WAGES, ETC., OF OFFICERS, SEAMEN, AND BOYS, COAST GUARD, AND ROYAL MARINES.

HC Deb 10 December 1919 vol 122 cc1368-478

Motion made, and Question proposed, That a sum, not exceeding £8,077,800, be granted to His Majesty, to defray the Expense, of Wages, etc., to Officers, Seamen, and Boys, Coast Guard, Royal Marines, Women's Royal Naval Service, and Mercantile Officers and Men, which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1920, in addition to a sum of £25,816,000 to be allocated for this purpose from the sum of £120,000,000 voted on account of Navy Services generally.

4.0 P.M.

Mr. LONG

I desire to thank the Committee for consenting to the suggestion which I ventured to put before them and which was endorsed by you, Sir. I would also like to thank my right hon. Friend (Mr. Lambert) for supporting the suggestion, and to assure him that I cordially and wholeheartedly accept the views which he expressed with retard to there being no precedent created on this occasion. The Committee will realise that what has fallen from you in regard to the circumstances of the day is literally and absolutely true. The circumstances are wholly exceptional, and the suggestion that I made was certainly not made with the intention in any way of curtailing the rights of Members or limiting discussion, but only in order that in these exceptional circumstances we should have the same opportunities of debate that we have had on ordinary occasions. I realise to the full that in the Estimates which we are presenting to Parlia- ment we are making a great demand upon the finances of the country. I think, however, that those Members who have had time and opportunity to examine the statements that I have circulated with the Vote and the figures contained therein will find that every effort has been made to secure economy, where economy is consistent with our duty and with efficiency. I am the last person in this House to complain of criticism—I welcome it—but I think the criticisms upon the Board of Admiralty which we have heard from time to time during recent months to the effect that they have not been sufficiently mindful of their duty and have not secured such reductions as they ought to have secured has been just a little unjust. I would venture to remind the Committee of the circumstances, in which we found ourselves at the beginning of this year. The Prime Minister, in a speech which he made not very long ago, reminded the House and the country of the undeniable fact that up to the very last moment of the signing of Peace the gravest doubts were entertained whether that Peace would be consummated or not. In these circumstances, I am quite satisfied that this House, as it is now constituted or any House of Commons, would have been the first to have condemned the Board of Admiralty, if possessed of that knowledge and realising what the risks were, they had failed to keep the Navy in such strength as would have enabled them to have done their duty if unfortunately the Peace had fallen to the ground. In addition to that, we had, and we still have—they are only just concluding—operations in the Baltic which threw a very heavy burden upon the Navy, and let me once again pay a tribute to the gallant admiral, Sir Walter Cavan, who has been in command in the Baltic, for the brilliant ability and unfailing determination with which he has conducted those very difficult operations.

In addition to these two calls upon our time, we were responsible for mine clearing. The seas were sown with mines which made navigation dangerous and impossible. While we have been talking and thinking of other things, a most gallant body of officers and men have been engaged day and night in the perilous task of sweeping the seas clear of mines. Let me tell the Committee, very briefly, what the work has meant. The position is as follows: The operations of clearing moored mines from the British area allocated by the Allied Council is now complete in home waters, and these areas are open to navigation. The area swept in home waters is no less than 59,065 square miles. An localities in which mines were laid were swept twice, and in many cases thrice. Some 11,000 mines, in 1,360 mine fields, were laid by the enemy in home waters. Practically all these were cleared during hostilities, and it is a tribute to the efficiency of this service that post-war clearances have only produced a further seventy-four mines. The mines laid by the British numbered 65,302, and 29,494, or 33 per cent., were swept up. I am thankful to be able to say that the loss of life in this dangerous and difficult work only amounts to 06 per cent. of the force employed, although upwards of 23,000 moored mines have been removed from home waters. That brief statement will show the Committee that this work has been a work of great magnitude. It has been most efficiently and splendidly done, and a deep debt of gratitude is due from this House and the country to the gallant men who have discharged this duty and who have been enthusiastic in the performance of it.

Some criticisms have been passed upon the staff of the Admiralty. We are told that it is not being reduced with the rapidity which is desirable. If we are to blame in this respect, I wish to say at once that I take undivided responsibility for anything that may have happened. May I respectfully remind the Committee that I have been now for more than thirty years connected at different times with various Departments, and I do therefore know from personal experience something of the work of our public Departments. Before the War the Admiralty was under-staff and over-worked. When I came to the Admiralty I found the civilian staff from the head of it downwards literally worked out. They had had no leave; they had worked seven days in the week at anxious, laborious, and difficult work; they had worked overtime; and they had had neither rest nor leisure. I made up my mind, whatever might be the criticisms levelled at me or whatever the attacks made upon me, that my first duty was to see that these men had the leave to which they were entitled, and the rest which they so badly needed, and I believe that in doing that I was acting not only in the interests of ordinary humanity, but in the interests of good administration. Men worn out in the service of the State cannot give to the State the service that they give when they have had a reasonable amount of rest I ask that that fact shall be considered when criticisms are addressed to us in regard to the size of our staff.

There is a natural desire for the reduction of expenditure and that demobilisation shall be accelerated. People seem to think, if you have so many thousand men and you want to reduce them to a much smaller number, that all you have to do is to say, "We do not want three hundred out of four thousand," put your pen through the names, and the thing is done. Demobilisation is a far more difficult matter for the Department concerned than recruiting. Demobilisation is one of the most laborious tasks that you can throw upon a Department. The amount of extra work thrown upon the Admiralty in consequence of demobilisation has been tremendous, and this fact has to be borne in mind when criticisms are made against us for not having demobilised sufficiently. I think that a careful, may I say an impartial, examination of our record as it is to be found in the statements circulated, and which I hope I may be able to make even clearer by the remarks that I shall make, will show that, though outside people are not altogether satisfied, the Admiralty are not really so much to blame as they endeavour to make out. Notwithstanding the fact to which I have called attention—the demand upon us for possible service at the beginning of this year—immediate steps were taken at the Admiralty to effect reductions and to secure economies.

My right hon. Friend who is now Minister of Transport began directly the Armistice had been signed. I followed in his place in January. We continued the work that he was doing, and I will give the Committee a very few figures which will show, I think, that we have done this with some efficiency. Before I come to the figures, I want to tell the Committee what it was that we actually did. We appointed a Committee, presided over by my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Admiralty, to go into expenditure in all its branches, examine it, and report as to reductions. A little later, when Peace had been signed, and we were able to make more definite plans for the future, the Naval Lords gave up their leave, to which some of them were fully entitled, and sat continuously on a Committee in London, examining into the naval side of the question with a view of ascertaining what reductions could properly and safely be made in respect of the Navy. I myself inspected our naval stations practically round the coast, beginning with Scotland. That was work which could only be done by the First Lord of the Admiralty, because in each of these stations there was more than one Department concerned. It was only possible to effect the necessary reductions there by personal inspection on the spot. I do not hesitate to say that if I had realised the kind of work that I should have to do I should have hesitated even more than I did before accepting the high office that I have now the honour to fill. I never have in all my life in connection with any public duty felt more depressed than I was when I visited these stations.

Let the Committee remember what had been going on. During the War there suddenly arose the need for a station for some purpose or another, for testing one thing or another, for making one thing or another, for storing them, or for a variety of purposes. There was not time to look round and select, perhaps, the very best site and to put the place in the best condition. What the Admiralty did was to say, "This thing is wanted for the efficiency of the Fleet, and it has to be found." It was found, and I say all honour to them. I am not responsible, except indirectly, for the work that they did. In these circumstances, we brought in men and women who were called upon to begin absolutely new work of the most difficult and even technical character. They devoted themselves to it with all their energy and all their power. They brought their various stations and the works in them to the most wonderful state of perfection, and it was a most painful task to have to tell them that their work was finished, that they were no longer required, and that all that they had done had to be brought to an end.

I had interviews with many of them. The Committee can hardly realise that they were working in distant places far removed from the centre of information, not the least realising what was the great movement going on generally in the country and in the world, but concentrated day and night upon this difficult and sometimes dangerous work. It was not unnatural that they should think that their particular work and their particular station were essential to the safety of the country. It was very difficult for them to realise that the War was over, that Peace required a different condition of things, and that these stations were no longer required. Do not let the Committee imagine that this is a financial matter and that these people were depressed because they were losing their employment. Nothing of the kind! They were depressed because they saw the child they had brought to such a wonderful state of maturity suddenly no longer required, and they thought that all the work they had done would be brought to naught. I was very glad to have the assistance of the Prime Minister, who was good enough to write a letter, which appeared in the newspapers, conveying the thanks of His Majesty's Government to these men and women, many of whose names are absolutely unknown and many of them who have worked without getting any reward except some small personal recognition from the Board of Admiralty. I have told this little story to the Committee because I am anxious that we should to-day record our gratitude to these men and women, who in many cases occupy humble positions, for the most wonderful work they did and for the devotion with which they gave their services to their country in the time of her need.

In addition, we have appointed a Committee, presided over by the Civil Lord of the Admiralty, whose duty it is to ascertain all the properties that we possess and to make' recommendations to the Board of Admiralty as to their present condition, whether they are still necessary for us, and, if not, how they can best be disposed of, so that, so far as critical, careful, and insistent examination into the expenditure and the finances of the Board is concerned, really I think we have done and are doing all that men could do. I have seen in Some of the criticisms comparisons made between the Estimates of 1913–14 and the Estimates of the present year. There is no possible comparison between them. The Estimates of 1913–14 were made by a Board of Admiralty which was preparing for the future and preparing for a possible war. The cost of every single thing was totally different from what the cost is now. The present Estimates are still Estimates connected with the War. In them are still to be found, not only the aftermath of the War, but the actual realities of war. We are discharging liabilities already incurred. When it is said, as it is said in some quarters, that the Admiralty is spending £140,000,000 or £150,000,000 a year which they ought not to spend, that statement is singularly inaccurate and misleading. It is not accurate to say of a man that he is spending £100,000 a year because he is spending £20,000 a year in upkeep and £80,000 a year in paying off perhaps, it may be, the cost of the erection of buildings, or putting in machinery or anything of that kind. The Admiralty in this case are paying money which is due. They are discharging debts already incurred in connection with the War. Therefore any comparison between the two periods I have named is wholly misleading. It is not fair to say that our expenditure has been on the colossal scale indicated when, in reality, only part of it is annual expenditure and a very great part of it is the discharge of liabilities. For the same reason you cannot take the Estimates for this year as providing any reliable guide for our expenditure in future. I shall say a word or two in a moment about that, but what you, Sir, said just now when the Committee granted permission for the general discussion, applies to these Estimates — they are wholly exceptional. They occur to-day, and I hope they will never recur. Certainly this year and next year are quite incomparable, because next year I hope we shall revert to real peace conditions, whereas to-day we are dealing in our Estimates in the money that we are voting to a very large extent with the past.

Before I give the Committee a few figures showing what the actual work of the Admiralty has been, I should like to say just a word about the changes in the Board of Admiralty. These Estimates are signed by the members of the old Board, of which Sir Rosslyn Wemyss, now Lord Wester Wemyss, was First Sea Lord. He has ceased to be First Sea Lord, and I am anxious here to say that he has left in the Navy and in the Admiralty permanent records of the admirable work he did as First Sea Lord, and among those who were privileged to be his colleagues he has left an enduring memory which we shall always cherish. His place has been taken by Admiral of the Fleet Lord Beatty. I am confident that the country will rejoice to know that he is now taking an active part in our naval administration. For myself, I feel that we owe him a debt of gratitude for accepting this onerous, difficult, and thankless post. He has done great service for his country continuously, and he might very fairly have claimed a period of rest and retirement; but he did nothing of the kind. He put his services unreservedly at the disposal of his country. Therefore, on behalf of the Board of Admiralty and, I believe I may say, on behalf of this House, we are very thankful to have the advantage of his unquestioned ability, his great energy, and his untiring example in the Board of Admiralty, because we have very difficult tasks before us and very difficult work to accomplish. I am thankful to be able to show the Committee that on the Board of Admiralty we have riot only Lord Beatty, but other Sea Lords, all of them being men who have come fresh from sea service, all of them being distinguished sailors who have proved their value to their country on many an occasion. Therefore there is no foundation for the charge I see made so often, and which fills me with astonishment—coming, as I do, new to my task—that the Board of Admiralty is old-fashioned, is hide-bound, will not think of new policies, and will not allow suggestions to be made or fairly considered. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Board of Admiralty to-day, as I believe it has always been, is composed of men who have come fresh from sea service, who have taken part in nearly all our naval engagements, and who, surely, must have the knowledge which is necessary if we are to approach the new problems of the future with any hope of being able to solve them!

May I say a word for us civilian members of the Government who are connected with the naval and other Departments? We are told that we are squandering public money, making too great demands upon the public purse, and so on. I can assure the Committee that the civilian members of the Board of Admiralty, and as far as I know of the other military establishments, are just as anxious to avoid the heavy burden of taxation as anybody in this House can be. We pay taxes and we hate it just as cordially as any Member of the House and anybody else in the country who has to pay them. The last thing we would do if we could help it would be to add to the national expenditure simply for the pleasure of so doing. Yet that is what is constantly said—that the Board of Admiralty constantly asks for money and that they do not think whether it is wanted or not; and that they do not think about the capacity of the country to find it, but simply ask for it because they want a great Navy. I have come fresh to the Admiralty and I think I can claim to be an impartial critic of what I find there. I can assure the Committee that there is no place where I find a more constant desire for economy and reduction of expenditure than in the Board of Admiralty itself. If that is true, and I can assure the Committee it is true, I think I may claim that this kind of criticism ought not to be addressed to it. I said just now that some people talked about demobilisation as if they seemed to think you could get rid of surplus men or anything else by a mere stroke of the pen. In regard to the Navy there is one important fact which has been constantly ignored by our critics, namely, that the Navy is, happily for us, a long-service Navy. Our men are enlisted for twelve years, and, therefore, you have not the power to do it even if you wanted to do it. You can only reduce your Navy by gradual, fair, and just measures. This means that your reduction must of necessity be slow. Yet I think the figures I am going to give the Committee now will show that, notwithstanding these natural obstacles, the reductions have been very great, and, if I may appeal to the impartial critic, I think I shall get a verdict in favour of the present Board and their policy.

Our Estimates this year are just over £157,000,000. They are tremendous, no doubt, compared with any figures with which we were familiar before, but if you compare them with last year's figures there has been a reduction of over £167,000,000, which is an immense sum. The March Estimates were £8,283,000 less than those presented to-day, but that £8,000,000 is accounted for by increase in the pay of officers, £2,400,000; of men, £8,000,000; gratuities, £3,000,000; and there are other increases, which are explained in the statement I have circulated, amounting in all to £27,000,000, showing, therefore, that if it had not been for rigorous and very general economy the increase in our Vote would have been very much greater than it is to-day. I have said that we have these Committees examining into our financial affairs and recommending reductions. I have referred to the visits which I paid in conjunction with the late First Sea Lord, the Director of Dock-yards, and the Naval Secretary to the Director of Dockyards, when we went round the coast, and which resulted in the immediate closing down of a large number of naval establishments. In addition to that, the Naval Lords went exhaustively into the naval strength and ascertained what could be done there by way of reduction. This is what actually happened. At the Armistice the personnel was 407,000. Today is has been reduced to about 150,000. That is not an unreasonable or unsatisfactory reduction, bearing in mind the facts to which I have referred. As regards contracts for ships, at the time of the Armistice there were 1,005 ordered and under construction. Since then, in the time of the Minister of Transport and myself, we have cancelled 611; completed to 31st October, 319; leaving seventy-five to be completed. The actual approximate saving resulting from the cancellation of these orders amounts to no less than £46,400,000. Surely that in itself is not an unsatisfactory record of the work we have been able to do during the very anxious and laborious months through which we have passed!

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY

At what period of the year were they cancelled?

Mr. LONG

I could not give the dates, but a certain number were cancelled by the Minister of Transport before the 1st January, some immediately after the new Board was constituted, and others gradually from then up till 31st October, but the, greater part of them in the early part of the year.

Sir D. MACLEAN

The right hon. Gentleman has told us that the cancellation of contracts amounted to about £46,000,000. Will he be able to tell us what were the total contracts, so that we can learn the proportion of the amount cancelled to the actual total of contracts?

Mr. LONG

I have not that figure with me, but no doubt I could get it. I understand its importance. Following upon these reductions, there have been reductions in the requirements of fuel and stores of all kinds. A footnote appears in the Estimates calling attention to the fact that the whole question of the requirements of oil fuel storage is under consideration. The total amounts are given. It may be possible to reduce these, but I am sure the Committee will realise the great importance of the question. The use of oil as fuel is increasing by leaps and bounds, and its advantages are manifest from many different points of view. One of the most anxious questions which the Board of Admiralty has to examine and decide is what shall be the storage of fuel and the necessary provision made for it. I could not undertake that there will be reductions in our Estimates, but if it is possible to make them, reductions will be made.

I gave the total figures in respect of cancelled ships altogether. Under Vote 8, the Vote for contract work, that stands at the very big sum of £41,885,000. I said these Estimates are abnormal and exceptional, and it will be seen in this relation how true that statement is, because of this large total all but about £2,000,000 represents expenditure entirely due to the War. The principal items are these: Payment in respect of cancelled contracts £2,650,000; payment in respect of ships which have reached an advanced stage of completion and considered desirable to complete, ships for sale, £4,750,000; ships requisitioned for the Navy, £17,450,000; reconditioning of hired vessels prior to return to owners, £7,900,000; fitting of mine protection for merchant vessels, drafting of unskilled labour to shipyards and extensions to shipbuilding yards, largely outstanding charges from the War period, £2,760,000; for non-recurrent services during the War, £4,100,000; a total of £39,610,000 out of the £41,000,000 which might be described as really war charges. Vote 11, for miscellaneous services, amounts to £6,106,000. This charge, which includes £3,700,000 for the hire of vessels, is entirely non-recurrent, and represents the cost of hired vessels taken up by the Ministry of Shipping for naval purposes, and trawlers, drifters, and other small vessels taken up by the Admiralty. The bulk of the vessels have already been returned or are in course of reconditioning prior to return. Over 1,900 of the trawlers and drifters in service at the Armistice had been returned by the end of November. At the Armistice the monthly payment for the hire of these vessels amounted to £200,000. By the end of next March that will reach the almost nominal sum of £8,000 a month.

I will now turn to the dockyard question. Here the Admiralty were confronted with one of the most difficult problems which had to be solved. We had in the dockyards a much larger number of men than we had before the War, and a number of men surplus to our actual requirements. With the Fleet reduced to Peace proportions, it is not necessary to have the same dockyard service. Before the War, when there was a great deal of building work being done, much of it was done in private yards, while repairing and other similar work was done in the Royal dockyards. Our intention is, so far as possible, to confine all the work for the Navy to the Royal dockyards. Therefore, the real reduction will not appear in our ordinary figures, because it will be a reduction of the employment given in private yards. Still, even when we allow for the work we have to do in the Royal dockyards, it is evident that there were more men than could justly be maintained there, having regard to the work we had to do. We consulted with the Minister of Labour and the Minister of Shipping. The Minister of Labour was quite confident that work would be found at once for all the men who were surplus to our requirements. The Minister of Shipping was very anxious that these men should he released, because he wanted them for the private yards. We set to work to try to secure this transfer of men from the Royal dockyards, surplus to our requirements, to the private yards, but an insuperable obstacle offered. While there was work in many of these Northern and other building yards, there were no houses in which these men could live, and I am sure the Committee would not for a moment suggest that we ought to have insisted upon turning these men off, to use a naval phrase, "putting them on the beach," and leaving them to get on as best they could, knowing that to tell them that there was work waiting for them in the Northern towns was to give them a stone when they were asking for bread, because men could not be expected to go and work in these places when they could not get a place in which to lay their heads.

I wish to make an appeal to the Committee, and I am sure I shall not make it in vain. We had in this matter to consider not merely the pounds, shillings and pence aspect of the case. We had to remember that these men had throughout the War given the very best of their service unreservedly to the Admiralty and to their country and had allowed nothing to deflect them from the path of duty. They had worked splendidly. They had answered every call made upon them day and night by the Boards of Admiralty of that time, and to suddenly turn round and tell them we were very sorry but they were no longer wanted, would have been an act of disgraceful ingratitude.

We tried many plans, and at last, taking advice from many quarters, not confined to Government circles by any means, we were advised that the best plan would be to bring forward some of the work we had intended to do in the spring of next year in the autumn and winter of this year and find employment for the men in this way, and it was suggested that would be better done in conjunction with working short time and losing one day in the week. We decided to ask the men to vote upon it, and it was put to them, but the proposal was not adopted, excepting in the case of Chatham, and the attempt failed. The Prime Minister, who had taken a very active interest in the question and given the Board of Admiralty invaluable assistance, received a deputation which came to him in London from the dockyards, and as the result a Committee was appointed, presided over by Lord Colwyn, representative of all the interests concerned, and it sat with as little delay as possible and reported with remarkable rapidity. The Report is now in the hands of the Board. It has been examined by members of the Board and by our officials, and it has been before a special meeting of the Board, which I summoned for the purpose and which sat yesterday, and a small Committee of three, representative of the Admiralty, has now been appointed to take up this Report and recommend how we can best give effect to it; so I think it will be recognised that we have exhausted every avenue which might lead to a satisfactory solution of this difficult problem, and we have done our best to save the men, to whom we owe so great a debt, from suffering and from hardship, and I have every reason to hope that in the proposals which Lord Colwyn has made we shall find a solution which will enable us to keep the men employed and give them the wages without which they cannot possibly live. Out of the net total Estimates of this year of £157,000,000, £80,000,000, or more than half is non-recurring War expenditure, so that really if our liabilities could have been discharged before last March the Estimates would have been £77,000,000. Further, of this sum of £77,000,000 the sum of £37,000,000 is entirely due to rises in rates of wages and pensions, and in the price of commodities. These are results entirely due to conditions brought about by the War, and it is not unfair to say that if the purchasing power of money had remained as it was in 1914–15, the Estimates for the current year's requirements would have been considerably lower than those before the War, notwithstanding the increased provision for such services as aviation and scientific research and experiment.

I will now say a few words about the future. A full statement about another year will naturally and properly be made when the Estimates for that year are presented; but I do not think I should be doing my duty if I did not say a word in answer to some of the criticisms and questions addressed to us. We have been told that we ought to produce a definite policy. In connection with that, and included in it, is, of course, the future of the Navy, and it is natural that there should be some unrest in the minds of both officers and men, and that when they hear and read so much about all round reduction, they should ask themselves, "What is going to be my fate in the Royal Navy?" Reductions, obviously, there must be. It is quite clear that we do not want a Navy as big as we have now, but the reductions must be gradual, and certainly the present Board of Admiralty and the present Government have no intention whatever of making such reductions in the Royal Navy as would put us in a position of insecurity at home or to render us unable to do our duty by tire Empire. With regard to policy, is it quite reasonable to ask us to produce a naval policy now? What are the facts the case? Before the War the naval policy was framed in accordance with the two or three-Power standard as was decided at the time, and the duties of the advisers of the Board of Admiralty were to find out as best they could who were likely to be our opponents, what would be the probable or possible combinations against us, and the naval strength of all these opposing forces. Having done that, it was their duty to lay down what, in their judgment, was absolutely necessary for the security of this country and Empire.

What is the position to-day? The great enemy which had thrown upon us such a tremendous burden of anxiety and expenditure has disappeared. It lies broken and destroyed as the result of the heroic deeds of our officers and men on sea, on land, and in the air. Therefore, that danger has been removed, and it becomes the duty of the staff of the Board of Admiralty to examine the new conditions from a new point of view, and to make their recommendations to us. It is quite true that that great enemy, which cost us so much, and which has suffered so much for its own sins, is destroyed, but this War has not alone led to great sacrifices and sufferings by us and those whom we have fought here in the West; it has practically convulsed the whole world. The result of this War is a new world. New conditions, and new problems have to be faced, and to ask us at the Board of Admiralty to produce a policy to-day would be to make a tremendous mistake. I have discussed this with the late First Sea Lord and the present First Sea Lord and all my advisers, and they are entirely of one mind. They are to-day and every day examining these problems with care and with anxiety, and when they see things in a truer perspective they will be ready with their recommendations, but I would say to our critics outside and inside this House, is it reasonable at tins stage, before we really know what the new conditions will be, or how the world will resettle itself, to ask us to commit ourselves to a policy which may turn out to be wholly mistaken and wholly unnecessary, and quite different from that which we might have to adopt?

I can assure the Committee on my responsibility as a Minister of the Crown that these problems, and they are many, they are new, and they are varied, are under constant daily examination by a staff which is thoroughly competent for the work. Whatever may have been the case in the past, the Board of Admiralty is fortunate to-day in having a staff which is well constituted in every particular for doing its work. It is in a position not only to make its recommendations but to press them at the meetings of the Board, and in every way to take care that the policy of the Board of Admiralty is seriously conceived and properly pursued. That is all that can reasonably be asked of us to-day. Take one subject under this heading. We see it stated sometimes, on the authority of great and famous men, that the day of the capital ship is over and that it is to be destroyed. If I stand here and say I do not accept that view and am not prepared on behalf of the Board of Admiralty to adopt it, I shall be told by the superior critics that it is because I am a stupid old fogey who cannot think of anything new, and who lives entirely in the past. I do not mind if that criticism is made, because I am in remarkably good company. As it happens, the present naval members of the Board of Admiralty have the immense advantage, amongst many good qualities, of youth. They are singularly young men for the offices in which they to-day find themselves, and it really is not a, very sensible thing to say that these men, full of knowledge, full of experience, full of practical experience gained in the naval battles of this War, and keeping themselves fully informed by the constant study of these questions, are not ready to conceive new ideas.

The Board of Admiralty are just as well aware of the fact as anybody else that we have immense possibilities before us. Who can say what is going to be the development of the Air Service in the future, and what is to be the effect of the Air Service? I was told to-day that the Air Service is going to be so effective that it will destroy the battleship, which is such a big target. That is the view of one side. I go to a great airman and I say, "I am told that our big battleships are not going to be of any use, because they offer such big targets for bombs which are heaven knows how many tons in weight, and which are to be dropped from the clouds on to the battleships." He said, "Some people will tell you that, but, speaking for the air people, I can say that as fast as they develop that attack we are developing a counter-attack and defence, and we shall have something to say before you abandon your big ship simply because an airship has been devised that is going to threaten you with bombs." There are the two sides to the question. I am taking neither side. We have to-day in His Majesty's Navy some of the most magnificent ships the world has ever seen, wonderful productions, and to destroy these vessels because we are told that the air is going to replace the Navy would be a criminal thing for any Board of Admiralty to do. Take the case of a submarine. We are told that because of the. submarine the big ship will not be able to move or to manæuvre, and that it will be of no use. Surely the answer to that is science, development, and invention. We are laboriously engaged on our scientific side in examining these problems, and I have not the smallest doubt that the greatest progress will be made in dealing with the submarine. Look at the wonderful strides that have been made in dealing with the mysteries of sounds below the water. Look at the power given to the commanders of the ships from this knowledge, which was entirely withheld from them before. The Admiralty, through the science departments, are working regularly and incessantly on these. scientific developments, and they believe that in these are to be found more probably the solution of the difficulties than in the abandonment of the great ship which has told, and will tell again, when it comes to great conflict, and when weight of metal is essential in order to secure the balance of victory.

I only make these remarks because I do think it is unreasonable to ask us all of a sudden to abandon a. great portion of our Navy owing to certain assertions which are made, because to-day they have not reached a stage further than that. In regard to science and invention, I only want to say this, that there has been great work done at Shandon and other places in scientific discovery for the Navy. I have visited these places myself, and I am satisfied that the work that has been done is splendid, but there is a great deal of overlapping. There is a great deal of work done in different establishments which could be brought together and done some of it in one and some of it in another establishment. We have enormous advantage now in the presence as Lord President of the Council of the Senior Member for the City of London (Mr. Balfour), who on this, as an many other questions, speaks with rare and exceptional authority. The Committee knows how devoted he is to all these scientific questions, and I am happy to say that he has consented to appoint a Committee, upon which we shall be represented, and the duty of this Committee will be to examine the present situation in scientific investigation and development, with a view to ascertaining how the work can best be done, and how it can be done without unnecessary overlapping and without undue expenditure. I have spoken of our staff. It has been said of the Board of Admiralty that they are hidebound and old-fashioned, and are not open to consider new ideas. One suggestion has been made more than once, and that is that there ought to be a staff corn-posed of representatives of the Admiralty, the War Office, and the Air Ministry, and that they should meet in order to discuss and consider the greater problems—I do not now mean the lesser problems whether you ought to land a force of troops here 5.0 P.M.

or send a ship there—but the greater problems, the world problems which we shall have to solve in the near future. This world has been entirely changed. The balance of. power has been transferred, and the problems connected with peace and war present themselves in a totally different form. These are great questions which the Navy cannot discuss alone for itself. They are also for the Board of Admiralty and all those naval and civil members whom we welcome. We are anxious that all should be joined up in a staff which should meet periodically in order that our plans may be completed.

The Navy exists for the protection of this Island, dependent as it is for its existance upon outside supplies, and whatever may be the predictions of those who believe that in the future we can do without a Navy, the people of this country will continue to demand that there shall be a Navy sufficient to give us reasonable security. In face of the conditions existing before the War we had, in some cases, to prepare to meet the greater risk and run the minor one. In many cases the old desirable work of the Navy was curtailed, even abandoned. I mean showing the White Ensign in the various waters of the British Empire. I am satisfied that this was essential, not merely for maintaining the prestige of our Imperial name, but because—and I have had abundant proof since I have been at the Admiralty and at the Colonial Office—in the interest of trade and the prosperity of the Empire, it was essential that our flag should be shown and shown widely. That, we hope, we shall be able to do, and we mean to do. I have only to thank the Committee for the patience with which it has listened to me, and I hope that at the conclusion of this discussion it will give us these Votes to obtain the money which we require. The circumstances are abnormal, but they are not of our making, and it is essential that these Votes should be passed with as little delay as possible. I know that there is plenty of room for criticism. I do not doubt that we have made many mistakes, but the Committee Can be confident that the Board of Admiralty will try to practice economy effectively, so long as that economy is consistent with the security of our Empire and the efficiency of our Navy.

Mr. LAMBERT

Everyone will join in the eloquent tribute which the First Lord has paid to the naval forces at sea especi- ally to those engaged in the dangerous occupation of mine-sweeping. I cannot imagine anything more trying to the nerve than sweeping up these deadly engines of destruction. I would like to join with him, too, in his word of admiration for the forces in the Baltic. There is acute difference of opinion with regard to policy, but that does not affect the men themselves. The Navy has to do its duty and go as the Government of the day directs it. If the policy is wrong, that is a matter for which you must attack the Government as a whole, and riot the Navy. My right hon. Friend has referred to the fact that he has given the administrative staff some rest. I am very glad of it. They were very hard-worked men. One of the complaints which we used to have to make at the Admiralty was that some of our best men were constantly taken away to other Departments. I remember one of the best men in the Admiralty being taken away for the II call h Insurance Department, and other very able and conscientious men with great experience of their work have been taken by other Departments, and I am sorry for it. I congratulate my right hon. Friend upon being the Minister privileged to increase the pay of the naval ratings. It is a reform that was long overdue, and, however much we may be economists—and I am one—the men who serve their country on the sea must be well and adequately paid. I congratulate the present Board of Admiralty on having effected a very necessary reform.

I agree with the first Lord that you cannot take these Estimates as normal. If you could, then all I would say is, God help us! Naval Estimates of £157,000,000 naturally must include a large amount of war expenditure, and the Estimates, I am perfectly convinced from some experience in the framing of Estimates, must be largely conjectural. They could not be very accurate in the abnormal circumstances in which they were framed. But I think my right hon. Friend has stated that next year, at any rate, the Estimates will be normal. That will be seventeen months after the Armistice, and I think that we may fairly ask that the Estimates then may be brought down to something like normality. I think that we shall require then some idea as to the permanent policy of the Navy. It will have to be very clearly and well thought out. Imagination must be devoted to future problems, because war problems have been revolutionised in the present War. As my right hon. Friend said, some years ago we were building on a two-Power standard. That was against France and Russia. In recent years we were building against Germany; but there is one country which I shall always refuse to include in making comparisons of naval strength that might be employed against us. That is the great English speaking Republic of America. I wish to ask some questions with regard to the Air Service, which to-day has been placed under the War Office.

Mr. LONG

The Air Ministry? The Secretary of State for War is also Secretary of State for Air, but the Air Ministry is quite distinct from the War Office at present.

Mr. LAMBERT

I am a little fogged as to the various distinctions, but what I wish to say is—and I am sure that I shall incur the displeasure of every Army man present —that I do not think that the Secretary of State for War should at the same time be Secretary for Air, and I would go so far as to say that I do not like the new Air Ministry, because we have got a great many new Ministries and they are all apt to be extravagant.

The CHAIRMAN

I think it better to intervene at once on this point. The right hon. Gentleman cannot deal with the Act of Parliament which has established an Air Ministry as a separate Ministry. He has no right when we are discussing in Committee of Supply to advocate a matter which requires legislation. He would no doubt repeal that Act.

Mr. LAMBERT

No, if you would allow me to go on you will see that I am perfectly logical, because the naval service of the country cannot be carried on without the Air Service. Naval power is the dominating factor in this country. It has always been so, and it will be so in the future. Therefore you cannot discuss this matter without some reference to air, because the Admiralty itself must have an Air Service, otherwise the whole Fleet is well,—at sea.

The CHAIRMAN

All I want to make quite clear is that the advocacy of the repeal of the Air Service Act is not open to discussion on the present occasion, though on some other occasion it might be.

Mr. LAMBERT

I quite agree, and I will not go into that.

Mr. HOHLER

May I call attention to page 60 of the Estimates, which refers to aviation. Can we not discuss aviation?

The CHAIRMAN

It is quite true that part of the Air Service is worked in connection with the Admiralty, and that occurs therefore on the Votes here. Discussion is open on that. All I am saying is that advocacy of the repeal of an Act of Parliament cannot take place in Committee of Supply.

Mr. LAMBERT

My right hon. Friend has referred to some problems which I have had in mind. One is the problem as to whether the surface ship as it has been known in the Navy from time immemorial will be the naval ship of the future. We have had surface ships from the days of Alfred the Great but we have never had submarines in action until within the last few years. Those are points to which my right hon. Friend and his Board will have to direct their attention. He has told us very truly that we have got some of the finest examples of naval ships. There is the enormous ship the "Hood," which hurls a projectile weighing something like a ton, I should imagine, from a 15-in. gun, and which cost of.£6,000,000, and I believe that in the year 1916 four of these ships were ordered, thus representing a cost of £24,000,000. They are cancelled, I agree, but I put the point whether it is wise that in future ships of these dimensions should be built, because I cannot but believe that the "Hood," magnificent and powerful as she is, is vulnerable to submarines. She is certainly vulnerable to mines. Whether she is vulnerable front the air I am quite unable to say.

A great problem which this country will have to consider is what the future of the Navy is to be, whether it is to be a Navy on the surface of the sea, whether it is to be a navy in the air may use the phrase—or whether it is to be a Navy under the water. I think the Board of Admiralty deserve time to make up their minds, but we must have a clear and definite policy as to what is to be the future method of offence and defence. To me it is hateful to talk of war after the terrible agony through which we have gone. But the Navy, if it is maintained at all, is maintained for War, and, therefore, must be of a character best adapted for that purpose. The "Hood" cost £6,000,000. The question is, will the "Hood" have to meet ships of an equal character in future? The very fact that you have to go into this question of naval construction brings with it very grave consequences with regard to other matters. I do not suppose I shall have a friend in any of the dockyard ports from the time I sit down. This question of the air must bring the Admiralty right up against the problem as to whether you can keep four great naval depots—Portsmouth, Devon-port, Chatham, and Rosyth—and whether they are in the right position. The strategy of the future is entirely novel, and, therefore, I ask myself are these great centres of naval population in the right strategic position for the Navy as it must exist in future, with all the possibilities of the air and of the submarine, which will he greatly developed?

In the past, Chatham, so worthily represented by my hon. Friend (Mr. Hohler), was no doubt a naval port protecting London. But she cannot protect London to-day from aircraft. What will be the future of Chatham is a matter which will have the closest attention of the House and of the Admiralty. I quite agree with the First Lord that you cannot throw these men out upon the world without warning. It is very easy to say, "Oh, yes; get rid of the lot," but we have to consider that they have served their country during the War, that they have been brought there in pursuit of a great naval policy, and we must remember that they are beings with human feelings as well as ourselves. The Government must aid them in every possible way. I feel, however, that if we are to effect great economy, some of these great establishments must be closed. They are enormously expensive; there are always, of course, an Admiral and Admiral Superintendent and all the staff. There is an enormous amount of machinery and of stores collected, and all these require a corresponding number in the Admiralty to control them. It seems to me, therefore, that this is a question which the Admiralty will have to decide, and decide quickly, because it affects large centres of naval population. Take the question of the port of Plymouth. When in the presence of the hon. Gentleman opposite (Sir C. Kinloch-Cooke) I am almost afraid to refer to a town in my native county. But still I have interests with the town of Plymouth, having been born and bred in Devonshire.

Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE

As a farmer.

Mr. LAMBERT

I suppose it is no disgrace to have been brought up on a farm?

Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE

No; it is healthy.

Mr. LAMBERT

The hon. Member seems to have some antipathy to me because I see things that are going to happen in regard to Plymouth. Plymouth is a port which, I know, had its commercial development defeated by the Admiralty for the good reason that you could not have a great naval port and a commercial port running side by side. But what is to be the future of the port of Plymouth? Will the Admiralty in future veto its commercial development? I understand that proposals have been made to the Admiralty whereby a large portion of the docks there would be utilised by a private company. I put it to my right hon. Friend that he will have to consider whether Devonport is a strategic centre to be maintained, and that, if any conclusion is arrived at, the greatest possible opportunity should be given to the Plymouth Corporation and all the people concerned to develop this into a great commercial port. My right hon. Friend knows full well that he has a very large number of men in the dockyards today who are. I may say, more or less redundant. Before the War I think there were in the outport shipyards something like 58,000 civilians. To-day there are 85.000, so that we are keeping in the dockyards to-day 27,000 more men than were employed before the War. You cannot throw all these people on the world at a moment's notice. It is easy for us in this warm and delightful atmosphere to say, "Throw them out," but we must remember that they have to live as well as ourselves. I am not complaining; but these things in the long run must come to an end, and no man must be engaged unless productively employed on the defence of the country. We have got to cut our garments according to our cloth, and we cannot go on spending money as fast as we are spending it to-day. We have had rather soothing assurances from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but I must say that what gives me great cause for anxiety is the fall in the American exchange, which is raising the cost of living to every class in the community. No man should be employed by the Government unless for absolutely essential purposes, or when he can be spared for carrying on work in connection with our export trade, which might reduce the cost of living.

May I ask some questions with regard to the cancellation of orders to which my right hon. Friend alluded? He has told us that he has cancelled a very large number of ships. That is perfectly true, but I want to ask him whether he could not have cancelled more. I have it here in his statement that he has cancelled three out of four big battle-cruisers. Of light cruisers twenty-one were under construction at the time of the Armistice, and only four have been cancelled. Was it necessary that only four should have been cancelled? I ask, because I find that some of these light cruisers were laid down in the middle of last year. There is the "Despatch," for instance, laid down in July, 1918. I should have thought that that cruiser could have been stopped. There is the "Diomede," laid down in June, 1918; the "Enterprise," laid down in June, 1918; the "Emerald," in September, 1918. Why were these gone on with? These four cruisers will cost from £6,000,000 to £8,000,000. They have to be maintained, they required to be manned, they will burn fuel. Have not we enough light cruisers without these extra four? There is another point in the Estimates, with regard to the time of building. When I was at the Admiralty a ship could be built in two years. Here is the "Wren," laid down in October, 1916, which apparently is not finished yet. I do not understand why. Then, as regards flotilla leaders, the right hon. Gentleman has told us that there were eleven ordered at the time of the Armistice, and only four have since been cancelled. I have looked into this, and I find that the "Keppel" is to be completed, yet she was laid down only in October, 1918. I cannot help thinking that that flotilla leader might have been abandoned. The "Rooke," another flotilla leader, was laid down in the same month as the Armistice, and is to be completed. I think we must have some explanation of that.

With regard to destroyers, I think we must ask for explanations why out of ninety-seven ordered only forty were cancelled. Fifty-seven new destroyers are being completed, and one of these, the "Worcester," was laid down in December, 1918. It seems to the ordinary observer to be a waste of money to lay down destroyers or to complete destroyers which were laid down actually a month after the Armistice was signed. Then, with regard to the repair of ships. The "Repulse," a battle cruiser, is to be repaired at cost of £39,000. Is it worth while to spend so much when we have an enormous preponderance of these battle cruisers? Take the "Antrim." She is an old cruiser laid down in 1902, yet the Admiralty propose to spend £161,000 on repairing her. Why spend so much on a ship which is really obsolete? The "Chatham" is to have £139,000 spent on her. Then there is the "Himalaya," purchased in 1916. That ship is to have £274,000 spent on her. I think we ought to have some explanation why such sums are being spent on ships, when we have such a large preponderance of the type.

I would ask my right hon. Friend. a question or two about our land stations. Land stations eat up personnel. They have all to be supplied with their little establishments, and each one of them has to have its corresponding number at the Admiralty in order that it may be controlled from there. Many of these land stations, which had during the War an actual fighting value, have very little today. My right hon. Friend has told us that it has been a very unpleasant duty for him to go round and say to these people, who have been doing their duty thoroughly well during the War, "You have got to go" I quite sympathise with him in that, but may I ask, in regard. to Vote 10, why it is essential to commence new Admiralty work? I observe that in West Africa there are to be erected new quarters for a wireless staff, at a cost of about £16,000. Are the Admiralty quite sure that a wireless station is needed on the West Coast of Africa? I, of course, cannot say, but I think it well that it should be considered. There is in the Estimate an item of £47,000 for oil fuel storage in Jamaica, to be commenced this year. Is it quite certain that this money will be spent to the best advantage? Then, again, there is an item of £195,000 for oil storage at Malta, to be commenced this year. It is true that only £25,000 is to be spent this year, and the rest carried on, but is it really the policy of the Admiralty to launch out into this expenditure at Malta before they have really developed their permanent naval policy? Then, again, the Holton cordite establishment has cost, I think, about £2,000,000 to put up, and now the Admiralty propose to spend £12,000 on housing there. Has there been any co-relation between the Admiralty and the other Departments with regard to the amount of cordite that will be required in the future? There is an enormous establishment at Gretna, and there are others at Queensferry and Enfield. Is it really wise to spend money on housing employés for a cordite factory when the Government have not made up their minds as to what they are going to do with the other cordite factories? I put these questions really from the point of view of inquiry.

Then there is the case of Rosyth. It is quite impossible, as I have said, if the Naval Estimates are to be brought down, that these four great naval depots can be maintained. In the case of Rosyth there is an Estimate of £40,000 for residences, to be begun this year, for subordinate officers. If you are to provide money for subordinate officers, presumably Rosyth is to be a. permanent establishment. I am drawing my right hon. Friend's attention to these questions, because I have been accustomed to go through these Estimates. At. Bandeath, I observe, £35,000 is to be spent on housing employés, and:£28,000 on housing for the police. The new works are to be begun this year, and they will carry a liability for next year and the year after. I ask again whether these works are really essential? Then there are some other large items for oil fuel, amounting together to nearly £2,000,000. Four hundred thousand pounds is to be spent on the Clyde for storage of oil. Is the Admiralty quite sure that that money ought profitably to be spent on the Clyde, when the whole of our naval policy is more or less unsettled? At Plymouth, I see, £555,000 is put down for oil fuel—a new service entirely. At Portland, again, there is an item of £9,56,000 for a new service for oil fuel storage. Is the right hon. Gentleman quite sure that all this storage will be required when the Navy of the future is developed? I cannot help thinking that, if we were in a different atmosphere, a good deal would be said about some of these items. I am placing them before my right lion. Friend because I know his difficulty, and I hope he will examine them critically before he allows them to be proceeded with, especially in the inchoate state of our naval policy for the future. I have thought a great deal about this matter of our future naval policy.

Our food supply is dependent on the Navy—not only on the Royal Navy, but on the Merchant Navy—and the Merchant Navy must be protected by the Royal Navy. Being a farmer, as my hon. Friend opposite has reminded me, I do know. something about food production, and I know that it is quite impossible—and I am sure the First Lord, who also knows something about agriculture, will agree with me—for this country to produce sufficient food to feed its people; it would have to be brought from abroad. Therefore, one of the great problems of the future, since the submarine is in commission, will be, in the face of a future potential enemy, to get food into these Islands. If one thinks about the matter one wonders how the Navy were able to. cope with the submarine menace in these narrow waters as successfully as they did. There is a scheme which I would suggest to my right hon. Friend, and which, I think, has great strategic possibilities. It is not my own scheme; I have no original ideas on such matters. It is the scheme of a distinguished admiral, whom I am proud to count as one of my friends, but whose name, when it is mentioned, excites a storm—Admiral Lord Fisher. Lord Fisher suggested that it would be of great value to this country, not only from a commercial but from a naval point of view, to make a harbour on the West Coast of Ireland, at Blacksod Bay. It would reduce the time of the voyage between Halifax and Europe to about, two days, and it is a question whether, with the submarine developed as it will be, some harbour on that coast should not be established. whereby food might be brought into the country without coming through those narrow channels. My right hon. Friend has said quite frankly that the Admiralty were quite willing to go into a joint arrangement with any other Department as to the future defence of the country. Our Dominions came to our assistance during the War; has not the time come now when we might ask them to give us their counsel as to the future defence of the Empire, whether from a military or from a naval point of view—and, I am also reminded, from the point of view' of the air? The Army, the Navy, and the Air Service are intertwined in the defence of the country, and it seems to me to be a mistake to put them in antagonism one with the other. Therefore, I would ask whether some council of the Empire cannot be called together, with the very best experience, to decide what shall be the future of the Air Service, the Navy, and the Army. I know that, when you walk up and down the streets of London or any other of our large towns, it does not seem very apparent that Britain is very much poorer than she was before the War; but we cannot afford schemes that are not profitable, and, although there is, we hope, no immediate danger for the League of Nations, yet we must prepare for the future in the light of the past. I stand here as one who says frankly that the Naval Estimates must be reduced very largely next year, but I am not prepared to accept the pre-war standard of Naval Estimates, because the prewar standard was based upon the German menace. The ships of the Germans to-day he scuttled, by their own dastardly action, at the bottom of Scapa Flow. I know that there are people who will always conjure up dangers, but this country cannot afford to maintain a Navy larger than its security demands. My right hon. Friend has a very unpopular task, in which I do not envy him. I should not care to be First Lord of the Admiralty at the present moment; it is so easy to spend money, but it is mighty difficult to cut it down. He has got, if he is to fulfil his duty, to be a ruthless, remorseless, and relentless economiser. I hope that he will come down to this House next year with Estimates which will be based on a peace standard, for I am quite certain that, given security, economy is the greatest reform that this country can accomplish.

Rear-Admiral ADAIR

I beg to move to reduce the Vote by £100.

I should like, in the first place, to congratulate the First Lord on his lucid statement in opening this Debate. There are three questions to which I desire particularly to refer. The first is that of mine-sweeping. Every Member of this House, and every naval officer, who reads the right hon. Gentleman's statement, will agree that the work that these men are doing is beyond all praise. It is the most infernal work that a man can well have to do. In the second place, I was greatly pleased to hear the right hon. Gentleman's references to the care with which scientific research and experiment are going to be carried out in the future by the Admiralty. My third point is as to the development of a general staff, working, I hope, under the Imperial Defence Committee, or some such committee, and not on any account under any one man. I am sure the First Lord will get all the money he has asked for, although, if the Committee were to judge by the list of reductions which I myself have put down, they might think he possibly would not do so. Most of those, however, were put down pro formá, in order to give me the opportunity of bringing in, on several different Votes, the great question of a Naval Air Service. As I was warned that there was not going to be any general statement of policy at the opening of this Debate, I had to break up my arguments. and divide them over the different Votes. I understand now, by the ruling of Mr. Whitley, that I am free to develop the arguments for or against the present system under which the Royal Navy is served by a certain Air Force, and that is the first thing that I shall apply myself to. I tell the First Lord quite candidly that with regard to Vote 12 I have put down a Motion for the reduction to draw attention to the neglect of the Admiralty in not seeing that the Air Force associated with the Navy was efficient. In order to keep myself in order, I am going to work on those lines, and I say that the Admiralty have been negligent in respect to the Air Force associated with the Navy. I will put it that way, to avoid any question of policy.

It is no use the Admiralty saying they are not responsible, because the efficiency of the modern Navy is bound up with the Air Force that serves it, and if the Air Force is not efficient then the Navy is not efficient, and that, of course, is the Admiralty's responsibility. In my opinion, any personnel working with the Navy as part of an Air Force must primarily be seamen. Aviation is only a means to an end, and that end in the case of an Air Service attached to the Navy is maritime warfare. The efficiency of the Navy, I say, is bound up intimately with its Air Service, and perhaps it would be well if I just mentioned to tie Committee what the actual duties are of an Air Force serving with the Navy. I have written them down rather carefully, so as to make no mistake about it. They are embarked in ships called carriers, such as the "Argus," which carry aircraft to operate at distances beyond the reach of those which he at shore bases. Such ships carrying these aircraft can accompany the Fleet, and the aircraft may be sent out as scouts for the Fleet, or they may actually take part in a Fleet action, when it occurs, by the use of bombs or aerial torpedoes, or they may be used with the same weapons against enemy fleets in their own harbours. They are embarked in fighting ships, battleships, and tile larger cruisers, as aids to efficient gunnery. There is the spotter, flying in a small machine, watching the fall of the shot, and there is the fighter, flying in another small machine, who has to protect the spotter from the enemy. The long-range fire of the Navy is absolutely bound up with this service of spotting and the protection of the spotter. They are employed at shore bases—coastal areas, I believe the correct term is— from which they defend the coastal waters against submarines and mines of the enemy, or they can be used from these bases for reconnoitring such distance as is feasible within their range of action, or they can be employed, again, with bombs or with Whitehead torpedoes, to attack enemy ships. In short, their duties are all forms of maritime warfare that can be effective from the air. That sounds rather paradoxical, but that is the actual fact.

Every one of these duties is linked absolutely with the Navy, and they are purely naval matters. They must be under the command and direction of naval officers. The information, for example, which a Commander-in Chief requires as to the composition, the disposition, the course, and the speed of a Fleet, which has to be brought in, perhaps, by one of these scouts—I ask the House to consider, could any man but a man who has been educated in Fleets bring back intelligible intelligence to that Commander-in-Chief? If they are not properly educated in Fleets prior to their becoming aviators, then they may bring misleading and absolutely dangerous information to their Commander-in Chief. In my opinion, there can be no question whatever about it that the Naval Air Service must be formed of men who are part and parcel of the Navy, and no amateurs can effectively do the work. Herein lies the first blunder, if I may call it so, of the Admiralty. They started the Royal Naval Air Service as a separate Service, and on no account should they have dissociated the administration of that Service from the Navy itself; it should have been a part of it, and when they allowed the whole of this Service to be turned over to the Air Ministry they made a still greater blunder, because they were turning it over to people who did not appreciate the needs and duties of the Navy, and it was highly probable, therefore, that any progress in naval aviation would not be what it should have been.

Let us see for a moment why they turned this Royal Naval Air Service over to the Air Ministry. At the outset of the War aircraft could be numbered, perhaps, by dozens. There were very few firms, and those only small ones, in the country who could produce them. Practically speaking, there were no fighting machines, and the manufacture of these fighting machines had to be done very hurriedly. There was great competition and rivalry between the two Services, and of course friction ensued. Neither party knowing exactly what they wanted, there were constant changes, and each party, the Army or the Navy, was demanding to be served first, and each wanted its own latest invention. All that occurred and led to the amalgamation of the two Forces, the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Flying Corps, under an Air Minister. I am not criticising that, but only stating facts. I do not wish to touch on policy, but I say that in future no such difficulties as those will recur. There need be no clash of interests whatever, for the productive capacity of the country now is quite sufficient to meet every service, however distinct it may be. I speak as a manufacturer, and the firm with which I am connected has made every sort of aircraft and engine under the sun. I wish to impress on this Committee that the true lesson learned as regards air service during the War was this—that the duties of the Naval Air Service were very different from those of the land Air Service, required different material, different administration, and a different education for its personnel. What has happened? In a letter that he addressed to the "Times" the other day, the late Under-Secretary for the Air stated that following On this great reform—that was the amalgamation of the Naval and Military Air Services—

The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN (Sir E. Cornwall)

The hon. and gallant. Member must remember that in Committee of Supply it is not in order to discuss the decision already come to by Parliament in setting up a separate Air Service.

Rear-Admiral ADAIR

I bow to your ruling at once, but I was only drawing attention, not to any policy, but to the neglect of the Admiralty. I am leadin up to that. They have been grossly neglectful about this Air Service, and I am trying to prove it, and my quotation from the Under-Secretary's letter is a very brief one and is not a question of policy at all. If you will allow me to read it, Sir, I think you will see that it is so. He said, "As a consequence of the amalgamation of the Naval and Military Air Force, the Air Force increased to an astonishing degree on the military side." That is all I wish to read, but I wish to supplement that statement, and my supplement is this, that I say emphatically that the amalgamation had a most prejudicial effect.

The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN

Is not that just the very point we must not discuss?

6.0 P.M.

Rear-Admiral ADAIR

I accept your ruling at once. Perhaps I might proceed on these lines, that if there has been a failure of progress, and it is due to neglect on the part of the Admiralty, it becomes my duty to say in what form this failure in progress has been shown. I will mention a, few facts indicating the lack of progress in the Naval Air Service. The first is that no aeroplane specially adapted as part of the equipment of a battleship for this spotting, and the fighting machine accompanying the spotter, has even yet been designed. What has been used has been a makeshift arrangement. Certain obsolete forms of land service aircraft have, I believe, been employed with certain air bags attached to them for the purpose of alighting on water. A proper machine is absolutely essential and should have been produced long ago. The second item I wish to refer to is this, that little or nothing has been done towards producing an armour-piercing bomb. An armour-piercing bomb is absolutely essential for the attacking of a ship that has a protective armoured deck. In not seeing that such a bomb has been produced the Admiralty have been neglectful. The third item that I refer to is that there is no such thing existing as a really reliable and accurate sight. It stands to reason that when you are aiming on a submarine from 5,000 ft. or 10,000 ft. in the air you must have a very accurate sight, and, owing to the movement of the machine, it is necessary to have some such thing as a gyroscopically controlled one. Two years ago such a sight was nearing perfection, and yet the Navy has not got it yet. The fourth item in which failure to make progress has occurred is this. Some five years ago there was actually fired from a naval aeroplane, or it might have been a seaplane, a Whitehead torpedo—successfully discharged from a craft in the air; but only this year, five years later, an attack has been carried out by such a craft with such a torpedo on a fleet with success I say that if the Admiralty had been doing their duty they would have had all these items completed long ago; and I would go so far as to say this, that, had the progress of the Naval Air Service been left in the hands of the Navy, the German fleet might have been destroyed is Wilhelmshaven long before the Armistice. That is rather a severe charge to make, but I think it is one that is justifiable. In view of what you have said, Sir Edwin, as to my not being able to refer to anything in the way of policy, I have to refrain from other remarks which I wished to make on this subject, but. I will conclude that subject by inviting the Admiralty to give far more attention to this Air Service than they have in the past, and if there is failure to make progress in consequence of the negligence of the Air Ministry, then it is the duty of the Admiralty- to bring it before this House. So much for the Air Service.

There is the question of future policy. I am not speaking of the Air Service now, but of the Navy. It is most important that we should hear as soon as possible what this future policy is to be, and for this reason, that there is very grave unrest amongst the men of tire Fleet at the present moment, and I will say unhappiness amongst officers, too, in consequence of their anxiety arid uncertainty as to their future. This is of the gravest importance. I do not wish to use any strong language on this subject, and the Admiralty, of course, must be alive to what is going on; but I do repeat emphatically that there is most grave unrest abroad, and after five years of fatigue such as these officers and men have gone through, they are in no mood to brook any delay on the question of their future treatment. There is only one other question I wish to raise on Vote 1, and that is the pay of officers. In the summer we had the Vote on Account. It came almost simultaneously after the new rates of pay for officers, and I said that when the Estimates came before the House I should have something to say on the matter. I find now, on examination, that the younger officers in the Navy are at a most distinct disadvantage as compared with those of corresponding rank in the Army. The Army rates of pay have re cently come out, and we have only been able to judge of this within the last few days. The young lieutenant in the Navy is distinctly at a disadvantage compared with an officer of relative rank in the Army. Naval officers commence their lives as naval officers much younger. They have to bear responsibilities at a very early age, and their responsibilities later on are very much greater than those of their brothers of the same age in the Army. For instance, a young lieutenant at the age of twenty-five, who is officer of the watch in a ship such as the "Queen Elizabeth" on a dark night, or running in a fog, with the lights out, has—:3,000,000 of the nation's money in his hands. A collision may cause the loss of his own ship or the loss of a corresponding one. The responsibility on that young man's shoulders, so far as pay goes, is put as the equivalent of the responsibility of a young officer in charge of a platoon, or at the utmost half a company of an Infantry regiment. That is not the right way to look at it. The only way to look correctly at naval pay is by responsibility. But I understand that the Admiralty, in the arrangements of naval officers' pay, have considered the matter of age. That is not the Nr ay to look at it at all. Responsibility is the true measure.

The only other point to which I wish to draw attention is the question of Income Tax. It will be remembered that in the Halsey Report the pay of the officers was put as the bedrock amount, and including Income Tax at the service rate. I understand that before the next Estimates are produced the Admiralty will be considering whether service rate Income Tax is to be charged or the full civilian rate. I urge them to adhere to the service rate. I have moved the reduction of this Vote, and I may say quite frankly that, on this question of policy, and in order to draw attention to the necessity for an immediate statement as to it, I purpose going to a Division.

Major-General SEELY

I will not follow the gallant Admiral into the detailed question of how far what. he terms amateurs can efficiently perform the duties of airmen attached to the Fleet, for the very good reason that, sitting by my side is the hon. and gallant Member for Leith (Captain W. Benn), who did perform exactly those services, And performed them with such distinction that he received the most coveted decoration from his Sovereign. But I think everyone in the House conversant with the subject with agree with the gallant Admiral as to the enormous importance of the Air, and all it can do for the efficient conduct of the Fleet. I suppose it would be impossible to exaggerate the effect that development in the air might have on the future of the Navy. Men like Lord Fisher and Sir Percy Scott, who have been referred to in this Debate, take the extreme view that all surface ships have become obsolete owing to the possibilities of attack in the air, and certainly it is the case that the experiment to which the gallant Admiral referred, which took place a short time ago, did show that a great advance had been made in the possibility of destruction of surface craft from the air. Such knowledge as I obtained when at the Air Ministry convinced me that development along those lines had extraordinary promise, and might have the most astonishing results. I know full well that the First Lord shares these views as to the possibilities of the air, for, indeed, he has stated it publicly, but he will allow me to say that within the Admiralty there are a great many people who, though they are devoted public servants, are of a conservative character so intense that it is almost impossible to move them. Many years ago—I think about fifteen years ago—in this House I ventured to draw attention to the number of occasions on which the Admiralty had refused to adopt new inventions. There were six great occasions when the Board of Admiralty, or at any rate the Service members of it, deliberately decided to reject a new invention which many years afterwards they were bound to accept, and in the interval, of course, there was great waste of money, and, had we gone to war, there would have been great waste of life.

At the present moment nothing like the advantage that might be taken of the possibilities in the air is being taken by the Board of Admiralty. On that I agree entirely with the gallant Admiral, although I differ from his conclusion with regard to a separate Air Service. But it is unnecessary to follow him on that point, not only because it would not, perhaps, be the proper moment to discuss it now, but also because in another place the most emphatic declaration was made by the Lord Chancellor a moment ago that there is to be definitely, so long as this present Government exists, a separate Air Force and a separate Air Ministry. We come to this, therefore, that when the right hon. Gentleman has overcome the conservative nature of some of his advisers, which is inherent in the Admiralty, then, in order to get these instruments which may completely alter the whole framing of his Estimates, and completely alter the fate of this country in the event of war, he must go to the Air Ministry. Now, the First Lord told us, I think, that it is now thirty years since he first went into a public office. of course, cannot claim anything like that length of service; but it is twelve years nearly since I first went into office, and I have served in four offices, and I know, therefore, how Government Departments work. There is never enough money or time for the many things one has to do, and therefore, this kind of problem must, and will, arise, and is no doubt arising now. The Army want aeroplanes for the defence of Egypt. The right hon. Gentleman opposite thinks it vitally important that he should obtain seaplanes or aeroplanes of a particular type which may completely alter the whole dispositions of the Fleet. I want to ask the right hon. Gentleman a very definite question. What does he do now? He must apply to the Air Ministry; in other words, he must apply to the Air Minister. He goes to him and he says, "I want you to turn your best brains, and as much money as you can spare out of your total, to the development of the naval side, for I believe that the safety of the State depends upon it." Whom does he find when he walks into that office? To whom does he really appeal? Be appeals to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dundee (Mr. Churchill), and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dundee says, "I am not in a position to give you these things which you so vitally require for the safety of the Fleet and its efficient conduct." "Why?" asks the right hon. Gentleman. "Because I consider they are required for the Army," is the reply. "And why do you so consider?" "Because I interviewed myself five minutes ago, and so I decided." That is really opera bouffe; it is not Government. The right hon. Gentleman has never said it td me directly, but I am sure he must know it full well. It is not fair to either of the Services, and, above all, it is not fair to the Admiralty. It is gambling with the safety of the State when you have a Service dependent, as I think we all agree here, in an ever greater and greater degree, on the de- velopment in the air, to have that air development thwarted by the chief competitor masquerading as the Secretary of State. The definite question I have to ask my right lion. Friend opposite is, what defence he, as the First Lord of the Admiralty, can make for such a position? What is he going to do when he finds himself in that position? How long is he going to stand such an arrangement?

The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN

I think we are getting into the question of the Air Service. As the right hon. and gallant Gentleman knows, we are in Committee of Supply, and it mould be quite out of order for any hon. Member to reply to the right hon. Gentleman by defending a separate Air Service. Therefore, I cannot allow a discussion on the question of a separate Service.

Major-General SEELY

With deep respect, I bow to your ruling at once. I am not in the least quarrelling with the state of affairs. I am not raising the question whether there ought or ought not to be a separate Air Service in any degree whatever. That has been settled by Act of Parliament, as we know. But it has been truly observed, and I interposed to emphasise, assuming that there must be a. separate Air Service and a separate Ministry, the question comes, How is the Admiralty to ensure getting its due supply of air effort which it must have to make an efficient Fleet? That was my point. I fear I did not make it sufficiently clear. I think, Sir, you will agree that that aspect of it is very germane to our discussion, because the general discussion is concerned with the efficiency of the Fleet. What I claim is that you cannot have an efficient Fleet without an adequate Air Service. The question I am putting to the right hon. Gentleman is, How does he suppose he can get an efficient Air Service for the Navy unless he can appeal to an impartial man, and not a man who must have the interests of competing Services at heart? The Services are distinct by Act of Parliament. The Secretaryships of State are united in one man. This is, of course, strictly legal, and in accordance with the Constitution, but the claim I make, to put it colloquially, is that it is gambling with the safety of the State and with the lives of men. I do not blame the right hon. Gentleman. who, I know, takes a keen interest in the air and who has a vision of its possibilities which I wish all others had, but I appeal to him to tell us quite frankly how soon he will put an end to a system which must have so evil an influence upon the future of the great Service for which he is responsible?

Commander Viscount CURZON

May I congratulate the First Lord of the Admiralty upon the remark which he made in the opening of his speech, that he welcomed criticism? Any criticism which I may have to offer I should like to assure the right hon. Gentleman is only offered with the idea of endeavouring to help the very best interests of the Navy, which alone I have at heart, in common, I am sure, with all other Members of Parliament. I was delighted to hear the last remarks of the First Lord on the distinguished officer who is commanding our naval forces in the Baltic. I personally have the very great pleasure and honour of his acquaintance. I know him, and know the esteem in which he is held by the entire Service. They hold he is one of the finest fighting officers that the Navy has produced, with the finest possible spirit, in the whole of the War. I also would like to congratulate the First Lord upon the fact that Lord Beatty has accepted the position of the Chief of the Naval Staff. I regard it as a most courageous act on the part of Lord Beatty, for it is an office which must be thankless to-day more than ever before, because of the naval reductions that are the talk of the day. Everyone is wondering how much money can be saved upon all the great spending services, of which the Navy is one. Lord Beatty must inevitably share any odium which may be incurred by anybody making these large reductions.

However, I would like to come to the main purport of what I have to say upon Vote 1. First of all, I would speak in regard to the question of policy. I was very disappointed with what the First Lord was able to tell the Committee. At a recent date I was with the Atlantic Fleet. I had an opportunity of talking with officers and men in a great many ships and different classes of ships right throughout that Fleet. There was one thing which all the officers impressed upon me above everything else. That was that what was urgently needed from the point of view of the Navy was some declaration of naval policy which would enable officers and men to have some sort of idea of what is likely to happen to them in the future. The officers, for instance, are uneasy, for rumours are going through all grades and through all warrants as to how many of these officers, of various ranks and branches of the Service, are going to be, as the First Lord said, on the beach.

With the men very much the same sort of uneasiness exists. I do not like to call it unrest, though I have heard it called by that name. I do not like to think there is unrest in the Navy. All the younger seamen want to know whether at the conclusion of their first period of twelve years they will be allowed to re-engage for a further period of twelve years. This is a question which, I hope, the First Lord will be able to answer in the course of his reply. I very much hope he will be able to give somewhat better indication, to both officers and men, what their future is likely to be under the reductions which have no doubt to be faced in connection with the Navy. Reductions, it is realised, have to be made. I think at a time like this, when it is so very difficult for men to get employment, when everybody, officers and men, as they are demobilised from the Army have to wait months and months before getting a job, it is essential at the very earliest possible moment to let officers and men of the Navy know that they have got to go—if they have to go—in order that they may make their own arrangements and endeavour to secure the means of livelihood in the future.

We have seen in the newspapers criticisms by Lord Fisher and Sir Percy Scott. They have been even referred to in the course of this discussion. The principle that appears to animate Lord Fisher is that of "sacking the lot." I do most earnestly ask the First Lord of the Admiralty whether, in face of these criticisms coming from this distinguished man, and receiving the publicity which they do, it does not draw attention to the fact that it is absolutely essential to make a declaration of naval policy as soon as possible? The, state of affairs at present is that these criticisms are being made, and they are not being answered, The country knows Lord Fisher and Sir Percy Scott as two most eminent sailors, and pays very great attention to what they say. The country at large does not know the Navy as do those who have been perhaps more intimately acquainted with it; and I do suggest it is advisable from the point of view of the Admiralty that they should be prepared with their proposals and policy at the very earliest moment, in order that false conclusions should not he arrived at by the people of this country in view of the rather light-hearted criticism—if I may say so—which has been passed by -these two distinguished officers.

There is one other point which was referred to in a general way by the First Lard in his opening. I hope I shall be in order if I refer to it. That is the question of staff. There is one thing which we have to learn as a result of the War. That is that in various stages in the operations of the War there was no sufficient co-operation between these various services. There is the classic example of that in the Dardanelles operations. I saw something of those operations. I saw things that happened. I hope, at any rate, we shall never have to face a similar situation in the future. I am firmly convinced we never shall do so if we have a real and proper thinking Department which is rather, if I may put it so, outside the Admiralty, which is a more complete liaison with the other great fighting Services. Great naval reductions have to be made. There is the whole question of naval policy to be decided. All questions must come under review. Would it not be wise in respect to all these questions which come under review to rope in the representatives of our great Dominions and of the fighting Services, and let them put their heads together and thrash out schemes of national defence, put them on a really sound basis, at any rate, if they are definitely deciding upon great arrangements which must be carried out. The principle has almost been admitted by the Admiralty this year, when it became necessary to advise our great Dominions in reference to their naval defence.

Lord Jellicoe was selected to go around the world. He went in a capital ship, in a most expensive ship. I do not know what the trip must have cost. It must have cost a considerable amount in coal alone. Lord Jellicoe went to advise our great Dominions on questions of naval defence. He apparently drew up a Report on his visit to Australia. I have addressed several questions to the Admiralty in relation to that Report. So far I have not been able to get very much of an answer, because, I dare say, an answer could not be given owing to the necessarily insufficient consideration so far given to the matter. At the same time the Report did say that Australia or ourselves should provide a squadron of eight battleships and eight battle-cruisers for service on the Pacific station. I should like to know what these sixteen ships are intended for If they are intended to fight the two greatest Powers in the Pacific the number is insufficient. If they are not intended so to fight, what other Powers are they meant to provide against? I suggest that this is only one instance where we could have with advantage a proper thinking Department, representative of all the great Dominions and the great Services here at home, centralised in at the heart of the Empire, to think out these great problems and co-ordinate the work of dealing with them.

The Air Services are what I would next deal with. I feel some considerable difficulty in alluding to this matter at all, but I should like to say this much, that I do know there is a great deal of anxiety about it on the part of the Navy. I have had the opportunity of getting to know something about the matter, and it has been put to me that it is obviously very difficult for the Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet to have to communicate at one and the same time with both the Admiralty and the Air Ministry upon various subjects connected, say, with the aviation services of the Atlantic Fleet. I suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that this is rather a difficult situation, and one which does not entirely make for efficiency. Vote 1 is concerned with the pay and wages of officers and seamen, boys, coastguards, and so on. In regard to the question of officers, I really would like to draw attention of the right hon. Gentleman to the position that exists to-day. I have here some figures which compare the pay of the Naval officer and the Army officer. Just after the second Vote on Account was taken this year the new scale for Naval officers was brought. up, and the Vote on Account for the Army officers, and I was astonished that the Army scale, instead of being the same as the Navy or equivalent to it, was astonishingly higher. I will give two instances. A lieutenant of under four years' seniority in the Navy gets £310. His corresponding rank in the Army is a captain with £429.

Mr. LONG

That is really a most misleading comparison, because the Noble Lord has omitted to mention that the basis in the case of the Navy is age and in the case of the Army it is rank. He is comparing a lientenant with four years' service with a captain in the Army, and he knows quite well the difference in age. It is quite a different question. If you consider age and fitness, the standard is a great deal higher in the Navy.

Viscount CURZON

I am afraid I must entirely differ from the right hon. Gentle-man's reply. A lieutenant of six years' seniority may find himself officer of the watch in a battleship, and he has a responsibility which almost attaches to a brigade commander in the Army. An officer with six years' seniority may find himself officer of the watch on a ship costing £6,000,000, and his equivalent is captain in the Army with fifteen years' seniority, and the latter gets £119 more than the officer in the Navy. Opinion in the Navy is that the scales of pay should be fixed according to responsibility and rank, rather than paying all this great deference to age. I do not think the Navy under- stands why age should have been taken as the basis. Take a commander in the Navy, who receives £730; he is an officer of nearly thirty years of age. The equivalent position in the Army is that of lieutenant-colonel, and his annual pay is £867, in addition to which he gets a married officer's allowance of That brings the total up to £1,022, and therefore he gets £292 more than an officer holding an equivalent position in the Navy. That is not understood in the Navy, and I hope the right hon. Gentle-man will bear that in mind when he replies.

This Vote also refers to the Women's Royal Naval Service. I put a question to-day on this subject. We were told on the last occasion when the second Vote of Credit was produced that the Women's Royal Naval Service was going to be demobilised completely by 31st October. The answer I got to-day on this subject was that 632 ratings had been re-entered on a civilian basis, sixty-eight had been discharged, and the number still serving is 564. I think it was hardly fair to tell the House that the Women's Royal Naval Service was going to be demobilised on 31st October if it is a fact that we still have 564 women who belong to it still discharging those duties under another name. This fact has become widely known on the lower deck, and has aroused a great deal of unrest and ill-feeling, because the men feel that ex-Service men are being kept out of the ships, and, therefore, I hope when the right hon. Gentleman replies he will address himself to this question, and explain why the undertaking which he gave that they would be demobilised by 31st October has not been carried out.

I would like to refer to one or two remarks which were made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Molton (Mr. Lambert). With regard to the building of the "Hood," the right hon. Gentleman took great exception to the capital cost of this ship. I think we are in danger of losing our perspective in these matters. We must remember that money to-day does not buy what it did before the War, and to get a proper idea of the value of the "Hood," you ought to subtract 50 per cent, from it to get the value in pre-war figures. I know it is an immense sum, but still it gives you a better idea of what the ship actually costs, A great many people have questioned the wisdom of the Admiralty going in for the construction of such an enormous fighting machine, but I think, when the lessons of the War are studied, they will show that the menace of the submarine may very easily be exaggerated. During the War the Grand Fleet was able to move about the North Sea with comparative freedom, and was seldom subjected to attacks by submarines. Only on two occasions do I remember the Fleet, and I was in it for some considerable period, being in any way in contact with enemy submarines. With the progress of invention and the high speed of our ships and destroyers they have great protection. Therefore the menace to a big ship is not so great as many people seem to think.

Another point I wish to mention is with regard to the naval history of the War. I hope we shall really have an authentic account of all the various naval actions which took place during the War. I gather that such an account is in course of compilation, and I hope it will give the information in detail, and include all the incidents of the War, that it will not hush up things or whitewash people, and that it will be a comprehensive and accurate account of everything that took place. Such a history would be of the greatest value, and would allay all future criticisms as to the movements which took place. I will conclude by asking the First Lord to go into this question of naval officers' pay. I know the opinion in the Navy about it, and I know it is an opinion which does not make for the good of the Service, but it makes for unrest, and I hate to see that in the Navy. I hope the First Lord will satisfy the naval officers on this point in the course of his reply.

Lieut.-Commander HILTON YOUNG

I listened with admiration to the eloquence of the First Lord of the Admiralty, but I listened also without conviction even through the most eloquent passages. I felt a sense of disappointment and a sense of the emptiness of the discussion in being left to the extent we were left without any more frank avowal as to the general tendency of the naval policy of the country. I urge most strongly that it is both possible and desirable that at the present time we should have a more uniform and intelligible lead in this matter than we have had. Nobody is so foolish as to expect from the Admiralty or the First Lord a full detailed programme or a scientific forecast as to what the future of the Navy is to be, but on the other hand I think it is possible at the present time that we might be given a finger post pointing out the general direction of the course of our path for the future.

Before the War we always knew what the policy was because we had the power standard. Let me put it in this way: Is our naval policy of the future to be governed by a power standard, and if so, by how many powers? [An HON. MEMBER: "And which?"] I should not think of asking which? I contend now that it is possible to give us something in the way of information showing the general direction of naval policy though not a specialised programme. I contend also that that is most desirable because you cannot defend expenditure for which you cannot account. At the present time there is a vigorous and violent agitation throughout the country on behalf of economy, and it is beginning, as anybody can see who watches the course of opinion among the people, to point itself most dangerously towards the Navy. We are hearing a growing clamour for a cutting down of the expenditure of the Navy, and why? It is because people are not told for what purpose money is being spent in the general direction of naval policy. You cannot defend expenditure which you cannot fully explain the purpose of to the people. I am one of those who think that nothing is more vitally important than that there should be an adequate and full maintenance of the naval defences of the country, and I view with apprehension a condition in which the expenditure for this purpose is left open to attack owing to the country being left in ignorance as to the general course of our naval policy.

Let me pass from those general consideration to a matter which some of us who have had experience in the Navy have come to regard as a matter of vital importance. I may say I listened with a sense of disappointment to the words of the First Lord of the Admiralty as to the programme for the establishment of a scientific centre in London. Certainly we have come to think that if there is anything amiss in the general organisation, training, and intellectual life of the Navy it is owing to the lack of a fully-equipped and active central scientific establishment. No experience is more curious than that of the newcomer into the Navy who is in search of such an establishment and finds none. I thought, in early days, it might be somewhere at Devonport, or Plymouth, or Chatham, but in the long run I failed to discover it. During the War the need of it was emphasised, because here and there, in sheds and railway trucks, this work had to be carried on by ardent patriotic Inca of science brought in from the outside, assisted later on by highly accomplished naval officers. But that was not at all satisfactory. There was no adequate supply of highly-trained naval officers in the more advanced branches, and the lack of them was very much felt at the beginning of the War, when the need for more scientific instruments was so marked. We had to fall back for that work on employés of private firms, and although officers from the Services, with a high spirit of patriotism, gave their aid, it was by no means a satisfactory state of affairs. Scientific research is the very heart of the modern Navy, and one cannot. emphasise too strongly the urgent importance that the Navy should be provided with an adequate central scientific establishment. I would like to know what is the Committee to which the First Lord referred. Is it an advisory Committee?

Mr. LONG

What Committee?

Lieut.-Commander YOUNG

The Committee to advise on scientific subjects.

Mr. LONG

It is a Committee appointed by the Lord President of the Council to examine what work is being done for scientific invention, both for the Admiralty and for his own Department, and to see whether it is done efficiently and in the right direction, and that there is no overlapping between the Science Department and our own Scientific Department.

Lieut.-Commander YOUNG

Then I fear it is rather less in the direction than some of us were hoping; it is not to consider the centralised development of these matters.

Mr. LONG

I thought I had made it clear that it is to examine into our existing arrangements, which is one of the things that is wanted. At present they are distributed in different places, and we want them concentrated. We want that the work done for the Navy, either in the way of scientific development or research, shall be work peculiar to the Navy. We do not want it done elsewhere. We do not want the two Departments both doing the same work.

Lieut. - Commander YOUNG

I am obliged to the right hon. Gentleman for making perfectly clear what is the scope and intention of the inquiry which, I venture to suggest, is certainly in the right direction. I trust the labours of the Committee will come to a speedy and successful conclusion.

Major-General Sir J. DAVIDSON

Instructive as the Debate has proved, it seems to me there is a proper muddle between the Air Force on the one side and the War Office and the Admiralty on the other, and I do not see any way out of it with our present methods. I was very glad to hear the right hon. Gentleman say a few minutes ago that he advocated the formation of a Joint General Staff. I think that would remedy much of what we complain if only he has the courage to press for it. I hunted through the Estimate papers to see if I could get any idea as to the line of the new naval policy. I could find none at all. To be complete, to my mind, naval policy must be in close relation to land and air policy. They are all bound up in the greater policy of defence. The only indication in the papers which have been circulated were the references to Lord Jellicoe's visit to the Dominions, which, to my mind, is an extremely expensive, inadequate, and inefficient plan of carrying out any method of co-ordination. I see that a considerable sum is to be expended on the Air Service. But why confine that expenditure to the Air Force? There are a few lines in the papers on the development of the naval staff, but I should have been glad to have seen pages on that particular subject.

I am of opinion that our first duty is to ascertain what our Imperial responsibilities are, and then to see that we get the most economical and efficient manner of meeting those responsibilities. At the, present moment I cannot see that we have any machinery for doing that. Everybody in this House during the last few months has been saying that it is necessary to cut our expenditure down within the limits of our revenue, and that nothing will stabilise—prices, wages, or the housing problem—until that is done. I do not see, however, how you are going to do it in a satisfactory way unless you regulate the expenditure of the three great spending Departments—the Admiralty, the War Office, and the Air Ministry. Nothing will be satisfactory until those are regulated in a sane, co-ordinated manner as a whole. Naval policy is only part of the policy of defence, and the Admiralty must take this into account. At the present moment it seems to me we are carrying on in all three Departments in exactly the same slipshod way as before the War, a way which led to the inevitable consequences in the Dardanelles. In these newer times we want new machinery, and it will soon be too late to put it up. Everything is in the melting-pot just now, and if we are to have new machinery let us have it without a moment's delay.

Everybody must recognise that our responsibilities just now are extremely great. Owing to the mandatory powers conferred upon us, our Empire is greater than ever, consequently there is danger at every point. There is a big imperial problem which has to be dealt not by the Navy alone, but also by the Army and the Air Force. We have to defend our trade routes and our coaling stations, and that is a duty not only for the Navy but also for the Army. The questions of the development of the services in the air, on and under the sea, and on the land are all combined, and the steps taken need to be, carefully controlled and directed Looking at it from another point of view, its Imperial aspect, it is essential that our Imperial bonds should be strengthened. We know that they may be strengthened either by patriotic or by sordid means, but defence bonds are what are needed. What we want is to improve the links in our defensive system, and if we have antiquated and slipshod methods for this it will be most reprehensible after our experiences in the Great War. We ought to take immediate advantage of those experiences to see that our defensive links everywhere are strengthened in every possible way.

I should like to point out to the right hon. Gentleman that the only satisfactory method of doing this does not depend on him alone. I know it is a question which affects the Admiralty to a very great degree, but it is a question for a Joint Imperial General Staff. It is, in fact, the normal development of the Esher Committee, and I would like to read out to hon. Members what Lord Esher writes on this point: I can assure you there is no conflict between this conception and that upon which the Esher committee based its policy in 1904. It is a perfectly simple evolution of a principle then laid down, which has worked with remarkable success in the War, but in the light of that War's experience requires to be further developed. The exception there referred to is the conception of a Joint Imperial General Staff as stated in my Resolution passed unanimously by the Army Committee. That is the idea with which Lord Esher originally started. It is clearly a development of the Committee of Imperial Defence. This committee never did function in any satisfactory way before the War, because it had not the chief military, naval and air experts always upon it. There is nothing new about this Joint Imperial General Staff. The idea was originated in 1907 at the Imperial Conference, and this is the normal and natural development. There has been some misconceptions about the committee, and I should like to point out what those misconceptions are. There was the misconception that the Committee of Imperial Defence was sufficient. It is not sufficient in any sort of way unless it has experts as permanent members. Secondly, it was suggested that it entailed a Defence Ministry. But it did nothing of the kind. The Joint Imperial General Staff can be established without establishing a Defence Ministry. There is also the idea that the Navy will be swamped. That is absurd, because the Navy will be adequately represented on it and will form an important part of it. I therefore appeal to the right hon. Gentleman to use his influence in pressing for this Joint Imperial General Staff to be formed at the earliest possible moment. I do not understand the situation at present. I believe the Secretary of War is in favour of some such staff, and we have had it from the First Lord of the Admiralty that he himself is in favour of it, The Air Minister resigned owing to the unsatisfactory conditions as regards the Air Ministry. Who then is it that is against it? It is some unseen force. Is it the Prime Minister? Is it the Labour party? I do not know, but I do trust that the difficulty will be got over as early as possible. Before the War our defensive task was clear. It was perfectly simple and clear to those who chose to use their eyes. But that task is not clear now. Each Service will tend to work in divergent directions, and I appeal for unity of thought between the three Services in carrying out a clearly defined policy.

7.0 P.M.

Sir D. MACLEAN

I do not propose to detain the Committee more than a few minutes, but I want to take this occasion now that the Navy Estimates are before us to repeat once again the expression as far as I am able of the deep appreciation of those who sit in this House of the work of the Royal Navy and of the loyal manner in which it was carried out. These words, I know, come nowhere near the real meed of praise these men should receive. There is just one particular in the statement of the First Lord to which I want to draw attention, and it is the line "killed in action 22,207, wounded 4,877." Those figures tell their own tale. Thor proportion of killed to wounded discloses the risks which every man fully knew when he took his great and noble part in the War which has just been concluded. I must confess some disappointment at the statement of my right hon. Friend in so far as it lacks any disclosure of anything approaching a definite policy on the part of His Majesty's Government in relation to the future and the duty of the Navy in its world-wide task. The War has been over now about thirteen months, and, while making every allowance for the difference in cost—I think my right hon. Friend was well within the limit, and in fact almost too modest, when he said that the cost was twice as much; probably it will be considerably more than twice—and while making every deduction which my right hon. Friend has indicated in his speech and in his statement, we are still spending many millions more than this country was spending at the outbreak of the War, when our Navy was never in the whole of its history at greater strength or in a state of greater preparedness for whatever might befall the nation. At that moment we had Germany and all her allies confronting us. What is the position to-day? Germany has gone as a naval and, indeed, substantially as a military power. Austria has disappeared. Russia is in a state of internal chaos, and cannot for years to come produce anything approaching an effective Navy. A very powerful and important part of her Navy is at the bottom of the sea. What have we to fear from Turkey from the military point of view?

Captain ORMSBY - GORE

Only the Navy can keep the Straits open.

Sir D. MACLEAN

I am quite sure that nay hon. and gallant Friend gives me credit for wanting the British Navy to be kept in being, and to be kept in effective being. That is the very basis of my position, as my right hon. Friend opposite knows. I have never let go of that. Does France threaten us? Does Italy threaten us? Do the United States threaten us? Where in the whole wide range of the world is there anyone who is a serious threat to us from a naval point of view? There is no one. That being the case beyond any real doubt, I invite the attention of the Committee to one of the tables which gives the revision of the shipbuilding programme, and especially to the two last columns setting out the ships completed on 31st October this year, and the ships still to be completed. Taking those completed on 31st October and those still to be completed, there are seventeen light Cruisers, one battle cruiser, seven flotilla leaders, fifty-seven destroyers, forty submarines, two aircraft carriers, twenty-five patrol gunboats, forty-four trawlers, thirty-three drifters, and twenty-eight boom defence vessels—I should like to know what is the necessity for still building boom defence vessels, when thirty-one were completed at the end of October—fifty-six tugs, and seven mooring vessels. I have left out one or two figures which bring up the total to 394 vessels of one kind and another completed on 31st October, and still to be completed. What is the case for them? No doubt my right hon. Friend will give some reply. I am sure he will admit that it is a proper question to ask in view of the complete disappearance for some years to come of any serious naval opposition in the world. I am, of course, excluding the possibility of a contest with America, as I think I am entitled to do. It is a serious question, and I must press upon my right hon. Friend to state, if he can in reply, or some time or other, what is the policy which His Majesty's Government are going to enunciate in view of the position which I have stated. Mr. Gladstone often reminded the country and this House that the real source of economy in the end could only be found by dealing with very close care with our defensive forces. We know that the Army, the Navy, and Air Forces constitute and must constitute—they certainly did in the past, though we hope that the position may be different in the future—the main sources or causes of our great national expenditure, and these are the occasions upon which the House, if it really means economy, should exercise the greatest watchfulness and care over the Estimates which are laid before it by the executive representing the Government for the time being.

Of course, it is quite common form to say that we regret the absence of a large number of Members from the House when these important questions are being discussed. When I was acting as your junior in the Chair, it was always a marked feature—except when some personal question arose, and then, of course, the House was full—when we were dealing with large questions of policy. My right hon. Friend, whose Parliamentary experience has been very long and honourable, will agree with me that policy is framed in Committee of Supply. Our business is to check the Estimates and, as far as possible, get to know from the Government what is their policy, comment upon it, and, if we can, shape it according to the views of the majority of the Committee or the House. It is the most important function of Parliament. So far as my experience qualifies me to express an opinion. I say deliberately that the care and control of the administration of the Government is more important than the legislative side of our work. We have all the cries of party and prejudice affecting most matters of legislation. Administration is the thing, and here, of course, we have the usual appearance of the House of Commons when its most important function is to be discharged. It happens under every Government. I do not blame this Government any more than another. I wonder whether it is possible, in view of the seriousness of the situation, to awaken the House to its real function of criticising with all needed severity but with justice the methods of the expenditure of the nation's revenue!

I want to make one suggestion to my right hon. Friend on this method of checking expenditure. I have not been able to give as much attention to this very interesting and lucid Memorandum with which Members have been favoured as I should have liked, but it shows the enormous figures which have been expended on the Navy since 1915 down to 1919, and it goes on to say that even these enormous figures do not indicate fully the steep curve at the height of which we stood in November, 1918. The weekly rate of expenditure on the Navy at the time of the Armistice was actually about £6,750,000, or at the rate of more than £350,000,000 a year. We all agree that it is our duty to watch these Estimates and this expenditure, and, in order to give the House an opportunity of seeing how far this reduction in expenditure to which my right hon. Friend has pledged himself is progressing, I suggest that there should be furnished to the House of Commons at least once a month a statement showing what is the average weekly expenditure on the Navy until such time as the new Estimates are made and we have an opportunity of knowing what is the future policy of the Government in regard to the Navy. That is a practical suggestion.

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the ADMIRALTY (Dr. macnamara)

I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will agree, on a moment's consideration, that in some particular months for which we might have to submit that statement we should be liquidating liabilities incurred previously, so that that month's expenditure might really have no relation to the maintenance charged for.

Sir D. MACLEAN

That would not satisfy a business man who wanted to know how a concern in which he was deeply interested was going on in regard to reducing expenditure.

Dr. MACNAMARA

That is what the right lion. Gentleman asked for.

Sir D. MACLEAN

I know. I mean that the reply of my right hon. Friend would not satisfy a business man, because in any particular week or month in which that occurred the fact might be stated. It is perfectly easy to say that in this or that particular week or month a certain thing has been done, which to some extent takes away from the accuracy of the figures which might have been furnished on a previous occasion, or which it was hoped would be furnished on a future occasion. It is the general tendency which the House ought to watch and to be informed of. Notwithstanding what my right hon. Friend has said. I would again urge him to consider it, and see whether it is practical. I am sure that an account could be rendered in that way, with a reservation indicating the actual liability. Such a return would enable those Members of the House who are interested to check it as far as they can, and I am certain that it would strengthen the hands of my right hon. Friend in keeping a guard over his Department.

Mr. WILKIE

In the first place. I should like to say how pleased I was to hear the statement of the First Lord in praise of the men of the Navy. After all, it is the men behind the guns who matter. My right hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary has told us more than once that we cannot pay in money What those men have done for us. To-day the discussion has been almost wholly from representatives of the quarter-deck. I should like to take it clown to the lower deck and the shipyard on the question of general policy. Members of the Government have for some considerable time-been urging upon the workers the necessity for increased production, but, surely, by paying off men from their own establishments they are not securing increased production. The unemployment benefit has just been ended, arousing strong resentment in a great many people. The Government have more than once promised to make an effort to provide employment for the workers, and thereby increase production. Of course, we may be told that they are endeavouring to reduce expenditure, but I think a better method would have been, instead of paying unemployment benefit, to take measures to provide employment, and I want to show how that could be done in their own dockyards. I have always thought that we needed an efficient Navy—not necessarily a larger Navy afloat, but an efficient one—and, apparently, from the present trend of the world, we require that just as much as ever. If some vessels are built and not utilised as they might be, that, nevertheless, is an insurance of the life of the nation. On the 20th May last I asked a question of the First Lord of the Admiralty as to the number of auxiliary vessels, such as colliers, oil tankers, troopships, store vessels, and also trawlers and drifters used as mine-sweepers and patrol boats, which were required to attend on the wants of the ships of the Navy during the War. The reply was as follows: At the date of the Armistice, 11th November, 1918, the number of the principal auxiliary Vessels which attended on the wants of the ships of the Navy was 4,274. No troopships attended regularly on the Navy, but occasionally parties of naval ratings were conveyed to, naval bases in troopships. Here are 4,274 auxiliary ships. Some members of the Government tell us that they do not want to compete with private enterprise. Here at their hand are all the vessels necessary for the Navy, and they could build them, as they build their warships, in the dockyards of the country. They could do that without coming into conflict with the private builder. On the same date I asked another question of the Prime Minister, as follows: Whether, in view of the number of vessels other than warships, required to attend on the ships of the Navy during the War, and the apparent necessity for the safety of the country to still maintain an efficient fleet, and in view of the sums expended on the national shipyards and the views of the trade union representatives of the National. Industrial Conference of the 27th February last in favour of the development of national resources under publicownership, he will consider the advisability of the Government retaining these yards for the purpose at least of constructing these auxiliary vessels required, and which need not compete with the ordinary yards, seeing that in the case of trawlers and drifters in ordinary times they could be utilised to reap the harvest of the seas and the fish so caught used to supply the needs of the men of the Navy and Army? That, again, would not involve any conflict with private enterprise. The reply that I received from the Leader of the House was as follows: All the points raised in the question were carefully considered by the Government, and we are not prepared to re-open the question. I understand that there have been several deputations from dockyards where the men are being paid off. I am not in favour of useless expenditure, but I do say that this expenditure will give us a return, whereas from the unemployment benefit we got no return whatever. We have been told that the outside demand is pretty well supplied for the time being, and therefore we view with dismay the discharge of these men from our dockyards in the South of England. A great many of them are getting on in years, and cannot leave their homes and their families and go to other places where employment might be found for them. I understand, from a reply which the right hon. Gentleman made to a question, that those discharges are now being suspended, and that other work is being speeded up. To my mind, and to the mind of the workers, that is a much better way of meeting the present difficulty than merely paying a dole. That is a point which I Should like to press upon the Admiralty. We have heard a great deal about general policy, but this is just as valuable to the nation as the general policy as to whether we shall have airships, submarines, or surface ships. We have no doubt that the experts of the Admiralty will see all that properly carried out.

The other day I asked the Secretary to the Admiralty whether the Fair-Wages Resolution is applicable to Government Departments, and, if so, whether it is the intention of the Admiralty to apply it to the Royal dockyards by differentiating between wages paid on new and repair work, as is done by private employers? His answer was: The Resolution referred to is still applicable. As regards the second part of the question, I would remind my hon. Friend that the question of wages of mechanics in His Majesty's dockyards has recently been the subject of arbitration, on the application of the various societies, and that the claimants, in putting their cases, both to the Admiralty and to the Court of Arbitration, gave due prominence to the differences between the rates for repair work and for new work commonly obtaining for shipyard trades in commercial ports. The advance of 2s.per week awarded by the Court of Arbitration applies equally to men on new work and on repair work, and leaves the rates equal, as they always have been, in His Majesty's dockyards. The repair rate on the Tyne is £4 7s. 6d. per week, on the Mersey £4 12s., on the Thames £4 18s., and on the Clyde much about the same as on the Tyne. The dockyard repair rate is only £4 3s. 9d. Our members, after all these years of free education, can read this and digest it, and you can quite understand that there is considerable dissatisfaction. Further, in His Majesty's dockyards you have heard a lot about oil being used instead of coal. There have been deputations about that dirty and dangerous work, We have had a lot of men killed by explosions in the tanks. All the outside firms pay extra money. We are not raising this because we are antagonistic to the Government dockyards, but the men's clothes get dirty every time they go to the tanks, and ought to be burnt, and it is not safe to go near a fire. The right hon. Gentleman is always ready to meet us when we approach him. He has always been courteous. We did not get the substance of our demands, but it is something to have been met and to have them fairly considered.

Another point I should like to raise is with regard to the dockyard workers' pensions. A great many of them who were on pension came back at the call of the Admiralty and went into the yard and started work when there was so much re- quired. We ourselves, at considerable expense, sent two or three thousand of our members from the private yards to help the Admiralty at the beginning of the War, and these men have a grievance in so far as their pensions were stopped, and when they were coming out the prewar rate was paid to them for their pensions and not the regular rate that they had been receiving, and they thought, having done so much for the country, that they ought to have received better treatment from the Admiralty, who admitted the valuable service they had rendered. I urge the right hon. Gentleman further, to consider these points with a view of carrying out Ins promise to make the Admiralty a model employer.

Major Sir B. FALLE

A few weeks ago I put a question to the Financial Secretary as to the relative pay of the different ranks in the Army and in the Navy. I gave him certain figures and he said he was of opinion that they were misleading. He forwarded me four tables which explained very fully the difference in the pay of the two services I have been through them a good many times and they are very complicated. In urging the claims of the Navy I in no way wish to assert that the Army should be less well paid than it is, but the Navy pay should be placed at least on the same level as the Army pay. It is a dirty bird that fouls its own nest, and, as I served in the Army, it would very ill-become me to endeavour to run down the pay of the force. The statement made by my Noble Friend opposite is absolutely accurate. Note B, on the pay of the ranks, gives rather an amusing instance. It is the question of the Army ration. The Army ration is 2s. 1d.daily. The Navy victualling allowance is only is. 2½d. When the Admiralty is asked to explain that difference a private secretary or someone gets out the answer that the reason for the difference between the 2s. 1d. and the 1s. 2½d. is that the naval officer's allowance is for bread and meat only at Government prices and he can purchase many other commodities, and the two allowances are therefore considered as practically equal. I have gone into that, and the great difference is that the Navy officer can buy tea and soft sugar, and some people say even tinned rabbit, for his deficiency of 10½d. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and I find that the men's savings are almost invariably taken in cash rather than in kind, and that is a complete answer to the statement that the two allowances are practically equal. They are in no way equal.

One advantage that the married Army officer gets when his family is prevented from living with him is that, in addition to being provided with rations, food, lodging and light, he receives, if he is a lieutenant, £116, and if he is a captain, a major, or a lieutenant-colonel, £155, and this applies to all officers except those under thirty years of age and married after April of this year. This allowance is precisely what the naval officers asked for and which the Horsley Commission favourably commented on, namely, a married quarter's allowance to assist them in keeping up the two establishments which about 98 per cent, of the naval officers have to keep up. The Treasury refused the request, but promptly granted it to the Army officers. There must be some reason why they did that. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will explain why one man should get £155 a year for married quarters allowance more than his brother in the Navy. Unless the Admiralty promises a married quarters allowance, or tells us that the children's allowance is to be continued after this year, which is mere justice, the case of the Army officer versus the naval officer is fully proved. There is very little doubt that the Navy, in face of this pay sheet, and in face of what we have known during the War, has not been as well treated as the Army. I need not refer to the case of the men pensioners, who for years did not get their pensions paid, and, I believe, but for the very friendly interference of my right hon. Friend, we should not have that yet. No naval officer got his pension and his pay, but every Army officer did. Every single pensioned Army officer received his full pension pay and allowances, and not a single naval officer that I have been able to discover did anything of the kind. On the contrary, he was given 25 per cent. bonus, and that is very inferior to the proper pension. This affected most seriously all those gentlemen who had risen from the ranks and had not large private means.

It is the more wrong when we consider what we owe to the Navy. Where we should have been without that Navy is a question which no man would care to answer. If we had had the German coast and the German Navy, and the Germans had had our coast and our Navy, where would they be now? Why, where they are—on the mud in Scapa Flow. We owe everything to those officers and men who protected us so gallantly and so wonderfully. It is the custom now to say we were prepared. We were not, but our Navy put up a marvellous fight and saved us. There would be no need for Housing Bills, Pensions Bill, or Home Rule if we had not had our Navy—for we should have lost all. It becomes us to do the most we possibly can for those officers and men who stood between us and absolute destruction, but instead of that we did not pay them their pensions, and we are not going to pay them their pensions. And now when it is a question of pay you are going to put them on a scale of pay which is distinctly inferior to the Army. I do not know that questions of pay entirely move men to join the Navy and the Army, but it must have a very considerable influence on many, and it means that instead of having, as we always have had, a majority of the best men in the Navy, we shall get all those to go into the Army, and the Navy must suffer. I will not say that if we had had that before the War we should not be where we are, but I do not think we should be where we are if we had not had the very best this nation could give in the Navy. The hon. Member for South Molton (Mr. Lambert) touched upon the question of the dockyards, and said he was afraid that when he had finished he would not have a single friend among the dockyard members. Such is not the case. I am entirely with him, and I was very pleased to hear my right hon. Friend say that in future all the naval work would be done in the Royal Dockyards. That agrees with a little plan of my own. My idea has been that the whole of the Navy work of the Empire should be concentrated in one port, and, of course, that port should be Portsmouth. Chatham is provided for; by its situation it could be made a commercial port. Plymouth is in very much the same position. It is by nature a great port of call for both the American and West Indian trade. It could be easily made a great commercial shipyard. It has behind it a splendid hinterland. Portsmouth, which is by nature a wonderful port, and is the premier naval port of the Empire, has on its right hand the great commercial port of Southampton, and it is practically impossible for Portsmouth to compete as a commercial port, because it would be crushed by the vested interests of Southampton. It has no hinterland, but it is a splendid port, and it is a ques- tion of which course is best—three dockyards, all starved for want of naval work, or one naval dockyard doing all naval work and two Royal dockyards doing commercial work. And the one dockyard for the naval work is Portsmouth, which is by nature intended to be a great naval port, and should build all the Navy ships. I would not in any way hurt or damage the other ports. I would not take away a- single naval ship from them without supplying them ton for ton with commercial ships. I believe that could be done, and is going to be clone at Chatham, and therefore it only remains to make such arrangements that there will be sufficient work for one Royal dockyard. This arrangement would be an immense advantage to the Royal Marines, who would be concentrated at Portsmouth, and would not be scattered about in all the other naval dockyards of the country.

My right hon. Friend the First Lord told us that he had every reason to hope that Lord Colwyn's suggestions would bear fruit. I was very glad to bear that, because, without being pessimistic, I had not that hope. There was one single sentence in the right hon. Gentleman's speech which pleased me more than any other. He was dealing with the men of the dockyards who are now suffering. Many men are now out of work in the dockyard ports, and unless something is done there will be many more men out. There is no work for them, and especially is this the case at Portsmouth, where there is no commercial work of any sort. The right hon. Gentleman said: It would be a disgraceful act of ingratitude to dismiss these men if work can possibly be found for them. I trust my right hon. Friend will bear these words in mind and that full effect will be given to them.

Captain HAMILTON BENN

I would like to express my great pleasure in hearing the remarks of the First Lord with regard to the operations in the Baltic and the work of the mine sweepers. I wish he had expressed himself much more clearly on the- question of policy. It is absolutely essential that some expression of policy should be made in the near future, and it does not seem to me that it is at all impossible to make a statement which would allay the unrest which exists in the Navy at the present time. There is great anxiety among both officers and men with regard to the future. The hon. and gal- lant Member for Norwich (Lieut.-Commander Hilton Young) expressed very well the position, in saying that the Admiralty and the Government should be able to make up their minds as to what standard it is proposed to work upon in the future. The necessity for a statement is all the greater when such authorities as Lord Fisher and Admiral Sir Percy Scott have so freely expressed their views regarding the capital ship. We have also heard speeches or seen references in the papers very much on the lines of the hon. Member for Peebles (Sir D. Maclean) where they begin again to talk about economy, economy, economy in regard to the naval and military forces of this country. If economy had not been the order of the day so frequently in this country the national debt would not have been what it is now. It is the constant cutting down of the essential military forces of the Crown which has at various times led us into war, and never more than in connection with the last great war.

It would also do something to satisfy the unrest in the fleet if a statement could be made as to the position of the men of the fleet in regard to operations in the Baltic. Are they to get war gratuity for these services or a bonus of 25 per cent. on their pay, such as was given to the Army of Occupation? I have always noticed in regard to Britishers that they are quite content to serve under trying circumstances and for small pay if they think that they are getting "fair do's." That is a familiar naval expression. It is when they know that somebody else is being given better treatment than they are that they feel unrest and are inclined to grouse. On the question of pay I cannot accept the First Lord's view as regards officers. It seems to me quite an anomaly that men of equal rank—for they are admitted to be of equal rank—in the two Services should not be paid a proportionate wage. It seems to me that the great difference between the Army and the Navy is that in the Army the officer gets a marriage allowance of £155. The other advantages are not great. As the hon. Member for Portsmouth (Sir B. Falle) pointed out, it is very curious that during the recent War the retired Army officers who were recalled got their full pension and pay, while naval officers did not get it. I always thought that the Navy was the senior Service, and I do not understand why representatives of the senior Service should not get the full pay that is given to those of the junior Service. The question of age does not bear upon the matter, because naval officers go into the Service at a much younger age than Army officers. They certainly have a much more uncomfortable life. They are separated from their families for years at a time, and no one can say that life on board ship is comparable to life in the Army, or that they have the same amenities enjoyed by officers in the Army.

8.0 P.M.

I should like to deal with the question of aircraft, but I am afraid of incurring reproof from the Deputy-Speaker. It is rather difficult when we have items in the Estimate which apply to aircraft that we should be debarred from speaking on any matter of policy in regard to them. My view, and I am sure it is the view which naval officers hold, is that the aerial arm has been as much a part of the Navy as the submarine, that there is a portion of the Air Service as regards the Navy which is analogous to the submarine service, and that it should be manned by men with naval experience, who would do their time in the air work, and when they are too old to fly would revert to the Navy in the same manner that the submarine officers revert to the Service ship. These men would be of inestimable value to the Service, having had air training and experience in flying. There is another view of the subject, and that is that the Admiralty have produced the submarine service, a child of their own, and encouraged it in every way, and it has benefited by the traditions of the naval service. In a similar way, if the Navy were responsible for their particular section of the Air Service, that section would have the naval training and the naval experience which is necessary for sea warfare. I do not want it to be understood that I am suggesting the abolition of the Air Ministry, or any reduction or supplanting of the independent Air Service. That has been laid down as a policy of this House, and is not one which is open to question. I do not think that anybody either in the Army or the Navy would suggest that there should not bean independent Air Service. It is only that there arc certain branches of the Service which, in my opinion, should be manned by naval men. The War has disclosed great possibilities in the development of under-water and air attack, and therefore it seems to me that the Admiralty cannot allow a weapon such as air- craft to pass entirely out of its hands. We are faced with the capital ship costing £6,500,000. No nation can afford to build a fleet on that basis, and therefore it behoves the Admiralty, in my opinion, to lose no time in. investigating in every direction what is the kind of ship that they have to build. That can only be done by exhaustive experimental work with aircraft and submarines, and to my mind the Admiralty should abandon building any new ships at the present time, and apply all the money to discovering what kind of ship they have to build. I was very much interested in what the First Lord said about experimental research, but it seemed to me that the sum named in the Estimates —namely, £200,000—is quite a paltry sum speaking in that. sense. The best guarantee of efficiency is experiment as regards technical appliances and methods. At the close of the War there remained a vast quantity of experimental material. Many new weapons came into use during the War, and at the end of the War there were many weapons in an experimental stage which required to be carried on. The development of the hydrophone, for instance, was not nearly completed at the end of the War, and it certainly is a method of defence against submarines which requires further development and experiment. The direction in which we have to apply our minds is as to what type of ship has to be built in the future, and I think, as I have said, that the whole of our thought and experiment should he devoted to that end.

Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE

The greater number of the speeches to which we have listened in this Debate, and more especially those of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen who sit on the benches opposite, have been directed against the speech of the First Lord, on the ground that he did not tell the Committee anything about the policy of the Navy. I put it to the Committee, How on earth could the First Lord come down here and tell us what the policy of the future is to be, when neither he nor anyone else can possibly know? We do not know what developments are going to take place in the Far East or in the Near East, and certainly we know very little about what is going to happen to the League of Nations. Only a few months ago the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Molton (Mr. Lambert) delivered an oration in this House, telling us that there was no need to build ships, that there was, in fact., no need for us to have a Navy of any kind. I am, perhaps, exaggerating a little, blithe said that there was no need, at any rate, for a large Navy, because the League of Nations was going to do everything that would be necessary, and to put an end, presumably, to war for ever. That speech gained for him an important headline in a paper called the "Daily Herald." I think that, after the speech we have listened to from him to-day, he may possibly get a similar reward to-morrow morning. Such a speech, from a right hon. Gentleman who has occupied such a prominent position as he has occupied in naval affairs, was most disappointing. He found fault with, and criticised, nearly everything that he could possibly criticise. He found fault with the budding of this ship and that, and asked why money was being spent here and why money was being spent there. In fact, in. a year or two, it we followed his advice, we should have no ships at all. It is no use whatever, either for the defence of the Empire or the development of the Empire, saying that you do not want a Navy, or that Your Navy is too small or too large, until you know exactly what is going to happen. I was glad to hear the First Lord say, at the end of his speech, that a strong and efficient Navy was, and always will be, necessary for this Empire. This Empire is scattered all over the globe. We have not alone to defend our own islands, but we have to defend India, the great Dominions overseas, and various other Colonies that are situated in between. We have not only to defend them, but to protect the. trade of the Empire; we have to guard the communications. Large as our Empire trade was before the War, we all, I am sure, hope that it will be immeasurably greater in the near future. Let us remember, too, that not only our trade, but the lives and freedom of' the British race, depend on the British Navy. Lord Beatty, speaking the other day at Bristol, told us very truly that the sea roads which join up the Empire are very long, and that a vast number of merchantmen is required to provide adequate service to link up the Dominions with the Mother Country; that the merchant navy is the chief source of Great Britain's prosperity, and that we have a greater stake on the seas than any other country, for the sea is the lifeblood of the nation. I think those words, coming from such an authority, are suffi- cient to warrant the First Lord in bringing forward such an Estimate as he has to-day, and assuring the country that he has sufficient ships on the stocks and building to secure the life-blood of this nation. I am sure that Lord Beatty, while he is First Sea Lord, will take care that the policy of the Admiralty is shaped in the direction of his speech, and as long as he does that I am sure he will be doing what every Member of the Committee would desire. I admit, that our Navy ought to be a real Imperial Navy. We should have a naval conference as soon as possible, at which our Dominions and India and the other parts of the Empire should be represented, and we should then form a truly Imperial naval policy, which before the War we never had. Before the War the Dominions, with the exception of Australia, only contributed a very small sum to the Navy. Australia had its own local navy, and it was said that Canada was going to have its own navy likewise; but when the War broke out Canada had not a ship, but she came forward and gave us a contribution. Contributions have been given by New Zealand and various colonies, and by India, but we want to know what they are going to do in the future, and whether there are to be local navies or an Imperial Navy financed by contributions from the Overseas Dominions. These questions have not been referred to to-day, but they are all important, and I have no doubt that the First Lord had them in mind, and more especially the question of a naval conference of the Empire, when he was framing his Estimates. No doubt he wants to Imo, as we all do, what the naval policy of the Dominions is going to be.

I have heard the question of the Pacific referred to in this Debate. Many years ago I was out in the Pacific, and in those days we saw very few of our naval ships there. We did see one or two German ships, but only very occasionally an English ship. The late Prime Minister of New Zealand said, just before the War, that he thought the Pacific would be the storm-centre of the future. Whether that be so or not, it is certain that the Panama Canal has made the Pacific Ocean, formerly a practically closed sea, a popular highway, and as time goes on it will be more popular still. The United States have awakened to the fact that the Panama Canal affects several of their important centres, and they are determined to protect the highways to those centres. They are accordingly building a sufficient Navy for that purpose. I hope and believe that it is the intention of the First Lord to see that our Navy is sufficient to protect the highways across the Pacific. We know that Lord Jellicoe has been to the Dominions, and some lion. Members seemed to think that the ship he went in was too large, and that the expenditure incurred was too great. To my mind I cannot agree with that. I think that the larger the ship and the more expensive the whole thing could be made the better for the Empire, because in that way you get better value for your money. What you want is to show the Empire the greatness of the British Navy, and that you consider that your admirals, and the people who represent you, ought to be treated in a proper manner. I think that the sending of Lord Jellicoe in a great battleship is in keeping with the policy of this country with regard to the Navy. I should have liked to hear something about Lord Jellicoe's Report. It must be coining home now, because extracts from it have appeared in Australia and Canada, and we know that he has said that there will be a certain number of ships necessary for Australia in addition to the local Navy which Australia is building. I understand that he said the same thing with regard to Canada, and that it was understood that Canada also is to build certain ships for the purpose of a local Navy. That will mean expenditure, and it will mean great ships. When we know what ships are coming from Australia, from Canada, and from New Zealand, the First Lord will be in a better position to say what is to be the future policy of this country. At ally rate, we must have a strong Navy. Lord Jellicoe, speaking in New Zealand, said: A strong Navy is the insurance of Empire. We must see that the premiums are regularly paid. It is no use looking to the League of Nations to pay those premiums yet. Lord Beatty said He hoped that the power and influence of the League of Nations will provide that large measure of insurance necessary and that in due time we shall be able to limit naval armaments to a size proportionate to our liabilities and interest. But, he added, we most remember that we are more dependent upon the sea and upon the protection of our great lines of communication with the outlying portions of the Empire than any other nation. Therefore we must expect to make greater provision than any other nation for our naval security. Speaking in the same strain at Colchester, Lord Wemyss said: It is our duty to see that the Navy is not brought down to such an extent that it cannot perform its duties. No one can foresee the future. Human ambition will always crop up, and it should never be forgotten that our very existence depends upon our Navy. There is another admiral who talks in the opposite direction. I refer to Lord Fisher. His policy is to "scrap the lot"—ships, personnel, and dockyards. What kind of a Navy should we have left if that policy were carried out? To my mind, it is economy gone mad. We have had one example in my time of Lord Fisher's economy and we do not want another. Where were the destroyers when war broke out, and who was responsible for the destroyers? Lord Fisher. Was there a dock at Rosyth when war broke out, and how many times from the opposite side of the House did the late Lord Beresford and others, including myself, urge upon the Government to get on with Rosyth, so that it might be ready in case of emergency? The emergency came and Rosyth was not ready. Whose fault was it? Lord Fisher's. Lord Fisher has asked— Whom are we going to fight? Is it the Chinese or Japanese Navy. Still more incredible is our fighting the United States. I think it is incredible that we should fight the United States. The late Mr. Roosevelt fully agreed with him on the principle of fighting, but what did Mr. Roosevelt say? Speaking at Springfield he said: When peace comes let us accept any reasonable proposal, whether calling for a League of Nations or for any other machinery which we can in good faith act upon, and which really offers some chance of lessening the number of future wars and of diminishing their area; hut let us never forget that any promise that such a league or any other piece of machinery will definitely do away with war is either sheer nonsense or rank hypocrisy. Lord Fisher goes on to say that the American and English Navies can dominate the world at any time. That seems contradictory of his previous statement. We want no domination, least of all a domination of the world. That was Germany's ambition. Lord Fisher was all wrong in his premises. We have no idea of fighting anyone. The British Navy was built for defence, not for attack. Right away from the days of Queen Elizabeth, when Howard and Drake de- feated the Spanish Armada, through all the perils and dangers of four centuries of time, the British Navy has proved itself, and ever will prove itself, the surest and most' effectual safeguard against world domination. I am a believer in the League of Nations like the Prime Minister—

The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN

We are not discussing foreign policy, but Estimates for the Navy.

Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE

I was commenting on naval policy as it has been, outlined, or rather criticised by right hon. Gentlemen opposite. One was rather led to believe from their remarks that the policy, of the Government should have been de-dared by the First Lord in his speech to-day. I was endeavouring to prove that he could not possibly have done so, because we do not yet know what the League-of Nations may turn out to be. However, I bow to your ruling. I congratulate the. First Lord on the statement he has made to-day with regard to Lord Colwyn's Committee. Had it been possible for him to do so, I should have preferred a longer statement. We all know of the great sympathy he has with the men who have been discharged from the yards, and we-all know his great desire to see that these yards are used to their utmost capacity. I am sure he will wish to see advantage taken of those yards for commercial purposes, just as much as he is anxious to see advantage taken of them for naval purposes. The object of the deputation, which included some Members of this House and myself, with the Mayors of the various boroughs, was to impress upon the Admiralty the necessity of using the Royal Dockyards for commercial purposes. I am glad to hear the First Lord say that Lord Colwyn was able to come to conclusions, and that though he did not say they were in actual accord with the views expressed by the members of the deputation, he did imply that there was a desire on the part of Lord Colwyn to see these dockyards used for commercial as well as for naval purposes. If that is arranged, it will prevent a great number of men from being discharged, and we may take it that, at any rate for some little time, there will be no more discharges from the yards.

Dr. MACNAMARA

My hon. Friend knows that the discharges have been reduced to one-sixth. They will continue, though he and I hope that it may be for as short a time as possible. At the moment they are being continued on the scale of one-sixth.

Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE

We have heard something to-day about naval pay. I should like to refer to the pay of the naval schoolmasters. Notwithstanding that the Jerram-Halsey Committee recommended that naval schoolmasters be placed, as regards pay, on the same footing as other officers holding similar rank, as regards new rates of pay no improvement has been made in the pay of this branch, although the duties are heavier and more technical than they were before the War. The rate of pay is the same as on 1st February. 1919, when the ad interim increase was granted to all officers. The schoolmasters are placed in an even more unfortunate position because of the children's allowance being stopped after 31st December. While other officers of the same rank will be receiving higher pay to meet this deduction, the schoolmasters have nothing to compensate them for the loss. Other warrant officers are promoted to commissioned rank after ten years' service in the ranks; schoolmasters have to serve for twenty years before gaining promotion, so they take a longer time to reach the maximum rates, which by the present decision of the Government range from 8s. 6d. to 14s. a day less than the corresponding rate of other officers holding similar rank. Schoolmasters ask that the pay recommended by the Jerram-Halsey Committee be conceded, although even this scale does not bring them up to the level of other officers of the same commissioned rank. They ask that the revised pay be ante-dated, as in the case of other officers, to 1st February, 1919, that relative rank introduced in 1919 for the schoolmasters' branch be abolished, seeing that it is not applied to any other body of officers in the Navy, and that if continued it will always have the effect that schoolmasters will be regarded as a body apart and excluded from privileges granted to others.

I want to refer to the Royal Fleet Reserve, Class "B." In view of the increased cost of living, and the general economic position, I would urge that the retainer of 6d. a day should be increased to is. 6d., and dated back to 1st October, 1918, that the bonus of £50 now received on reaching forty be increased to £150, and that, instead of the pension of £12 a year on reaching fifty-five years, they should receive a pension of £36 granted at fifty years. When I brought forward the case of the mechanicians, the Admiralty apparently did not sec eye to eye with me. I should like to know on what ground they refused the concession asked for. The mechanicians are men who do practically the same work as the engine room artificers, and they should be placed on the same footing. Then there is a question with regard to the naval cooks. That was a matter which I brought up some months ago. We have no answer yet. Surely the food of the Navy is a very important matter. These men cook for the men as well as for the officers, and it is really time that some answer was given to the request addressed to the Admiralty. I wish to refer also to surveyors of stores, agents. In existing circumstances, both established and hired men lose a portion of duty pay. I ask that full duty pay should be given irrespective of any trade rate to which they may be entitled. The scale proposed is 3s. a week for the first twelve months, 6s. for five years' service, 9s. for eight years' service, and 12s. after eight years. These men have not received any increase in duty pay for ten years, and in this respect their Department stands alone. The present system by which surveyors of stores agents muster by ticket is incompatible with their position and responsibilities. They desire to muster by signature as chargemen and recorders, and they desire also to be designated "examiners of stores" in lieu of surveyor of stores agents. It is a very small request, and I hope the Admiralty will see their way to grant these few concessions.

I must say one word about retired pay. During the War the services were treated differently with regard to retired pay or pensions. On the military side officers called up had retired pay as well as active pay. On the naval side this was not allowed. Take the case of men who rose from the lower deck. After forty years' continuous service they find themselves deprived of their pensions, yet candidates are promised that for twenty-two years' continuous service of good conduct they will receive a pension for life. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War, and Mr. McKenna, when he was First Lord, both stated in this House that pensions are the legal possession of the men who earn them, and the answer of the Admiralty is: "We gave them a bonus." The Admiralty Order of the 1st of June, 1917, deals with the bonus, and it says: It should be understood that the bonus of 25 per cent. on their full pay which is granted to retired and pensioned officers called out, is in lieu of their being allowed to count time so served for increase of retired pay or pension. Nothing is said in that Order as to the bonus being accepted in lieu of the pension itself, and yet the man finds himself called up for service and deprived of his pension. Take the case of Lieut.-Commanders retired. When called up they were receiving £200 per annum, or 11s. a day. The amount was suspended, and they were given full pay, plus 25 per cent., equal to 16s. 6d. a day. In other words, those men received only 4s. a day for their active service work, while the men in the Army were receiving full pension. There is a distinct difference in treatment between the Navy and Army, and this went on, I think, all through the War, and I have no doubt it is going on now. I really think this money ought to be refunded to them. It is not a very large amount, but it is due to them from the Treasury, and I would ask the Financial Secretary to represent that to the First Lord and to see if it is not possible to get refunded to these men what is their due.

One word in regard to the findings of the Jerram Committee with regard to the pay of the men. I brought that up on the last occasion, and am very sorry to say that it did not meet with a generous response from the Admiralty. We ask, first, that the scales of pay should be ante- dated to the 1st October, 1918. Secondly, that the revised scale of pensions should be applied to all pensioners now on the rolls, and, thirdly, that the widows pensions, in certain conditions, should be granted and compassionate allowances to orphans of naval ratings be given. Why do we ask that? We ask in order that every man who fought in the War should have justice done to him. The decision of the Government means that 200,000 men are deprived of the advantages which other men have got. The Admiralty Order which was issued at the time when the ad interim bonus became operative was to the effect that the bonus was to be regarded only as a temporary increase, and that information was given to all the men who were then employed in the Navy. From this they naturally gathered that all the men serving at that date would be included in the new scales of pay, when they were promulgated. The Jerram Committee recommended it so, but the Government say 'No," and 200,000 men are wiped out. I say that is unfair. As regards the second point, men who have served their country are now absolutely starving because of this limitation of the addition to the pension. You give the addition to the pension to men who are under fifty-five and refuse it to men over fifty-five, who have now to live on a pension, many of them, of less than £1 a week, some of them 15s. a week, and others even less. I cannot understand why the Admiralty cannot see its way to assist these men by adding something to their pension. The Report says that the reason why they ask for the pensions to be added to was in consideration of the increase in the cost of living and the higher standard of comfort, and yet the Admiralty come in and say that this must only apply to men under fifty-five. I submit to the Committee that that is an arbitrary line to draw which never ought to have been drawn, and it is not right or fair. As regards the dependants of the men, I submit that they should be treated the same as the dependants of the officers, but the dependants of the officers arc badly treated and those of the men are unable to get any pensions at all. Then it is unfortunate that the pensions for the widows have not been sufficiently considered by the Admiralty. I mean the widows of naval men who have died in the service of the country before the War, and I think the Committee will be appalled when I tell them that the highest pension given is, I believe, 9s. 6d. a week. Is that not right?

Dr. MACNAMARA

I cannot say offhand.

Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE

You do not deny it. The right hon. Gentleman knows more about pensions than anyone in the House, and I am sure he knows that what I say is about right. I have just heard of a case of a woman, an invalid, with a pension of Os. 6d. a week, who lives in a back room, and for the last twelve months she has been unable to have fire, light, or clothes. By that I mean that she has been unable to go out because her clothes are insufficient to keep her warm. She has not tasted meat for many months, except when she visits her sister-in-law, who then gives her a meal. That is the position of the widow of a man who spent his life in serving the country, and I think every Member of the Committee will agree with me that the time has come when we must speak out and claim from the Admiralty something, at any rate, that will enable a poor woman like this to get at least her dinner once a week without having to beg of her sister-in-law. I thank the Committee for having listened to me for so long, and I will conclude with that one appeal to the Admiralty about the old pensioners, and especially the widows of the pre-war men.

Sir FORTESCUE FLANNERY

I am sure the Committee have listened with interest to the speech of my hon. Friend who has just sat down, which has ranged from China to Peru, and I think the Committee will agree with substantially all that my hon. Friend has said, and particularly as to the great Imperial duty that rests upon this Government to coordinate the Navy of the Empire as distinguished from what at present exists—the Navy of the 'United Kingdom and the separate Navies of the various Dominions. Nothing will bring about permanently and indissolubly the union of the Mother Country and the Daughter Lands so completely as the co-ordination of the Navy into one great Imperial Navy, manned by the sons of Britain from all parts of the Empire, and supported by the King's subjects, whether at home or in the Dominions, being thus one great means of Imperial defence and of Imperial union. I sincerely trust that the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Admiralty will continue in office long enough to see that consummation reached and that great reform carried out for the benefit of the Empire at large. I wish to say a word or two of hearty congratulation to the right hon. Gentleman upon the exceedingly lucid speech that he made in introducing these Estimates. He had before him a task which, after listening to the speeches that followed his, proved comparatively easy, and that was to defend the Admiralty and the Government against charges of extravagance and unnecessary expenditure upon the Navy. The analysis of figures which was given by my right hon. Friend was, to my mind at all events, and I think even to the minds of those who endeavoured to attack him afterwards, convincing and complete. It is true that the Naval Estimates just before the War amounted to only £53,500,000. It is equally true that the Navy Estimates now before the country amount to £157,500,000, but the dissection which my right hon. Friend was able to give so clearly showed that, whether it was upon the items of war expenditure still to be discharged, upon the items of a greater expenditure upon the personnel by reason of giving them greater wages and bonuses and pensions, or whether it was money's reduced power of purchasing, the whole of the increase upon the Estimates of 1914 was explained and, as I believe the Committee and the country at large will accept, was fully justified.

What was the attack which followed the speech of my right hon. Friend? The right hon. Member for South Molton (Mr. Lambert) and the right bon. Member for Peebles (Sir D. Maclean) reminded me somehow of Pope's words. Both of them were "willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike." The right hon. Member for South Molton read out a long list of detailed Estimates, but he had not the courage to say that this Estimate or that Estimate, with all his knowledge and experience of the Admiralty, was unwise or excessive or involved an. expenditure upon a ship which was obsolete No, he asked a question. It was all interrogation from beginning to end, so that he may go to the country and say, "I warned the Government against this wasteful extravagance." He has not the courage in this House to pledge himself that any one of the items is unnecessary. He confines himself in that regard to a suggestion that some, at least, of the dockyards should be closed. I sincerely hope that such a suggestion will never be accepted by any Government, and I do not believe it will ever be accepted by any Government that has the confidence of the country and of this House. Rather than close the dockyards, make them useful for the combined purposes of warship construction and merchant ship construction. I speak with some experience upon that matter, because I have had quite recently the duty of supervising large repairs in Portsmouth dockyard to a ship, it is true, belonging to the Admiralty, but used for commercial purposes, and I desire to testify from my long experience in these matters to the fact that the work done in the dockyards can be done, as we all know it is done, with the very perfection of workmanship, and if as applied to merchant shipbuilding it can be done with equal efficiency and equal economy, at least as compared with warship construction, in which the men of the Royal dockyards have the most experience, I very humbly and respectfully commend to the Admiralty the extension of that policy. I hope we shall know very soon what Lord Colwyn's Committee does report as to the extension of that policy, so as to keep the dockyards going by providing a larger tonnage than could be otherwise provided for the Mercantile Navy, and bring together still more the unity of the Royal Navy and the Mercantile Navy, which. as a result of this War are more identified than ever before, and more capable of working together, as I believe, both in regard to construction as well as in regard to navigation and ordinary service than they could possibly have been but for the circumstances which have arisen out of the War.

My right hon. Friend the First Lord stated that he hopes next year to revert to peace conditions, that is to Estimates which should be reduced so as to be in accordance with the circumstances of peace and real preparation for defence. We all hope that that will be the result of the experiments and of the recommendations to the Cabinet, and here I should like to refer to what my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Greenwich (Captain H. Benn) and others have said as to the experiments which must be made in regard to the changes in ships of war. No doubt the whole idea of the construction of battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and submarines has developed and changed throughout the War, particularly by the use of airships by all navies. But it seems to me, with great respect, that we shall never reach that state when we shall be able to abolish the surface ships. Lord Fisher has suggested that the warship of the future will be amphibious in so far as she will be able to float on the surface, dive under the surface, fly above the surface, and even crawl up the beach for the purpose of an invasion of an enemy country. Such ideas, I venture to say with great respect, are quite chimerical. We shall probably have warships very much larger in size than the present submarines, capable of diving, but just as more powerful battleships or battle-cruisers were protected during the War very successfully in many times of danger against submarines by flights of destroyers cruising round, so I believe will it be found by experience that the airships of the enemy, which would jeopardise the very existence of the largest battleship, will be driven off by the airships which that large battleship will be able to carry to send up in defence of herself in exactly the same manner as she signals for destroyers to cruise round against submarines. You will never, I venture to think, safely abolish the battleship or battle-cruiser of large power and large size, although no doubt the type of that ship will be very largely what has been indicated by Lord Fisher as regards submersibility.

Reference has been made, only by way of allusion, as I shall refer to it myself, to the League of Nations. The League of Nations will abolish war, we are told. I, for one, do not believe it. I believe in the maxim of Cromwell—" Put. your trust in God and keep your powder dry." That maxim, brought down to the modern interpretation, is, "Join the League of Nations, do all you can by agreement to ensure the peace of the world, but be ready for defence if the necessity should arise." So long as we have that policy, readiness and sufficiency of naval preparation, so long may we be sure of our safety, and so long may we join with confidence in the League of Nations or any agreement of that kind. Only upon a basis of physical force can the security of that League and its efficiency rest. So it is, I believe, notwithstanding that these Estimates are larger than expected, they will be passed by the Committee without a dissentient voice, as necessary only for the defence of the country, even after we have finished the terrible War, and are, as we hope, commencing a period of many years of peace.

Mr. HOHLER

I have little to say in view of the fact that so much of the ground has been covered. But I do want to ask my right hon. Friend whether he can, in the condition of things, give us any indication of the Admiralty policy in respect to the dockyards. The dockyard towns have been absorbed in this matter, in view of the fact that around them an immense population has grown up dependent entirely for their livelihood upon the employment in these yards. Grave considerations consequently arise. I realise that in the higher points of policy, as to the future of the Navy, there may for the moment be difficulties in saying anything, because unfortunately—as I think—by virtue of the difficulties created in America in the ratification of the Peace Treaty, and more particularly with regard to the League of Nations, it is very difficult to say what will be necessary to ensure the peace of the world if America falls out of the Treaty. Bearing in mind the vessels in hand when the Armistice was signed, so advanced that they have to be completed, we have sufficient naval vessels to last us for at least a year or two, possibly more. Therefore there is very little chance of real naval construction in the Royal dockyards for a period of at least one or two years. Substantially there is nothing in progress in this matter in the dockyards. Is the right hon. Gentleman at liberty to tell us anything in regard to the negotiations which have been proceeding as a result of the interview which the Prime Minister and he had some little time since with the representatives of the dockyards and Members from those towns to which I have referred? Can he say what is the policy of the Admiralty, whether it is a proposal to undertake the building of mercantile ships in those yards on the available slips, and also, if that is not the policy, does he know what is the policy? Do they wish to try and let, the yards, or any part of them, to private builders? That would be undesirable.

9.0 P.m.

What, however, I am really pressing for, and what we are anxious to know—for the matter involves many considerations in regard to building and other things in the towns—can my right hon. Friend tell us— is what is the policy of the Admiralty in regard to these Royal shipyards? This matter presses daily, and is always borne in upon me by the municipalities who govern these towns, and by our. constituents. What, too, is the policy in regard to discharges? I fully appreciate the fact, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend upon it, for I think he has been largely a supporter of the view advocated that the discharges should be suspended until a later period—that is to say, in the spring. They have been suspended out of consideration for the men, and other difficulties that are obvious. Are we to look, as quite probably we shall, to a reduction to what is, in any case, a prewar standard? If so, I would suggest, in view of the fact that these discharges will occur, say, possibly in the spring, the Admiralty should establish some policy upon which they are going to proceed in regard to them, so that the men likely to go should be informed at an early period. They can then look for employment elsewhere. I suppose it is common knowledge that of the great number of men who went into the yards during the War —I do not think it is ungenerous to say this, for I believe it to be true—many of them went to avoid war service. I hope that when these discharges take place, regard will be had to the men who have served longest in the yard, and that these will be retained. I trust also that the apprentices, who volunteered and joined up during their apprenticeship will be retained, because of their whole surroundings, because their father is probably working in the yard, and other cognate circumstances. I trust also that consideration will be given to the class of work a man was employed in before he entered the yard. I have reason to believe there are a number who were in the building trade. There are agricultural labourers and other sorts of people who never were shipbuilders or connected with dockyard work until the War. I trust the policy of the Admiralty will be such as will do justice to the men in the yards who have been there the longest, and will also be careful and considerate to the apprentices, particularly those who have fought in the War.

The yards have been closed for a period for half a day per week. I would like my right hon. Friend to apply his mind to the consideration of the question of the establishment. Under this comes the men who do not receive full wages, as do the other men, in that a reduction is made from their wages for the payment of the contribution in regard to the establishment, which at the age of sixty will entitle them to a, pension. The half-day rule applies very hardly to these men. In my view the Admiralty, and indeed the Government, have no right to say to the established men, "You shall work less than a full week." Under the terms of the engagement between the Admiralty and these established men they are entitled, I think, to ask the Admiralty to provide a full week's work. The men have most generously responded in this matter—

Dr. MACNAMARA

Hear, hear!

Mr. HOHLER

—to help their fellow workmen, yet I do not think the thing should be carried too far. I would like to propose, and I hope my right hon. Friend will consider it reasonable in the circumstances, that so long as the Admiralty is not working full time in the yards, these established men should not be charged in the way I have stated. Let the contribution be a Government contribution. Let the Government pay for that period instead of deducting it from the men's wages. These men have been doing their part—and more! They have accepted the position out of regard for their brother workmen. They are. doing more than their share when they forego their half- day's work, and I trust my right hon. Friend will carefully and sympathetically consider this point. I really believe if he looks into it be will feel it is only right that the Admiralty should do something so that these fellows are not put in a worse position than at the present moment. Turning to the matter which more concerns the pay of the officers and men, I want to know what decision the Admiralty have come to in regard to the sailors who have been disabled in the course of the War. I can give an extreme case. It is that of a man I know who served actually twenty-one years and 392 days, and is invalided for disability. He gets no long-service pension at all, and all he gets is a disability pension. That point was put in the general report, and the answer the Admiralty gave was that the matter was under consideration. Can the right hon. Gentleman announce to-night what the result of that consideration has been?

Dr. MACNAMARA

No.

Mr. HOHLER

I strongly urge the right hon. Gentleman to bring this matter to a head. I submit that the decision of the Admiralty eau only be one way. They realise how unjust it was that these men who have been disabled are not receiving long-service pensions. Before the general report they had inaugurated a scheme, and they had given to these men some pension though they had not served for pension and so far had they carried it that they borrowed a bit from the man who had served for pension in the War and was disabled, and they tried to adjust the matter by the man who had served for pension losing a part of it in order to contribute to those who had been disabled before they had served for pension. I can give the right hon. Gentleman chapter and verse for it. I have raised this matter on the Admiralty Estimates before, and you cannot rob Peter to pay Paul. The men have put forward their case themselves, and what did the Admiralty do? They gave them some service pension, but they took it away from the man who was entitled to his pension to the extent of 2s. a week in order to contribute to the other men. The Admiralty have recognised this case, and they cannot say "No" to it. I could settle the matter in half an hour, and it is only a question of how much. Really, it is not right that the Admiralty should hold this matter up. The men are complaining very bitterly about it. They are asking why they do not get any service pension, and the Admiralty reply that the matter is under consideration. Nine months is really too much for a simple point like this to remain undecided, and I press my right hon. Friend to get this point dealt with.

Then there is the question of the change of the name of the commissioned shipwrights. I wrote to the First Lord of the Admiralty stating that these men objected to being called ships' carpenters, and they want to be called constructive officers. An inquiry was held on this subject, and it reported in favour of the change of name to constructive officers, and what did the Admiralty do? The recommendation of this inquiry was turned down by the head of the naval constructors who has no position in the Navy except at the Admiralty, and who never goes to sea. This proposal was absolutely turned down by him. That is what I call a piece of real jobbery in the Navy. I raise this point on behalf of these men who have won their battle by honest merit, and it is something which is due to them. Why were the naval constructors consulted in this matter at all, because they are purely a civilian rating? The men will not accept this decision as final. The Admiralty may say that it has been officially decided, but I am confident that one day some person will see that justice is done to these men. I intend to protest against it every time I can gel, an opportunity. I shall continue to raise it, and I ask that it shall receive the attention to which these men are entitled.

Sir T. BRAMSDON

If we have learned anything in the War it is the value of the Navy, and we know the influence that naval power has borne in history. But for the Navy the late War could not have been won, and I agree it is absolutely necessary in the interests of the defence of our country that we should always have an invincible Navy. The First Lord has pointed out what that Navy shall be. It seems to me that that is not a very easy matter to arrange. It is true that during the existence of the German Empire we had an aggressive nation opposite to us, and it was somewhat easier to be able to stipulate that there should be a Navy equal to two other Powers. It has been suggested that the policy of the Navy should be to be equal to any other two Powers, and someone very properly suggested, Which Powers? It seems to me if you are going to talk about a two-Power standard you must talk about which Powers. Under the present circumstances it is not possible to talk about a combination of two other Powers. What I believe is that this is a matter we might very well leave to the Board of Admiralty. I remember in 1909 I was called to order because I said that I thought the Admiralty could be trusted. The results proved that they can and that I was right in my remark. I cannot help thinking that still we can trust the Admiralty. We have at the head of affairs those in whom unbounded confidence can be placed, whether on the civil or the military side, and now we have Earl Beatty we may be sure he will not be a party to anything that will lead to a lowering of the standard in the Admiralty.

We have heard a good deal about the amount of the estimated expenditure. We know very well the value of money. It is only half what it was before the War, and if we take the figures before us to-night as being £50,000,000 pre-war expenditure, we may safely put the expenditure daring last year at £150,000,000. I do not think it is too much to say if the £50,000,000 prewar expenditure is doubled it would then bring the expenditure of the past year to something like £100,000,000, and we cannot complain very much of the expenditure which has taken place when it represents £150,000,000 under the circumstances. But the utmost economy coupled with efficiency must be observed, and I think that the Admiralty have shown their wisdom and discretion in the economies which they have exercised during the past year. I represent a naval port, and suppose I approach the Admiralty as often as any Member of this House. I cannot help thinking there is a large amount of economy exercised. I know I do not get very much ahead in the demands which I put forward to the Financial Secretary, and let me here say, I do riot think any Department ever had a more true and loyal supporter than the Admiralty has in its present Financial Secretary. He is courtesy itself, he is anxious to meet us at all times, and there is one thing to be said, if he has a best eye it is always given to the Admiralty; the other comes to us. I have nothing but praise for the courteous way in which he meets the demands made to him from the various ports and dockyards, and I must say if he did not do. as he did we should go away very much more discontented than we do now.

But there are still many things to be brought under the consideration of the Admiralty. Many of them have been talked about to-night, and I want to emphasise one or two of the points which have been dealt with with great power on these benches. It is true there is great discontent amongst naval officers at the scales of pay which have been awarded to them when they compare them with those granted to Army officers. My right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary is most ingenious in the arguments which he uses in explanation, but, if I may say so, they would not do. Naval officers would not have them; they do not believe in them. I get a lot of correspondence—I am almost bombarded with it—on this subject, and I have before me at the moment a very long letter upon this particular subject which I hope I may be allowed to show my right hon. Friend, because nothing is too much trouble to him. He is always willing that we should send him matters for his consideration, and sometimes I wonder if I ought to send the things I do. I hope that, notwithstanding what has happened and has been said, the Admiralty will give due consideration to this subject of the pay of naval officers. There are many subjects I talked about on the last occasion when the Vote on Account was under discussion. I am the last man to wish to take up the time of the House unnecessarily. My right hon. Friend knows that I have corresponded with him on subjects connected with the Royal Fleet Reserve, the artificer-engineers, the engineering-room officers, the Royal Marines, the schoolmasters, the sick-berth attendants, the mechanicians, and many other grades. I hope due consideration will be given to all these cases, and that the men will get the reward due to them, because I do believe that in the Admiralty there is justice and we shall eventually get it, although some of us, may have to hammer away a good deal in reference to it.

If there is one thing I always regret it is that the recommendations of the Jerram Committee and of the Halsey Committee were not carried out in their entirety. These Committees took evidence, considered the matter judicially, and made certain recommendations on their merits, and I think I am not going too far when I say that those recommendations were just, and that if the Admiralty could have carried them out it would have given universal satisfaction throughout the Navy. Of course, it is a question of money. But I suggest that the amount that the Admiralty would have had to find for these cases would not have been begrudged by the nation, because it would have been in the interests of the old salts who have done so much for the protection of our country. Perhaps later on the Admiralty may see its way to concede these points, and, if so, they will earn the gratitude and respect of all concerned.

I was very glad that the welfare committees were set up. I do not know whether any concessions have yet been granted by the Admiralty as a result. These welfare committees were offered to the lower deck in order that they might constitutionally put forward their various grievances. They met, and it is to their credit that the committees were conducted in such a splendid, respectful, and honourable way. They appointed their chairmen—in fact, they almost reminded me of Whitley councils. They debated the matters brought before them very fully and at the same time very respectfully, and they duly made their report. I hope my right hon. Friend will be able soon to announce the results of their recommendations, and I suggest if they are given effect to it will only be in accordance with the spirit, intentions, and desire of the Admiralty in affording the men a. constitutional way of airing their grievances. I should like to deal with one other point which constitutes a very grievous matter in the Navy, and it is a question affecting the old pensioners. The Jerram Committee recommended that there should be an extension of the payments to old pensioners. There is a great deal of feeling and agitation in connection with this subject. My right hon. Friend arranged an interview with the Leader of the House on this question, and we were most sympathetically received. He heard the views of the old pensioners. So far as I recollect, it was practically agreed their application should be granted, but the difficulty was that it opened up not merely a naval question, but also one affecting the Army and the Civil Service, and it would involve a very heavy payment. The suggestion was afterwards made that if the full amount could not be granted a smaller sum might be allowed, and I believe the Navy people would gladly have accepted that, but up to the present time no suggestion has been forthcoming with regard to it. I do not know whether we shall hear anything today, but I do hope we shall be told that a decision has been arrived at, and, in my opinion, the decision ought to be publicly announced. Something ought to be done for these old pensioners who fought the battles of the country in previous wars and who now live on a mere pittance. Many of them are aged and infirm, and I am sure the nation would not be against giving them a further increase. If consideration can be given to these old men, I am sure they will be extremely grateful.

I do not know whether I am correct in understanding that there is about £2,000,000 contract work unfinished. I do not know whether that unfinished work has been already given out to contract. Perhaps my right hon. Friend will say. If it has not, it is not too much to ask him to be good enough to see that it is placed with the Royal dockyards only and not with private yards. Everybody knows that the private yards are swamped with work at the present time. Many of them cannot carry out the work that is open to them. There is almost a redundancy of work. There is work required that cannot possibly be carried out, and, if this work could be given to the Royal dockyards, it would be the means of keeping on men, who, if they are discharged, will be sent to places where they cannot get houses. I was going to raise another question, but the right hon. Gentleman is always open to approach, so I will see him personally with reference to it, and I feel sure that he will consider it.

Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHY

I feel great diffidence in addressing the Committee as a naval officer upon naval matters after the many excellent speeches that we have heard to-night. I am sorry that the hon. Baronet (Sir Fortescue Flannery) has left the House, because understood that he was disappointed that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Peebles (Sir D. Maclean) only asked questions and did not state facts when criticising the Estimates. I wish he were here, because I propose to make some criticisms, which I hope will be constructive and helpful. I think I am the Member of this House who was last at sea, and I am still on the active list. I am sure that the First Lord will understand that the criticisms I am about to make are meant to be helpful, and I hope that they will be helpful. The First Lord has declared that he is not In a position to state the policy. That is very regrettable. It seems to me that there are only two policies possible in the future—a third alternative. Any reduction of our Navy below a safe standard, I am sure, cannot be entertained for a moment. We all agree that the Navy, with the Air Force attached to it, is our first line of defence and must have first call upon our finances. The Army at the present time overshadows the Navy, and there is a danger of the Navy being starved for the benefit of the Army in the lean years to come.

Mr. LONG

Why has the hon. and gallant Member formed that view?

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY

During the late War the Navy has been the silent Service. It has been impossible for the naval dispatches to be published. The Army, however, has been right in the public eye. Five millions of our race have served in the Army, and only 500,000 have served in the Navy. Every family in the country has had a relation in the Army. Therefore, as after the Napoleonic Wars, people will think too much of the Army and too little of the Navy. I foresee that danger. We have also embarked upon many responsibilities abroad which will call for great military resources; and the shortsighted uninformed democracy of to-day do not understand that our naval forces alone enable us to hold our Empire together at all. The Secretary of State for War, as a matter of fact, has talked of the bonds of Empire smouldering as an excuse for keeping on conscription. The danger of the Army overshadowing the Navy is very real indeed, and I hope that this Committee will take account of that view and correct it. The two policies are these: Are we going back to the jungle law with regard to the Navy, or are we going to work up to a great international naval policy with the Associated Powers in the League of Nations? Is it going to be a case of Britain building against the only two Powers that can compete against us at sea? Is it going to be a case of Britain building again in competition against America and Japan? Is it going to be a case of this country building against America and Japan combined, or against one of them, or against the biggest of them, or what is it to be? If that be the case and the challenge be taken up by the United States of America, we are going to be outbuilt or bankrupted in twenty years. That may as well be realised. On the other hand, are we going to work up for some limitation of forces by mutual consent? Are we, in other words, going to make the League of Nations a real thing? I have not seen much signs of the latter policy, which is the only sane policy, in the doings of the Admiralty or in the whole attitude of the naval staff which at present, under my right hon. Friend, controls naval policy. The right hon. Gentleman told us that he would not mention policy, and not one word about any future international agreement or about the League of Nations was mentioned.

Mr. LONG

Is not the hon. and gallant Member making a mistake in blaming the Admiralty? All that we have to do is to be responsible for the naval forces which can discharge the duties laid upon us by our own Government, and now the new responsibilities accepted by us as one of the nations coming into the League of Nations, supposing it matures? Is he not rather unfair in criticising the Admiralty because we do not formulate the policy of the League of Nations? We have nothing to do with it. As a member of the Cabinet—that is a different question. As a Government, we are responsible for our share in the development of the League of Nations, but surely it is not fair to blame the Board of Admiralty, because, as he says, we have no policy, when, as he himself admits, the whole policy of the League of Nations and of the Allies is at present a question in dispute.

The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN

I had better remind the hon. and gallant Gentleman of my previous ruling. We are only discussing foreign policy so far as the Admiralty are concerned in administration. No doubt the hon. and gallant Member will bear that in mind.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY

I will take care not to stray any further. I do not think that I was a bit unfair to the Admiralty. If my right hon. Friend had been here—the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Admiralty was here—when one of the hon. Members for Devonport spoke (Sir C. Kinloch-Cooke), he would have heard the lion. Gentleman reading out very recent extracts from speeches of the present Sea Lord and the late, Sea Lord, who has gone to another place. and who received such a well-earned eulogy from my right hon. Friend, in which those two very gallant and respected admirals almost ridiculed the idea of trusting to anything but our own strong right arm at sea. Members of this House have said the same to-day, and we heard at once cheers of approval. Therefore, we are going back to the jungle law at sea, and, that being the case, let us see how the Admiralty policy is shaping. To begin with, the North Sea is now a British lake, and therefore no expenditure should be incurred on bases or air stations or anything of that sort in the North Sea above a bare minimum. I fear that there has been unnecessary expenditure on purely North Sea defences. If I might make a prophecy, the great strategical point of the future will be the Straits of Malacca, and Singapore is the place where development should take place with regard to dockyards.

The great flight to Australia, which has been so happily completed to-day, passed through Singapore. Singapore is not only a great strategical point from the naval point of view, but also from the aerial point of view. With regard to the dockyards, again referring to the jungle policy, I hope there will be no money spent on Jamaica. I regret to see that there is some allowance for oil tanks there. It will be impossible to hold Jamaica against the United States of America. [HON. MEMBERS: "Nonsense."] I hear hon. Gentlemen who arc greater strategical experts than I am say "nonsense." I at once bow to their superior wisdom. In any naval warfare in the Atlantic, with a hostile United States, Jamaica will be too far inside the enemy's territory, and could no more be held than Heligoland could be held against Germany in the late War. Hong Kong is also too far in the enemy's sphere of influence if we are going to fight against Japan, and any money spent there, I submit, could be much better spent with greater effect at Singapore.

With regard to home bases, Chatham, to which big ships cannot go except at high tide now, is a dockyard which will have to be turned over to mercantile work in the future. For the same reason Harwich had better be a purely commercial port. From a strategical point of view, money spent on Harwich could be much better spent elsewhere. I hope that the policy of keeping obsolete vessels abroad for the purpose of showing the White Ensign will not be continued. At present there are sloops and gunboats in the East Indies which in war time would be death traps and in peace time are not fitted to carry the British Ensign with dignity. The democracies in those countries are educated, they have a vernacular Press and the sending of obsolete sloops and gunboats will not very much affect them. The fastest and most modern ships should be available for that service. I would ask the right hon. Gentleman when replying to tell me whether it is intended in the future to keep up the expenditure of money on the present obsolescent vessels of the Royal Indian Marine? Many of those vessels have great historical names and have done great work in this War, but they are quite useless for modern warfare. The criticism I have to make of the £157,000,000 Estimates is that the real reductions will not commence, so far as I can gather, until the summer. For some months the Navy was kept in a state of suspended animation.

Mr. LONG

No.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY

The First Lord has excused that—

Mr. LONG

The hon. and gallant Gentleman must forgive me for interrupting him, but it is the only way I can prevent unintentional misrepresentations. He will remember, if he listened to what I had the privilege to say earlier, that I stated that the reductions began two or three days after the Armistice, and were continued without interruption by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport, followed up by myself, in January and, so far as I know, there has been no interruption since. The great majority of the reductions were made before June.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY

Of course I know that reductions took place because, the hostilities being over, the men began to be demobilised.

Mr. LONG

It was before that.

Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHY

Perhaps I am putting the case badly, but we know that the construction of certain ships was continued. Then apparently the policy was changed and the ships were not preceeded with. Take the case of airships. We were building as lately as 2nd July, six airships.

Mr. LONG

They were under construction.

Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHY

They were under construction at a cost of £2,200,000. I understand that we are now building only one. The policy, therefore, has been changed in that respect. The First Lord excuses this by saying that there was the danger of the Peace being abortive and the War breaking out again.

Mr. LONG

No, no!

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY

I understood that was the right hon. Gentleman's explanation. So long as that was a danger, that might account for keeping a sufficient number of men with the Colours, but if the War had broken out again with Germany after the Armistice, there was no German navy to fight. Therefore we could have gone ahead with our reductions at the beginning of the year at a faster rate, not only by taking out of the Fleet ships we now find to be superfluous, but by closing air stations and other stations round the coast. May I point out what I feel has been a failure with regard to naval policy in Paris. Was it impossible for us to insist on the legal abolition of the submarine as a vessel of war? Did we propose that whole-heartedly from our Admiralty I happen to know that the United States Admiralty was in favour of the legal abolition of the submarine, that murderous, cowardly weapon, especially when used against merchant ships. Did we propose that whole-heartedly, or were the arguments of the people particularly interested in submarines—who lived for the service, who brought. it up and who made the British submarine service second to none—listened to, and did we not with our full weight press for the legal abolition of the submarines? If we did not, a great opportunity was lost. If the opportunity ever arises again, I hope that with our full weight we shall press for that great international reform. Submarines can never be used for commercial purposes in peace time. We have a very good case for making them illegal on the ground of humanity and because it is in accordance with new world ideas. It may be said that submarines can be built in a very few months by some Power which could make all preparations beforehand, and then spring a war on the world. Although that is perfectly true, you cannot make submarine officers in under two years, because they do not get the practice of handling their ships and using their periscopes. Even if we were so unfortunate as to find ourselves engaged in war, we should have two years' breathing space at least in which to make our preparations for countering them, should the war last so long. It would mean a great saving in all the navies of the world if the building and maintenance of submarines were made illegal. It would be immensely to our advantage. Although certain of our continental friends might object to it, we have a great deal to offer them in exchange for it. This would be a favourable opportunity if the First Lord could say a word or two on that subject. It was a great disappointment to some of us to find that the submarine was not made illegal as one of the terms of the Peace.

It is a pity that any encouragement should be given to the new small nations in Europe to build fleets. A naval mission has been sent to Poland. I believe they were declared to have gone in order to decide on the buoyage and navigation of the Vistula. But shortly after they were there, statements appeared in the Press that the Poles were going to have a Navy of so many cruisers, gunboats and destroyers. If we are going to send naval missions to Jugo-Slavia, Poland, and the other small States to encourage them to build navies of their own, although it may be very agreeable to the armament making rings of the world—they are international; I do not stigmatise any particular nation —these small navies may prove an infernal nuisance to us in the future, and we are making a great mistake if we encourage them to waste their slender resources —they are mostly on the verge of bankruptcy—in building fleets.

I cannot refrain from saying a few words about one or two other items which I regard as wasteful. At present there are 116 motor cars for the use of the Navy. Before the War I do not think there were any —or perhaps. three or four. There were 162 motor cars on 1st November, 1919. I do not think these can cost less than £30,000 a year. These things all mount up. The greater part of these motor cars could and ought to be dispensed with, and it will be interesting to know why they have not been. Flag officers in commission are another great and unnecessary source of expenditure. On 1st May, 1914, we had thirty-two admirals on shore, and six commodores flying their flags. This was when the Navy was keyed up ready for war at twenty-four hours' notice with the second Navy in the world. On 1st November, 1918, when we were at the culminating point of our naval effort, there were sixty-three admirals and twenty-six commodores. On 1st May, 1919, that is seven months after the Armistice, there were still fifty-five admirals and twenty commodores. These gallant admirals are a great expense. They are not only well paid, as they deserve to be, but they have allowances and large staffs, with flag officers on their staffs, and secretaries who are officers and clerical staffs, steamboats and motor-cars of their own in many cases, and they run away with a great deal of money. In the Atlantic Fleet at present there are ten battleships and no fewer than five admirals flying their flags. That means one admiral to every two battleships. That does not conduce to efficiency. In the ordinary course of events a captain has really a much freer hand, and can do his work much better when he is away from a flag officer. He is not always watching the flagship, waiting to see what to do. It encourages initiative. In the old days of the Channel Fleet, in which I served, there were thirty-two ships at one time, and we only had the same number of admirals as there are now in the Atlantic Fleet. The ordinary proportion before the War was four battleships, one admiral. You halve that now, and it is not only a great extravagance, but it actually interferes with the individual efficiency of the captains of the ships. It is, of course, rather a painful matter to deal with, but this officer question is a great source of expenditure. I would refer also to the fact that there is at present a great redundancy of officers. It is an unfortunate fact that there are some four hundred commissioned officers of the rank of lieut.-commander and above for whom there are really not posts in the Navy. Before the War we had 104,400 men, for whom we had 5,330 officers. I admit we were rather short of officers at that time. In the present Estimate we have 196,000 men, but we have 16,400 officers. That means that whereas the men have been increased in numbers since 1914 by 45 per cent., the officers have increased, and apparently are still increased, by 300 per cent. This accounts for what so many hon. Members have referred to as the uncertainty leading to discontent and almost unrest amongst so many officers in the Navy. They do not know whether they are going to be kept on or not, whether they are going to leave and when they are going to leave. I beg the right hon. Gentleman to relieve them of that uncertainty as soon as possible.

May I inquire whether the men and officers who were sent to the Yorkshire coal mines in connection with the mining strike received the extra pay that was promised, because my information to date is that they have not? They were promised double pay, which I understood was to be found by the mining companies. Furthermore, is it a fact that the seamen, Marines, and stokers who were employed at the time of the railway strike did not receive any extra pay, and, if not, why not? Why did civilians receive £1 a day in many cases, and even, I am told, in the case of motor drivers, £4 a day, while the blue jackets who were sent to do the same work have not received extra pay? In many cases the blue jackets were not volunteers, but were told off for duty. In some cases they were volunteers, but I am told they volunteered because word was passed round at the barracks that those who volunteered would get better jobs, and if they did not they would be told off in any case.

Mr. LONG

There were no volunteers at all.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY

I am glad to hear that. But volunteers or not, these men were employed on the same work as the civilian volunteers. It was not naval work; it was not the work they enlisted fur, and I believe a great many officers in the Navy agree with me that it was not work which they should be asked to perform, but, nevertheless, they were told off for it, and did it without any question, and they should receive at least the same extra pay as the civilian volunteers.

I should like to say a few words about the operations in the Baltic and the Black Sea, which received a few paragraphs in the brochure. Has the First Lord completed his inquiries with regard to the ninety-three Royal Marines who are at present in Bodmin Prison under various sentences of penal servitude for, incredible as it sounds, I am told in some cases, cowardice in action? The Royal Marines, a regiment than which there is none better in the whole world; a regiment which was described by the late Lord Beresford as the sheet anchor of the Navy, men of wonderful morale, with great esprit de corps; men who have done wonderful work for the last three hundred years —it seems incredible that ninety-three of these men should be in gaol on a charge of cowardice and insubordination. It is an event unprecedented. Is it a fact that these men were disembarked from the ship and sent on leave with the instruction that they were going to be sent to the Army of the Rhine? Is it a fact that six hours after they had returned from leave, and before they were embarked, they were told that they were being sent to Russia? Is it also a fact that they were sent out there, and although they did not like it they went? Whether these men actually did refuse to fight or did show any sense of cowardice is very much questioned.

Mr. LONG

I very reluctantly interfere, but I must ask your ruling, Mr. Whitley. I have said, in answer to questions, that these very serious charges against gallant sailors and Marines are now under investigation by the Board of Admiralty. They have been reported upon by various courts-martial. They have been receiving, and are receiving even to-day, the most careful examination by the Board of Admiralty. In other words, they are sub judice, and I submit that questions which are sub judice ought not to be raised in the House of Commons, where these questions can be asked, but where it is quite impossible for me as First Lord of the Admiralty to answer them, owing to the fact that they are still the subject of investigation, both here and on the spot.

The CHAIRMAN

Perhaps the hon. and gallant Member will see that in that case he ought not to pursue the subject.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY

I can see that at once. I was really asking whether any decision had been come to. It was sub judice a fortnight ago, and I thought that a decision might have been reached. I did not put a question down because I intended to raise it to-day. In regard to the Baltic we are told that the Admiralty have sent out ships to guard the shores of Latvia and Esthonia, and that Admiral Sir Walter Cowan—in regard to whom I share fully the First Lord's admiration—has been sent to command that squadron. Admiral Cowan is first and last a fighting man. He would not mind my saying that he would fight anyone, anywhere, at any time. To send Admiral Cowan and to give him any sort of hint that there is a hostile squadron means that he will attack it. Was it quite policy to send him out to the Eastern Baltic to defend the shores of Latvia and Esthonia, and to order him to get into touch and to co-operate with the German General Von der Goltz, and to act with him against the Bolsheviks in December, when we were still technically at war with Germany but not at war with the Bolsheviks? Is it quite in accordance with the great and high traditions of the Royal Navy that we should have to collaborate with this German Junker, Von der Goltz? Was it altogether wise to send as his political adviser a Baltic baron? Was that likely to reassure the people whom he was sent to protect?

The CHAIRMAN

These seem to be questions of common policy, which ought not to be pursued now.

10.0 P. M.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY

I at once bow to your ruling. May we have some details about the lamentable death of nine sailors on board His Majesty's ship "Dragon"? This vessel was fired upon by Bermondt's artillery, and we know that nine gallant men were killed, blown to pieces, and one officer and four men wounded. She was delayed in getting away from danger, and was deliberately fired upon by the Russians who were supposed to be helping. Is it a fact that His Majesty's ship "Dragon" had both anchors down, and the cables were not even on the slips, when fire was suddenly opened on her? I do not want to pursue the question of the employment of the Navy any further, but I would like to say this: that from the time of its inception the Royal Navy has fought for freedom and liberty. It fought the Inquisition in the time of Elizabeth. It fought the Imperialism of Napoleon. It fought for the freedom of the slaves. Its greatest traditions and its greatest glory have been gained in fighting for liberty and freedom. Because it realises that on it rests the safety and security of the realm, because it is the Navy recruited for long service in all parts of the world, it behaves those who have the direction of it to think carefully on what service they send it, and that that service can bear full investigation.

Mr. ADAMSON

I intervene for a few moments to express a few views from the Labour point of view. I join in the tribute of gratitude expressed by the First Lord to the officers and men for the splendid service they rendered during the War. I am in agreement with his statement that we should have a Navy sufficient to protect the country and the Empire. I was also very pleased to know that, in the Estimates he has made provision for higher pay and better conditions for the men of the Royal Navy. I fear that having noted these points of agreement, I have exhausted the points wherein the right hon. Gentleman and myself agree regarding the Estimates. These Estimates will be a serious disappointment to a large number of people. During the War we were frequently told that this was a War to end war; and our people were led to expect that upon its conclusion there would be a serious attempt made to reduce the burden of armaments. Instead of that, however, in the first year of Peace, we have the First Lord presenting an Estimate amounting to no less than £157,528,000, as against an expenditure of a little over £50,000,000 in the year before the War, something like three times our pre-war expenditure.

Mr. LONG

My right hon. Friend is not treating the Admiralty quite fairly. In the £51,000,000 expenditure in the Naval Estimates in the year 1914 there was no previous debt of any kind. That was expenditure for the upkeep and maintenance of the Navy for the year and prices of everything at that time were also very much lower. To-day out of our total Estimate no less than £80,000,000 is due to debts incurred during the War, so that if you deduct from the present Estimate the debts incurred before the War and the increased charges since the War the actual Estimates are actually lower than before the War.

Mr. ADAMSON

I am much indebted to the First Lord for his explanation, but I cannot agree with him in the way he figures out the Estimate. Notwithstanding the increase in tie cost of materials necessary for the Navy, I am strongly of the opinion that greater deductions could have taken place in the present year. In the year before the War this country was faced with the ever-present possibility of a fight for its life with Germany. Notwithstanding that we spent roughly £50,000,000 on the Navy, which was then practically our sole arm of defence. To-day the German fleet is at the bottom of the sea, and the only other countries which have navies of considerable size are our Allies, countries with whom we are on the closest terms of friendship. Yet here we have this enormous Estimate, which is only 25 per cent. less than the largest Estimate which we had in the course of the War, for the Navy. That is a very serious position for the people of this country to find themselves in. The First Lord told us that before the war we had to provide for a two- or three-Power standard, but that our great enemy had now disappeared. He said there were, however, new conditions and difficult conditions surrounding us, and that he was examining the new conditions with his advisers. I would ask him in the course of his examination to take into consideration with his advisers several important points.

The first is that any fleets of any considerable size in the world are those of our Allies with whom we are endeavouring to cultivate terms of the closest friendship and that consequently there is not the same necessity for us to continue to have such a large fleet as in prewar days. The next point is that nine out of every ten of our people were of opinion that the first step after Peace was declared to be taken by ourselves and the Allies would be to reduce greatly the armaments which constituted such a serious burden not only to ourselves but to other countries. Unless this is done we may tempt other countries again to build up big navies, and that will bring us into the same position as we were in before the War began. Unless this is done there is great danger of the world being overwhelmed with the enormous burden of defence. This is a question that cannot be left entirely to the officers of either the Army or the Navy, but a question in which the whole of the people of this country have as much interest as these two sections, and on which they have a perfect right to express an opinion as to our future procedure. The third point to keep in mind is that this nation at the moment is faced with a national debt of £8,000,000,000, and in order to meet the interest on that national debt and our other standing charges, we are continuing to spend more than we are raising, and are creating fresh debt. The most important question for our people at the present moment is whether we are going speedily to recover our solvency as a nation.

The next point is what influence the League of Nations is going to have upon the future peace of the world and cones- quently upon the necessity of continuing to have either a large Navy or a large Army. Whatever ideas the First Lord may have regarding the League of Nations, the working classes of this country are determined that this League will be used to its utmost capacity for the purposes of settling our international difficulties on the basis of arbitration, instead of by the arbitrament of the sword. The First Lord pointed out in reference to the discharge of men from the Royal dockyards that the Admiralty had exhausted every avenue with the object of finding employment for these men. I disagree with that statement. He pointed out that these men had given their services unreservedly to the Admiralty. With that I am in agreement, but my colleagues and I are strongly of opinion that there is an immense amount of work to be done in connection with the Mercantile Marine and the reconditioning of the ships which have been under the control of the Admiralty, work which ought to be given to men in the Royal dockyards, and so keep up the volume of employment there. I have heard it stated that at Devonport—and I assume it applies to other dockyards—some suggestion was made that commercial work could be undertaken if orders were received. Does the First Lord really expect that private shipbuilding firms and shipowners are going to give orders to the Royal dockyards and so lose the profit that they could secure by doing the work themselves? Such a suggestion is not worthy of consideration. I make bold to say that, apart from building merchant ships for the State, in the interests of the State—a thing which clearly ought to be done, in view of the present scarcity of shipping—the Admiralty could put in hand the reconditioning in the Royal dockyards of the vessels that have been under their control, and so ensure full employment for the men in the dockyards. I understand that with respect to the reconditioning of ships alone many millions of pounds require to be spent, and if that work was given entirely to the Royal dockyards, as it should be, there is no doubt that the men will have full employment.

We agree with the First Lord's statement that the difficulties which our men have had to face in the Baltic have been great. We disagree with him as to the necessity of the men being there. We think that the Government are pursuing a mistaken policy in Russia. That is all I am going to say about that. I know, as well as the First Lord, that I am on dangerous ground. The point I wanted to make is that there is strong indignation existing in this country as to the treatment of the ninety-three Royal Marines, and I think the First Lord will be well advised to have that matter gone into very closely at the earliest possible moment.

Mr. LONG

We are looking into it.

Mr. ADAMSON

I trust that these men will be treated not only justly but as generously as their service to the country demands. I do not want to take up any more time. The First Lord has yet to reply, to the criticisms made. We do not want to see a single step taken that would endanger the safety of the country, but at the same time we are strongly of the opinion that under existing conditions there is no necessity for continuing to spend such large sums either on the Army or on the Navy and that the time has arrived when not only the Government but this House and the country will require to face seriously the financial position in which we find ourselves. If we are to do that, if we are to recover our solvency and remedy the serious position in which we are to-day, it can be only by large reductions in the Army- and Navy and in other State Departments.

Dr. MACNAMARA

Before I come to the points raised since the First Lord's introductory statement I should like, if I may, to make one or two general observations upon these Estimates. At the time of the Armistice everything was in full blast, full steam ahead, so far as we were concerned. Our war production effort at the time was at a crescendo, at its highest point at that moment. Hostilities had not ceased because of exhaustion on our part, it was the other way round, and had it been necessary that crescendo on our part would still have gone higher. As it happened we were making provision for eventualities which never arose. But, of course, the work of slowing down and cancelling and abandoning under those circumstances is not so simple as if we had been in a state of exhaustion. Now we have been charged, in common with all other Government Departments, as the First Lord said earlier, with having drifted on, recklessly 'spending money long after the necessity had ceased. My right hon. Friend (Mr. Adamson) thinks so, too, and not only that, but altogether unmindful, as he would say, of the straitened condition of the national purse as a result of the strain of war. I do think that the First Lora's statement shows how unjust and ill-founded that charge really is. I hope I may be allowed just to enforce his repudiation that we have been wasteful and allowed things to drift on after the moment of necessity. I hope I may be allowed to do so, particularly because I think the country owes a debt of real gratitude to the body of public servants who passed at once and without intermission from the grave anxieties and strain of over four years of war to a task as difficult and as complex as anything they experienced in the War, and applied themselves loyally and faithfully to the task of bringing down the tremendous and increasing momentum of this great and complicated machine to what I may call slow time with as little delay as possible. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Central Hull (Lieut.-Commander Kenworthy) said we began too late. Nothing of the kind. I remember the morning of the Armistice I heard the guns booming outside and the hells ringing, and we were sitting at that time, while the people were rejoicing at the Armistice having been signed, in an emergency meeting of the Board of Admiralty to consider how we could at once slow down, reduce, cancel, and abandon. That is not the middle of the year, but the 11th of November, 1918.

Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHY

Then why did you wait for five months before stopping the waste on the building of ships and airships?

Dr. MACNAMARA

I say that so far from waiting for the middle of the year the very moment the Armistice was signed the Board of Admiralty was at work, as it was in duty bound, on seeing how it could avoid unnecessary expenditure. What is the result? The proof of the pudding is in the eating of it. In 1918–19 the expenditure was round about £325,000,000 and in the year after 1919–20, the Estimates now before us, and a year a third of which had actually passed before Paece was signed, and a year the whole of which saw very considerable obligations on the Royal Navy in several seas, we have got that £325,000,000 down to £157,000,000. Of that £157,000,000, the First Lord has said earlier in the day that quite a considerable amount is non-recurring war liabilities, not contributing to the maintenance of 1920 at all, deadweight liabilities which we had to meet, and, more than that, there are millions of this—and no one in the Committee or outside of it will object —which represent well-merited permanent improvements in pay and conditions of service for the officers and men of the Fleet; and, further, let me say that all the' Store Votes are double as high as they were in 1914, because everything is twice. as dear. I am prejudiced in favour of it, of course, but I know the day-by-day and the hour-by-hour labour and watchfulness-which has produced this result. I do not pretend that either the officials of the Admiralty or myself or the First Lord are infallible; I do not pretend that every penny of expenditure has automatically ceased at the moment when it is no longer necessary; certainly not, but I do know, from the beginning, day by day, that unremitting watchfulness has been bestowed upon this, and the figures before us are, after all, the best witness to that fact. I think it right to say that, if only in justification of officers at the Admiralty who, after the' long strain of the War, continued without intermission, have brought the momentum of this great machine down to slow time so admirably. My right hon. Friend the Member for Peebles (Sir D. Maclean) suggested that we should publish once a month a series of Statistical Tables showing the course of expenditure. I interrupted to point out that that would be entirely misleading, because in any given month payments might be unduly coming in, which would make that month appear to be one in which we had spent a good deal more than we really had, and the Statement for that particular month would really bear no relation whatever to-the actual expenditure of the month. That is my experience front going into my- own figures in my own way, pretty much on the lines the right hon. Gentleman has suggested. Nevertheless, we will look into that and see whether it will not be possible —although it will certainly be very difficult—to produce sonic Returns which will show the country that we are not quite the wasters that a good many people suggest we are. It will be difficult, but at any rate it shall be considered.

I will now turn to some of the more detailed points which have been raised during the Debate, and if I do not cover all the points which have been urged—and I take leave at once to say that it is physically impossible to do that—let me assure hon. Members that all the points made in the Debate to-day will be referred, as they always are, for information and consideration to the Departments and superintending Lords concerned, and if necessary, reported and brought up to the Board. As regards the interesting comments of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for the Shettleston Division (Rear-Admiral Adair), my right hon. Friend the Member for South Molton (Mr. Lambert), my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Ilkeston (Major-General Seely), and my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Greenwich (Captain Hamilton Benn), in regard to the question of the relations between the Navy of the future and operations in the air, that, obviously, is a matter of high policy. It is a question for the Board of Admiralty in the first instance, and then for the Cabinet. If I do not discuss that now, my hon. and right hon. Friends will see that is a matter for a higher authority than I possess, but that again will be a matter which, as I have said, will be referred to those responsible for its consideration. The First Lord stated that during the Armistice we had 1,005 craft of all sorts, mainly small craft, under construction, and that we cancelled over.600, and by that cancellation we saved £46,000,000. My right hon. Friend the Member for Peebles asked for information as to the cost of building all the others, so that it might be seen what proportion of what otherwise would have been expended, was saved. I tried to get the figures. I could make a shot, at them now, but I do not want to do that. Some vessels were in the dockyards, some under contract, and some under time and line. It would be very difficult to get the total figures. But if my right hon. Friend will put a question down—and I will suggest it to him tomorrow when I see him—I will try to work it out and show to what we were committed, and what would have been the cost if we had gone on with everything in the ray of shipbuilding from the moment of the Armistice, and what would have been the cost of the ships that would have been completed since. Then he asked why we were going on with two boom defence vessels, as we had apparently a lot already. They were so far completed as to make it expedient and good business to finish them. But they are being completed now to be used when completed as two barges, and no doubt we shall get our money's worth for them.

In the course of the Debate a number of hon. Friends have pressed for a definite statement regarding permanent post-war naval provision and policy. It is impossible for me, or anybody else, not to sympathise with one of the grounds upon which that request has been put forward, namely, that the officers and men of the Fleet desire to know at the earliest possible moment what is to be the future of the Service to which they belong, and they are naturally anxious and apprehensive as to their own future. I say that is a ground as to which everyone must sympathise, and it is undoubtedly our duty to them, and it is the least we can do, to make delay as unavoidable and as short as possible. But my hon. and gallant Friends and the officers and men of the Fleet will, I am sure, realise the position in which the Government finds itself. It is not at this moment, having regard to the information in its possession., and the circumstances in which it finds itself, in a position to determine finally the future policy, but it will be compelled, so far as I can see, to determine the standards of the immediate future in a very short period of time, because in a very short time we shall have to get to work in the preparation of the Estimates for 1920–21. These must be submitted in about three months or so, and I imagine it will be for the First Lord in submitting them to go much further than he has gone to-day in regard to the future policy which determines naval strategy. Then the matter—on the submission of the Estimates—can be carried to a much more definite conclusion than to-day. There is nothing for it in the circumstances in which we find ourselves, I am afraid, than that, my hon. and gallant Friends, and those whose interests they represent so ably, should possess their souls in patience till the Estimates are submitted.

Viscount CURZON

Can the right hon. Gentleman give an undertaking that that policy will be announced in three months?

Dr. MACNAMARA

What that policy shall be—certainly not!

Viscount CURZON

in regard to the personnel?

Dr. MACNAMARA

I cannot say more. But you cannot submit the Estimates for 1920–21 without some clear idea of what your immediate future is; that is perfectly obvious. Officers and men of the Fleet will be in a much better position then to answer the anxieties and apprehensions which naturally fill their minds than to-day. Various hon. and gallant Gentlemen pressed—and quite rightly!the anxiety of the men in regard to re-engagement for pension. In this desire which has arisen out of what I may call the policy of free discharges, naturally the man finds himself anxious as to what would happen to him if he stayed in the Navy. Men have come, say, to a period when they might fairly reasonably expect to be allowed to go on and get further time for pension. I take this opportunity of stating—and I am glad I have been given that opportunity—there is no ground whatever, so far as I can see, for the anxiety which appears to have arisen as to what will happen when the time for re-engagement arrives. There is no intention of restricting re-engagement to complete time for pension of the man whose record has been satisfactory in all respects.

The next question raised, very influentially, relates to pay, particularly in respect to a comparison of officers of the Navy and the Army, to the great advantage, as I gather from the speeches, of the new Army scale, especially from the point of view of the family allowance. I wish time permitted me to go into the comparison. It does not. One thing I would say: I do think we want to examine the case of the lieutenant (ex-mate). There is a case there. Under this approved scale of salaries an officer who has four children, and the children's allowance is withdrawn, will, as a matter of fact, be a loser to the extent. of £4 15s. in the year. Under the Halsey-Jerram recommendations no other officer would lose at all. This is a case that requires looking into. As a matter of fact, we have it before us. The question of naval schoolmasters has been referred to, but their case was dealt with by the Jerram-Halsey Committee, and the Government decision on the matter was, briefly, that as the pay of the naval schoolmasters has been considered and increased at the end of 1918, and as they had received the ad interim increase of the 1st of February, 1919, their rates compared favourably with the salaries of teachers in civil life. It is true that a number of temporary schoolmasters who had been serving during the War were asked to offer their services with the Navy permanently after the War, and it is quite true that the response to that invitation has not been very reassuring. I may say, however, that the views expressed to-day will be very carefully considered by the Board. I have no authority to go beyond that, except to say that I have been impressed, not only to-day, but with the case made out from the point of view of those who put it that some consideration should be paid to these men. With regard to the Royal Fleet Reserve, Class B, representations have been made to us by members of the Royal Fleet Reserve, Class B, and hon. Friends interested, and on the 14th November a deputation representing these men was received at the Admiralty by the Fourth Sea Lord and myself, and a full opportunity was given to the men to state their case. The requests put. forward have been referred to a conference of the Admiralty Departments concerned, and the decisions reached will be communicated to the representatives who attended at the earliest possible moment.

So far only one small point has been settled. Members of the Royal Fleet Reserve and the Royal Naval Reserve, when up for annual drill, will be paid provision, lodging, and subsistence allowances at the rates payable to active service ratings. For the rest, I am afraid they must await the decisions. With reference to the pensioners over fifty-five, I am afraid that I cannot add anything to the decision which has already been stated, and I have no authority to vary that decision in any way. My hon. Friend the Member for Devonport gave a sad case of a woman who was eking out a bare existence on Ds. 6d. a week. I know of no naval fund that can render assistance in this case, but if there is any means of getting further assistance from other sources, I will see what can be done. Then there is the case of Article 48 of the Jerram decision raised by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Chatham? What are the facts as to this? Pensioners, under Article 51, are men who have done twenty-two years' service, and their basic rate was raised. But men who have not done twenty-two years, but have been invalided, had a pension which was partly service and partly disability. The sum for the service part previously had borne a certain proportion to the basic rate. When the Jerram Committee recommended it, the Government raised the basic rate threefold, but they left untouched the service part of the pension received by the man with a disability pension. Naturally, the Jerram Committee suggested that something more should be done for the men invalided out under twenty-two years' service by way of bringing the service part of the pension up to something approaching the new basic rate. It was recommended that men invalided should be awarded a pension in respect of length of service apart from any award in respect of disability. That announcement was made months ago in the White Paper. We prepared a scheme which had to go first to the Pensions Ministry and then to the Treasury, and it is with the Treasury now. All I can say is I regret I am unable to advance it beyond that stage. I agree with my hon. and learned Friend it is a long time since we gave the undertaking that the Admiralty would examine into the question with a view to a further announcement, but I hope we may be able to hasten the decision.

Now I come to the Welfare Committees. My hon. Friend the Member for Central Portsmouth (Sir T. Bramsdon) pressed me about this. The Committee consists of officers selected by the Admiralty and presided over by Admiral Sir Martyn Jerram, to whom we owe so much. It is assisted by an Advisory Committee of men representing the various branches of the lower-deck ratings elected by the lower-deck ratings themselves.

Mr. J. JONES

Soviet government.!

Dr. MACNAMARA

The elections were held at Chatham, Portsmouth and Devon-port in September last, and a meeting was held at each port to decide what questions should be brought forward. A comprehensive programme was finally drawn up at Portsmouth. The method of conducting the elections and the meetings was left entirely to the men, and at the conclusion of the meetings at Portsmouth the decisions were forwarded to the Welfare Committee at the Admiralty on the 2nd October last, and after they had been sifted and summarised by the Committee, the eighteen advisory members, who were drawn in equal numbers from the three ports, were summoned to London.

The first meeting of the complete Committee took place on Tuesday, 14th October, and since then I am advised it has sat from day to day, and is still sitting. I understand that the Advisory Committee may conclude their labours within the next fortnight. The requests of the men contain a great many details which necessitate close investigation, and I am afraid that no date can yet be fixed for the completion of the Committee's work. Their-recommendations will, of course, receive careful consideration by the Board when they come to us. The hon. Member for Battersea (Viscount Curzon) referred to the fact that we had said in this House that the Women's Royal Naval Service had been demobilised, but that in reply to a question put it had been admitted that 564 were now in our service, having been entered again as civilians.

My hon. and gallant Friend, in effect, says. "Do you think that it is necessary to keep all these girls engaged upon this civilian work, telephone operating and clerical work, when so many ex-sailors and soldiers have no work to do?" I have every sympathy with that request. In the great majority of cases the employment is purely temporary, and, where practicable. ex-Service men are being substituted. I go further than that, and I know that I carry the First Lord with me. These girls have done very good work indeed during the War. They are very keen and efficient, but, things being what they are, if there are any of them who have a good subsistence at home, if their parents will keep them for the time being. then, though not wishing to prejudice them at I do think that, without being ungrateful for the services that they have rendered, they ought to go home and give place to ex-Service men, many of whom undoubtedly ace unemployed. We shall, we hope without inflicting any hardship upon anybody, do what we can, as I said in my answer, to find employment for ex-Service men in these posts wherever practicable. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Central Hull (Lieutenant Commander Kenworthy) said, "What about the men who went down and helped in connection with the miners' strike? Why have they not had the extra pay that they were promised?" Here is the answer I gave on 22nd October: Instructions were issued in August last of these officers and men to receive extra pay at double the rates laid down in the regulations whilst employed in the Yorkshire mines, in addition to their ordinary naval pay and allowances (including, separation allowances where these are issuable). The colliery companies concerned are being asked to refund to the Crown a sum equivalent to the civilian wages for which they would have been liable had the pumping stations, etc., been manned by civilians instead of naval personnel."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 22nd October, 1919, col, 2, Vol. 120.] Do I understand that these men have not been paid?

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY

I asked if they had got the pay. I am told they have not.

Dr. MACNAMARA

I have not any doubt about it, but the first thing that I do when I leave this bench will be to find out.

Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHY

Thanks; that is all that I want.

Dr. MACNAMARA

I do not think that there is much doubt about it.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY

I said that the railway people had not got their pay.

Dr. MACNAMARA

The right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Molton (Mr. Lambert) mentioned particular ships in which certain sums had been spent in repair work. The suggestion, I think, was that we were spending money repairing ships for which there was no necessity. What were the ships? The "Repulse," a battle-cruiser, laid down in 1915 and completed in 1910. Is he going to scrap her? If not, why are we asked why we are spending money repairing that ship, a first-class ship? Then he mentioned the "Chatham," a light cruiser, completed in December, 1912. Certain necessary alterations and repairs were made in her to fit her for the post-war fleet. The "Himalaya" was purchased in 1916. She was converted into an armed merchant cruiser and has now been converted into a transport ship for troop service. That is why we are spending money upon her. The "Antrim," the fourth ship mentioned, is being fitted as a signal training ship. She was completed in 1905 and is not required to fight. She was specially selected for the purpose of a signal training ship because she was the most suitable vessel, and the only alterations that are being carried out are those which are to fit her for her duties, which are very important.

Reference was made by the First Lord in the first instance and by other right hon. and hon. Gentlemen Later, to service in the Baltic—an exceptionally arduous and trying service in any case, but particularly so coming after the long strain of the War without intermission. Everybody in the Committee and in the country will endorse the First Lord's praise of the way in which that service has been performed. In reply to an inquiry which has been made, I may say that a clasp for war service in the Baltic will be issued, and—it is a small matter, but I state it in reply to a query that has reached me, if not from the Committee to-day, at any rate from other quarters—extra leave to the extent of one day for each two weeks' service in the Baltic, up to a maximum of seven days, will be given. Several of my hon. Friends have asked questions about the Royal Dockyards and their future. The First Lord at the outset of the. Debate explained what pains we had been at to mitigate the hardship of discharges. I am glad to say that the immediate discharges are on a very small scale. They are not wiped out altogether for the moment, except in Chatham, where we have agreed to go on short time and which has only had one half-day. It did nut have any half-day last week, and it might not have, although this I cannot promise, a half-day this week. Other reductions have been reduced to a very small number, although they are all additions in each case to a very large number of men already unemployed, particularly in Portsmouth and Devonport. The Committee has heard that we received the Report of Lord Colwyn's Committee last Thursday, or, rather the First Lord had then received it and others of us had not. The First Lord at once introduced au informal discussion upon it at the Board on Thursday. Another Board was held yesterday, at which the matter was carefully discussed, and a Committee of three has been appointed by the Admiralty to look into Lord Colwyn's proposals, and to see in what way practical effect can be given to them. Certainly we shall not allow the grass to grow under our feet in carrying into effect whatever is practicable in that Report. Nothing would give us deeper satisfaction than to find as the result of Lord Colwyn's inquiry that discharges need not farther be carried out, at any rate during the hard time of the winter and the early spring. I believe I have now covered most of the points which have been raised.

Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHY

What about motor cars?

Dr. MACNAMARA

How many of them are there?

Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHY

One hundred and sixty-two.

Dr. MACNAMARA

That is 162 over the whole world. I am informed that they are very well employed, and I have no reason to doubt it. I would appeal to the Committee to give us this Vote and the others, for this reason: Our first Vote on Account of £60,000,000 was to have carried us to the middle of July, when we hoped to be in a position to submit these Estimates. It did carry us through till that time, but we were not able to submit the Estimates, and we asked for another Vote on Account, which we hoped would carry us up to between the 8th and the 15th December. That is what has happened, and unless we get the Vote to-night, not to put too fine a point on it, we may find ourselves rather hard up.

11.0 P. M.

Major-General SEELY

May I press the First Lord for an answer to the question I put earlier in the Debate, Whether he is satisfied and can defend the present arrangement under which the necessarily competing claims of the Navy and the Army for air equipment and air service are referred not to an impartial Minister as between the two, but to the Minister who is the head of the Army; and, if he is not satisfied with that arrangement and cannot defend it, what steps he proposes to take to put an end to an arrangement which is obviously so prejudicial to the naval service?

Mr. LONG

I have no hesitation whatever in answering my right hon. Friend's question, as far as it is possible for me to do so, although I might take refuge, if I chose, in the very ordinary Parliamentary reply that the whole of his question is hypothetical, because really it centres in his conclusion, what course shall I take as First Lord of the Admiralty if and when I find that the present arrangement does not conduce to the efficiency of the Navy? My right hon. Friend and I are too old friends to quarrel, but if I wanted to quarrel I might say he must leave it to me to say what course I take when I do not feel it consistent with my honour and credit to remain a member of the Government. That is really the answer to his question. When he asks me about the present situation, that is a totally different question, and, as we have discovered to-night, it is extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, to answer it within the very narrow limits which we are allowed in this Debate, owing to the fact that we have to accept the existing condition of things under which the Air Board is a Ministry by itself. My right hon. Friend is an enthusiastic supporter of a separate air administration. My hon. and gallant Friend (Rear-Admiral Adair) does not share my right hon. Friend's views. He does not approve of the existing state of things, but he still more disapproves of a separate Air Ministry, and wants a reversion to the original condition which existed before the Air Minister was appointed.

Rear-Admiral ADAIR

It should become a part of the Navy.

Mr. LONG

That is exactly what it was before the Air Board was appointed. The Board of Admiralty and the War Office were each responsible for their respective air branches. Owing to the very unsatisfactory state of things which arose during the War public opinion became very excited, and the opinion of this House was not only unanimous, it was more than that. No Government could have resisted the pressure of Parliament to get rid of this dual control, by the two military Departments, and to substitute a separate Air Ministry. Therefore, it would be kicking against the pricks to attempt, even if you believe in the old system, to go back to it now. Parliament deliberately arrived at this conclusion. I was a member of the Government at the time, and I know how great the pressure was. The Air Department was created, and up to the constitution of the present Government it was under a separate head. The Air Department is now under a Secretary of State, who is also Secretary of State for War. My right hon. Friend (General Seely) thereupon rehearses to the Committee an imaginary conversation between myself and the head of the Air Board I was unable to recognise either myself or the head of the Air Board in the conversation which was rehearsed with artistic skill. He asks me, "What are you going to do when the Secretary of State for War and the Secretary of State for Air, Mr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, this dual political personality, tells you that having discussed the matter with himself he cannot give you at the Admiralty what you want for the air, because he has already given it to himself at the War Office "? I do not want to take refuge in the hypothetical, but I think I may pray for mercy and say that we have plenty of other difficulties to deal with. We have had a most interesting debate. Everybody who has spoken has criticised the Admiralty and the First Lord, and has attacked us and abused us. [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] Well, at any rate, the majority have. Ninety-eight per cent. have, and the other 2 per cent. that have praised us have done it more in the sense of favours to come than of favours received. At the end of the Debate, with my bruised ribs, and in my exhausted condition, I find myself being asked what I shall do in a hypothetical situation, when the Secretary of State for War says that he has consulted the Secretary of State for Air, and the Secretary of State for Air cannot give to the Secretary of State for War all that he wants, and therefore the Secretary of State for War cannot give the First Lord of the Admiralty all that he wants. That state of things has not yet arisen. As a matter of fact the chief of the naval staff, who is the First Sea Lord, and the chief of the air staff have been in constant communication. I do not say for a moment that I am satisfied with what the Air Board has done, but I have no reason to believe that this is because the Air Board has surrendered itself to the War Office. I am not at all sure that it is not the case that the Air Board take a different view of what we want than we take ourselves. It may be that my combat in the future will not be with the Secretary of State for War, but with the Air Board, who may take a different view from what we take of naval requirements. All I can say is that when the moment arrives when I find—if I am still First Lord of the Admiralty—that the Navy suffers, the first thing -I shall have to do will be to discover whether the culprit is the Air Board or the War Office, and the second thing will be to decide, having found the culprit, the course to take in regard to my own position. I do mot think I ought to be asked to state in advance what course I should take. My right hon. and gallant Friend has taken his own course. He has, in accordance with a long and honourable Parliamentary position, resigned the office he held, because he felt that he could no longer serve the country in that capacity. He may rest assured that I am not likely to hold my office one moment longer than I feel I can hold it consistent with my duty to my country.

Rear-Admiral ADAIR

As the First Lord has given us an assurance that in three months we shall know the numbers for next year, 1920–21, no useful purpose will be effected by going to a Division—

Mr. LONG

To-day is the 10th of December, and I have never given the assurance that within three months, to a day or a week, this shall be done. What I have said is that the new Estimates for the coming year must be presented within about three months, and at that time I shall certainly make a definite statement.

Rear-Admiral ADAIR.

That is quite sufficient. No useful purpose would be served by going to a Division, and I, therefore, withdraw my Amendment I must say one word as to the Air Service. In the Navy we look to the Admiralty and not to the Air Ministry, for the Air Service which is absolutely essential for the efficiency of the Navy.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Original Question put, and agreed to.