the food supply, taken precautions against this danger; and seeing that most rookeries are on the lands of persons who do not till, whether an Order will now be issued for the destruction of all rookeries?
    The CHIEF SECRETARY for IRELAND (Mr. Duke): I am having inquiries made.

    IRISH PRISONERS.
    Mr. GINNELLasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he is aware that an Irish political prisoner named Fahy, at Lewes, under sentence of a secret court-martial, is so reduced in health and appearance by bad treatment that his wife has recently had difficulty in recognising him; whether he is to be released to avert his death; and, if it be intended to detain him until the International Peace Congress deals with the treatment of political prisoners, whether an independent doctor from an Allied country will be allowed to examine him now?
    The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Sir George Cave): No representation has been received as to the health of this prisoner, but I am inquiring into the matter.
    Mr. BYRNEasked the Chief Secretary if he is aware of the treatment of the Irish prisoners at Lewes; if he will say how many have been removed; for what they were removed, and to where; if one has been removed to a lunatic asylum for hunger striking; if two others have been removed to some place unknown within the past few days; if he is aware that the Censor has refused to allow publication of letters from the National Aid Association on their treatment; and will he say what action he proposes to take?
    Sir G. CAVE: My right hon. Friend has asked me to reply to this question. On the 28th May all the Irish prisoners at Lewes refused to work. They had been repeatedly warned that any concerted action in defiance of the prison rules would result in the withdrawal of the special privileges conferred upon them, and I therefore decided that these privileges should be withdrawn and that the prisoners should return to the ordinary conditions of penal servitude. Some of them have since been removed to other prisons. The mental condition of one prisoner gives cause for anxiety, but no prisoner has been removed to a lunatic asylum.
    Mr. BYRNE: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman say whether the Government are really serious in their intention for a settlement of the Irish question, having regard to the brutal treatment of these prisoners'?
    Sir G. CAVE: There has been no brutal treatment of these prisoners. They have received exceptional favours on condition of good conduct.
    Mr. GINNELL: The Home Secretary has not informed the House on what grounds these prisoners made their demonstration on that particular occasion. What specific claims did they advance as a reason for their demonstration?
    Sir G. CAVE: I must have notice of that question.
    Mr. BYRNE: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman state whether the twenty prisoners have been removed from Lewes, and, if so, where they have been sent to within the last few days?
    Sir G. CAVE: I cannot without notice give the hon. Gentleman figures or places to which these men have been sent.

  ALEC GORDON.
  Mr. KINGasked the Home Secretary whether reports of the activities of Alec Gordon have been received at the Home Office; and whether Alee Gordon has been or is now employed by the Home Office?
  Sir G. CAVE: The answer to both parts of the question is in the negative.

  FISHING BOATS SUNK (IRELAND).
  Mr. GINNELLasked the First Lord of the Admiralty, having regard to the belief prevalent on the south-west coast of Ireland that any sinking of fishing boats there has been caused by British, not German, destructives, whether facilities will be afforded to Irish or to American divers to examine the wrecks with the object of placing correctly responsibility for the sinking?
  The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the ADMIRALTY (Dr. Macnamara): There is, of course, not the slightest foundation for the outrageous suggestion put forward in the earlier part of this question. To have put it on the Paper, I consider mischievous to the last degree.
  Mr. GINNELL: Will the Admiralty give facilities for divers from Ireland or America going down and examining and testing the validity of this charge?
  Dr. MACNAMARA: I have told the hon. Member there is not the slightest foundation for the outrageous suggestion contained in the early part of the question.
  Mr. GINNELL: If there is not, why not allow divers to go down and prove it one way or the other?

  MUNITIONS.

    ARMY RESERVE.
    Mr. R. LAMBERTasked the Minister of Munitions whether his attention has been called to the conditions of the men who are placed as Army Reserve Class W, and sent to Avonmouth as Army Reserve munition workers under his Department; whether these workers, though liable to be fined or sent back to the Army if they lose time, can yet be forced to remain idle by the action of the employers, in consequence of weather, or other circumstances, without wages being paid to them; and whether he can state what is the rule in such cases?
    The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of MUNITIONS (Mr. Kellaway): It has not been possible to trace any special complaints on this subject from the Army Reserve munition' workers employed at Avonmouth. Army Reserve munition workers are employed as civilians and are subject to the ordinary conditions prevailing on the job in the same way as any other workmen except that they may receive additional payments in respect of rate, subsistence and children's allowances. I am informed that during the last eight weeks the total average time lost by Army Reserve munition workers at Avonmouth owing to circumstances for which they were not responsible has been only three and a half hours.
    Mr. LAMBERT: If I send my hon. Friend particulars of cases brought to my notice will he have them looked into?
    Mr. KELLAWAY: Certainly.

    GLASGOW FAIR HOLIDAYS.
    Mr. DUNCAN MILLARasked the Minister of Munitions whether any arrangements have been made to permit of the holding of the Glasgow Fair holidays during the present summer; and over what period of time the munition and other

    503
    industrial workers in the West of Scotland will be permitted to extend their summer holiday this year?
    Mr. KELLAWAY: It is not proposed this year to interfere with the holding of the Glasgow Fair and other summer holidays in Scotland, except in the case of individual establishments whose output may be found-to be urgently required. I have no doubt that both employers and employed will realise the importance of not extending the holiday beyond the period which is recognised in the district or which may be required for the purpose of repairing plant.
    Mr. HOLMES(by Private Notice) asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade whether he has considered the question of the facilities for transport in connection with the Glasgow Fair Holidays, and what is being done?
    Mr. G. ROBERTS: This matter is receiving attention, and I hope it will be possible to provide reasonably adequate railway facilities during the holidays for the workers in the Clyde district.
    Mr. GULLAND: Will those facilities not also apply to workers in other parts of Scotland?
    Mr. ROBERTS: My right hon. Friend and myself have this whole matter under consideration, and we are prepared to receive any representations. We are in communication with the Minister of Munitions and the Railway Executive to see whether any, and what, railway facilities can be put into operation during the holiday season.
    Mr. GULLAND: Will the hon. Member kindly keep in mind the very large number of munition workers in the South of Scotland?
    Mr. ROBERTS: I am not likely to overlook them, or the large numbers in other parts of the country.
    Mr. PRINGLE: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the main question here is the steamship facilities, and may I ask him whether the representatives of the Board of Trade will receive a deputation from the district?
    Mr. ROBERTS: Yes, we are not averse to receiving a deputation. The question of steamship facilities is even greater than that of railway facilities, and we are
    504
    in communication with the Shipping Controller to see whether anything can be done in that direction.

  PRISONERS OF WAR.
  Mr. HUME-WILLIAMSasked the hon. Member for Sheffield (Central Division) (1) if he can state whether an agreement has been entered into between France and Germany for the mutual repatriation of prisoners interned in Switzerland; if so, what are the terms of the agreement; and are negotiations pending for the conclusion of a similar agreement between this country and Germany; and (2) whether any English prisoners in Switzerland have been examined by a board of Swiss doctors for the purpose of securing their return to this country under such arrangements as have been made; and, if so, when they may be expected to arrive and in what numbers?
  Mr. J. HOPE (Lord of the Treasury): The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative. The agreement relates to prisoners of war who are found by a Swiss Medical Commission to be totally unfit for military service, the decision of this Commission must, however, be confirmed by another Commission of one military and two medical officers appointed by the captor Government. An agreement has been concluded between His Majesty's Government and the German Government on similar lines. This agreement is not yet actually operative as far as we know. I should explain that the number of British prisoners of war who will benefit by the agreement is not likely to be considerable, and/that a few men have already been repatriated from Switzerland on the ground that their health has deteriorated to such an extent since their transfer from Germany as to make them eligible for repatriation under the repatriation agreement already existing with Germany.
  Mr. HUME-WILLIAMS: Can the hon. Gentleman say how soon the agreement will become actually operative?
  Mr. HOPE: I imagine at once.
  Mr. HUME-WILLIAMSasked whether any English and Turkish prisoners have yet been exchanged; if so, how many and when; and how soon may the English be expected to arrive in this country?
  Mr. HOPE: No exchange of British and Turkish prisoners of war has yet taken place, nor, unfortunately, is it likely that any can take place in the immediate future. In a Note which has just reached His Majesty's Government after a delay of over two months, the Turkish Government pass over the proposals made to them for the exchange of 100 or 600 invalid prisoners a side as a first instalment, and express the desire to revert to the arrangement reached last year according to which all prisoners were to be exchanged who came up to a certain standard of incapacity. As it appears that the Ottoman Government only considers that eleven of the British prisoners of war who were in their hands in December last reach that standard, it is clear that such an arrangement would prove wholly unsatisfactory. The Turkish Government is therefore now being pressed for a specific reply to the above-mentioned proposals for numerical exchange.
  Sir J. JARDINE: May I ask if the answer refers merely to British prisoners or includes Indians?
  Mr. HOPE: Speaking from memory, I think it includes both.
  Mr. HUME-WILLIAMSasked whether the American Ambassador has now left Constantinople; whether, before leaving or since, he has made a report as to the condition of the Turkish camps in which English prisoners are interned; who is now charged with the duty of visiting such camps; and what are the most recent reports?
  Mr. HOPE: The United States Ambassador has left Constantinople, and the protection of British interests in Turkey is now in the charge of the Netherlands Minister. The United States Ambassador was not able, so far as is known, before leaving to take advantage of the promised permission to cause internment camps to be visited by his representatives. As stated in the reply returned to my hon. Friend on the 10th May, the Netherlands Minister has been requested to cause the camps to be visited, but it is not known whether he has been able to do so, and no reports have yet been received.
  Mr. HUME-WILLIAMS: Will the hon. Member exercise such pressure as he reasonably can to have somebody sent to those camps, a great number of which have not been seen at all?
  . Mr. HOPE: Yes.

  FLAG DISPLAYS (IRELAND).
  Mr. GINNELLasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland if the carrying of flags by athletic clubs in Ireland is forbidden; and, if so, will he say under what Statute; why a general Proclamation to that effect has not been issued; under what authority Constable Flagherty, of Kilcullen, county Kildare, seized and carried off such a flag carried by Mr. Michael Healy on Sunday, 6th May, refusing to state his authority for so acting; and whether Flagherty will be required to return the flag and apologise?
  Mr. DUKE: The carrying of flags, other than emblems of sedition, is not forbidden. The flag in question, as I am informed, came within the exception.

  GOVERNMENT WORKERS (WAGES).
  Mr. BYRNEasked the Chief Secretary (1) if he will say when the Government propose to grant equal pay for equal work in Great Britain and Ireland; if he will consider the claims of men and women workers in Government Departments in Ireland to be placed on the same level as regards pay and bonuses granted to British workers doing similar work; if he will compare the Army Ordnance Department workers' wages in Ireland with Army Ordnance Department workers in Woolwich; and if he will see that there is a levelling up of wages in the two countries; and (2) if he is aware of the wages paid to clerks in Government Departments in Ireland; and if he will cause inquiries to be made into their conditions and recommend the payment of a living wage?
  Mr. DUKE: I must refer the hon. Member to the answers given him by the representative of the Treasury on 4th May.

  IRISH NATIONAL VOLUNTEERS.
  Mr. GINNELLasked the Chief Secretary whether he has read the decisions reached at the last meeting of Irish National Volunteer officers, held in Dublin on 27th May—namely, respectful sympathy with their fellow countrymen who lost their lives in the cause of freedom in Easter week of 1916, urging the release of those imprisoned for the same

  507
  cause, the necessity for a volunteer force to defend Ireland against invasion, the withdrawal of the hon. Member for Waterford from the presidency as a condition precedent to any progress, and the representation of Ireland as a distinct nation in the forthcoming International Peace Congress; and whether the National Volunteers who supported the foregoing decisions will now be tried by secret court-martial or banished without trial?
  Mr. DUKE: I have read the resolutions in question. I do not agree with the hon. Member's suggestion that the authors of them should be prosecuted.

  MILITARY SERVICE.

    RE-EXAMINATION
    Mr. ANDERSONasked the Undersecretary of State for War whether he is aware that statements of so serious a character regarding the treatment of men sent back for medical re-examination have been made before the Northampton Tribunal that it has been agreed to hold a special joint meeting with representatives of the medical board; whether, he knows that one solicitor stated that his clients had been treated like dogs; and whether investigation into these charges will be made by his Department?
    The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for WAR (Mr. Macpherson): No specific complaints of the treatment by the Northampton Recruiting Medical Board have been received in the War Office. An officer of the Department recently visited the board and found that the men were being well treated and carefully examined. If my hon. Friend will give me details of any particular case, of alleged ill-treatment, I will have the matter investigated immediately.
    Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALDasked the Under-Secretary of State for War whether his attention has been called to the passing for active and other forms of military service involving hard physical labour of men in Leicester suffering from valvular disease of the heart, chronic rheumatism, blindness in one eye, congenital physical weakness which has incapacitated from work for years, curvature of the spine, lameness, chronic bronchitis, and similar complaints; and whether he proposes to issue instructions
    508
    to the Army doctors examining in Leicester which will prevent them passing such men into the Army '
    Mr. MACPHERSON: I have noted what my hon. Friend says of the recruiting medical board at Leicester, but I must remind him that men suffering from definite disabilities which incapacitate them for general service are being classified in the lower categories for service of an Auxiliary character. Every endeavour is made not to accept for service men whose disabilities are of such a character as to unfit them for rendering military service either of a general or auxiliary character.
    Mr. PRINGLE: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that men are passed into low categories and then are immediately, on subsequent examination, passed into higher categories without any real examination of their physical condition?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: I am told that that is not the case.
    Mr. PRINGLE: Well, it is universal !
    Mr. MACDONALD: Is it not the fact that men passed into the lower classes of these categories have got notice to sell up their businesses and dispose of what connection they have got; and that the mere passing of the medical examination is so serious that it ought not to be done unless it means something from a military point of view?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: I am told that no special instructions to give any such notice have been issued by the War Office.
    Mr. PRINGLE: Can the hon. Gentleman explain why the R.A.M.C. doctors pass men without putting the stethoscope to them, especially seeing the men have been certified to be suffering from valvular disease of the heart?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: The hon. Member has made these charges previously, but he has not once submitted a specific case.
    Mr. PRINGLE: Oh, I have !
    Mr. MACPHERSON: I may inform the House that within the last week the Director-General has visited various centres from which complaints have come, and I can assure the House that thorough investigation of each complaint is being made.
    Mr. PRINGLE: Whitehall is one of them. !
    Mr. R. MACDONALD: It seems desirable to get this matter cleared up. Has ray hon. Friend inquired into the long list of specific cases which I sent to him the other day, with names, addresses, and particulars of the men about whom I have made complaint?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: Yes; I have ordered inquiries to be made into each individual case.
    Mr. CHANCELLORasked the Under-Secretary of State for War if he is aware that in the notices calling up rejected men for re-examination the paragraph stating that the recruit will not be called up for service with the Colours if again rejected is now being struck out; by what authority is this being done; and whether it is the policy of the War Office to cripple the Army still further by enlisting men medically unfit in addition to those already filling our hospitals 2
    Mr. MACPHERSON: There is no paragraph in the form of notice calling rejected men up for medical re-examination under the Military Service (Review of Exceptions) Act, 1917, stating that the recruit will not be called up for service with the dolours if again rejected. It is not the policy of the War Office to enlist men for any form of service for which they are medically unfit.
    Mr. CHANCELLOR: Does the hon. Gentleman suggest that this paper which I hold in my hand, containing the paragraph mentioned, struck through with red ink and dated 28th May, is the creature of my imagination?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: Perhaps my hon. Friend will supply mo with it?

    SOLDIERS AT BRIGHTON (FOOD).
    Mr. PENNEFATHERasked the Under-Secretary of State for War whether he has received any complaints in regard to the quantity and quality of the food supplied to the soldiers at the Pavilion at Brighton, who have lost one or more of their limbs; and, if not, whether he will cause inquiry to be made as to whether the men at the Pavilion are receiving such food as men in their condition ought to receive?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: No complaints in regard to the matters referred to in this question have been received in the War Office recently, but I am having inquiry
    510
    made, and will inform my hon. Friend of the result as soon as possible.

    EXEMPTIONS.
    Mr. OUTHWAITEasked the Under-Secretary of State for War whether his attention has been called to the case of Mr. L. J. Parkyn, who on 27th July, 1916, was granted exemption by the Hen-don Tribunal conditional upon being engaged in agricultural work and who subsequently obtained such work through the Pelham Committee and performed it to the satisfaction of his employers; and, in view of the fact that Mr. Parkyn, at the instigation of the military representative at Hendon, was called before the tribunal on 12th April, his certificate torn up by the chairman, and his exemption withdrawn, can he say on what grounds this action was taken?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: I am making inquiries in this case, and will communicate with the hon. Member as soon as I have obtained the Report.
    Mr. OUTHWAITE: May I inquire whether the fulfilment of the terms of the exemption is any guarantee for its retention, or is there a policy of calling up men and withdrawing these exemptions, quite apart from whether they have fulfilled their obligations or not?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: I cannot answer that in a specific way, but I will inform my hon. Friend.
    Mr. CHANCELLORasked the Undersecretary of State for War if, as stated by the military representative to the Carnarvon Borough Tribunal, unless they have applied to a tribunal for exemption within 30 days after the date of the notice calling them up for re-examination, rejected men who on re-examination are again rejected may later be conscribed into the Army without the right of appeal; if so, by what authority the right of appeal up to date of final calling up for service conferred on all men by Act of Parliament is being denied; and whether he will instruct his officers to discontinue breaking the law?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: A man upon whom a notice under the Military Service (Review of Exceptions) Act, 1917, has been properly served is deemed to have been enlisted and transferred to the Reserve under the Military Service Acts, 1916, upon the "appointed date," which date is the

    511
    30th day after the date of the notice. Under the Military Service Act a man's right of application to a tribunal for exemption extends only to the appointed date. There is no Statutory right of appeal up to the date of final calling up for service. The hon. Member is under a misapprehension on this point. It has been recognied by the War Office, however, to be undesirable that when on a first examination a man has not been accepted for service his application should be considered and decided by a tribunal on a date at which he is not available to be called up for military service. It has therefore been arranged that when a first application has been lodged with a tribunal before the appointed date, but has been withdrawn after the man has not been accepted for service, or when no application at all has been lodged in a case where a man on re-examination has not been accepted for service, then if on a later date the man is again re-examined and accepted for some form of service, and has been called up for service, the tribunal should entertain an application On his behalf, although technically out of date, if such application is lodged within seven days after the date of the notice calling the man up for service. This concession is being embodied in a circular letter to tribunals, which I am informed is on the point of issue by the Local Government Board.
    Mr. CHANCELLOR: This is a very important matter. I understand, by the Military Service Act—[HON. MEMBERS: "Order, order!"] I want to put the question, because it is important. If a voluntarily attested man who has been rejected and is not treated as discharged is called up for examination, will he have the same rights under the Military Service Acts, 1916, as a man to whom notice requiring examination has been served?
    Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member had better put his question down upon the Paper, and then we shall all be able to see it and understand it. It is impossible to follow it in the way he is putting it.
    Mr. PRINGLE: Arising out of the hon. Gentleman's answer, may I ask what is the position of the man upon whom notice has been served, which notice has subsequently been cancelled?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: If my hon. Friend will give me notice of that, I will look into it.

    WOMEN VOLUNTEERS FOR FRANCE.
    Mr. CHANCELLORasked the Under-Secretary of State for War if he is aware that women volunteers for service in France who have been passed as fit medically and in every other respect are being informed that vaccination and inoculation are conditions of such service, to which no exception can be made, and rejected solely on the ground of refusing them; by what authority his Department enforces on women conditions not legally compulsory on men; and whether it is the policy of the War Office to deprive the country by such differential treatment of the services of patriotic women?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative. These conditions apply only to women who volunteer for service in France, and are laid down by the Army Council as part of the conditions for which women are asked to come forward.
    Mr. CHANCELLOR: Do I understand that it is the policy to refuse fit women who volunteer for service in France because they refuse to have their blood poisoned? Is the appeal sincere which appeared in yesterday's paper for application from such women?
    Mr. MACPHERSON: The conditions are as I have stated them in the answer.

  AMERICAN GUNS.
  Mr. GINNELLasked the date of the receipt of the American guns with the help of which the Prime Minister has stated that the British Army won the battle of Arras at a time when America professed to be neutral?
  Mr. MACPHERSON: The guns referred to were not "American" guns, but guns made to our order in America. The first of these were received in September, 1915. The implication in the hon. Member's question is therefore not correct.

  LEYBOURNE CAMP.
  General CROFTasked the Under-Secretary of State for War whether in the recent case of arrest of officers at Leybourne Camp, these officers were placed under arrest pending further in-

  513
  structions; whether any investigation took place; whether they were put under arrest for any definite charge; whether the charge was later entered as disobedience of orders; whether in fact the order which these officers were presumed to have disobeyed had ever been conveyed to these officers; and (2) whether, on the occasion of the recent air raid, certain officers at Leybourne Camp were placed under arrest; if he will state on what charge these officers were arrested; and whether these officers are still under arrest?
  Mr. MACPHERSON: I have not received any information as to the matters suggested in the question, but I will make inquiries.
  General CROFT: May I ask my hon. Friend to make inquiry by telegram, as these officers are under arrest during all this time for what would appear to be an extraordinarily trivial offence?
  Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member is now making a statement.

  WARSHIP LOSSES (COURTS MARTIAL).
  Commander BELLAIRSasked the Prime Minister whether he is aware of the departure from the custom and practice of the Navy to hold courts-martial to inquire into the losses of warships having been made in so many cases; whether he is aware that in about thirty cases where courts-martial were held they were held in secret, contrary to invariable practice, and the secrecy has deprived Parliament of much guidance and knowledge; and whether the Government will set up a Royal Commission as soon as the War is over to inquire into the whole position, and to suggest such a revision of the Navy Discipline Act as will be binding on the Admiralty, and will tend to maintain the high standards of the Navy while safeguarding Parliament's control through the publicity of proceedings of courts-martial?
  Dr. MACNAMARA: My right hon. Friend has asked me to answer this question. I dealt with the contention that the custom and practice of the Navy has been recently departed from in the Debate on the Motion for Adjournment on 25th May. As regards the holding of courts-martial in secret, I would call my hon. and
  514
  gallant Friend's attention to King's Regulation 674, Admission to Trial, which provides that during the period of the present War, in the interests of the national safety, the public may be excluded during the whole or any part of the trial, if the court in its discretion makes an order to that effect. As regards the setting up of a Royal Commission, so far as the Admiralty is concerned, that course will not be proposed.
  Commander BELLAIRS: I beg to give notice that I will repeat the question on Monday, as I asked for a Royal Commission, and that is not the proper thing for the Admiralty to decide.
  Dr. MACNAMARA: I was careful to take note of that. I said that we should not propose the setting up of a Royal Commission to the authority authorised so to do.

  FLAVINE.
  General CROFTasked the Under-Secretary of State for War (1) whether the properties of flavine were known to the medical profession in January last, when a preliminary report was published in the "British Medical Journal"; and whether up to this time substantial quantities of flavine cannot be obtained for the treatment of wounded soldiers in any hospital either at home or abroad; and (2) whether the War Office has received information as to the properties of the new antiseptic flavine; if so, what steps have been taken to obtain it; to whom was the order given for the supply of flavine and within what time was the order executed; whether there has been any delay in the execution of this order; and, if so, what is the reason?
  Mr. MACPHERSON: The antiseptic properties of the substance referred to were described in a preliminary report published in the medical Press in January last, giving the results of experiments with a small supply of this complex substance, specially made for these experimental purposes in a Government Laboratory. Arrangements were made at the same time for further trials in various military and other hospitals, and steps were taken with a view to a commercial supply being made available in the event of these trials proving sufficiently favourable. The trials have been in progress since

  515
  January, and the effects so far obtained are under careful comparison with those of other antiseptics. Before the substance can be placed on the market a licence must be obtained from the Board of Trade, as the substance was already the subject of a patent obtained before the War. Applications were made to the Board of Trade by various firms in the middle of last month. The hearing took place on the 24th ultimo, and I am informed that the requisite licences are now being issued to five firms. There would, therefore, seem to be no doubt that the supply of the substance will be made available as rapidly as the several firms can produce it.
  General CROFT: Is it not a fact that a definite order was given for this antiseptic, and, owing to the exorbitant price, for some reason or other there was delay, and will the lion. Gentleman supply us with any information on the subject, because it is impossible to obtain this antiseptic?
  Mr. MACPHERSON: As I stated in answer to the question, five large firms have now made application to supply it, and I hope in the near future it will be available.
  General CROFT: May I ask whether it is not a fact that an order was actually made some months ago by the War Office?
  Mr. MACPHERSON: I cannot say that,

  QUARTERMASTERS' ALLOWANCES.
  General CROFTasked the Undersecretary of State for War whether he is aware that quartermasters serving in the field for whose families lodging, fuel, and light allowances are being allowed at home are not entitled to similar allowances for themselves; whether it was intended to debar quartermasters under allowance regulations from this allowance (paragraph 286c); whether in the present circumstances an unmarried quartermaster is permitted to draw this allowance in the field whilst the same privilege is denied to married quartermasters; and whether the married quartermaster on active service is placed in this respect on less favourable terms than the married quartermaster who is serving in this country?
  Mr. FORSTER: A quartermaster in the field, like any other officer so situated, is provided with accommodation in kind or in cash, irrespective of any issue that may be made in respect of his family.

  INOCULATION (SOLDIERS' LEAVE).
  Mr. CHANCELLORasked the Under-Secretary of State for War if he is aware that, in spite of repeated assurances, the instructions issued by the Army Council in November last continue to be disregarded by Army officers, and that the commanding officer of the 23rd Battalion Royal Welsh Fusiliers has recently instructed officers commanding companies to give greater facilities for leave to men who have been inoculated and less to those who have not; and whether he will see that the Army Council's instructions shall be observed, which makes leave depend entirely on the health conditions of the place to be visited and not on the fact of inoculation?
  Mr. MACPHERSON: I have no information that the case is as alleged, but a report has been called for, and I will inform my hon. Friend of the result.

  Education, Scotland.
  Sir EDWARD PARROTTasked the Secretary for Scotland whether his attention has been directed to the Departmental Committees set up, or about to be set up, by the Board of Education for the purpose of inquiring into the principles which should determine the construction of scales of salaries for teachers in elementary, secondary, technical, and other schools; and whether he will empower the Scotch Education Department to constitute similar committees for a similar purpose in Scotland?
  The SECRETARY for SCOTLAND (Mr. Munro): The matter is under consideration. In Scotland, however, the appointment of a Committee such as is suggested would not, in my opinion, achieve any practical result unless and until local authorities with much wider rating areas are substituted for the present school boards, and representatives of the new authorities are in a position to take part in the deliberations of the Committee.

  Land Purchase (Ireland).
  Mr. GINNELLasked the Chief Secretary whether his attention has been called to the facts that land monopolists, some helped by moneylenders, are taking advantage of the check to land purchase caused by the War to acquire new titles in large tracts of untenanted land which in normal times would be purchased and distributed, and that occupants of uneconomic holdings and landless men having moral and statutory rights to such lands and willing to produce food on them are thus being cheated out of their rights and the production of food lessened; and whether immediate action will be taken to stop the monopolising, nullify the new titles, and distribute all such lands as provided by the Purchase Acts?
  Mr. DUKE: The matter referred to in the question has been a subject of inquiry in the Irish Departments which deal with the land question, and I am advised that no case at present exists for preventing the sale and purchase of Irish land. Sv.ch a course would inflict great loss on all persons possessing landed interests either as absolute owners or otherwise. The Land Purchase Acts are intended to facilitate the transfer of land from the owners to the tenants, and contain no prohibition of the sale of land by private arrangement.

  National Teachers (Ireland).
  Mr. GINNELLasked the Chief Secretary if he will state the number of Irish national school teachers, male and female, respectively, who are now paid salaries under £25, £30, £35, £40, £45, and £50 a year, respectively; whether he is aware that, at present prices, they cannot feed and clothe themselves and de pendants on these salaries; whether teachers in this country are paid such salaries; and when increases will be paid to the Irish teachers?
  Mr. DUKE: All ordinary principal and and assistant teachers of national schools receive salaries in excess of £50 a year, except the teachers of small schools in which the average daily attendance is less than ten. The teachers of these small schools, numbering approximately fifty-five, are almost exclusively women, and are paid at a capitation rate of £4 per annum for each unit of average attendance. This rate includes an ordinary capitation rate of £3 10s., residual capita-
  518
  tion, and an additional capitation Grant of'5s. per pupil. In such cases it is expressly stipulated that for a school the teacher of which is untrained the local aid should be such that the total emoluments of the teacher from State and local sources should be not less than £44 per annum, and for a school the teacher of which is trained the local aid should be such that the total emoluments of the teacher from State and local sources should not be less than £51 per annum. Junior assistant mistresses, who are recognised under specified conditions in schools in which, as a rule, the average attendance of pupils would not warrant the recognition of ordinary assistants, are paid less than £50 a year. These teachers, numbering approximately 2,280, are divided into two classes:

  (a) Junior assistant mistresses paid at the rate of £24 per annum, in cases where the average daily attendance at the schools warrants such appointments.

  (b) Junior assistant mistresses employed in mixed schools under masters, in which the average attendances do not warrant payment of full salary. In such schools payment is made to a teacher of this class at the rate of £6 for each quarter in which the average attendance of girls is at least twenty. If the average attendance of girls is less than twenty for any quarter the junior assistant mistress is paid for that quarter a capitation Grant of 5s. for each girl in average attendance.

  The number in class (a) is about 2,100, and in class (b) about 180. Every junior assistant mistress of either of these classes receives the war bonus of 4s. a week, and each of them who has completed two years' efficient service- is eligible for an, additional Grant at the rate of £4 per annum. The question of the revision of the salaries of teachers is being dealt with by the Commissioners of National Education, and T expect their complete proposals at an early date.

  Chemists' Assistants (Ireland).
  Mr. BYRNEasked the Chief Secretary if he will cause an inquiry to be made into the working conditions and wages paid to chemists' assistants in Ireland; if he will see that licences are not issued to chemists paying assistants a starvation wage; and if he will see that their working hours are not such as to be injurious to health?
  Mr. DUKE: As regards the first part of the question, I would refer the hon. Member to the reply given him by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour on the 17th May. Chemists are regulated by the provisions of the Pharmacy Acts and not under licences issued by the Chief Secretary. The working hours are regulated by the Shops Acts.
  Mr. BYRNE: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Government have big contracts with chemists in Ireland who pay assistants 25s. per week and work them sixteen hours per day?
  Mr. DUKE: No, Sir, I am not.

ORDERS OF THE DAY.

  MILITARY SERVICE (CONVENTIONS WITH ALLIED STATES) BILL.
  Order read for resuming adjourned Debate on Amendment to Question [15th May], "That the Bill be now read a second time."
  Which Amendment was to leave out the word "now,'' and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day six months."—[Mr. Whitehouse.]
  Question again proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question." Debate resumed.
  Mr. GLYN-JONES: When the proceedings on this Bill were interrupted, I was speaking in support of it, and I stated that the constituency which I represent, namely, the Stepney Division of Tower Hamlets, contained the largest number of people affected by the Bill. I have since been informed that I was inaccurate in that statement to the extent that there is one other, namely, the adjoining constituency of Whitechapel, which has more aliens residing within it who come within the scope of this Bill. One of the objects of the Bill, as I understand it, is to provide that the obligation which is now by law placed upon all citizens of this country to take up arms to serve either in the Army or the Navy, shall now be placed upon those who are domiciled in this country, but who are not in fact citizens of the country, not having been born here or become naturalised, but who are citizens of one or other of our great Allies. 1 can quite understand those who object to compulsory military service of any kind, and who have objected throughout the course of the War to imposing upon British citizens the obligation of taking up arms, raising an objection to this obligation being cast upon the friendly alien, but I cannot understand the attitude of anyone who, whilst admitting that the conditions in which the world to-day finds itself, and our own country and the countries of our Allies in particular, justify a departure from what has been the policy of this country in regard to military service by imposing compulsion on our citizens to take up arms, yet object to the same obligation being cast upon those who are domiciled
  524
  in this country, who have come here to live with their families, some having brought up their families here, and who, except for the special pi ivileges—and they are not many—which the naturalised subject has compared with the alien, enjoy to all intents and purposes to the full the rights and privileges of all those living in this country.
  No one likes doing that, but it is quite clear that the military necessity demands it, and certainly it demands that men such as those who are now being called upon and who are British citizens must serve if the necessity means that men who have been out at the front and have come back wounded or invalided two or three times, and have to go again perhaps to run those same risks. If the necessity is such as to justify that I cannot see any argument against the necessity of compelling able-bodied people who have lived in this country, and availed themselves of all our privileges, not going and taking their fair share in this War. On the ground of necessity alone this Bill could be justified. The hon. Member for Mid Lanark (Mr. Whitehouse) said that we were in danger of doing very great injustice to these aliens. He says:
  "I realise the prejudice that- exists on this subject throughout the country, but I do not think we get rid of prejudice and passion by yielding to it."
  I do not know what he means by prejudice in that respect, but I think he must be referring to the feeling which I, and those who represent constituencies like mine, are very conscious of, and that is a feeling which I describe not of prejudice but a genuine sense of injustice. In the course of the War we have to do things which mean that people do not bear equal burdens. It is impossible, I know, to secure that, but we have no right to try our people, as we are trying them in this matter, by giving them, in my view, sound and reasonable cause for bitter complaint. Let anyone go down to the East End of London to-day and he will find there a very different state of things from that which he would find in any other part of the country, for he would find a number of men of military age, the explanation, of course, being not that these men have been exempted in large numbers because they are required for essential work at home, but they are men who have never been put in the position of British citizens having to ask the country whether they were needed at home or at the front. All

  525
  that this Bill does is to impose exactly the same liability upon these people to serve as is imposed upon the British citizen.
  My hon. Friend in introducing this Bill said there were about 30,000 Russian aliens in this country, most of them in the East End. What do you find in almost any street in the East End of London to-day You will find a family where the Russian father came here perhaps when he was quite a young man; he will have brought up his family here and will probably be engaged in business here. He has come here possibly to escape conditions which were imposed upon him as a Russian citizen, and one of those conditions was that so long as he remains in Russia he would have been liable to military service. Prior to this War I was one of those opposed to compulsory military service in this country, and consequently I would naturally have a great deal of sympathy with a man who left his country because he was opposed to the principles of compulsory military service, and who came to another country where they did not impose in time of peace that obligation. But hon. Members who object to a change in that attitude towards these people seem to me to forget, as they do on most other things, that we are at war; that both the aliens' country and ours are at war, and consequently the whole aspect is changed. Hon. Members talk about the welcome we gave these people to this country, but I ask, should we have welcomed them here in the same way if when they came their country and ours had actually been at war and we were fighting for our lives? Should we have welcomed them had we known they were fleeing from their country to avoid the crisis which had arisen and to avoid doing their duty? I think not. The very conditions which have led me to take up an entirely different attitude in regard to the necessity of military service in time of war with regard to our own citizens are exactly my justification for saying that although these people came here when we had not compulsory military service, when we find the state of the world to be what it is now, when we find the country of their birth and the country of their adoption fighting for their lives, I have no sympathy with them when they say we will fight for neither.
  The so-called prejudice is very naturally due to the fact that amongst other people, Jews who were born in this country and have become naturalised have been called upon to serve and give up their businesses,
  526
  and who are the most likely to take their businesses than those of their own race? Who are the biggest competitors of the Russian Poles in the East End to-day? The Russian Poles who are not naturalised. There is more to fear from them from competition than from anyone else, and yet as the law stands, because a man felt it his duty to take his place as a citizen of this country, when in this time of stress he is called upon to sacrifice everything, you see his next-door neighbour who has enjoyed all the privileges of British citizenship remaining behind and taking up these businesses, and yet the naturalised man has to leave his family and he is called upon to serve in the ranks. There are hon. Members of this House who have no doubt been able to show to their own satisfaction how the honour of this, country requires that that state of things should continue, but you will never explain to the people of the East End of London that the honour of this country requires it. I was very much impressed by a very representative deputation of mayors and members of borough councils who met a number of Members from the East End in this House, and they told us solemnly that they were seriously apprehensive of a real breach of the peace in the districts where these people live. I only mention this because I do not think it is quite fair to suggest that the object of this Bill was to meet prejudice. Its real object is to meet a necessity which calls for the placing of 30,000 Russian aliens in the East End in the same position in regard to their obligation to fight in this War as they would have been if they had remained in their own country or if they had remained citizens of the country of their adoption. When I say that there should be the same obligations, I also ask the Government to give them the same rights. The British citizen under the Military Service Act has certain rights of exemption, and he has the right to go before a tribunal and have his circumstances considered. I hope the Government, at any rate, will see that they do not ask the alien whom they are bringing in under this Bill to submit to anything to which the British citizen is not asked to submit, and that he has the same right of appeal.
  Many of these people are members of the Jewish race and are of the Jewish religion. I think that the War Office might have done more in the earlier days of the War to have encouraged these

  527
  people to volunteer by giving them facilities to serve in separate units where they would have found the great majority of the men to be of their own race and religion and their own habits of thought. It is perhaps a little hard to take a civilian alien from his surroundings in Stepney and plant him down as an isolated individual in a regiment where, perhaps, he may feel that he is not at home, and, if you are going to bring in a large number of these men I am sure, if it is at all practicable, that it would ease matters if arrangements were made for them to serve together as far as possible. If you impose upon them, and I hope you will, the liability to serve, you should give them the easiest opportunity of becoming fully naturalised British subjects. I think it is a corollary if they have been called upon to fight for the country and risk their lives—some of them may be called upon to lay down their lives—that you should, if any of them desire it, make it perfectly easy for them to become fully naturalised British subjects. I hope that the Bill will go through and that the Government will pay such a respect as may be due to the suggestions which I have offered for their treatment after they have become soldiers.
  1.0 P.M.
  Mr. TREVELYAN: The hon. Member who has just spoken is perfectly correct in saying that some of us who oppose this Bill also opposed Conscription for this country, but I am bound to say that it is for very widely different reasons that we oppose this Bill. There are objections to it, very different from those which we raised against the Conscription of our own subjects. The first objection which we have is that this Bill is the worst type of the bad sort of legislation which we have been having during this War. The House of Commons under it signs away to the Government quite indefinite powers for a quite indefinite number of people with indefinite results to those people. We do not know how many of our own people in foreign countries or foreigners in this country whom we are going to conscript under this Bill. It depends upon certain conventions which apparently and professedly are expected by the Government, but which do not now exist, and which the Government make no promise whatever of making public. I should like the Under-Secretary of State for War, if he replies, to quite definitely
  528
  say whether those conventions will be made public when they are made. We are legislating in the dark. We are giving; these powers before these conventions exist, and, to begin with, we say that the discussion of this Bill ought, at any rate, to be postponed until the first and most important of those conventions, the one with Russia, comes into existence. As it is, the House is deliberately encouraging the Government in the courses of secret diplomacy. The Government, if this Bill is passed, will have a free hand to make any secret or illiberal arrangement it likes with Russia or with any other country, and there will be no Parliamentary sanction whatever, and no effective power on the part of this House of stopping it. The House, by passing this Bill, will be signing away the rights, privileges, lives, and fortunes not only of foreigners, but of our own subjects, without in the least knowing what they are signing away. That is a very unwise kind of legislation for this House to adopt, and I hope it will not pass. I think, as a matter of fact, however, the Government are really in a difficulty, and they are hurrying on this Bill because they are not certain if they are going to get their principal convention at all. The largest number of aliens who are resident in this country are Russian subjects. They are the people whom they want to conscript, and they justify this Bill by saying that they are preparing a convention with the Russian Government in order to conscript them. I do not know whether they are going to get that convention, but it is not settled. Let us take the story of this secret transaction between our Government and the Russian Government as far as we know it. The Government began negotiations with the old violent, tyrannical bureaucracy that has recently been extirpated in Russia. It is quite true that old Government of Russian did not ask for this legislation. It is quite true that the desire for it originated in this country, but equally I have no doubt that old Russian bureaucracy was not sorry to find that there was in power here a Home Secretary who was ready to hand back men who had fled from the Russian Government. I have no doubt they were glad enough to enter into an arrangement which was then calculated to send back large numbers of these people to unfree Russia. The convention, however, was not concluded with the old Government. We have now had three months

  529
  of the new Russian Revolutionary Government and the convention is still under discussion.
  I should like to know more about the prospects of the convention coming into existence. There have been changes in the Foreign Office in Russia, and the last change is one which in every other respect shows a complete repudiation of all the policy of the old Russian Government. We have no business to proceed with this Bill until we know with certainty and definiteness that M. Tereshtchenko is going to carry out the policy which his predecessors were intending. The truth is that one of two things is the case with this Bill. We are either legislating in a hurry in order to save the face of the Government and in order to get this legislation passed for political reasons, because they are never going to get their conventions, or else we are legislating in a hurry before seeing the conventions which the Government are going to get, and which we ought to see before we have this legislation established. The Government cannot get out of that dilemma at any rate.
  I now pass to the principle of the Bill, which is no small matter. It is quite true that it concerns very few people in this country, yet we are establishing an absolutely new system which has never been heard of in our modern civilisation, namely, the conscription of foreigners and allowing our own people to be conscripted by foreigners. I propose to deal with the conscription of foreigners in this country first. It is no doubt true, as is said by those who support this legislation, that a great many of these aliens owe a great deal to this country which has offered them an asylum, and of all people they arc the first to acknowledge it through all their declarations and through anything any of them ever said privately. It is one thing to be grateful to Great Britain or to the country which has given you an asylum, and it is another thing to be enthusiastic enough for that country to the extent of being willing to die for it. Hon. Members speak as if there was anything comparable between the patriotism of a citizen who comes of a family which has been for generations in England and the patriotism of a new refugee. The quality is of an entirely different kind. Turn it the other way round. Supposing there is a Briton who is domiciled for a time in Brazil or
  530
  the Argentine, where he has his home' and satisfactory opportunity for livelihood, and where he is leading a very good life. It is one thing to appreciate the country which you go to and which gives you advantages, but it is quite another thing to be asked to be so patriotic to that country as to be ready to die for it.. The two things cannot be put on the same basis at all. The truth is that the more you believe in patriotism as a principal virtue, the less you ought to expect it to-be shown in this way for new countries.
  What is the real excuse for this Bill? The hon. Member who spoke last (Mr. Glyn-Jones) said it was because of our military necessities. We have had very little told us as to the number of people who are likely to come under this Bill in any circumstances. The figure o£ 30,000 has been mentioned. Let us take that figure. I wonder what it consists of, and what deductions have got to be made I In the original circumstances under which this; legislation was proposed the idea was to enlist all the people who refused to go back to Russia or to send them back to Russia. But the problem is quite a different one now. The problem is not nearly so acute as it was. Masses of these men are ready to go back to Russia now, and one thing we want to know is, what facilities are being given to enable them to go back? Until you have deducted all the men who want to go back, you have no right to quote that figure, and you have no right to begin talking about the Bill you are bringing forward. There are large numbers of these people who want to go back, but in the first place they are unable to find transport. There is a still greater difficulty. There are large numbers who would be perfectly willing to go back to a free Russia, but they are unable to find transport, and if they were able to transport themselves they are unable to transport their wives and children. You cannot expect a man to go back to Russia and leave his wife and children here in most cases. It is no use saying, "We are ready to transport individuals," unless you are ready to transport families. Before you have any right to legislate you ought to provide facilities for these aliens going back, if they want to go, and you ought to find out the extent of the problem which you have got to deal with. Thirty thousand foreigners is the figure that is mentioned. Supposing you enlist all these. It is not true that that is really a matter which

  531
  vitally concerns our military necessities. Thirty thousand is nothing in these days; it is an insignificant number.
  This is a small local problem. I agree that it may be acute enough in the East End, but what the Government are really doing is to surrender to a quite natural, if not very elevating, popular irritation in a few districts in the country. It is quite true that the presence of a large number of these young men may be irritating in these districts, but it is not true to say that great masses of them are taking the work of people who have left. What is true is that the great mass of them are simply doing work in their own occupations, and a few of them, it is true, are taking the places of the people who have gone out. But you have not got a big problem, and you have not got a problem so big that you ought to break with the whole of your British traditions, and invent an entirely new system of enlisting foreigners, and getting your own people enlisted in foreign countries. The game is not worth the candle. Thirty thousand ! From those 30,000 you have to deduct, first of all, if you are going to be honest in your declaration that you are going to allow them the alternative of going back to their own country, the number of those who are ready to go back to Russia with their families. You then ought to deduct those who are ready to go to neutral countries. Then there is another important matter, and I want to have a definite answer about it. What is going to be the position of the Poles who form a very large part of the Russian community here? The Poles cannot go back to their own country. Russia has declared for the independence of Poland, and it does not look as if it would be very likely that she will try to reconquer Poland, which she proposes to make independent. The situation in Poland is, so far as we can see from the newspapers, that the Poles are not fighting for Germany, except to a very small extent. Practically Poland is already a neutral country. The Poles have no patriotic motive in fighting on either side, because they realise that independence has been promised by both parties. It has been partially given by one and honestly offered by the other. The Poles ought not to be asked to fight on either side. We object, rightly, to their being asked to fight on the German side, and they ought not to be asked to
  532
  fight on our side either. Both parties are steadily verging towards Polish independence, and I want to know definitely whether the Government proposes to conscript the Poles.
  But there is another side of the question, and it is remarkable that it has not had more attention. We are going to enlist foreigners, and our own nationals are going to be conscripted in foreign countries, and I want to know what the fate of our own nationals in foreign countries is going to be. Supposing you get a series of conventions with Russia, France, Italy, and so so, what is going to happen to the thousands of our fellow countrymen who are going to be enlisted? You may say you want them to be compelled to fight there if not here. But that is not the whole question. The question is, to what kind of treatment are they likely to be subjected? It is quite impossible, even if we had the most admirable Foreign Office and the most perfect Consular Service, to substitute the attention of our officials in foreign countries as an adequate safeguard compared with the attention which our own people get in their own country when it is a question whether they ought to be enlisted or not. Our people living in foreign countries, strangers in a strange land, if they come under compulsory service will be subject to foreign tribunals, and I do not know whether they be any better than ours.
  The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for WAR (Mr. Macpherson): My hon. Friend will not find that in the Bill.
  Mr. TREVELYAN: I suppose not. We do not find anything in the Bill. We do not in the least know under what conditions our nationals will be enlisted, and that is just the point. I do not suppose they have tribunals in France like ours, but they will have some process of compulsion. I have read very carefully what my hon. Friend said, and there was nothing in the least to explain what safeguards there were. I think the Ambassador, or some official, is to have the power of claiming exemption.
  Mr. MACPHERSON: There is no question of tribunals.
  Mr. TREVELYAN: I did not say there was. I said that in whatever country our people are conscripted there will be some process of compulsory enlistment, whether by tribunals or otherwise, and it

  533
  will probably be something more brutal than our tribunals. The more militarist the country the more brutal the system. This Bill is being justified on the ground that foreigners are competing with our own people. Do you suppose that sort of argument is not heard in foreign countries as well Of course it is. If we get conventions with Italy, France, Russia, etc., there will be industrial competitors of our people over there who will be very glad to get rid of them. I want to know what kind of security our Government is going to give to our non-nationals that they are not going to be conscripted, whether by tribunals, military authorities, or what not, and what kind of security they are going to have that they will get anything like fair treatment. It is absurd to say the mere veto of the British Ambassador is going to be sufficient security. It is going to be nothing of the kind.
  But, further than that, I hold that we have no right whatever to leave our own people to the tender mercies of the military systems of other countries. As soon as a man gets in a foreign army, without help, out of our ken altogether, there will be not the least chance of any assistance being given to him if he is badly treated in any way. Once in a foreign army there is no redress whatever possible. That is a point of view which I think we ought to consider for the sake of our own nationals, and for that reason also I should be opposed to the Bill. I think the House of Commons will be far better advised to follow the example of the French Chamber of Deputies, a member of which sought to require subjects of Allied nations belonging to classes called up in their respective countries to present themselves for military service. He wanted the French to do precisely and exactly what our Government is asking us to do by this Bill. He used exactly the same arguments and put them perfectly fairly and squarely exactly in the same way as the advocates -of this Bill do. These men, he said, are deserters from duty in their own countries. They constitute a population often undesirable which, whether lazy and objectionable, or industrious and taking our jobs, is alike offensive to the French population. Everything we hear from every advocate of this Bill was heard in the French Chamber. With more need of men than ever anyone can say we have, the French Chamber rejected that proposal by 325 votes to 124. When I cited this
  534
  in a question to the Leader of the House he said they did not really reject it, and they did not mean what i implied, so I made inquiries. I inquired first of a very well-informed Frenchman in England as to what had really happened, and he said the Amendment w7as referred back to the Army Commission, and he went on:
  "Everyone knows that in France when anything is referred back to the Commission it means a first-class funeral."
  Further, I wrote to an eminent member of the Chamber of Deputies, who replied in exactly the same sense and said that the proposal had been sent back to the Army Commission, where it had been given very little consideration and they would report unfavourably when called upon to do so.
  Mr. MACPHERSON: Have they done so?
  Mr. TREVELYAN: No; they have not been asked, and they are not going to do so. It would be better that we should do the same thing and give this Bill a first-class funeral by putting it oil for three months, which will have exactly the same effect as the French in sending it to the Army Commission. It is most unfortunate that we should do anything quite unnecessarily to break with the British tradition of giving an asylum to foreigners in this country. It has been unbroken for generations. We have harboured refugees from many lands for many centuries, freeing them from many kinds of persecution. At all times in our history there have been. difficulties and inconveniences, of course, in having aliens in our midst, but, after all, we have provided in many ways, most of all in our reputation as being the guardians of freedom, and I am very sorry it should be the British House of Commons that is the first to break the tradition that if there is Conscription it ought only to be by f he nation to which the conscripted man belongs.
  Mr. CARADOC REES: While I have been listening to the Debate the question I have put to myself-has been, is this a fair Bill, having regard to all the difficulties with which we are confronted, and is it a just Bill? The last speaker has repeated the phrase that we are legislating in a hurry. We have been three years at war. This is not a Bill brought in immediately on the outbreak of war. It is a Bill brought in after three years delay, and there has been nothing in the nature of hurry in the introduction of this measure

  535
  to this House. Another point the hon. Member put to the House is, can a man here be expected to fight for a country to which he does not belong, can a Russian in this country be expected to be patriotic for this country? That is not what we are asking under this Bill. We are not asking them to fight for us; we are asking them to fight for the Allies. Hon. Members talk as if this country only were engaged in this War. The man will be fighting for Russia, which is his own country.
  Mr. KING: Send him back to Russia, then.
  Mr. REES: I will deal with that question in a moment. The hon. Member says that if a man does not belong to this country, why cause him to fight for us? He ought to be fighting for the country from which he has come, or the country to which he has come. The position hon. Members are putting is that a man who leaves his own country and goes to another country ought to fight for neither. That is a curious proposition to put forward. I submit that this Bill is the barest justice, and that it is a fair Bill in every way. One of the dangers is this: We may be unfair to a lot of the aliens who are living here. A lot of them did offer for service, but were rejected because they were not of our nationality. Under this Bill they will come in. I believe there is a number of aliens who are willing to go into the Army, and their anxiety has not been, as certain hon. Members have suggested, that they should be sent back to Russia, but that they should not be sent back to Russia. The whole burden of the claim in September, 1916, when we offered to send them back to Russia, was that they did not want to go back to Russia because they were refugees. Now when it is proposed to bring them in under this Bill it is said that they say they want to go back to Russia. If the argument is that a number of Russians here are anxious to go back to Russia in order to fight for the Allies, if that be true, what harm is being done to these people when we remember the number of Russians who are at present on the French front fighting with the French Army? What harm or wrong is there, instead of wasting all the time in sending them back to Russia, in telling them to go straight to the French front and to fight with their fellow Russians with the French Army? If they are honest in what they profess, they can go straight to the
  536
  Western front and fight alongside their Russian friends. The suggestion I make is that this is a fair Bill and one that has been long delayed. I put this question to anyone in the House who happens to be a father: If his son at the outbreak of this War was of military age and was living or carrying on business in Italy at that time, would he have desired him to escape his military obligation because he happened to be in Italy at that time 1 Let us do unto these men what we would wish to be done by. That is exactly what this Bill does.
  Mr. KING: I am very glad to follow the hon. Member for the Arfon Division of Carnarvon (Mr. C. Rees). He spoke on the subject some months ago, and I attempted to follow him then, but I had not the opportunity which you, Sir, have afforded me to-day. If the hon. Gentleman remembers his speech on that occasion, he will see at once that it is totally inconsistent with the speech he has just delivered. He then suggested that if these men would not join our Army, why should they not go out of the country. When I asked him privately afterwards whether he was aware that they were not allowed to leave the country for any neutral or foreign land, he was quite surprised to hear it. He was in total ignorance of the fact that though these men for something like two years had been requesting the Government to let them go to America, to France, to Holland, and to Scandinavia, they had been kept in this country all that time. The hon. Member, who is generally so well informed, always so reasonable, and invariably so pleasant to listen to, was in absolute, blank, hopleless ignorance of the facts. I shall not follow him in the various other instances of misunderstanding the question which he gave us to-day. He is aware that there is at the present time an intense desire to get back to Russia. I am very glad the Under-Secretary for War admits that, because the hon. Member for the Arfon Division evidently doubts it. I would give my testimony. I have had a great many calls in the Lobby from these gentlemen, and they have often told me: "Mr. King, if you had sent us back to Russia under the old regime, it would have been sending us to hell; but if you will let us go back to Russia under the Revolutionary Government, it will be sending us to heaven." If a man wants to go to heaven and wishes to do so for his benefit and our own, let him do so

  537
  Instead of letting a man go to heaven, the place where he wants to go, we bring in a ridiculous Bill like this, based upon a convention not yet made, with regard to which the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs from his place to-day told us he had no opportunity of making it at an early date and only that negotiations were in progress. I think that "wait and. see" will be the motto of these proceedings for a considerable time to come.
  Why I chiefly object to this Bill is that it is based upon a very unfortunate and discreditable, although I must admit a growing, feeling of anti-Semite intolerance in this land. The speech of the Under-Secretary itself bore witness to the fact that it was an anti-Semite feeling which made it necessary to bring in this Bill. Of course, he himself is totally incapable of ungenerous feeling. He is a wide-minded, just man, and I entirely exonerate him from any ill-feeling in this matter. But he, like every other man in office, has to bow to the storm, and he has given way in bringing in this Bill, for which I do not think he cares very much himself. I think he wants to get the question out of the way and that he thinks this Bill will be the easiest method of shunting it on to a siding where it will be forgotten. If I thought so I would support him, but I should not be able to say sincerely all that I thought about the matter. But the speech of the hon. Member for Stepney bore witness to the fact that the first reason for this was to satisfy the feeling caused by these Jews in the East End. In other words, you have got to reckon with growing anti-Semitism in this country. Anti-Semitism, when it comes into a country, is a feeling which is very dangerous and very difficult to control and brings with it extraordinary evils and corruption in society. That it exists to-day there is no doubt. One has only to read the "Pall Mall Gazette"—I am sorry that my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy is not here—to see that it breathes every day a spirit of anti- Semitism. I have here another very strong anti-Semite paper, the "Globe"— a very bright and influential journal. I would like to call the attention of the hon. Member to the issue of the 26th of May, in which you have—
  Mr. SPEAKER: What does it signify what the "Globe" says? It has no relation whatever to this Bill.
  Mr. KING: I am very sorry to have transgressed in any way the limits of the discussion, but I was proceeding to show that the excitement and the inducements to violence, which can be found in certain papers at the present time, have actually led to outbreaks in Leeds and elsewhere.
  Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member sets up some imaginary reason for introducing the Bill, and then proceeds, in order to support that theory, to bring in another matter which has no connection whatever with it. He must come a little closer to the text of the Bill.
  Mr. KING: I am very sorry to have said a word which was superfluous upon this large matter, especially when we shall have, I suppose next week, the opportunity of discussing the details of this matter in Committee, on which occasion I hope to be able to be present to give the hon. Member my assistance. But I suppose I am in order in referring to what has already been referred to by several speakers—I mean the various stages and various lines of policy which this Government has pursued towards these people. When the War first broke out a great number of these Russian Jews wanted to enlist, and a great many did enlist. You have only to read the Jewish papers to see their photographs in every issue. Many did enlist, giving—wrongly, I am afraid, in some eases, and in some cases ignorantly—their nationality as British. When it was found that they were not British they were actually turned out of the Army, and many of them, when they were wounded and discharged from the Army and were found to be not of British nationality were refused their pay and pensions, and so on. And anybody who has read Patterson's book, which was referred to by the hon. Member for Denbigh Boroughs, will know that the real reason why the men in Egypt were disbanded was partly because of the great difficulty in getting pay from London for these men. Therefore at first the War Office discouraged these men from enlisting. In future I hope for something more generous on the part of the War Office, because I believe that if they go into the Army now they would be fairly treated, and will get the same pay and separation allowances as British soldiers, and I think that they should be entitled to the same pensions. There is nothing of that in the Bill, and I believe that under the present warrants it is

  539
  doubtful whether they have got the same claim to these rights as British subjects. That is a point which I hope the hon Member will look into. I will give him an opportunity by Amendment of facing it in Committee, but it is a point of real substance, and one which has caused a difficulty in the way of this Bill.
  Another matter of importance is the actual persons who are to be appointed to look after recruiting. I pointed out to the predecessor of the hon. Member, and to the late Home Secretary, that it was a fatal mistake to put the recruiting of these Russian Jews into the hands of people from New Court in the City. If the War Office had taken the advice of the people who know the temper of the different classes of society with whom it has to deal, it would not have placed the recruiting of the Russian Jews in an office in New Court in the City. Still, the hon. Member, if he wants to save himself trouble, if he wants this very objectionable business worked smoothly, must come to someone who knows the psychology of these people. On the back of this Bill you read that it is a Bill to enable His Majesty in Council to carry into effect the convention which may be made with allied and other nations.
  What are the other States the subjects of which are to be conscripted under this measure? I can well understand their making an arrangement with Allies, but to make arrangements with those who are not themselves in alliance with us for the purposes of this War seems to us a most extraordinary and outrageous thing. Which are the States which have any appreciable number of citizens in our islands which are not Allied States? First of all, there are the enemy States and then the neutral States, and I put out of court at once the idea that we can possibly conclude a convention with the enemy States. Js it intended to make a convention with Holland, or Norway, or Sweden, or Denmark, or Switzerland t Those are the only States I can conceive that might be brought into this Bill. Again I ask, which are the other States which are contemplated? We are in alliance with France, we are in alliance with Italy, we are in alliance with Russia, and we are in alliance with the United States of America, with Japan, with China, and a number of other States, including Portugal and the Argentine. What other States in the
  540
  world are to be brought within the scope of this Bill I think really ought to be stated to the House. If some reply on that point is not made, let me warn the Undersecretary for War beforehand that I shall move an Amendment in Committee to omit the words "or other," and that unless he is able to say what are the other States that are not in alliance with us, but with which he contemplates conventions, I shall not hesitate to press that point as much as possible. Just consider, taking what one may judge to be the natural course of its operation if this Bill becomes law, what will happen. Some day or other, apparently without our knowing it, a convention will be made. Will that convention be published? I do not take it that it is quite sufficient to say, by a statement issued through the Press Bureau, that a convention has been made by which every Russian in this land of military age will be liable to be conscripted here. We ought to know the conditions and the actual words. There have been protests in the course of this War from all sides against secret diplomacy and binding alliances, not only from Members below the Gangway, but from every side of the House. Will these conventions for effecting this purpose, concerning vitally British subjects in Russia and Russians in Britain, be published to the world or will they not? There is nothing in this Bill whatever to-prevent the Government announcing that-a convention has been made and not telling us anything about what is in the convention, and then acting accordingly under the Defence of the Realm Regulations and powers which they may have by law that we know nothing whatever about, and then men finding themselves in consequence—our citizens as well as the citizens-of Allied States-domiciled here—placed in a most difficult, trying, and irritating position.
  No notice, as far as I understand this Bill, need be sent to a man. When we passed Conscription for this country, of course, it was not necessary to send a notice, because everybody in the land had been called on, every male citizen was more or less following the public events of the day, and, therefore, that notice was not necessary. At any rate that was the attitude taken up, and there was some reason for it. Now, however, if there is no publication of the convention, but only an Order in Council which is issued and published in the "London Gazette," a man may in a few days—thirty days—after

  541
  suddenly find that he is a soldier. He may know nothing about the English language and may not be able to understand anything of the conditions of life. He may only recently have come here; in fact, if he lands here one day he may find himself a soldier in the British Army the next. He may be an absentee, and he may be charged before a magistrate and fined and sent to prison for a long term as an absentee. Injustices of this kind have happened frequently to our own citizens. The Under-Secretary for War knows it. He had to inquire yesterday into, I suppose, two or three dozen cases of that sort, which are creating in the circles in which they arise a sense of intense injustice. If that has happened with British citizens who know and understand the circumstances of life, the political conditions, who are acquainted with the language and read the papers of our country., what will not happen with aliens who do not know our language and some of whom may have only been a few hours here? You will have a great deal of difficulty, irritation, and injustice, and men will go back after the War and tell stories of the intolerance, injustice, and so on, with which they have been treated in this country. I am raising these points because I hope to bring them forward also in Committee, and, as I sec the Under-Secretary for War is very kindly attending to my efforts to give assistance and throw light on this Bill, I hope he will make a note of them and be prepared to deal with them.
  Mr. SPEAKER: These are evidently Committee points. Perhaps the hon. Member will now address himself to the main question.
  Mr. KING: The main principle of this Bill, we are told, is that we are to find some solution of the large number of Jews in the East End who are not able to go back to Russia, as they wish to do, and who are not willing to serve in our Army, I am afraid I must repeat that that is mixed up with a growing and a dangerous feeling against all Jews at the present time, a very dangerous feeling—
  Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member is now going back upon that part of the question to which I have told him he cannot go. It is beyond the scope of this discussion, and I would again invite the lion. Member to address himself more closely to the subject-matter. He has been wandering a great deal already.
  Mr. KING: I should have sat down by now, and I will only say that I regret that, this Bill has been introduced. It is not going to lead to a solution of the question. The only solution of the question is to be found on very different lines, which I have in conversation with the Under-Secretary for War often suggested. I cannot state them now, and I will only say that if this. Bill goes to a Division on the Second Heading I shall feel it my duty to vote against it. If it goes into Committee I shall venture to propose a number of Amendments, because I see a great number of faults in this Bill. It is very defective. As I think was said by one hon. Member a month ago, it is a loosely drafted and badly framed Bill. It does not make clear for instance even whether Irishmen are to be conscripted in Russia or not. The relation between Irishmen and Englishmen in different countries is one of the obscure points. I will only say, therefore, that what I think about this Bill was expressed on another occasion, that patriotism is not enough. I must have no bitterness, no hatred against any man, and knowing that this Bill is founded on bitterness and pushed on by hatred I shall vote: against it.
  Mr. MOLTENO: I take very strong exception to the method which has been pursued in regard to this Bill. There has been, a want of information. Information has not been given to the House to justify the course the Government have taken. The Under-Secretary for War (Mr. Macpherson), as far as I could make out his speech in introducing the Bill, gave us no indication why the Government were pursuing; this very unusual course. He did not attempt to justify it in any way. The preamble of the Bill states that it is
  "to enable His Majesty in Council to-carry into effect conventions which may be made with allied and other States."
  That is a very unusual preamble. The-ordinary businesslike course would be to make the conventions and come to this House for the necessary power to carry them out. The Under-Secretary has given us no reason why that ordinary business course should not be followed in this case. I object also to the form of the Bill, because it is conferring upon the Government autocratic power to legislate for a British subject, not through Parliament but by executive decree. We have had already during the course of the War a great many Orders in Council Here is a

  543
  provision that His Majesty's Government may by Order in Council prepare for conventions and certain effects are to follow. If it were actual, something might be said. You have, in addition, to apply to British subjects all over the world a state of things "which is unknown to them, which is quite unknown to us, and which is indefinite at the present moment. We have no guide or indication what it means. We 'have not been given by the Under-Secretary one single word as to the lines on which the arrangements will proceed, and it creates, as all this kind of legislation must do, very serious inequalities. In the first case, if the Bill is carried out as it is drawn up there is the greatest inequality, and, I think, injustice, as between one set of British subjects and another, British subjects coming from neutral countries or the Dominions. There is a most distinct differentiation in the treatment of British subjects, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman, when he speaks, will give an indication that that will be removed. It now only does that in this country, but it will have a similar effect in other countries to which it will be applied because there British subjects, as I understood from his language in the course of the Debate, are in a different position.
  2.0 P.M.
  British subjects coming from South Africa, who might find themselves in America when these conventions are made, would be liable to conscription as the Bill stands. British subjects from Ireland, where no conscription exists, and from South Africa, where there is also no conscription, would both find themselves subject to conscription in a foreign country. I understand that the Under-Secretary submitted that this was not intended and that it was not one of the state of things he was going to bring about, and I think he promised to alter the Bill so as to prevent the inequality. I hope he will answer that part and say what proposal he means to make to meet the case of a British subject who originally came from this country to be differently treated in America to a British subject who originally came from Ireland or one of our Dominions. You have, both in this country and foreign countries, differentiations and want of equality, and to that extent there is an injustice between British subjects and British subjects. Why should these inequalities be extended? Why, with our eyes open,
  544
  should we increase them? Not only is this so, but, as was pointed out by the late Secretary of State for Home Affairs, we are not now going to treat the foreigner in this country as a British subject. That is, as he pointed out, a very strong order, to treat a foreigner in this country as you treat a British subject. But a foreigner under this Bill is going to be worse treated than a British subject. That has a very important bearing on what I am going to draw attention to. I say you are not giving the foreigner, when you put him under this Bill, the same treatment as a British subject, but worse, because you are depriving him of the right to claim advantage of exemption under the Military Service Act. I regret very much that on the subject that I am about to open now there is no representative of the Foreign Office upon the Front Bench, because this matter is one which concerns the Foreign Office very largely. In every other Debate which I can remember where the Foreign Office was so largely involved, there has been a representative on the Front Bench. I suggest that we ought to have a representative of the Foreign Office here to explain the situation between foreign countries and ourselves in regard to this matter, which has given rise to prolonged, though we do not know what kind of, arguments with Allied countries. We are reversing the policy of this country which has been pursued steadily for many years. In the past the whole course of policy has been directed to freeing our subjects in foreign countries from conscription. We are now reversing that. We have endeavoured to protect, as I hope we always shall endeavour to protect, our subjects from arbitrary action on the part of foreign Governments, and, with that object in view, we have entered into a number of treaties and engagements with foreign countries not to apply their arbitrary methods to British subjects. We are now about to reverse that policy, and give a perfectly free hand to foreign Governments to treat our own subjects, who happen to be in foreign countries in any manner they choose. We have heard a great deal from the hon. Member for Stepney about the feeling which exists in the East End and other places where there is a considerable number of people who are not British subjects and whose country is fighting for existence. Yet that is exactly the position which has existed in regard to British subjects in foreign countries. This Government has

  545
  always taken the position that no British subject in foreign countries at war, and struggling for their existence, shall be conscripted. That is the attitude we have taken up with regard to the British in foreign countries, and we have heard from the hon. Member for Stepney what is felt there in regard to large numbers of foreign subjects.
  Attention called to the fact that there were not forty Members present; House counted, and forty Members being found present—
  Mr. MOLTENO: Before the interruption, I was just pointing out that we have taken up the position in foreign countries that whatever the circumstances during war might be, British subjects who happened to be in those countries were not to be conscripted. We now find foreigners in the East End in a position exactly analogous to British subjects in foreign countries, and we are obliged to put up with all the feelings of injustice which are now being expressed. Not only did we insist upon this, but we embodied the condition in our treaties with foreign Governments, and I am particularly anxious that some representative of the Foreign Office should be here to give us some information about treaties and agreements with foreign Powers, how far they are operative, whether anything has been done to abrogate them, and what is the position of those treaties and agreements to-day. I complain very much that no information was given to us of the fact that the carrying out of this policy was affected by a treaty with Russia. Russia is a country where this question has arisen most actively and to a most important degree; yet no intimation of it was given to us by the Under-Secretary, who possibly may not be aware of it, and this shows the disadvantage of not having a representative of the Foreign Office here to whom we might put questions. It appears that there is a definite treaty with Russia, to the effect that we would not conscript Russian nationals, while they would not conscript ours. That was the obstacle to the action which the Government desires to take. The Undersecretary for War, in opening the discussion on the Bill, did not give us any information with regard to the treaty. It is a matter of the greatest importance, it is absolutely vital, that that treaty should be got rid of if this measure is to
  546
  be carried out, and, therefore, the House should have been taken into the confidence of the Government on a matter of such vital importance as that which is before us. I object very strongly to the Government's asking the House for a blank cheque to legislate by Order in Council, and if it makes such a demand it ought to be with all the cards on the table, and honestly letting us know what the position is. They have not done so. They have pursued a policy of concealment, they have kept from us all knowedge that there was a treaty with Russia which prevented that policy from being carried out, and that treaty has to be got rid of before it can be carried out.
  Where is the representative of the Foreign Office to tell us what the position is? The Under-Secretary for War did not go so far as to tell us what is the position as to the treaty and as to the negotiations. What is the position of the negotiations, what is the character of the negotiations, and what bearing have those negotiations upon that definite treaty? I want to put these definite questions to the hon. Gentleman before parting with a Bill of this kind. The Government are asking for powers of an enormous character, they are asking for a blank cheque, and therefore they ought, at any rate, to give us all the information they can. They ought to let us know what the position is in regard to these negotiations, and more about the perfectly definite and clear treaty which exists, and which prevents them from carrying out their policy. The Government neither tell us what is going to be done in the future nor what has already been done. They are asking the House to legislate absolutely in the dark. It is not consistent with the dignity of the House that we should be asked to legislate with an entire absence of information, and at the same time to be asked to give the Government an absolutely blank cheque in a matter so seriously affecting not only those people who are immediately concerned, but the liberties of all the subjects of the British Empire, including those in our Dominions. We know now that there have been long negotiations with Russia and with the late Russian Government, which, arbitrary as it was, saw the difficulty of reversing this policy. They saw that British subjects had never been taken in any of the Russian troubles, and had never been conscripted—indeed, that the British had

  547
  never done their duty in the country in which they were living and were making money, and they said, "But the moment it affects you"—that is, this country—" then you come and say to us 'you must free us from this obligation.'" We have Russian subjects in this country, a very large number of them, and you want to force them into our Army, and I can understand that even the Government of Russia saw the difficulty of reversing this policy, arbitrary though that Government was. If it were difficult for the arbitrary Russian Government to agree to that, how much more must it be for the free Government which has succeeded that Government. !
  I definitely ask the Under-Secretary to give us this information and that some representative of the Foreign Office should tell us not only with regard to Russia, but also as to the other countries what is the position to-day. Are these treaties still in existence1? Have they been modified, and, if so, to what extent, and the nature and character of the modifications? I think the House ought to have that knowledge before being asked to give a blank cheque to the Government. It seems to me that the Under-Secretary put this matter upon the foundation that the Bill was necessary for the sake of man-power. Rut whose man-power? Was it for the man-power of Russia or of this country? If Russia for the sake of its man-power had demanded it, there might be something to be said for it. But we know that Russia has refused to give her assent to the abrogation of the treaty in existence. Therefore, it is not for Russian manpower. The assistance likely to be derived for the purpose of the War from proceedings of this kind seems very doubtful. This is one of those arbitrary proceedings to which the present Russian Government are taking such strong exception. If my information is correct, I understand that very considerable feeling is being displayed in Russia at the arbitrary character of proceedings in this country, and when those are to be applied to their own subjects it is quite natural that they should take a very strong interest in those proceedings. I am afraid this is not going to bring about what we all ardently desire, namely, better feeling between Russia and this country in regard to co-operation in this War. I, therefore, do appeal to the Under-Secretary to give us the information and an assurance in regard to changes
  548
  in the Bill and to get the Foreign Office to give us the necessary information before we can act with propriety or wisdom on a matter of this great importance.
  Mr. KILEY: I would ask the House to consider whether there is sufficient justification for the production of this Bill, and, secondly, can the objects desired be attained by any other method than the one proposed? On the question of the necessity of the Bill I somewhat regret that the Under-Secretary, in introducing it, did not give the House as full information as he had available, as I am sure if we had it before us it would have been of considerable benefit m considering the matter. I am very much interested to find what is the extent of this problem with which we are confronted. The Under-Secretary mentioned that there were something like 30,000 Russians, of whom the greater part were in the East End of London. I claim to know a little of the borough of Stepney, with its five Parliamentary divisions, and I was anxious to obtain some definite figures. I find from the National Register figures that there were 4,900 single men of military age described as aliens. That number includes a large number of sailors and seafaring men whose stay in this country is brief. We have also in the borough a considerable number of Germans and Austrians and a large number of Dutch and Swiss, also to be deducted. Therefore, when you start reducing those from your 4,900 single men of military age, you will find that this problem has been grossly magnified and distorted. You will find that with regard to the 8,000 married men similar deductions will have to be made, and out of a total alien population in the five divisions of Stepney of men of military age of something over 12,000 you can, in my judgment, reduce that to something approaching 8,000 or 9,000 men in all who would be of military age and to whom this Bill applies, and of those 60 or 70 per cent. Russian subjects.
  We have had a good deal of discussion about this matter, and a number of paragraphs have appeared in the Press. I dare say that in that connection most Members have been favoured with a circular from the London Chamber of Commerce stating that in a certain area twenty-four business premises were formerly occupied by British subjects, that those men had been called up for military service, and that their shops were now occupied by aliens. I regret

  549
  to question anything coming from the chamber of commerce, of which I happen to be chairman of a section. I took occasion to communicate with the chairman of the section which had issued that circular and asked for his authority. The authority was that he had been misled, that he could not give any such data and that such did not exist. I refer to that simply to show what a vast amount of prejudice has been aroused over this question. I am anxious, in the interests of the East End of London, that we should not suffer from misleading statements and also the stigma which at present attaches to us. I may mention that a friend of mine in Lincolnshire is the head of a large manufacturing concern. A few weeks ago his workpeople came out on strike, and when challenged for a reason, said that it was because of a paragraph they had seen in the papers, that they might be called up for military service and their positions taken by aliens. I quote that to show how difficult it is to get this problem in its true proportions when we have so little data. Therefore, I regret that the Under-Secretary was not a little more explicit in introducing this Bill and did not give us the reliable data which he has in his possession, and which would have been beneficial to people in the East End of London.
  I want to demonstrate, if I may, that there were other means available for meeting the problem, because undoubtedly you have a certain number of these men, whether single or married, who are at the present time domiciled in this country, and, if I may say so, doing very well in this country. I do not reproach them for that. In certain of our own districts with munition factories, some of our own subjects who are also not in military service are doing very well. I am glad they are doing very well, and I am always glad when people are doing well. But I certainly think if these men are here that they should take their share of the burdens and duties of citizenship. I have maintained that from the very start. In my capacity as chairman of a recruiting committee I was pained and astounded when Russian subjects came and offered themselves for military service and were told by the recruiting people that they could not be accepted. I at once went to the War Office. All the satisfaction T got was that "the King's Regulations number so and
  550
  so lay it down that these men cannot be accepted." I will not be exaggerating if I say that I wore out the best part of a new pair of boots running up and down the corridors of the War Office, trying to persuade those in authority that something should be done. I volunteered to take upon myself the responsibility of organising these men, for which I had the offer of the assistance of the leading men of this nationality in the area. In spite of all my efforts, nothing occurred To-day there is a problem with which we must deal.
  I am quite willing to help the Government in every way possible if they in turn will be reasonable. These men have come and have asked time after time that if they join the British Army and get into khaki they will have the rights of British citizenship. If the Under-Secretary of State for War will my that a man who takes! the oath of allegiance to the King thereby becomes a British citizen it will remove a great stumbling-block which exists in the minds of these men, and which also places people like myself, who are anxious to help the Government, in a position of considerable difficulty. All we can say to them at present is: "You had better join the Army; make your application in the ordinary way, and it will receive the ordinary treatment; you may or you may not succeed in getting your certificate of naturalisation." These people object to that attitude, not, I think, without some justification. Another point put forward—and again it is a serious matter to which I invite the attention of the Under-Secretary—is that these men are not all men of the same mind or of the same abilities. There are some who feel they would do very well in the Artillery. Some think they would do very well in the Engineers. I am given 10 understand that these men are to be conscripted, and that they will be sent into Infantry regiments alone, without any regard to their fitness for particular service or their abilities. These men raise that point, and I think they are entitled to some consideration, and also to some definite statement that if they are prepared to join the Army they should not be treated differently from other soldiers.
  There is one other point on which they lay great stress, and which, I think, should have its proper consideration. I had a letter sent to me from a Russian who was born in this country. He is, I think, a London University student. He is a

  551
  Territorial, and has joined the Army. He has a foreign-sounding name. He has been recommended for a commission. On account, however, of his name and foreign associations, he is not considered a desirable person to receive a commission. If there is that prejudice existing, I think it is time it was removed, and that a man's case should stand on its merits, irrespective of his birthplace, or who his father was, or the foreign sound of his name. These are matters which should be considered by the War Office. If they are given the consideration which I think the War Office will be justified in giving them it will do a great deal towards removing the dissatisfaction which exists at present in the district. The district has done great things in regard to this War. We have sent out thousands and tens of thousands of our men. We have done a great deal in the way of other service. I believe the public spirit in the district is, and has been, as great as in any part of the country. With that point of view before us we are willing and anxious that the Government should have every assistance possible if they will only proceed in a reasonable way and meet the objections raised. I am, therefore, prepared to give the Bill a Second Reading on condition that the points raised will receive the very serious consideration of the War Office authorities, and that the hon. Gentleman the Under-Secretary is prepared to consider Amendments which would be drafted towards the object which we have so much in view.
  Mr. SNOWDEN: The few Members of the House who have had the privilege of listening to the speech of the hon. Member who has just sat down will, I think, account it a very valuable contribution to the Debate. I think the hon. Gentleman in charge of this Bill docs not feel perhaps more comfortable at the conclusion of the hon. Gentleman's speech than he did at the beginning. Many of the statements the hon. Gentleman made when he moved the Second Reading of this Bill have been severely handled and criticised by the speakers who have previously taken part in the Debate, but after the criticisms to which we have just listened I am afraid there is nothing remaining of the hon. Gentleman's introductory speech. My hon. Friend below me (Mr. Molteno) made a protest against the absence from the Government Bench of any representa-
  552
  tive of the Foreign Office. The House of Commons is becoming in these days quite accustomed to being treated with contempt by Ministers. I want to protest against the way in which the Government regard this Bill; against the way it was introduced. The way in which it has repeatedly been put down on the Order Paper shows that the Government attach very little importance to it. They seem to disregard altogether the strong opposition which prevails amongst what we must admit is a minority of the Members of the House. The Government seem to rely upon their obedient, and, so far as the knowledge of this Bill is concerned, their ignorant supporters. When I called a count a little while ago one hon. Member who rushed in at the bidding of the Government Whip inquired of another hon. Member what was the Bill which was under discussion? When it comes to a Division the Government will, no doubt, be able to get the Second Reading by the votes of men who do not even know what the Bill is upon which they are voting.
  It is a most important measure. It is the fourth Military Service Bill which we have had introduced into this House during the last eighteen months. I want to tell the Government that they are not going to get this Bill quite so easily as they appear to assume. I do not know that even this Friday afternoon will be a sufficient time for the Second Reading of the measure. They certainly will get that, but only if they have taken the precaution to have a sufficient number of Members here to support them in the Closure Motion. Yesterday the Patronage Secretary, who stated the business for the coming week, mentioned, in quite an incidental way, that an hour or two might be occupied by the Committee stage of this Bill on Wednesday of next week. I can tell the Government—and therefore they can be making their preparations—that they will not get the Committee stage of this Bill in an hour or two, and that they will not get it next Wednesday. They will not get it in one day. We shall require several days for the Committee stage of this Bill.
  An HON. MEMBER: You will have to stay longer, then.
  Mr. SNOWDEN: It does not matter. We are quite prepared to stay all night.
  Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Mr. Maclean): Sufficient to the day is the Com-

  553
  mittee stage of the Bill. I would remind the hon. Gentleman that we are now on the Second Reading.
  Mr. SNOWDEN: With all respect to your ruling, Mr. Maclean, I am simply, as I said, making a protest against the way in which the Government think to get forward this Bill. I will not pursue the protest any further. What is this Bill? It is, as I said just now, a Bill to extend the provisions of the Military Service Act, and to apply the operations of that Act outside our own country. It seems to me to be a most extraordinary thing that this House should be engaged in legislating outside the area of the British Empire. As I understand this Bill, the countries with which conventions are made are given the power to impose all the conditions of the British Military Service Acts upon British subjects who are residing in that foreign country with which the convention is made. I want to submit to the hon. Gentleman in charge of this Bill that that is not only an extraordinary thing to do, a most unfair thing to do, an unjust thing to do, but I think it is an impracticable thing to do. Under our Military Service Acts certain statutory rights, at any rate, were given to men who came within their provisions. They were entitled to put forward claims for exemption upon certain grounds specified in the Acts. For the purpose of hearing these appeals military service tribunals were set up, and elaborate Regulations have been framed by the Local Government. Board and by the War Office for the guidance of these tribunals. It is, of course, within the knowledge of everybody who has watched these proceedings that both the Act of Parliament itself and the Regulations have been treated with contemptuous indifference. We have been repeatedly told by these tribunals, when claims have been made, that they were not bound by any pledges of Ministers, and quite illegal decisions have in hundreds of cases been given.
  As I understand this Bill, a British subject in some foreign country, say, the United States of America, who comes within the operation of this Bill, when it becomes an Act of Parliament, will be entitled to all the privileges which a British subject in Great Britain has under the Military Service Acts. I want to know how he is going to secure those privileges in the United States or in some other foreign country. If I read this Bill rightly,
  554
  a statement that was made by the Undersecretary when introducing the Bill is not in accordance with the provisions of this measure. As I read his speech, he said that it will rest with the Ambassador or other Minister in the country where those persons happen to reside to give a certificate of exemption. That was the statement made by the Under-Secretary, but I do not read that in the Bill. The Bill says that all the provisions of the Military Service Acts of last year shall apply to these persons. It says, "Those Acts shall apply accordingly, subject to the following modifications." The first modification deals with the appointed date, and the second modification deals with the exceptions under the Military Service Acts, 1916 and 1917. I suppose the Military Service Act of 1917 means that notorious Review of Exceptions Act about the administration of which so much has been heard in the House of Commons. The paragraph in the Bill says:
  "A subject of the contracting country shall be deemed to be within the exceptions under the Military Service Acts, 1916 and 1917, if he is the holder of a certificate of exemption for the time being in force granted under those Acts or by the Ambassador or a duly authorised public Minister of that country in the United Kingdom but not otherwise:"
  I may be wrong, but it does seem to me as a layman that those two things are separate and distinct, and that the first part of the provision is to be read that a person coming within the operation of the Military Service Acts residing in a foreign country shall be able to obtain a certificate of exemption on any grounds specified in these two Military Service Acts. If I am right in that view, you will have to set up in these foreign countries military service tribunals similar to those which exist in this country. How are you going to do it? You are going to impose upon the Government of the country with which a convention is made the obligation to administer the Act. What you are practically doing is to extend the Military Service Acts which have been passed in this country to any other country with which a convention is made, and that country, as I have said, will have to set up these military service tribunals for the purpose of hearing claims on any of the grounds set forth in those Acts which may be made by British subjects in those countries.

  555
  What is the other course? It is that the Ambassador or Minister in that country shall take the place of the military service tribunal which we have here. Is this House prepared to agree to that? That is no democratic principle. I remember, when we were discussing the first Military Service Act, the tribunals were defended on the ground that they were democratic institutions. They may be democratic in their constitution; they certainly have been anything but democratic in their sympathies. They have been the most tyrannical, oppressive, and autocratic bodies which we ever set up in this House, and their decisions have had no parallel in English administration since the days of Judge Jeffreys. If those men in a country with which a convention is to be made are not to have the right of a democratically constituted military service tribunal, they have to apply to the British Minister or Ambassador in that country for an exemption. What mercy are they going to get from him? Who is he? What democratic sympathies has that man got? That man is the agent of the British Government. It is his duty—a duty for which he is paid—to carry out the directions and the instructions of the British Government, and therefore this proposal is a mere farce. It is quite as big a farce as the administration of the Military Service Acts has been in the hands of the tribunals. Therefore, in either case, or in both cases, you are not putting British subjects in foreign countries on the same footing as those who are liable to military service in Great Britain. They are not going to have the same right to claim exemption on any of the grounds specified in those Acts.
  This Bill is to extend the existing Military Service Acts to people who hitherto have been outside these Acts, and, therefore, I think I should be perfectly in order in asking whether our experience of the working of the Military Service Acts in this country, in view of the widespread injustice and hardship which have been inflicted by the administration of these Acts, justifies us in giving to the Government power to bring in some tens of thousands of persons who are at the present time outside these measures. Those Members who are listening to me need not be reminded by me that I attach no value whatever to any pledge that is given by a Member of the Government. During the passage of the Military Service Bills we
  556
  had innumerable pledges given in regard to safeguards and protection, and not one of them has been kept. I remember the late Prime Minister upon one occasion actually bursting into poetry about the poor widows' sons, and giving the most solemn assurance that the only surviving son of a widow should not be called up for military service, and words which were thought to carry out the Prime Minister's pledge were inserted in the Act. Tens of thousands of sons, the only son of widows, have been conscripted in spite ol that, i had this very morning a letter from a man in Burnley who has been called up under the Military Service Act; he has appealed to the local tribunal and failed; he has been before the Appeal Tribunal and failed. He has had to send his mother into the workhouse because he was her only support. There are tens of thousands of such cases in the country. When the Under-Secretary spoke on the Second Reading he justified this Bill on the ground that there was a good deal of indignation m the East End of London. owing to the businesses of British subjects who had been called up under the Military Service Act being taken over by aliens. I think that argument is very largely disposed of by the interesting and amusing incident which was related by the hon. Member who has just sat down, who has shown that in the case of the London Chamber of Commerce where the statement had been made that in one small district twenty-five shops had been vacated by British subjects who had been called up for military service had been taken over by aliens, when the statement was investigated it was discovered that there was no truth at all in that assertion. But even if it were so, that is no reason why this House should pass this Bill.
  One of the most exciting Debates we had on the second Military Service Bill was that dealing with the one-business case, and the most definite assurances were given that those cases would receive consideration; in fact, special provisions were put in the Bill, and special instructions were issued by the Local Government Board. What has happened? I was in a town in Yorkshire two or three days ago and I saw a number of empty shops with a printed notice in the window, "This business is for the present closed, as the owner has been called up on military service." If other hon. Members have correspondence like my own, every

  557
  day they are getting letters from one-man business men who have businesses which have been closed down by the tribunals, and therefore it is no argument in support of this Bill to say that it is attempting to prevent a hardship which otherwise British subjects would suffer through having been called up for military service, because that hardship would not exist in regard to one-man businesses if the Act had been carried out, because legally these men were exempted from military service by the provisions of the Act. This Bill definitely proposes to apply the last Military Service Act, known as the Review of Exceptions Act, to these people. At Question Time every day we hear of the way in which this Act is being administered, and I do not believe there is a Member of this House who does not receive every day letters from his constituents about the way in which the medical board are treating men under this Act. In view of this, I ask: Is the House of Commons justified in passing a Bill which is going to extend this Act, this Review of Exceptions Act, to tens of thousands of other men? I submit that it is not.
  Then with regard to aliens in this country who, if this Bill be passed, will be brought within its operation. I assume at any rate, whatever may be the position of British subjects in foreign countries with which a Convention has been made, aliens in this country will have the opportunity of appealing under the Military Service Act. But here, again, they are not quite in the same position as British subjects, because many of them are largely ignorant of the English language. They will come before the tribunals, who are prejudiced against them. Those who are following the work of these tribunals to-day are well aware that, bad as was the way in which applicants were treated in the early days, they are being treated much worse to-day. Many of these men, for reasons which were quite justifiable, held back from enlistment and they have been treated as shirkers. These men will have to appear before the. tribunals with that prejudice against them, and they will also have the further prejudice of the disability to which I have referred of not understanding the English language, and consequently will not be able properly to put their case before the tribunal. The Under-Secretary when he introduced this Bill justified its introduction on the ground that it was going to bring into the
  558
  Army a very large number of men. I think that statement has been very effectively disposed of by the facts which have been given by the hon. Member for one of the East End Divisions.
  The hon. Gentleman said he expected to get out of the East End of London alone something like 20,000 Russians by the operation of this Bill when it becomes an Act of Parliament. As a matter of fact, they are not there, and you cannot get them. This Bill really has a long history. There has been an agitation for forcing aliens into foreign service ever since the first Military Service Bill became law. The late Home Secretary (Mr. Herbert Samuel) took a lively interest in this question, but his interest never matured so far as to do anything practical, and I believe that if the right hon. Gentleman were to speak this afternoon he would admit, if he were free to admit, that he found the question an extremely difficult one to deal with; in fact, that he found it to be almost impossible to frame any practical scheme to deal with this subject. Since then the Russian Revolution has taken place, and it has somewhat altered the position of the Russian people in England. Before the Revolution they were opposed to compulsory military service, and they did not want to go back to Russia, but now circumstances have changed, and if there were sufficient shipping accommodation thousands of them would be ready to go back to Russia, because they want to be on the spot to share in the excitement of the work of the great transformation which has taken place in Russia. This Bill does not provide for that. The Under-Secretary for War on the Second Reading of this Bill said he would do that, but he has admitted that the Bill does not propose to do it, and all he says is that some negotiations are going on with the Russian Government by which it is hoped some arrangement of that sort might be adopted. In reply to a question put to me by the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs to-day we were told that these negotiations were still going on, and I think they are likely to go on for a long time.
  We have to recognise that this Bill is likely to become law in the course of a few weeks' time, and it will at once become operative, and when it does those Russians in England will have no alternative or choice. They will have only one

  559
  course, and that will be to join the British Army. They do not want to do that. Many of them in the changed conditions which exist in Russia are quite willing to join the Russian Army, but they are not willing to fight in the army of a country of which they are not citizens. I would like to support the point made by the hon. Member for White-chapel (Mr. Kiley), that if you are going to take these men compulsorily you have no right to deprive them of the other rights which British citizens enjoy. I do not think, therefore, that the House would be justified in passing this Bill into law until there was an opportunity given to all these Russian subjects—and the same thing applies to the subjects of other countries—to enlist in the army of the country of their birth. There is not the least possibility—there may be a possibility, but there is no probability—that any such arrangement will be concluded before this Bill becomes law. Therefore, there is reason why the House of Commons should suspend its judgment upon this measure until we know definitely what the Russian Government think about it.
  This Bill is a complete reversal of the historic tradition of this country. One of the proudest boasts that we have had as Englishmen has been that this was not only a land of freedom, but that it was a place to which the oppressed of all nations could come and know that the moment their feet touched the soil of this country they were free men. It may be said that many of the Russian refugees, for whom it would have been extremely dangerous to return to Russia before the Revolution, have no longer any excuse to impose upon our hospitality. But that does not apply to others. This Bill is not confined to the relations between Russia and this country, but applies to any country with which during the War this Government may at any time make a convention. I think the right of asylum in this country is a thing of such tremendous importance, and of which Englishmen have been so proud, that we ought not, even under the stress and necessity of war, to abrogate it; and, apart from all other reasons, I shall oppose this Bill upon that ground. I do not believe the Bill is worth the trouble of attempting to operate it. It is going to get a very small number of men. I do not believe that it will get anything like a division of men.
  560
  3.0 P.M.
  A mere handful of men will be obtained by it. When the House was asked to pass the previous Military Service Acts we were told what an enormous number of men would be obtained thereby. We have never been supplied with any figures as to the yield of these measures, and I am certain, if we were, that the yield would be found to be surprisingly small. I do not think that I exaggerate if I say that four-fifths of the number of men taken since the passage of the first Military Service Act were men already in the Army in the sense of being voluntarily attested men. The number of British subjects living in foreign countries whom you are going to get by this Bill must be infinitesimal. This Bill especially excludes Ireland. You dare not apply the Military Service Acts to Ireland, but you are going to apply this Bill to Canada, providing the agitation which is going on there in favour of conscription is successful, and from what one can read in the papers there appears to be little prospect of Canada quietly accepting conscription. I know from first-hand information that organised labour from Toronto to Vancouver is up in arms against the measure and is united in opposing these conscriptionist schemes. The United States has adopted a sort of Conscription Act. The newspapers this week have been telling us about the enthusiasm with which more than 10,000,000 men have been registered, but frankly I do not believe it. I have been watching very closely the news from America which is now permitted to appear in British newspapers. It is utterly untrustworthy. I am told by newspaper men that the censorship has never been imposed so rigorously since the War began as it is now being imposed upon news which is sent from the United States. I want to point out the difficulty that there will be in the United States of America in carrying out any convention which—
  Mr. SPEAKER: That would be their business. You have nothing to do with it.
  Mr. SNOWDEN: I submit that these are British subjects, upon whom the United States Government would have to exercise the powers to be conferred by this House.
  Mr. SPEAKER: The difficulties in the way of the United States Government do not concern us on this Bill.
  Mr. SNOWDEN: My point is that the United States Government -will be our agents in the carrying out of this Act, so far as the conscription of British subjects is concerned. As a matter of fact, they are doing it already, and I assume that arrangements have been made. Surely, the United States Government would not be enrolling men in the British Army unless some arrangements had been made between that Government and our Government. However, if conscription be passed in Canada, and it has already been passed in the United States, we shall be able to take men into the British Army in Canada, while unable to take men in Ireland. I am not using this point because I am in favour of the extension of the Military Service Acts to Ireland. I have opposed, as the House knows, every line and every Clause of all the Military Service Acts. I do not believe in conscription for this country, and therefore I do not
  believe in conscription for any other country. I do not believe that the Conscription Acts which are now upon the Statute Book of this country will help to win the War. I do not believe that you have; a stronger Army to-day than you would have had if these measures had not been passed. I am perfectly sure that you. have more disunity in the country as a consequence of these measures, and if you pass this Bill you are adding to all these difficulties without getting any compensating advantage. Therefore, for all these reasons I shall oppose the Second Reading and the Bill at all its stages.
  The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Sir G. Cave)rose in his place and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put."
  Question put, "That the Question be now put."
  The House divided: Ayes, 151; Noes, 16.

  Division No. 48.]

  AYES.

  [3.5 p.m.

  Ainsworth, Sir John Stirling

  Foster, Philip Staveley

  O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)

  Amery, L. C. M. S.

  Gibbs, Col. George Abraham

  O'Dowd, John

  Baird, John Lawrence

  Gilbert, J. D.

  Ormsby-Gore, Hon. William

  Baldwin, Stanley

  Greig, Colonel J. W.

  Parker, James (Halifax)

  Barnes, Rt. Hon. George N.

  Griffith, Rt. Hon. Ellis Jones

  Parrott, Sir James Edward

  Barnett, Capt. R. W.

  Gulland, Rt. Hon. John William

  Pearce, Sir Robert (Staffs, Leek)

  Bathurst, Col. Hon. A. B. (Glouc., E.)

  Hall, Frederick (Dulwich)

  Pearce, Sir William (Limehouse)

  Beale, Sir William Phlpson

  Harris, Henry Percy (Paddington, S.)

  Pennefather, De Fonblanque

  Beauchamp, Sir Edward

  Haslam, Lewis

  Peto, Basil Edward

  Beck, Arthur Cecil

  Hewins, William Albert Samuel

  Pratt, J. W.

  Bellairs, Commander C. W.

  Hinds, John

  Pretyman Rt. Hon. E. G.

  Benn, Arthur Shirley (Plymouth)

  Hodge, Rt. Hon. John

  Prothero, Rt. Hon. Rowland Edmund

  Bigland, Alfred

  Holmes, Daniel Turner

  Rawson, Colonel R. H.

  Blair, Reginald

  Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)

  Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough)

  Blake, Sir Francis Douglas

  Hope, Lieut.-Col J. A. (Midlothian)

  Rees, G. C. (Carnarvonshire, Arfon)

  Boyton, James

  Howard, Hon. Geoffrey

  Rees, Sir J. D. (Nottingham, East)

  Brace, Rt. Hon. William

  Hume-Williams, William Ellis

  Reid, Rt. Hon. Sir George H

  Bridgeman, William Clive

  Ingleby, Holcombe

  Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)

  Brookes, Warwick

  Jardine, Ernest (Somerset, East)

  Roberts, George H. (Norwich)

  Broughton, Urban Hanion

  Johnston, Sir Christopher

  Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs)

  Burgoyne, A. H.

  Jones, Edgar (Merthyr Tydvil)

  Rowlands, James

  Carr-Gomm, H. W.

  Jones, J. Towyn (Carmarthen, East)

  Rutherford, Sir John (Lancs., Darwen)

  Cator, John

  Jones, William S. Glyn- (Stepney)

  Samuels, Arthur W.

  Cave, Rt. Hon. Sir George

  Kenyon, Barnet

  Samuel, Rt. Hon. H. L. (Clevaland)

  Cawley, Rt. Hon. Sir Frederick

  Lambert, Rt. Hon. G. (Devon, S. Malton)

  Sanders, Col. Robert Arthur

  Cecil, Rt. Hon. Lord Robert (Herts, Hitchin)

  Lewis. Rt. Hon. John Herbert

  Shaw, Hon. A.

  Chapple, Major William Allen

  Lloyd, George Butler (Shrewsbury)

  Shortt, Edward

  Clyde, J. Avon

  Locker-Lampson, G. (Sailsbury)

  Smith, Sir Swire (Keighley, Yorks)

  Clynes, John R.

  Loyd, Archie Kirkman

  Spear, Sir John Ward

  Coats, Sir Stuart A. (Wimbledon)

  M'Callum, Sir John M.

  Spicer, Rt. Hon. Sir Albert

  Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.

  Mackinder, Halford J.

  Stanley, Rt. Hon. Sir A. H. (Asht'n-u-Lyne)

  Cowan, Sir W. H.

  Macleod, John Mackintosh

  Stirling, Lieut.-Colonel A.

  Craik, Sir Henry

  Macmaster, Donald

  Strauss, Edward A. (Southwark, West)

  Croft, Brigadier-General Henry Page

  McNeill, Ronald (Kent, St. Augustine's)

  Terrell, George (Wilts, N.W.)

  Crooks, Rt. Hon. William

  Macpherson, James Ian

  Walsh, Stephen (Lincs, Ince)

  Currie, George W.

  Maden, Sir John Henry

  Ward, A. S. (Herts, Watford)

  Dalziel, Rt. Hon. Sir J. H. (Kirkcaldy)

  Marks, Sir George Croydon

  Wardle, George J.

  Davies, Timothy (Lincs., Louth)

  Marshall, Arthur Harold

  Warner, Sir Thomas Courtenay T.

  Denniss, E. R. B.

  Mason, James F. (Windsor)

  Wason, Rt. Hon. E. (Clackmannan)

  Dickinson, Rt. Hon. Willoughby H.

  Meux, Hon. Sir Hedworth

  Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)

  Dougherty, Rt. Hon. Sir J. B.

  Money, Sir L. G. Chiozza

  Williams, Aneurin (Durham, N.W.)

  Duke, Rt. Hon. Henry Edward

  Montagu, Rt. Hon. E. S.

  Williams, John (Glamorgan)

  Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness)

  Morgan, George Hay

  Williams, Col. Sir Robert (Dorset, W.)

  Edwards, Clement (Glamorgan, E.)

  Morton, Alpheus Cleophas

  Wilson, Lt.-Cl. Sir M. (Beth'l Green, S. W.)

  Faber, George Denison (Clapham)

  Munro, Rt. Hon. Robert

  Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)

  Fell, Arthur

  Newman, John R. P.

  Winfrey, Sir Richard

  Fisher, Rt. Hon. W. Hayes (Fulham)

  Nolan, Joseph

  Wolmer, Viscount

  Fleming, Sir J. (Aberdeen, S.)

  Norton-Griffiths, Sir John

  Wood. John (Stalybridge)

  Forster, Rt. Hon. Henry William

  O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

  Worthington Evans, Major Sir L.

  Yate, Colonel Charles Edward

  Young, William (Perthshire, East)

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—

  Yeo, Alfred William

  Yoxall, Sir James Henry

  Lord Edmund Talbot and Captain F. Guest.

  NOES.

  Anderson, W. C.

  King, Joseph

  Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.

  Arnold, Sydney

  Lambert, Richard (Wilts, Cricklade)

  Snewden, Philip

  Baker, Joseph Allen (Finsbury. E.)

  Molteno, Persy Alport

  Trevelyan, Charles Philips

  Byrne, Alfred

  Morrell, Philip

  Chancellor, Henry George

  Nuttall, Harry

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr.

  Harvey, T. E. (Leeds, West)

  Outhwaite, R. L.

  Whitehouse and Mr. Lees Smith.

  Jowett, Frederick William

  Question put accordingly, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
  The House divided: Ayes, 150; Noes, 19.

  Division No. 49.]

  AYES.

  [3.12 p.m.

  Ainsworth, Sir John Stirling

  Gibbs, Col. George Abraham

  Pennefather, De Fonblanque

  Amory, L. C. M. S.

  Gilbert, J. D.

  Peto, Basil Edward

  Baird, John Lawrence

  Greig, Colonel J. W.

  Pratt, J. W.

  Baldwin, Stanley

  Griffith, Rt. Hon. Ellis Jones

  Pretyman Rt. Hon. E. G.

  Barnes, Rt. Hon. George N.

  Gulland, Rt. Hon. John William

  Prothero, Rt. Hon. Rowland Edmund

  Barnett, Captain R. W.

  Hall, Frederick (Dulwich)

  Rawson, Colonel Richard H.

  Bathurst, Col. Hon. A. B. (Glouc., E.)

  Harris, Henry Percy (Paddington, S.)

  Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough)

  Beale, Sir William Phipson

  Haslam, Lewis

  Rees, G. C. (Carnarvonshire, Arfon)

  Beauchamp, Sir Edward

  Herbert Hon. Aubrey

  Rees, Sir J. D. (Nottingham, E.)

  Beck, Arthur Cecil

  Hewart, Sir Gordon

  Reid, Rt. Hon. Sir George H

  Beckett, Hon. Gervase

  Hinds, John

  Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)

  Bellairs, Commander C. W.

  Hodge, Rt. Hon. John

  Roberts, George H. (Norwich)

  Benn, Arthur Shirley (Plymouth)

  Holmes, Daniel Turner

  Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbigh)

  Bigland, Alfred

  Hope, Lieut. Col. J. A. (Midlothian)

  Rowlands, James

  Blair, Reginald

  Howard, Hon. Geoffrey

  Rutherford, Sir John (Lancs., Darwen)

  Blake, Sir Francis Douglas

  Hume-Williams, William Ellis

  Samuels, Arthur W.

  Boyton, James

  Ingleby, Holcombe

  Samuel, Rt. Hon. H. L. (Cleveland)

  Brace, Rt. Hon. William

  Jardine, Ernest (Somerset, East)

  Sanders, Col. Robert Arthur

  Bridgeman, William clive

  Johnston, Sir Christopher

  Scott, A. MacCallum (Glas., Bridgeton)

  Brookes, Warwick

  Jones, Edgar (Merthyr Tydvil)

  Shortt, Edward

  Broughton, Urban Hanien

  Jones, J. Towyn (Carmarthen, East)

  Smith, Sir Swire (Keighley, Yorks)

  Burgeyne, A. H.

  Jones, William S. Glyn- (Stepney)

  Spear, Sir John Ward

  Carr-Gomm, H. W.

  Kenyon, Barnet

  Spicer, Rt. Hon. Sir Albert

  Cator, John

  Lambert, Rt. Hon. G. (Devon, S. Melton)

  Stanley, Rt. Hon. Sir A. H. (Asht'n-u-Lyne)

  Cave, Rt. Hon. Sir George

  Lewis, Rt. Hon. John Herbert

  Stirling, Lieut.-Colonel A,

  Cawley, Rt. Hon. Sir Frederick

  Lloyd, George Butler (Shrewsbury)

  Strauss, Edward A. (Southwark, West)

  Cecil, Rt. Hon. Lord Robert(Herts, Hitchin)

  Locker-Lampson, G. (Salisbury)

  Terrell, George (Wilts, N.W.)

  Chapple, Major William Allen

  Loyd, Archie Kirkman

  Walsh, Stephen (Lancs., Ince)

  Clyde, J. Avon

  M'Callum, Sir John M.

  Ward, A. S. (Herts, Watford)

  Clynes, John R.

  Mackinder, H. J.

  Wardle, George J.

  Coats, Sir Stuart A. (Wimbledon)

  Macleod, John Mackintosh

  Warner, Sir Thomas Courtenay T.

  Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.

  Macmaster, Donald

  Wason, Rt. Hon. E. (Clackmannan)

  Cowan, Sir W. H.

  McNeill, Ronald (Kent, St. Augustine's)

  Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)

  Craik, Sir Henry

  Macpherson, James Ian

  White, J. Dundas (Glasgow, Tradeston)

  Croft, Brigadier-General Henry page

  Maden, Sir John Henry

  Williams, Aneurin (Durham, N. W.)

  Crooks, Rt. Hon. William

  Marks, Sir George Croydon

  Williams J. (Glamorgan)

  Currie, George W.

  Marshall, Arthur Harold

  Williams, Col. Sir Robert (Dorset, W.)

  Dalziel, Rt. Hon. Sir J. H. (Kirkcaldy)

  Mason, James F. (Windsor)

  Wilson, Lt.-CI. Sir M. (Beth'l Green, S. W.)

  Davies, Timothy (Lincs., Louth)

  Meux, Hon. Sir Hedworth

  Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)

  Denniss, E. R. B.

  Money, Sir L. G. Chlozza

  Winfrey, Sir Richard

  Dickinson, Rt. Hon. Willoughby H

  Montagu, Rt. Hon. E. S.

  Wolmer, Viscount

  Dougherty, Rt. Hon. Sir J. B.

  Morgan, George Hay

  Wood, John (Stalybridge)

  Duke, Rt. Hon. Henry Edward

  Morton, Alpheus Cleophas

  Worthington Evans, Major Sir L.

  Duncan, C. (Barrow-ln-Furness)

  Munro, Rt. Hon. Robert

  Yate. Colonel C. E.

  Edwards, Clement (Glamorgan, E.)

  Newman, John R. P.

  Yeo, Alfred William

  Fell, Arthur;

  Norton-Griffiths, Sir John

  Young, William (Perth, E.)

  Finney, Samuel

  Ormsby-Gore, Hon. William

  Yoxall, Sir James Henry

  Fisher, Rt. Hon. W. Hayes (Fulham)

  Parker, James (Halifax)

  Fleming, Sir J. (Aberdeen, S.)

  Parrott, Sir James Edward

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES—

  Forster, Rt. Hon. Henry William

  Pearce, Sir Robert (Staffs, Leek)

  Lord Edmund Talbot and Captain Guest.

  Foster, Philip Staveley

  Pearce, Sir William (Limehouse)

  NOES.

  Anderson, W. C.

  Lambert, Richard (Wilts, Cricklade)

  Outhwaite, R. L.

  Arnold, Sydney

  Macdonald, J. Ramsay (Leicester)

  Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.

  Chancellor, Henry George

  Molteno, Percy Alport

  Snowden, Philip

  Devlin, Joseph

  Morrell, Philip

  Trevelyan, Charles Philips

  Harvey, T. E. (Leeds, West);

  Nolan, Joseph

  Jowett, Frederick William

  Nuttall, Harry

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr.

  Keating, Matthew

  O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

  Whitehouse and Mr. Lees Smith.

  King, Joseph

  Main Question put, and agreed to.
  Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House for Wednesday next.—[Mr. Macpherson.]

GAMING MACHINES (SCOTLAND) BILL.
As amended, considered.
Motion made, and Question proposed, -"That the Bill be now read the third time."
Mr. PRINGLE: In Committee my hon. Friend (Mr. Watt) commented on the fact that this Bill should have been promoted by, among other bodies, the Glasgow Corporation, which at the same time was itself engaged in a shameless lottery. The object of this Bill is to make illegal the use of certain machines which are regarded as gaming in their character, but which the decisions of the Scottish Courts, unlike the English Courts, had held not to be within the existing gaining law. The inconsistency of that position was obvious, and as the result of the discussion then I understand the Lord Advocate has decided that the operations of the Glasgow Corporation are actually within the law, and that these operations are now to come to an end. As my hon. and learned Friend is unable to be here to-day, I think in the circumstances he will regard his action on a former occasion as being entirely justified. In the circumstances I do not think there is any necessity to discuss the Bill further. Obviously, if any public body desires to extend the gaming laws, it should itself have clean hands in the matter. As this is the position, I offer no objection to the Third Reading.
Question put, and agreed to.
Bill read the third time, and passed.

COMPANIES (PARTICULARS AS TO DIRECTORS) BILL.
Order for Second Reading read.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
Sir J. RUTHERFORD: As regards this Bill, I should like to be informed whether
566
Clause 3 is wide enough to cover debenture holders. It is possible that a company might be formed of which the directors were mere nominees of the debenture holders. I think also that Clause 2 might have been extended to a number of genuine British firms. The Board of Trade in that Clause have the power to exempt certain firms under certain conditions. I think it might be extended so that it should include a description of the business. I would like to put these two definite questions to the Solicitor-General: (1) Whether Clause 3 covers debenture holders, because there may be a company formed with British directors who may be merely the nominees of a debenture holder, who may be an alien or anything else you like; and (2) whether the Clause which gives the Board of Trade power to exempt certain firms cannot be extended to include a description of the business 1 I am informed that it is quite a common thing in a certain class of company for the real power to be in the hands of the debenture holders.
Mr. KING: This Bill, I suppose, is an extension of the Registration of Business Names Act, 1916. We have heard a great deal of how badly that Act is working and how much disappointment and muddle there has been about it. I know one case where a firm had to register and where there were difficulties as to certain facts in connection with the articles of partnership and they wrote before the appointed day to the new offices which have been set up in Russell Square. For several weeks, long after they were liable under the Act to be fined, they got no reply. I understand that is a very common experience. Therefore, I think before we pass this Bill, which will put additional work on the Department which is carrying on the registration of business names, we ought to have some statement as to whether the office which was set up to do that work is now working and in proper order. It did not get into proper working order early and there were delays, doubts and difficulties. I think we ought to know, when we are bringing a new set of facts and figures, that the office is in working order, and that we are not adding more confusion and muddle to what was admittedly confusion and muddle at the first. If there is not going to be any reply from the Government, I shall be justified in moving the Adjournment, of the Debate. There ought to be a reply to two moderate speeches.
The SOLICITOR - GENERAL (Sir Gordon Hewart): With regard to the question that was asked upon Clause 3, as I understand it, the debenture holder as such is not affected. But he certainly comes within the Clause II the directors are accustomed to act in accordance with his directions or instructions.
Sir J. RUTHERFORD: Will you accept an Amendment?
Sir G. HEWART: My hon. Friend asks whether an Amendment would be accepted so as to cover him. If the view which I have just expressed is correct, an Amendment would be superfluous. If it is necessary we will consider the matter. With regard to the second point as to the description of the business, that could easily be got from the Memorandum and Articles of Association. But it does not constitute a permanent part of the name which establishes the identity of the company. With respect to the question put by the hon. Member (Mr. King), I do not understand that there is any intention to impose any extra work upon that Department.
Question put, and agreed to.
Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House for Tuesday next.—[Mr. G. Roberts.]

RUSSIA (SOCIALIST CONFERENCE).
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."— [Lord E. Talbot]
The MINISTER of BLOCKADE (Lord R. Cecil): I take this opportunity of correcting an answer which I gave at question time. I said that in the first place Mrs. Pankhurst had not applied for a passport. I understand that is not true. She has applied for a passport, and the War Cabinet has decided she shall have one.
Mr. KING: Can the Noble Lord answer the second part of the question, whether any public funds are involved?
Lord R. CECIL: No, Sir.
Mr. KING: There are none?

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
Mr. DICKINSON: Can the Home Secretary make any statement with regard to what will happen on Clause 4 of the Representation of the People Bill, and whether we shall get to the discussion of women's suffrage on Tuesday?
Sir G. CAVE: If it is convenient both for those who are in favour of women's suffrage and those who axe opposed to it to know whether the Division on the Clause is likely to take place next week, I may say that so far as I can see it is possible, and I hope it may be the fact, that the discussion will commence on Tuesday, and I think I may safely say we shall not take the Division upon that Clause on Tuesday. That being so, it is very unlikely that the Division will be reached next week.
Motion for Adjournment, by leave, withdrawn.

SUPPLY [5TH JUNE.]

  CIVIL SERVICES AND REVENUE DEPARTMENTS ESTIMATES, 1917–18.
  Resolution reported, "That a sum, not exceeding £13,480,310, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1918, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Post Office, including Telegraphs and Telephones."
  Resolution agreed to.
  The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.
  Whereupon Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House, without Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 3.
  Adjourned at Twenty-five Minutes before Four o'clock till Monday next (11th June).