DISARMAMENT CONFERENCE.

HC Deb 13 May 1932 vol 265 cc2325-83

The SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Sir John Simon)

I understand that the Opposition have indicated a desire that on the Motion for the Adjournment there should be come discussion of the present position in relation to the Disarmament Conference which is now going on. I understand, further, that it was thought by them to be convenient that I should open the debate with a short statement. I am very willing to do my best on the Motion for the Adjournment which the Chief Whip has just moved.

It is well to begin by reminding the House and calling the attention of the country to the very important consideration that—whatever our opinions may be as to the prospects of good results from the Disarmament Conference, or as to the appropriateness of the time at which it is being held, or as to the difficulty of the method which has been pursued—the holding of the Conference itself is expressly called for by the documents which were agreed to and exchanged at the time when the Treaty of Versailles was signed in June, 1919. Not only this country but all the countries who were parties to the Treaty of Versailles are, therefore, carrying out the declared intention upon the basis of which those documents were exchanged and entered into. Perhaps I might be allowed to gather together four short quotations. First of all, we will take the articles of the Treaty itself. Part V is introduced by a Preamble, the words of which, although they have often been quoted, are very material to bear in mind in this connection. They provide that: In order to render possible the initiation of a general limitation of the armaments of all nations Germany undertakes strictly to observe the Military Naval and Air Clauses which follow. That is the first provision and hon. Members will see, without entering into the question of whether there is any thing in the nature of a contractual condition, or anything of the kind, that it is quite plain that the Treaty of Versailles, in the introductory words of Part V, contemplates the initiation of a general limitation of armaments, which would be generally applied, and associates that with the provisions then being made and accepted by the defeated Powers. In the same way when one examines the Articles of the Covenant of the League of Nations, which forms an important part of the first portion of the Treaty of Versailles, Article 8 not only implicitly but explicitly insists upon the same course of procedure. Article 8 contains this phrase: The members of the League recognise that the maintenance of peace requires the reduction of national armaments to the lowest point consistent with national safety and the enforcement by common action of international obligations. It goes on to provide that the Council of the. League, which was then being constituted for the first time, should undertake the duty of formulating plans for such reduction for consideration and action by the several Governments. That is the second quotation and very relevant in this connection. The third quotation is from a document which was drawn up at the very time when the signature of the Treaty was about to take place, and was described as the Clemenceau letter. Documents were exchanged between the Allied and the Associated Powers on the one hand and the representatives of the defeated Powers on the other, in which the terms of the draft Treaty were reviewed and certain difficulties and objections were analysed. On the representations then made on behalf of Germany, the famous document was drawn up and delivered, which contains this sentence: The Allied and Associated powers wish to make it clear that their requirements in regard to German armaments were not made solely with the object of rendering it impossible for Germany to resume a policy of military aggression. They are also the first step towards that general reduction and limitation of armaments which they seek to bring about as one of the most fruitful preventatives of war, which should be one of the first duties of the League of Nations to provide. The last extract that I would add is a short quotation from a document which did not come into existence at the time when the Treaty of Versailles was signed but later, and it is all the more significant because it is later. In 1925, when the negotiations took place which fructified in the signing of the Locarno Treaty, the final protocol to the Locarno Conference included a very significant sentence. It put on record not only that the Governments who were parties to the Locarno Treaty believed that the new arrangement would relax the hostile tension between nations, some of the nations concerned in the Treaty, but that it would ease the future solution of political problems in Europe. The final Protocol went on to say that the signatories held that it would hasten on effectively the disarmament provided for in Article VIII of the Covenant of the League of Nations. I am making these citations, not because they are unfamiliar, but because I think it is a useful process now to bring them forward in order that we may see what, when hopes were more easily entertained and expectations more fervently embraced, the declared intentions of the peoples of the world were in connection with this matter. Therefore, the first point I make is that the holding of this Disarmament Conference is not to be questioned or challenged in any quarter, for it is an essential step if we are to fulfil, or atempt to fulfil, the declared purpose and make good what was in some respects the basis of very important negotiations and agreements in the past.

The second point I wish to make is this. It is true that it has taken a long time before this Disarmament Conference is called, but those who are a little critical of the whole procedure are not as a rule those who are contending that the Disarmament Conference might have been held before but those who are a little disposed to question whether it is going to produce good results now. In fact, it may be taken as a general proposition that an international conference will never succeed unless there has been adequate preparation. It is hardly too much to say that the conferences which have produced the most resounding results are conferences in which a great deal that was decided, with so much emphasis and public announcement, had been to a large extent privately arranged before. You must have a preliminary preparation.

Let the House observe the nature of this Conference. It is by no means a small or easy example of international discussions. Something like 55 nations axe involved, great and small. We have present not only those who set themselves by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles to pursue this act, but nations who are not members of the League of Nations at all. On the one hand, we have Russia, with Mr. Litvin off from time to time making speeches which are not without point and pungency. We have the United States of America, and we are glad to know that they are taking so full and loyal a part in this tremendous matter. The preparations which had to be made before we could enter upon this adventure are preparations which have extended over many years. Putting aside earlier matters familiar to my right hon. Friend who was for many years at the Foreign Office, quite apart from that, for five long years there has been diligently sitting and studying this subject the Preparatory Commission, and as the result the Preparatory Commission produced a very substantial body of suggestions, articles which are drafted, and which will be found, as the House knows, in Command Paper 3757 of this year—The Articles of a Draft Disarmament Convention.

No one who studies this document with any care can but be impressed by the intensity and thoroughness of the study which has been made of this tremendous problem from almost every aspect. There is only one thing about it which must cause anyone who studies the draft to look at it with anxiety as to what may be ultimately accomplished. It not only consist of draft clauses, but in critical places it consists of blanks, which have to be filled in. Take, for example, the second Article which deals with personnel. It says: The average daily effectives in the land, sea or air, armed forces and formations organised on a military basis of each of the high contracting parties shall not exceed in each of the categories the effectives defined in the tables annexed to the chapter the figures laid down for such party in the corresponding column of the said tables. You turn to the tables with increasing expectancy, and when you come to the tables you find that the average daily effectives, which are not to be exceeded in the land armed forces, are represented in the document by the names of the high contracting parties in a series of columns, which are to be filled with figures, each column of which is at present blank. It is very important, and everyone ought to bear in mind, that the real detailed work of this Disarmament Conference will only be reaching its effective stage in regard to numbers when we have got what we are striving with all our might to get, a, measure of agreement between the parties to the Disarmament Conference, with the nations represented there, and the insertion of figures in these columns which are waiting to receive them. That is the nature of the preparation which has been made for the Disarmament Conference.

The House will desire perhaps briefly to hear from me what has been, broadly speaking, the course of events and what has been the view which the Government have taken and expressed about it. The Conference met in February, so that three months have passed. I do not share the view of those who are tempted to say that nothing or little has been accomplished. Very considerable results may be said to have been secured, as long as we do not dwell upon them as though they were final achievements. In the first place the mere fact of bringing together all the nations of the world for the purpose of joining in this Conference is an immense achievement. As I have pointed out, the fact that you have there great States who are not themselves members of the League makes the achievement more remarkable.

In the second place, while I really am the very last to mistake speeches of broad and general import for the practical business of definition and decision, at the same time make no mistake that the impression that was produced, and rightly produced, by the general course of the opening debate was quite justly declared by Mr. Henderson to have been a striking one. Declarations, though they were, of course, general in form, none the less did show from every quarter of the world that Governments desire to make their own contribution and to make them in a sincere and practical spirit.

Now comes the question, how you are going to translate these general declara- tions into some practical shape. For that purpose the United Kingdom delegation took up a position which I will explain to the House. There are two ways in which you can conceive a limitation of armaments being brought about through international agreement. I say international agreement, for for my part, I make it entirely clear that what I conceive to be our object and intention is to get international agreement, which is quite a different thing from going on by oneself in doing what is called setting a good example. But assuming that we are all aiming at an international agreement, there are two ways in which you might hope to forward that purpose. Perhaps I might coin a phrase which is convenient to use. There is what you may call the quantitative method and there is the qualitative method. By the quantitative method is meant the fixing by international convention of the total in different categories, both the number of effectives in an army, the total number of units of a particular denomination in a navy, the total number of aircraft of this sort or that, the total figures beyond which the party to the convention, the State in question, undertakes not to go.

11.30 a.m.

The House will observe that that method not only limits the actual numbers of men or ships, but also includes such things as limitation of the weight and calibre of guns. That method is very essential, if only to stop further growth, but it is open, if it is used as the sole method, to this objection and difficulty If you study it minutely you feel it intensely. It is not fixing the limit up to which a given State will go but merely stipulating what is the permissive height to which a State will wish to reserve the right to go. Some very difficult consequences follow. One consequence is this—that if you have a State which is not, as a matter of fact, now building up to its approved maximum, if you have, for instance, a naval Power like ourselves, which is not in fact building right up to the totals permitted under the Washington and the London Naval Treaties, if you ask a State that is not spending or building to anything like the figure which it might perhaps in different circumstances wish to do, to put down. its quantitative maximum, you will find that that State will tend to put forward a. figure which is very much above its actual expenditure or total at the moment. On the other hand if you have a State which is producing an increasing amount of armaments year after year and possibly straining its provision to the largest practicable limit, such a State may very well, under the head of quantitaitive disarmament, put down a figure that is not merely in excess of what its actual forces are, but in excess of what its present needs are, with the result that the State that has really been showing economy and a desire on its own part to limit armaments, is put in the position of making a claim which appears to be in exact contradiction of its real purpose, while others who take quite a different course will be able to claim the modesty of the increase which they wish to make. To use a phrase of good Saxon English, it enables them to get away with it.

There is a second difficulty in quantitative disarmament, the fixing of maxima. It is what I may call a subjective operation; that is to say, each State has to be content with the figure for itself, and it is not a question of a majority vote determining what is the figure which ought to be fixed. Nothing can be signed and sealed, unless each State says, "Yes, that is enough for me." I have heard people in a mood of depression declare that if that was all that was going to be accomplished there is a risk that the Conference may end in being an Armament Conference. At any rate, it would be most alarming, as well as most impressive, if when each State was invited to say the maximum which it might conceivably want to reach, in the next 10 years, they put forward, perhaps with a desire to be on the safe side, a series of figures of exaggerated proportions. Of course what is contemplated is that there will be, and indeed there must be, negotiations and discussions between at any rate groups of States for this purpose.

Take the case of naval armaments. The great naval Powers of the world are at least able to claim that they have made a practical contribution towards disarmament in the Washington and London Treaties. In the case of the Washington Treaty, five great naval Powers have reached certain agreements; in the case of the London Treaty I am sorry to say only three out of the five have reached agreement because France and Italy have not as yet been able to come into line. But at any rate those Powers by discussion among themselves have set down maximum figures, and something of the same sort will obviously have to be done if quantitative disarmament is going to produce good results as regards other States.

That being so, it has appeared to some of us, and I share this view very warmly, that it is most important, if possible, to combine with what I will call quantitative disarmament, side by side with it, not as a substitute, not as a contradiction but as an addition, as a cross-check, another order of ideas which we have called qualitative disarmament. That is to say that you should try, by international convention, to define certain arms, or varieties of arms, or methods of warfare which the States of the world are prepared, by international convention ultimately to abandon.

Let me point out, in the first place, that, if you do that, you are no longer leaving each State to judge its own necessities. You are applying the objective rule which, let the House observe, really has a definite effect in the direction of disarmament for the world as a whole. It is in that spirit that the United Kingdom delegation has urged that there should be abolition of submarines. That is qualitative disarmament. It is not a question of how many you want to have, or how many you need, or how many you think you ought to have the right to have in the next ten years. We substitute a different class of check, a check which would involve the outlawry of a particular weapon altogether. If that could not be done, you could, at any rate, limit the size, the tonnage or the range of action of such a weapon as the submarine and if you do that you are, again, applying the idea of qualitative limitation.

I take the view—I have done my best to expound it at Geneva with, I am glad to say, a very large measure of support from other most important States and I believe it most heartily—that if we are going to make a success of the Conference, we must by no means abandon the idea of combining qualitative with quan- titive disarmament. As a matter of fact, there are some examples of it with which, I think, everybody will agree. Everybody I think is agreed that it is desirable to enter into an agreement and to make as effective as possible the observance of that agreement, against the use of poison gas. That is qualitative disarmament and that is only one example. There are two difficulties apart from the great difficulty of agreeing as to what the list should be.

There is, first, the difficulty that it is not easy to draw an exact line between what we call offensive weapons and defensive weapons. That is a very real difficulty. Nobody would for a moment dream of denying it. The object which qualitative disarmament puts before itself is finally to outlaw or veto the use of what, at the moment, I will call predominantly offensive weapons. To put it in a rather different form, a form which appeals to many people, it is to weaken attack at the expense of defence or to increase the power of defence by weakening attack. To put the same thing in yet another form it is to make it more difficult for the invader to succeed and to limit the prospects of success of a knockout blow. I am perfectly conscious of the fact, layman as I am, that it would be—

Mr. CHURCHILL

A knock-out blow to whom? To the invader or the invaded?

Sir J. SIMON

When I refer to limiting the prospects of success of a knockout blow I mean limiting the power of secret preparations for the purpose of suddenly, and without notice striking by way of aggression at another State.

Vice-Admiral TAYLOR

Does the right hon. Gentleman include in that category the size of ships?

Sir J. SIMON

I will come to that point in a moment. I am not dealing particularly with those matters. I only wish to show what is involved and I was saying that it is much better to face the difficulties. There are at any rate two very considerable difficulties. The first difficulty is that, in a certain sense, you cannot classify scientifically weapons of defence and weapons of attack. I do not agree that there are no cases at all which are manifestly on one side of the line. I should have thought, for example, that heavily armoured forts, standing behind a boundary line, at a suitable distance, in order to hold up an invader could not well be described as constructions for the purposes of offence. But I agree that it is not possible to draw a precise scientific distinction.

I submit, however, to the House—and this is a view which I think is widely entertained among most of the other great nations of the world whose spokesmen are at Geneva—that it does not lie in the mouths of any of us to say that such a general conception of the distinction between offensive and defensive is meaningless for this reason. There are certain weapons mentioned in Part V of the Treaty of Versailles which are prohibited to Germany, and there are certain other weapons which Germany is permitted to have. Will anybody who thinks that qualitative disarmament is all nonsense be good enough to tell me why the Allied and Associated Powers selected those particular weapons and prohibited Germany from having them? The answer is written on the face of the Treaty of Versailles, and it is that those weapons were then regarded as weapons which would have enabled Germany, had she been so minded to undertake operations of offence.

As a matter of fact, though this is a matter in which you cannot draw the line precisely, instances do suggest themselves which are more suitable to this class of limitation than other instances. Otherwise, we would have a situation in which to vary slightly the phrase of the eminent zoologist, it could be said, "This animal is very naughty because, when it attacks you, it explains that it is only defending itself." I hope very much that I may find that the sentiment of the House as a whole and the feeling of the country is that we ought to endeavour, side by side with quantitative disarmament, to discuss and try to reach agreement on the topic of qualitative disarmament. These are technical matters, but far from being altogether technical. Most of these large questions, after one has had the invaluable guidance of experts, are questions which have to be looked at very broadly, and we have to see what is the maximum amount of agreement which we may hope to reach with reference to this particular weapon or that. In the meantime, it is true to say that this principle has been accepted, with the advice of their experts, by most of the great countries which are represented at Geneva.

All that is dealing with rather general conceptions. I do not think anyone can suppose I am meaning to avoid difficulties, because indeed I am not, and I should like to say to the House that, of course, we are now approaching, at Geneva, questions of a more concrete, a more controversial, and a very difficult character. We are approaching, for example, the discussion of two propositions or conceptions which I would shortly describe to the House, though I do not think we can usefully debate them or set them against one another to-day. One is what is called the German thesis of equality, and the other is the French thesis of security. Nothing is gained by failing to look these things in the face, and therefore I propose to state, in two or three sentences, what is the nature of the issue which these two most important propositions raise.

Take the German thesis, put before the conference in a document which has already been expounded in one or two preliminary speeches which, in the course of time, of course, must be considered. It will be seen at once that it is not a technical question, but that it is something which is much more fundamental than any technical question. It is fundamentally a political question. The German thesis, as I understand it, is of this sort: Germany says, "We are invited to join in this Disarmament Conference. We come into the Disarmament Conference as a member of equal status with everybody else. We are in fact a member of the League of Nations and a member of the Council of the League of Nations." Now, Germany says, "when discussing the question of what should be the level amount of our armaments in the future, there is a question of status involved." And Germany is not the only part of the world where questions of status have their importance.

It is pointed out—and so far it cannot be challenged or denied—that Part V of the Treaty of Versailles, in putting a limitation upon German armaments did not arise from a Disarmament Convention to which all the States of the World were equally parties, but arose under the terms of a special instrument which was the result of the Great War. Germany raises this question, and it is one which will have to be considered in its political aspects. It is not a question primarily of quantum, of the amount of armaments, but on what basis and on what principle is the German limitation of armaments in the future to be based; and that question that she should in this respect enjoy, as she would describe it, a status, and therefore entirely how her position is going to be fitted into the general scheme at which the Disarmament Conference is trying to arrive, is one of the big matters in front of the countries represented at Geneva.

I do not wish to put it into contrast with that at all, as necessarily inconsistent, but side by side with that, and in a certain sense claiming attention as a rival, is the French proposition, which deserves again a very great deal of careful and sympathetic study. Our friends in France put forward quite early in the Conference a Memorandum, which, like many French documents, is a model of ingenious and detailed statement, and essentially the French Memorandum puts forward two conceptions, and the conceptions are related; in fact, we are warned in the document that if we do not accept the second, it is no good accepting the first.

The first conception is the conception of an international force. I do not wish to use any language which is thought to be critical. I am merely examining the proposition and indicating its nature. The Memorandum proposes that there should be certain armaments, primarily certain air armaments—boambing aeroplanes of the larger type—which should be at the service of the League of Nations, and indeed that the largest type should be physically handed over to the League, and that an intermediate type should be solemnly declared to be at the service of the League, though, as I understand, remaining in the physical possession and control of the States which built them. The conception which underlies this plan, not limited to bombing aeroplanes, is that it would be a development of the conception of international action, operation, and influence, that the great international organ, the League of Nations, should have, for the purposes of enforcing the true rule of international conduct, a force, be it small or large, at its disposal. That is the first of the two large propositions.

The second is a proposal, which is said to be intimately connected with it, that there must be a further development of security for the organisation of peace, which appeals to be a desire to secure some Protocol, binding those who sign it, to come to the assistance of the victim in the case of aggression in a very definite way. I mention these things because it is manifest that when, after Whitsuntide, the discussions at Geneva are resumed, these two propositions present very grave, very controversial, and extremely practical issues.

Perhaps I may, without indiscretion, say this much about the conception of an international force. It has seemed to me—and I think I am speaking in the name of the Government when I say— that whatever may be said for an international force, an international force eventually involves an international commander, an international general staff, and an international cabinet, and while it is perfectly true that all these things will be international, none the less we have to remember that the individuals who will compose the international general staff will not be international, but will be national. They will belong to nation "A," or nation "B," or nation "C."

I think probably that there are Very serious difficulties to be analysed and considered, because, after all, it is the essence of the work of an international general staff that it should set itself a hypothetical problem in advance. For instance, suppose nation "A" were to make an aggressive attack on nation "B," what is the best way of bombing the capital of "A"? I do not see how you are going to constitute an international general staff consisting of members of different nations with much hope that the plans will remain secret.

Really, this raises very big questions. Do we conceive of the development of the League of Nations as an international police force, or do we conceive its strength and authority running along a different line, as being the concentration, embodiment and expression of what is an increasingly sensitive and powerful organ, namely, the organ of world opinion? As I ventured to say to the House in the same connection some time ago, it seems to me that we are in this dilemma. When the difficulty arises, either the public opinion of the world will be so deeply stirred that it will be overwhelming in effect, and in that case you will not need a police force; or else the case will be one in which, whatever arrangements you make in advance, there will be real differences of view, in which case we shall find it exceedingly difficult to give the international police force consistent and intelligent direction.

I have done my best to sketch the main issues which have arisen and which are now arising, but there is one observation I desire to make in conclusion. I quite understand the state of mind of those who express some strong feeling that the Disarmament Conference may not be likely to produce all that we hope. I do not abuse them as mere cynics. I do not wish to use hard language about pessimism, for I understand how men who study the debates at Geneva are sometimes tempted to say with the Oriental poet that they …heard great Argument About it and about; but evermore Came out by the same door wherein I went. 12 n.

All that is natural for the observer who does not take a long view, but I make this claim. Let us look at tills thing as practical men, and after all, what is being practical in this matter? Is it a practicable attitude to say that as things have been they will remain? Anyone who says that has never seriously sat down to consider what continuous and increasing armament would cost and what the next war would be like. Therefore, for my part, I define the attitude that I would wish to take up and which I think the Government and the House of Commons would wish to take up. It is an attitude of qualified optimism as regards the results of the Disarmament Conference, but unqualified determination to pursue a good result to the end.

Mr. LANSBURY

I should have preferred that someone much more experienced than me in the intimate affairs of European and international diplomacy were here to speak after the right hon. Gentleman. But things being as they are, it may not be without some advantage that a person who has had to look at life from the outside of Government offices should state what the party and the movement to which I belong feel on this question. It happens that during the time of the Peace Conference I spent three or four months in Paris and met all sorts and conditions of people, from President Wilson to representatives of many of the smaller nations and some of the larger nations. I was one of those who were carried away, perhaps unfortunately and rather stupidly, by the speeches that were made at the first gathering of the Peace Conference at the French Foreign Office, when President Wilson, the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) and M. Clemenceau and others made great speeches telling us what was going to happen in the near future as a result of the work they had in hand. If people like myself were stupid enough to accept at their face value the statements then made, the responsibility must rest with the eminent men who made the statements. It was categorically stated that we were to enter on a new era of international relationships in which co-operation between great and small nations alike would secure peace in the world; and that, although there might be some difficulties in regard to Germany and the conquered powers, they were in the end to be brought in on equal terms with the rest of the powers of Europe and America.

Some 14 years have passed since then, and it is still true to say that all the civilised nations of the world are still arming, and all the questions the right hon. Gentleman asked—you could put the question mark after nearly every sentence of his speech—are just the same as have been formulated all the time. The right hon. Gentleman advises us not to be over hopeful as to anything in the immediate future, but to preserve our faith—at any rate, that is how I interpreted his last few sentences. I believe it will be the expression of opinion of ordinary men—not the diplomatists, not the wise people, but ordinary people —that the speech we have heard from the right hon. Gentleman is one of the most disheartening on this subject that has ever been made. It may very well be that it was right of him to strip us of all our illusions, and to state in clear, unmistakable language how almost hopeless are the great ones of the earth about anything really effectual coming—

Mr. MANDER

No

Mr. LANSBURY

Perhaps you will allow me to make my own speech. I am expressing what I believe will be the view of the average man and woman who reads the speech of the right hon. Gentleman, and I shall be very glad to hear something that will give me a little more hope than I have at present. As. I understand him, the right hon. Gentleman has made it abundantly clear that there is tremendous difficulty in the adjustment of affairs and that we must have a great deal of patience and just go on hoping.

I think it would not be out of place to call attention to the fact that this attempt to bring the nations together on the path of disarmament and universal peace is not new. At the Vienna Conference after the Napoleonic Wars there was the same attitude of mind that was evident at Paris, and we all know what the end of that Conference was. The right hon. Gentleman went over the events of the Peace Conference and read out to us extracts from the Peace Treaty and also the letter of M. Clemenceau. When he told us that there was this very vital question as to Germany's status and her position in the matter of disarmament, he was putting forward something that is very real, but I think the answer to that point was supplied in the first part of his speech when he was showing how the Peace Treaty imposed disarmament on Germany as only the first step towards general disarmament. The Clause in the Treaty which he read to us, with the letter of M. Clemenceau, led me and ordinary people to believe that the aim of the nations who imposed those terms on Germany was not that Germany should be isolated for ever from the rest of Europe but that the rest of the nations, who were imposing that condition on her, would shortly put themselves in the same position; and ordinary people will wonder why the Governments of Europe have not done so, why the great Powers have not taken the question of disarmament fully and completely in hand.

I know it will be said that there has been some attempt at disarmament. I have tried to believe that. It is said that we ourselves are in a different category now from what we have ever been in before. Those who were present during the Debates on the Estimates of the Fighting Services will know that we were told that we had made cuts to the bone, and that we, at any rate, could not make any further contribution towards disarmament until other people had done more. Speaking here some weeks ago I said that if I attended a Disarmament Conference the first question I should like to put to everybody would be, "Who are we arming against; for what is it that each of us desire to have armaments?" The right hon. Gentleman who was formerly Foreign Secretary said that would be one of the most dangerous questions that could possibly be put. I think it would be the most common-sense question, because until it is answered we shall never get within miles of universal disarmament, which must be the ultimate goal of everyone who thinks about war. When I think of all the speeches made by pacifists and others during and after the Crimean War, and couple them with the speeches made since 1918, I cannot help feeling that what is wrong with the nations of the world—with the statesmen, not with the people—is that they will not honestly and truthfully face one another fairly and squarely on this question: "What does France want with poison gas, and what do we want with poison gas?" It is all very well for the right hon. Gentleman to shake his head.

Sir AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

I said, "we want nothing."

Mr. LANSBURY

Very well; then let us not have poison gas; let us both agree not to manufacture poison gas. If we have no use for it, and if we are not anticipating the use of it, surely to goodness there is no object in producing it and employing people to discover what more fiendish stuff we can get in order to be superior to everybody else. The right hon. Gentleman gave the answer when he was dealing with the international police force or international armed forces. He answered my question to some extent when he said, "Why, the first thing they have to do is to start thinking where they may have to operate." That is a spirit which I think is of the devil, and it has got to be exorcised out of the minds of the statesmen who have this job in hand, because until that attitude of mind is disposed of there can be no hope for either partial or universal disarmament. I think that is at the root of the whole matter, and because I think so I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he will not, if I may respectfully say so, think a little more deeply about that side of the question.

Reading what has been published, in regard to the attitude of France and Italy towards each other and the attitude of France towards Germany, the one thing apparent is that what they are asking for is summed up in the word "security." All nations, when they go to war, claim that they are right. That happened during the great War, and it has happened in every war that I have known in my lifetime, and always, after the War, when the terms of peace are being settled, the one thing striven for is security. The French want security against the Germans. What the Italians want security against I am not quite sure, but "security" is the one word that all the statesmen have in their minds. That brings me again to the question that I said I would put, and that is, against whom do the statesmen expect to use their armaments, and against whom do they wish to have security? I know that all this is only very simple, ordinary talk, but the statesmen of the world have made a pretty fine muddle of this business, and they have not advanced very far. It may be that if they would bend their minds to the simplest things, which, in spite of all that one may say, are nearly always the truest things, they would get nearer to a settlement of their difficulties.

Let us bring the matter a little nearer home. As I understand the propositions or the suggestions of the Foreign Secretary which have been accepted at the Disarmament Conference, it is not only that quantitative armaments shall be discussed and dealt with, but qualitative ones also. I believe that there is a sort of agreement among large numbers of Powers that submarines are hideous things and ought to be abolished. A number of nations think that if sub- marines are to be abolished, great battleships should also be abolished. They maintain that if one nation thinks battleships are important for defence, the smaller nations who cannot afford battleships may think, and from their point of view rightly think, that submarines must be maintained. So that each nation thinks, in regard to qualitative armaments, of what will be best for its own security. I come back to that word again. I believe, if you follow this up, that that will be the rock upon which all these propositions will split. I would like the House to consider that when tanks and the modernised mechanism of warfare are put into the scale, we should not only spend less money but should have less armaments, in a sense, because we should have them very much more concentrated. One nation with large land frontiers may want more of those mechanised arms than any nation that is on the water, like ourselves.

I cannot for the life of me see, in regard to the French proposition of an international force, why any such force should be created, if individual nations are to have armies and navies and air forces at the same time. There is an argument, which I am not going to put up this afternoon, for an international police force to keep the peace of the world. Perhaps, in the days to come, that will be the ultimate outcome of all these negotiations, but at the moment the statesmen have got themselves into a tangle simply because each nation is thinking in terms of national security, as if they had some enemy that they anticipated having to fight some day. If there is to be a start along the lines of true disarmament, the nations must take some one weapon either on the water, in the air, or on the land, and say: "This shall be taken out of the sphere of nationalism and internationalised". We on these benches hold this view, although we disagree among ourselves. Some of us are out-and-out pacifists, and others take the view that we can only march alongside other nations, but we all agree on the proposition that aviation, with all that aviation means to the world, is something quite new that ought not to be allowed to be developed for the purposes of war by individual nations. The whole business of aviation should be internationalised. It seems easier to carry that pro- position through than any other proposal that we have heard. A very great deal of the difficulty connected with air routes and oiling stations would be got over if the nations would agree to bringing all aviation under international control. Our representatives at Geneva should stress that, and should do their best to convince the nations that that is the best way.

If we are to proceed by steps in regard to the other armaments, we believe that the list with regard to naval and land armaments that was put up to Germany when the peace treaty was signed should apply to other nations.

When it comes to discussing our own position on the water, do not let us forget that we said to Germany "You shall not build battleships above a certain power and size," and that since then her engineers and scientists have produced a "pocket" battleship. The right hon. Gentleman will know whether I am correct when I say that the Germans have said frankly that they are willing not to build any more pocket battleships if they as a nation are put upon an equality with other nations with respect to big and powerful ships. Surely that is a proposal which our country ought to stand for. I do not know whether the Foreign Secretary will be able to say anything in regard to that proposal. On this side, we do not think that the question of Disarmament and World Peace can be settled merely by discussions as to the limitation of armaments or anything that is happening at Geneva. I believe that the economic conditions of the world have always been at the root of every modern war. We are divided by economic differences and difficulties, and the world has been parcelled out by one great nation after another.

I had intended to ask the Foreign Secretary some questions with regard to the Lausanne Conference, and the financial and economic conditions not only of our country but of the world, and what the Government are going to do with regard to that question. We propose to ask for more time in order that this question may be fully discussed by the House. We do not think that the difficulties from which the world is suffering to-day are the fault of the crime of any one nation in the world, but they are natural difficulties which have grown up during the century. The attitude of those of us who sit on the Labour Benches towards international affairs is very much the same as our attitude towards national affairs. We meet here and discuss and argue questions, at the same time hating and detesting some of the principles held by men and women in various parts of the House, but we all believe that out of our discussions, and as the result of our agitation, a new and better order of things will be developed.

12.30 p.m.

As I listened to the Foreign Minister, I had a feeling of gathering depression, and I could only comfort myself with the thought, which I believe is founded on the bedrock of truth, that the world to-day is made up, so far as the races to which we belong and to which the major part of the people of Europe belong, of people who have received some measure of education and who can think and reason. I am not going to accept as final the statement of anybody that because the world has reached a certain stage in economic development which has produced an abundance of goods, men have a right to slaughter one another in order to obtain them. I am not going to accept as final any statement that we are not going to find a way out of that difficulty. If the statesmen of the world cannot find a way out by applying their old opinions, then I think that the public opinion of our time will compel them to accept some other people's reasoning and some other way out.

It cannot be that the world is going to be satisfied with the haggling of statesmen at Geneva or elsewhere. The common people have read the story of the Great War. They have read the history of that war, one of which was written by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill), and we have just had another volume of the official history of the War. We may not be able to read more than we can understand of the things that happened before the War and during the War, but the history of the War reveals that in the relation of nations one with another certain changes must take place. The future of the world depends, not on what statesmen do or say, or so much upon written treaties; I pin my faith to the idealism that John Bright and others stood for in this House years ago. I believe that co-operation is a better law than competition, and I believe that the law of brotherhood is better that the law of fighting and struggling to get on the top of one another. I believe in the words used by Professor Lecky, who wrote: It still remains true that there is a large body of public opinion in England which carries into all politics a sound moral sense and which places a just and righteous policy higher than any mere party interest"— I may say here that Professor Lecky means national interests— It is on the power and pressure of this opinion that the high character of English Government must ultimately depend. That is my feeling in regard to armaments and peace, and it is in the hope that that may triumph over the pessimism of the right hon. Gentleman's speech that I shall be able to face the future with a little more hope.

Mr. CHURCHILL

I could not bring myself altogether to disagree with the Leader of the Opposition when he said that he considered that the speech of my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary was depressing and disappointing, certainly to those who have attached high hopes to Disarmament Conferences, and to the Conferences which are now proceeding. But when I listened to the speech of the Leader of the Opposition, to his admirable sentiments and his humane expressions, I could not see that, if he were at Geneva himself in the next few weeks, when, as the Foreign Secretary has said, these serious practical issues are going to arise, he would add any real forward impulse to the decisions on these issues. It is just because there is this very great difference—I am sorry that there should be—between the public professions, the warm sentiments which are expressed on all sides by political leaders on the one hand, and the actual forces which influence the decisions of Governments on the other—it is just because of this great gulf and division that the Conference on Disarmament has now got into a condition which I must regard as not only disappointing, but, from many points of view, discreditable.

My right hon. Friend began with an elaborate legal justification for holding the Conference at all—the Treaty of Ver- sailles, the Treaty of Locarno, and so on. There is no need for legal justification. If by any means an abatement of the expense and sacrifice involved in maintaining large armies and navies could be achieved, we should not look back to the legal reasons which had brought the Conference into being. What we have to consider is whether any useful result is actually being obtained at the present time, or has been obtained. I confess I have always doubted the utility of these conferences on disarmament in the present condition—I say only in the present condition—of the world. I see that I said, practically a year ago: I believe that the armaments of the world to-day would be positively even smaller, certainly no greater, if none of these discussions had taken place at Geneva. I sec that I said also: They have been a positive cause of friction and ill will, and have given an undue advertisement to naval and military affairs. They have concentrated the attention of Governments in all countries, many of them without the slightest reason for apprehension about or dispute with each other, upon all sorts of hypothetical wars which certainly will never take place."— [OFFICIAL REPORT, 29th June, 1931; cols. 955–6, Vol. 254.] My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, in his speech, pointed out to the House that, when you come to discuss quantitative disarmament, every nation asks itself, not "What is it that I am actually going to have in military instrumentalities?" but "What is the claim that I must peg out for myself in circumstances which I cannot foresee, and which may come upon me at any time in the next 10 years?" Consequently, the whole tendency of these conferences, and they have been going on ceaselessly for six or seven years in one form or another, has been to lead to the Governments of all countries, and the military, naval and air authorities behind the Governments of all countries, stating their demands and claims at a maximum. Undoubtedly, also, the whole mind of the governing instruments of the different countries have been continually concentrated upon the prospects of war, and they have been invited to consider, as I said, all sorts of conditions which may never come to pass, with the result that you have now an organised, regimented opinion in all the Governments that are met together at Geneva, and all are there in order to make sure that no diminution of armaments is effected which infringes the strong position that their military and naval experts have taken up in the internal discussions which have taken place.

So far as the Navy aspect is concerned, I have nothing to add to what I have have said on so many previous occasions, that I believe that there has been no diminution of naval force through any of the agreements which have been made since, possibly, the first Treaty of Washington. Economic pressure has led to great slowings down, but, so far as we are concerned, I still believe that we are greatly disadvantaged by the Treaty of London which was entered into last year. We have parted with our freedom. That is, to us, a very great disadvantage, because we had the lead in design, and could ensure that such moneys as we could spare for naval defence should be employed to the best possible advantage. We have parted with that; we have tied our hands with respect to our own special dangers which may arise in the narrow seas. I still hold that it would have been far better for us to have said to the United States, "Build whatever you will; your Navy is absolutely ruled out of our calculations except as a potential friend. Build whatever you will, and allow us to deal with our special problems." We have suffered in that respect, and, more than that, I think it is possible that the world has suffered by the great decline in the force and power of the British Navy. When I was on the other side of the Atlantic, I used frequently to point out that American dissatisfaction at events which were taking place in the Far East must to some extent be due to the fact that it was owing to the decline of the naval power of Great Britain that an entirely new development and balance of forces had arisen in the oceans of the world.

I come now to the proposals of qualitative disarmament about which my right hon. Friend was so very insistent. He told us that it was difficult to divide weapons into offensive and defensive categories. It certainly is, because almost every conceivable weapon may be used either in defence or offence; it all depends upon the circumstances; and every weapon, whether offensive or defensive, may be used either by an aggressor or by the innocent victim of his assault. My right hon. Friend said that he wished to make it more difficult for the invader, and for that reason, I gather, heavy guns, tanks and poison gas are to be relegated to the evil category of offensive weapons. The invasion of France by Germany in 1914 reached its climax without the employment of any of these weapons at all. The heavy gun is to be described as an offensive weapon. It is all right in a fortress; there it is virtuous and pacific in its character; but bring it out into the field—and, of course, if it were needed it would be brought out into the field—and it immediately becomes naughty, peccant, militaristic, and has to be placed under the ban of civilisation. Take the tank. The Germans, having invaded France, entrenched themselves; and in a couple of years they shot down 1,500,000 French and British soldiers who were trying to free the soil of France. The tank was invented to overcome the fine of machine guns with which the Germans were maintaining themselves in France, and it did save a lot of life in the process of eventually clearing the soil of the invader. Now, apparently, the machine gun, which was the German weapon for holding on to 1.3 provinces of France, is to be the virtuous, defensive machine gun, and the tank, which was the means by which these lives were saved, is to be placed again under the censure and obloquy of all just and righteous men.

There is also the question of gas. Nothing could be more repugnant to our feelings than the use of poison gas, but there is no logic at all behind the argument that suggests that it is quite proper in war to lay a man low with high explosive shell, fragments of which inflict poisonous and festering wounds, and altogether immoral to give him a burn with corrosive gas or make him cough and sneeze or otherwise suffer through his respiratory organs. There is no logical distinction between the two. A great many of our friends are here to-day because they were fired at by German gas shells, which inflicted minor injuries upon them. Had it been high explosive shell, they would in all human probability have been killed. The whole subject of war is, beyond all words, hor- rible, and the nations are filled with the deepest loathing of it, but, if wars are going to take place, it is by no means certain that the introduction of chemical warfare is going to make them more horrible than they have been. The attitude of the British Government has always been to abhor the employment of poison gas. As I understand it, our only procedure is to keep alive such means of steadying this subject as shall not put us at a hopeless disadvantage if, by any chance, it were used against us by other people.

Then there is the question of submarines, which I wish had never been discovered or invented. Everyone who has been connected with the Royal Navy or the Admiralty would take that view. But a small country, with seaport towns within range of bombardment from the sea, feels very differently about having two or three submarines to keep the bombarding squadrons at a respectful distance.

I have only gone into these details in order to try to show the House how very absurd is this attempt to distinguish between offensive and defensive weapons and how little prospect there is of any fruitful agreement being reached upon it. These illustrations that I have given will be multiplied a hundredfold when the naval, military and air experts on the committees to whom this subject is to be remitted get to work. I have not the slightest doubt that nothing will emerge from their deliberations, which no doubt will be prolonged, except agreements to differ in one form or another. I think a much truer line of classification might have been drawn if the Conference of all these nations at Geneva set itself to ban the use of weapons which tend to be indiscriminate in their action and whose use entails death and wounds, not merely to the combatants in the fighting zones but to the civil population, men, women and children, far removed from those areas. There, indeed, it seems to me would be a direction in which the united nations assembled at Geneva might advance with hope.

It may be said that in war no such conventions would be respected, and very few were respected in the Great War. We hope there will be no other wars, but, even if there are wars in the future, we need not assume that they will be world wars involving all the Powers of the world, with no external Powers to impose a restraint upon the passions of the belligerents or to judge of the merits of their cause. I do not at all despair of building up strong conventions and conceptions held by the great nations of the world against the use of weapons which fall upon enormous masses of non-combatant persons. Still more should I like to raise my voice in abhorrence of the idea, now almost accepted among so many leading authorities in different countries, that the bombing of open towns and the wholesale destruction of civilian life is compatible with any civilised decency. We are all allowing ourselves to be led step by step into contemplating such hideous episodes as part of the ordinary give and take of a war, should a war ever come.

I submit to the House that this attempt to employ the energies of Geneva upon discriminating between offensive and defensive weapons will only lead to rigmarole and delay and is in itself a silly expedient and that a much truer method would be to endeavour to focus and marshal opinion upon the lines of preventing the indiscriminate use of weapons upon non-combatant and civilian populations. I think the adoption of such topics for discussion really casts a certain air of insincerity over the proceedings at Geneva. I do not believe any of the naval or military experts who meet to discuss these matters will have any doubt whatever that no practical advantage can be gained. As for the French scheme of security, that certainly is a logical proposition, and I do not know whether, in a quite different world from that in which we live, the relegation of the air arm to a central police force might not conceivably be a means of providing a higher organisation of society than anything that we can achieve, but, of course, in the present circumstances it is obviously impossible that such a development should take place. Here, again, is another one of these very complicated propositions which have been put forward, the only purpose of which it would seem is to afford for those 53 nations who have arrived together to discuss Disarmament some provender upon which they could sustain themselves.

If you wish for Disarmament, it will be necessary to go to the political and economic causes which lie behind the maintenance of armies and navies. There are very serious political and economic dangers at the present time, and antagonisms which are by no means assuaged. I should very much regret to see any approximation in military strength between Germany and France. Those who speak of that as though it were right, or even a mere question of fair dealing, altogether underrate the gravity of the European situation. I would say to those who would like to see Germany and France on an equal footing in armaments: "Do you wish for war?" For my part, I earnestly hope that no such approximation will take place during my lifetime or in that of my children. To say that is not in the least to imply any want of regard or admiration for the great qualities of the German people, but I am sure that the thesis that they should be placed in an equal military position to France is one which, if it ever emerged in practice, would bring us to within practical distance of almost measureless calamity.

We must also remember that the great mass of Russia, with its enormous armies and with its schools of ardent students of chemical warfare, poison gas, its tanks and all its appliances, looms up all along the Eastern frontier of Europe and that the whole row of small States, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland—not a small State, but for this purpose in the line—and Rumania, are under the continued preoccupation of this enormous, and to them in many ways unfriendly Russian power. It may well be that there is no danger, but I expect that if we lived there we should feel rather uncomfortable about it.

Mr. LANSBURY

indicated dissent.

Mr. CHURCHILL

The right hon. Gentleman opposite would not feel uncomfortable about it because he has special friendships with the Soviet Government and no doubt he would make quite sure that they respected any country which he had honoured with his temporary presence. It seems to me that these grave political dangers must be faced and recognised. All these small nations look to France, and the French Army, as giving them a kind of central support.

1.0 p.m.

Although I should like to see the foundation of European peace raised upon a more moral basis, I am very anxious that the present foundation should not be deranged until at any rate we have built up something satisfactory in its place. I hope and trust that the right hon. Gentleman the Foreign Secretary will continue his pious labours at Geneva, and that he will be able at some future date to give us a more favourable account of them. For my part, I shall continue to trust to the strong and ceaseless economic pressure of expense which is weighing upon all countries, to the growth of a greater confidence which a long peace must ensure, and to the patient and skilful removal of the political causes of antagonism which a wise foreign policy should eventually achieve.

Sir J. SIMON

I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman a question and to get his approval of one matter. I will read to him from the Resolution which I moved at the Conference. It begins thus, after the preliminary references: That as regards the question of the abolition or internationalisation, certain tests should be applied, notably, what degree of risk to innocent civilian populations was involved in the use of particular arms. I should be greatly obliged if I could have the right hon. Gentleman's support to that matter.

Mr. CHURCHILL

I gladly associate myself with that, and I trust that my right hon. Friend will endeavour to develop that line of argument rather than attempt to distinguish between offensive and defensive weapons.

Brigadier-General SPEARS

We have all listened with interest to what the Foreign Secretary has had to say concerning his work at Geneva. Many of us realise the difficulties he has to face, and that his task is anything but an easy one. There is no doubt that many of us feel a deep sense of disappointment at the fact that this country, to which so many countries look for a lead, should have pinned its faith, to the extent that she seems to have pinned it, to this qualitative disarmament. There is not even unanimity of opinion in this country on the subject. For instance, the infantry will not thank the right hon. Gentleman for making it impossible for it to get into a tank and obtain a certain amount of protection thereby. The matter of other weapons has been very fully dealt with by my right hon. Friend the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill). But take the case of forts, to which the Foreign Secretary referred. Forts do not invade other countries. Nothing seems to be more a defensive weapon than a fort, but anyone who knows anything about military history knows that forts are the springboards behind which invading armies have always started upon their objectives against the enemy. Even from the point of view of forts, I do not think that any satisfactory arguments can be adduced in favour of qualitative disarmament.

It is unfortunate from the point of view of our reputation that we should attach such enormous importance to the question of submarines. We do give an impression to other nations of having a certain amount of detachment, but in the case of submarines which touches us vitally we take up a position which in the view of many continental people makes us appear absolutely hypocritical. The truth so far as the question of submarines is concerned is that we are right and the French are right. We have every reason to fear submarines, and they need submarines for their defence. We could go on arguing the question for ever, backwards and forwards. What is necessary is for us to seek out an entirely different solution. What is needed is to offer to France absolute security for her coasts in exchange for the abolition of her submarines. We ought to find a different way and a new solution, because if we continue as we are doing we shall never get any further.

What seems to have occurred is that there is a conflict of opinion between what we may call our point of view and the Continental point of view. It is obvious that our proposals to abolish or limit certain armaments will lead us nowhere unless at the same time something is done to increase security. If we go on as we are going, when we go to Geneva again it will result in deadlock. None of our proposals meets the contention of most of the Continental coun- tries that they will not disarm unless they get a certain measure of security in exchange. Something must be done to bridge the gap between our point of view and that of Continental nations. Our point of view, which is largely shared by the United States, is the point of view of nations protected by the sea as opposed to the point of view of nations which have land frontiers.

Ever since the creation of the League of Nations in 1919 we have upheld the thesis that moral sanctions are sufficient to maintain peace. That policy has obviously failed. After 13 years of it armaments have increased. Whatever limitation of armaments may be achieved at Geneva they will in no way deal with the root of the evil. All that is happening at Geneva and all that can result from the work at Geneva is that periods between wars may be made less expensive, but the root evil of war itself has not been attacked. That moral sanctions are not enough is shown by the fact that in the country of Mr. Kellogg, who still holds that the thesis of moral sanctions are enough, Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, who used to hold that point of view, has abandoned it, and believes in the application of the most drastic economic sanctions.

We have had in the world before Leagues of Nations that had not the force of sanctions behind them, and they all ended in disaster. There was, for instance, the Amphictyonic Council in ancient Greece. That is what I think it was called, but I have not had time to verify it owing to the fact that the noble lady the Member for the Sutton Division of Plymouth (Viscountess Astor) kept us up so late last night. It was a council of delegates from the cities of ancient Greece which met at Delphs, just as we meet at Geneva, by way of settling the disputes between those ancient cities. But as they had no means whatever of enforcing their decisions the effect of their meetings actually led to the sacred wars, which in turn led to the entire destruction of Greece at the hands of Macedonia. With this ancient historic example in mind, are we entitled to go on insisting on our point of view that moral sanctions are absolutely sufficient? I think it is a waste of time to do so. To go on holding that point of view is to deceive our people. To allow our people to believe that moral sanctions, backed by pious resolutions signed by thousands of people in this county, are enough to maintain peace, is really to mislead the people.

On the other hand, can we adopt the continental point of view? Are we prepared to go to war anywhere in Europe, anywhere in the world, to support a country unjustly attacked? That, it seems to me, is asking an awful lot of the people of this country, all the more so when the main burden of such an effort would be borne by the people of this country, because of the fact that we are the strongest naval Power. Further, it is well known and understood that such action on our part, which might lead to the enforcement of a blockade, might be likely to bring us into conflict with the United States. But we must do something and something more effective than merely to propose the abolition or the reduction of certain kinds of armaments. Let us be careful not to justify the criticism which is so freely made against us on the continent to-day that we and the United States, being ourselves safe, are regardless of the needs of other countries. What, then, can we do?

In the first place, let us make our own position clear; let us explain it to our own people. By Article X of the League of Nations we are bound to safeguard the territorial integrity of all other members of the League. Are we going to refuse to honour that obligation? If we declare that we are going to refuse to honour it we must leave the League of Nations, and our leaving the League of Nations would certainly mean the collapse of that institution. That is a grave matter. This obligation is not understood by our own people. Instead of spending so much time in pious aspirations for peace we ought to explain matters of this kind to the people of this country. They should understand the position. The uncertainty concerning our attitude is terribly bad for the cause of peace. No one knows where we stand. If it were known beyond any shadow of doubt that if a nation was unjustly attacked we should fly to the rescue of that nation such an attack would probably never take place; if Germany had known that we should fly to arms if Belgium was invaded the War would never have taken place. If we are not prepared to meet our obligations it would be far better for us to say so. Continental nations would at least know where we stand. Anything is better than to go on havering as we are doing to-day. At Geneva the delegates of other countries have no idea of the fundamental attitude of this country. Nobody knows whether, if it came to the pinch, we should honour our obligations or not. And nobody knows whether if the Government subscribed to its obligations the nation would follow. All I know is that the nation would get an awful shock if it were asked, because it does not know what our obligations are.

There is a better alternative than a repudiation of our obligations. We ought to explain to our people that war can be insured against but that, like other forms of insurance, when you take out a policy a premium has to be paid. Naturally, in our own interests, we want the premium to he as low as possible. The French have proposed a form of insurance against war which has been dealt with by the Foreign Secretary. They have proposed the creation of an International Force under the League of Nations. In my opinion if we subscribe to that idea we should be taking out the wrong kind of policy and paying too much in premiums. The idea is not a sound one; it can be riddled from the practical point of view, as indeed it has been already this morning. On the other hand, I do not share the point of view of the right hon. Member for Epping concerning an international Air Force. I think we might find in that the solution to many of our difficulties. The objection that an international force would require an international staff does not arise to the same extent when you are dealing with an air force, because you are dealing with a much smaller body. You could have a kind of mercenary force.

The main advantage of such an international Air Force is that it would act as a psychological and moral deterrent, far more than as a physical deterrent. The knowledge that instantaneous action could be taken, the knowledge that eventually large towns might be destroyed, would have a most tremendous moral effect upon nations. There is another important point about this question of an international Air Force, and that is that the idea was first mooted in France. That means that it would be acceptable to France. Ever since 1919 we have been chasing around in a vicious circle from which we have never been able to escape, as to whether disarmament should precede security or whether security should precede disarmament. The result is that armaments have not decreased. In this international Air Force the means of breaking through this circle might be found. Another important aspect of it is that as it would be an international force Germany would have an equal part in it and her fear that it was designed to keep her in subjection would be eliminated. It does not go counter to the point of view of equality of arms between France and Germany. Each country could keep the armies for which it is prepared to pay, but there would be over and above that this international Air Force. It is a question which should be given the most careful study.

I began by saying that it is necessary to find some means of bridging the gap between our own and the Continental point of view and I suggest that this international Air Force might provide the means. There is only one way of ensuring permanent peace in Europe and in the world and that is to come to an understanding with the greatest Continental Power to-day, France, which equally with ourselves is anxious to obtain and maintain peace. Whatever formula is found at Geneva, be it that of an international Air Force or any other, it must, if it is to do any good at all, be acceptable to the French just as it is acceptable to ourselves. Without us the French cannot solve the European problem. If we express a desire to work with her, she in her turn will do nothing to forfeit our support. In other words, working in close touch with the French means that to a great extent they will follow a policy acceptable to ourselves. Let it not be forgotten that even from the German point of view that country has suffered most when we and the French were in disagreement. Lastly, this collaboration between ourselves and the French, for which I most earnestly plead, should of course in no way be exclusive of other nations, and in fact it would render the greatest possible service to the United States, whose interpreter in Europe we seem designed to be.

Mr. MANDER

Before dealing with the main subject of the Debate I desire to make a brief reference to a matter raised at the Council of the League of Nations by the British representative, that there should be an inquiry into the expenses of the League. That seems to me to be a perfectly wise and proper suggestion. If it is found, as a result of inquiry, that there is extravagance in any department, it ought to be cut down. But to my mind it is far more likely that a discovery in quite an opposite direction will be made, and it will be found that the finances of the League are scrutinised as closely as those of any body in the world. First of all there is a supervisory commission, which is going over the expenditure from time to time. At the annual meeting of the Assembly every estimate has to go through the Budget Committee and it finds very great difficulty in getting through.

I think it will be found, as a result of inquiry, that the League is working on very slender financial resources, and so far from deducting from them there might still be a case for spending more. In fact I think this House might well take a leaf out of the book of the League in the way it deals with finance. If we had a supervisory commission acting continuously throughout the year, investigating and trying to cut down our expenditure, possibly we should make a very much better showing than we do. What is the sum that we are contributing to the League? There has been a great deal of exaggeration and propaganda in the Press on the subject. I will give the House only three figures. We are spending for the chemical research station, dealing with poison gas, about £106,000 a year. Our contribution to the League is very little more than that. Every year the Admiralty spend on stationery and printing £160,000. Our contribution to the League is £120,000. Here is a striking figure. If all the nations were to hand over to the League the amount which they spend on armaments in one year, it would be sufficient to keep the League going on the present basis for nine centuries, without any further contribution at all.

Vice-Admiral TAYLOR

There would be no necessity for the League at all if there were no armaments.

Mr. MANDER

It would be surely worth doing if you got that result. The right hon. Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill) in his very interesting speech gave another example of what he himself referred to outside this House not long ago, of his differences with the hanging committee. As far as I understand him, it seemed to me that he did not approve of disarmament conferences at all. He thought they generally did harm, and that it would be much better for the world if they were not held, and if each nation were left to carry on as it thought fit. But the right hon. Gentleman later made a strong plea that the Government should adopt a particular method of approach to the question of disarmament, and he did it apparently in complete ignorance of the fact that what he was advocating was the policy of the Government and had actually been advocated in a speech by the Foreign Secretary at Geneva. That speech I had intended to quote when I interrupted the right hon. Gentleman. This is the quotation: The United Kingdom delegation asks leave to submit the following draft Resolution, the terms of which he hoped would embrace what he believed was the Commission's widespread intention: In. seeking to apply the principle of qualitative disarmament, as defined in the previous Resolution, the Conference is of opinion that the range of land, sea and air armaments should be examined with a view to selecting those weapons whose character is the most specifically offensive and the most threatening to civilisation. So if the right hon. Gentleman had only carried his researches a little further he would have found himself in the rather extraordinary and painful position, for him, of actually supporting the policy of the Government.

1.30 p.m.

The Leader of the Opposition to-day started by describing the speech of the Foreign Secretary as very disappointing. I do not think that that was a fair description of it at all. Personally I thought it was a very satisfactory speech in the circumstances. We arc only half through the Disarmament Conference, and I would like to pay a tribute to the firmness and the clearness and the Tightness of the policy which the Foreign Secretary has advocated. I say this with the more pleasure because on previous occasions I have felt bound to criticise some of the actions of my right hon. Friend. It did seem to me, for example, that when the Council of the League was considering the situation in the Ear East the counsel of the British representatives showed a lamentable weakness and hesitation, and that if the problem had been grasped and faced then in a resolute way probably the Shanghai episode would never have taken place.

In so far as what has happened out there has been a success for the League it has not been a success for the Council of the League, but for the special Assembly of the League, where you got a focus of world opinion expressing itself openly, instead of the closed meetings of the Council, and where one nation after the other amongst the smaller Powers showed determination to go to all lengths in order to maintain the new world structure and to support every part of the Covenant. In no speech was that made more manifest than in the speech of Mr. Te Water, the representative of South Africa, who expressed what afterwards was clearly the view of the whole of the Assembly, and as a result of the debates in the Assembly the Resolution of March 11th was passed.

The Leader of the Opposition to-day said that the League had not succeeded so far in carrying out its obligations under the Covenant. That is true. That is the one great failure of the League up to now. If the Foreign Secretary is obliged to come here at the end of this year, or whenever the Disarmament Conference is concluded, and to tell us that no progress has been made with disarmament, then he will deserve all that was said to-day by the Leader of the Opposition. The situation would be so serious, the fact that we have failed to take the initial step to disarm, and that the pooled security of the Covenant was going to be abandoned, would undoubtedly mean that we in this country would have to consider increasing our arms. I hope that the policy outlined to-day, firmly pursued by the Government, will make for success rather than failure. The policy of the Government as originally announced officially at Geneva seemed to me satisfactory. It was a little vague. It should have been much more defined and clear, but I believe that it is going in the right direction.

I congratulate the Foreign Secretary on the admirable speech which he made at Geneva in support of the proposals of the American representative, supported so well as he was by the Italian representative and I think that some tribute should be paid to the Italian Government for the realist action which they have taken throughout this controversy. The right hon. Gentleman is also to be congratulated on having got unanimous support for the Resolution dealing with qualitative disarmament which he laid before the League. Some controversy has arisen here to-day on the question of what are offensive and defensive weapons. The Foreign Secretary, I think, placed the matter on its proper foundation when he pointed out that the real test was to be found in Part V of the Treaty of Versailles. If the weapons mentioned there were rightly forbidden to Germany, then they can undoubtedly be forbidden to the rest of the world to-day.

It seemed to me a little unfortunate— the Resolution about offensive and defensive armaments having been passed and sent to the technical committee—that the technical representatives of the various Governments, including our own, should then start elaborate arguments, often in direct conflict with the views expressed by the Foreign Secretary and other ministers in the Committee, trying to argue that battleships and other weapons are really weapons of defence and not of offence. If we stick to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles in regard to capital ships over 10,000 tons, submarines, tanks, heavy artillery and military aircraft and aircraft carriers, we shall be on sounder ground than if we pay too much attention to exact definitions as to whether a particular form of armament is offensive or defensive. We are approaching the stage at Geneva, if we have not already arrived at it, when it is necessary for the civilian element, for the statesmen, to step in with their wider vision and lay down the law as to what policy is going to be pursued, instead of leaving decisions of high policy to technical representatives.

I remember a story told in the very admirable book on Disarmament by Dr. Madariaga of an incident, shortly after the War, when a mixed commission of civilian ministers and generals were dealing with some disarmament problem. A general found that not much attention was being paid to his views on the question at issue so he made representations to the civilian Minister in charge and asked why he was not being consulted and the reply was, "It is not usual for the doctor to consult the microbe." I do not wish to say anything prejudicial to the admirable technical representatives whom we have at Geneva. I am sure they are doing their work in an efficient and effective way, but their work can only be on a limited scale and I hope that the Government will see that as far as possible we are represented by civilian Ministers who sit in this House, and that more and more attention will be paid to the wider vision of the statesman cutting out the purely technical side of the question.

At the basis of the excellent policy put forward by the Foreign Secretary there should be not so much the consideration of what is offensive or defensive as, first of all, the consideration that it will give something in the nature of equality. That policy is based on the Treaty which bound down Germany and therefore will give more satisfaction to the demands which she is making. Also, by dealing with these armaments, it will be possible to make a very large reduction in expenditure, which is what we want. Thirdly and perhaps least important on balance, it will do something to assist the defensive rather than the offensive element. I do not desire to put it any higher than that. I hope that the endeavour of the Government will be to secure, in connection with a general policy of qualitative and quantitative disarmament, a reduction of about 25 per cent. in total expenditure spread over a period of five years. I hope that that reduction will be carried out by a permanent League Commission, similar to the Mandates Commission, which will have the duty of seeing that in every country the terms of the Disarmament Conference are being observed. If that is not done, the nations cannot be expected to have much confidence in any agreement which is reached. I am sure that the Foreign Secretary and everybody connected with the League will realise the importance of permanent supervision in connection with any such agreement. I also hope that part of the general arrangement will be that the Traffic in Arms Convention will come into operation and will be adopted by all countries.

No doubt, during the discussions, the points already alluded to about security will arise. I assume that these will be dealt with in one or other of two ways, or, possibly by means of the two together. There is the possibility of adopting something on the lines of the French proposal for an international force. It may be that public opinion in the world is not yet sufficiently advanced to adopt a scheme of that kind, but I agree with the hon. and gallant Member who spoke last that it is logical and inevitable. In the long run something of the kind will have to be adopted, whether in the form of an international Air Force which seems the best, or in some other form. Reference has been made to the difficulties of such a proposal. Obviously it would be necessary to have an international staff. But there is an international staff now. The administration of the League, in many ways, is acting most effectively as an international staff.

Then it is said that it would be necessary to have a League Cabinet. But there is a League Cabinet to-day in the Council of the League. It does not always act as a Cabinet, but on the other hand it often acts as a Cabinet, and it is only a question of time and the growth of confidence before it will be possible to go further in that direction. I feel that it will be necessary to have an international force of some kind on the analogy of what happens inside a country. Would anyone propose to abolish the police force in this country and to rely in future on moral appeals to burglars to refrain from their nefarious practices? The second way in which security may be given is the way of assurances to the countries chiefly interested, and I suppose particularly France, that the pooled security which has been unanimouely agreed to by all members of the Assembly will, actually be available on the occasions when it is wanted, and will not remain something hypothetical and in the air as unfortunately it is at the present time to a very large extent.

I hope that one of the results of the happenings of this year will be to show that the League is now working so closely with the United States that in the future it will be unthinkable, that, where an aggressor has broken the Covenant and broken the Kellogg Pact, the United States would want to claim those neutral rights to which in other circumstances and in pre-War days she would have been entitled. Lastly, I hope that the Government will take up a firm, resolute and courageous attitude on this question and act as a truly National Government. They are dictators at the present time. Whatever policy they submit to this House as a united Government will go through without the slightest difficulty. If they persist on the firm and resolute lines indicated by my right hon. Friend to-day, they will do something, I believe, to start a movement in the first Disarmament Conference which will make it a landmark in the history of the world.

Mr. PATRICK

I want to intervene on one point that was raised by the Foreign Secretary, and that is the French thesis on security, as embodied in their proposals before the Disarmament Conference. The Foreign Secretary touched on one or two of the difficulties inherent in that scheme, but there are others of a different and even more practical kind. One of the chief points in the scheme, I understand, is the creation of an international Air Force made up of contingents of bombing machines supplied by foreign States members of the League. The Foreign Secretary and the right hon Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill) pointed out the great difficulty in separating offensive and defensive weapons, but if there is one weapon on the subject of which that difficulty does not exist, it is the heavy bombing aeroplane, because it is essentially and purely an offensive weapon. Its function is not to engage other aircraft, nor to defend particular areas or localities. Its sole function is to attack, and not only so, but its greatest efficacy lies, not in attacking troops in the field nor in operating actually in the theatre of war, but in attacking industrial areas, towns, and so on behind the lines—in fact, in attacking the civil population.

During the last war the assistance that bombing aeroplanes gave to the fighting troops was practically negligible. It may be that with the development of aircraft, the greater weight of bombs which they can carry and their greater speed, they may become a more formidable factor in the actual theatre of operations than they were 15 years ago, but I think it is unquestionable that their chief targets must necessarily be industrial areas behind the lines—in plain language, the civilian population. Under the French proposals the League would find themselves armed with a deadly weapon of that kind, directed, in the first place, against the civil population, including women and children; and, being armed with that weapon, it is worth while to examine how, and how only, it could be used. In the event of tension between two States leading to actual hostilities, it would be the duty of the League to decide which one of them was the aggressor, and, having made that decision, it would be compelled to launch its Air Force against the State which it decided was the aggressor. If it did not act in that way, the possession of the air force would be meaningless and useless. It could only decide which State was the aggressor and then launch its bombing machines on the civil population of that State.

I think a function of that kind is about as far as one could get with the conception which the average man has of the League, which he looks upon as an instrument of peace, not of war. Not only so, but one ought to think of how it would affect this country, which would doubtless have contributed a very important contingent to the League air force. What would happen would be that British lives and machines would be risked and possibly lost in an attack on the towns and industrial areas of some State in which, perhaps, public opinion in this country had no particular interest, of which it had no great knowledge, and as to the merits or justice of whose case it might know little or nothing at all. It is inconceivable to me that public opinion would tolerate the loss of life and material in such circumstances as that, if only it were realised in advance that that was what would happen, but I do not think that public opinion does realise the full implications of the French proposal.

That is, so to speak, the domestic aspect of the matter, but there is a much wider conception, another angle from which one should look at the question, and that is its effects on the future of the League itself and all that it stands for in the shape of international co-operation and that security for which France and many other States in Europe are looking so anxiously. In my own view, and in that of many people more experienced than myself, to create an international Air Force, or indeed any force at this juncture, would be to wreck the League and with it, to wreck the idea for which it stands. I know there is a considerable body of opinion in this country which sees the best hope of peace and co-operation in Europe by hastening on immediately with the development of the functions and attributes of the League in advance, as I see it, of world opinion, but it seems to me that people who advocate that are really blind to two very important and undeniable facts which should be plain to the most superficial observer of the Europe of 1932.

First of all, for good or for ill, the League is not a separate and distinct entity as yet. It is merely a loose conglomeration of the representatives of those States who happen to be at Geneva at the time. That is one factor, and another, to which it is useless to shut one's eyes, is that, though the idea of the League, and the ideas of co-operation and co-ordination for which it stands, have considerable power in Europe now, yet there is no doubt that forces pulling in the opposite direction—national animosities on the one hand and national, political alliances and entanglements, military and other, on the other hand-that these two forces, combined, would certainly succeed, in the event of a clash, in outweighing the ideas for which the League itself stands. If one accepts those facts, there is only one deduction to make from them, and that is that there is good hope for the future of the League if it confines itself to the rôle it has fulfilled up to now, that of coordination, mediation, and conciliation, if, in fact, it maintains a certain attitude of detachment and impartiality.

If it pursues that course, I believe that its own power, prestige, and influence will grow and that the forces normally working in opposition to it will tend to weaken. If, on the other hand, the League arms itself and descends into the arenas of belligerents, I feel certain that the centrifugal forces would immediately break it asunder. Once the League sinks to the level, so to speak, of one combatant among others, I feel sure that it will immediately break up its component parts. The States which together go to form it will find that what they conceive to be their national interests and jealousies are too strong, and the result will be that the League will break up. If that happens, one of the greatest hopes of the world, I think, will have gone.

The hon. and gallant Member for Carlisle (Brigadier-General Spears.) urged the contrary case. He thought that the time was ripe for some such arrangement on the part of the League as is advocated in the French proposal. I find myself in complete disagreement with him. He gave the instance of the Amphictyonic Council as an example of a successful armed league. There are many other examples in history, the Holy Roman Empire for one, but in none of those cases did the league in question last, and I think the lesson to be drawn from that fact is not that it is a desirable thing to arm the League, but that it is infinitely more desirable to keep it disarmed, impartial, and out of the area of struggle. The hon. Member for Carlisle was, I think, perfectly right in describing the great anxiety felt in France and other European States for security, but I am certain that security cannot be achieved on the lines of arming the League.

Mr. GURNEY BRAITHWAITE

I think hon. Members will agree with me chat it is a misfortune, although unavoidable, that a Debate of this importance should have had to take place upon what may be, not irreverently, described as the morning after the night before, and it is quite unavoidable that it should be so, but I am certain that hon. Members who have had the opportunity of listening to the Foreign Secretary and others will agree with me that it is at least unfortunate that it was not possible for those speeches to have been heard at a time when a large House was present. But if that, is a disadvantage to the House as a whole, it is an advantage to such as myself who have an opportunity, through the fact that many of our hon. Friends may be described as gentlemen in England, now abed, shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here to make a contribution to the Debate. I found the speech of the Foreign Secretary highly informative and lucid. Since entering the House this morning I have certainly learned a great deal about the Disarmament Conference. It would seem that there has emerged from the Debate two or three points which I should like to emphasise. There seems to be far more agreement in this country and the House than there used to be a few years ago upon the general desirability of a programme of disarmament of a practical character being put into force at the earliest possible moment.

I do not know whether I am misinterpreting hon. Members opposite, but it would also seem to emerge that the theory of unilateral disarmament has definitely taken a back seat in the past few months. I think that hon. Members opposite and ourselves are far more in alignment than we used to be with regard to the kind of policy that we should like to see put into operation. Mr. A. V. Alexander, who was my opponent at the last election, definitely said in the House not many months ago that unilateral disarmament was not a policy to which the Government of which he was a member could subscribe. The right hon. Gentleman was then First Lord of the Admiralty. Perhaps we have in another sphere an example of the disadvantage of unilateral disarmament in the attempt made in this country from 1846 onwards to conduct a policy of unilateral fiscal disarmament. It was thought in those days that our example would be universally followed, and yet we find ourselves some 80 years later driven to arm ourselves once more from the fiscal point of view. That shows the importance of disarmament progressively step by step, by -agreement rather than by any unilateral policy.

2.0 p.m.

I read into the speech of the right hon. Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury) a point which seems to me of tremendous importance. What was in the right hon. Gentleman's mind, I think, when he was outlining his views on disarmament was roughly this. The question of armaments as such is really secondary. What really matters is not what armaments Nation "A" possesses in relation to Nation "B,'' but what the people of Nation "A" are thinking of the people of Nation "B." What is in the minds of the people of these two nations in regard to their future relations? That point is really the governing factor more than any agreement between experts at any conference. We have a lamentable example in recent history of the thesis that it is quite possible to abolish armaments and still have a prolonged and sanguinary conflict. I am thinking of the recent—from the historical point of view—conflict between North and South in America in which the two sides started without any armaments at all in the terms in which we are discussing armaments to day.

Mr. LANSBURY

I want to make clear that what I wanted to convey was, in addition to what the hon. Member says, and underlying it all, the economic relationship between nations which is, in my judgment, the governing factor which makes for war.

Mr. BRAITHWAITE

I am afraid that I did not make it clear that at the beginning of my last sentence, I was departing from the right hon. Gentleman's speech and inverting that argument to show how it was possible for that terrible conflict in America to take place when neither side had armaments in the terms in which we are discussing them to-day. That war lasted for a considerable period, and we all know how in many parts of the world there take place tribal conflicts of the most sanguinary nature in which there is no yard-stick or measure of the calibre of guns or any of those technicalities. Indeed, to-day in the Red Sea our sloops are constantly intervening to prevent piratical attacks on ships. That is why I would emphasise the remarks made in this House a few days ago by the right hon. Member for Hillhead (Sir E. Horne) in a rather different connection. The right hon. Gentleman was dealing with the gravity of the world economic situation, and he went on to say that the representative statesmen at Lausanne carried upon their shoulders the fate of civilisation. I think that is true.

To return to my original argument, what matters at Lausanne is the mind in which the statesmen who take part in the conference approach their problems. At that conference we have the key towards sensible progressive disarmament. The key is the universal financial distress of the various countries. I have often thought that Budget deficits and financial crises in this country are more likely to bring about disarmament at home than conferences, eloquent addresses at dis- armament meetings and rallies, and all those other steps which are taken to impress on us the importance of disarmament. We read somewhere in English literature that "sweet are the uses of adversity." The particular adversity through which all nations are passing from the financial point of view may very well be more effective in bringing about progressive and effective disarmament than any mere technical conferences or considerations of that kind.

I was advised when I came to this House that, whenever a Member addressed it, his speech is not complete without some local reference to his own constituency. I want to make one because this Disarmament Conference affects very seriously a great number of my constituents, though not quite from the point of view that the right hon. Member for Bow and Bromley would approve. There are among my constituents a great many skilled men, nearing middle age, who have earned their livelihood ever since they have been old enough to work in the great armament factories of Sheffield. They have become skilled at their particular task, they are key men to-day. One can foresee, or one hopes that one can foresee, that the time is rapidly approaching when naval construction, which has already slowed down, may almost reach vanishing point, and those men will be faced with the necessity of throwing their energies into another branch of activity. Should that be so it will be the inevitable, it will be something which they will have to face, but at this juncture one is entitled to stress the importance of some decision being arrived at by His Majesty's Government at a very early date.

At the present moment these men are engaged in the manufacture of neither swords nor ploughshares. They are hanging about waiting to see what the policy of His Majesty's Government is going to be. From their point of view, as skilled artisans, it may be that they would welcome a large programme of naval construction, and one could not blame them, but if, on the other hand, their future activities must be directed towards ordinary industrial pursuits, the sooner they know it the better; because the years are getting on and the men are getting older, and at present they are being detained for possible naval activi- ties, whereas they could be engaged in industry. I thank the House for bearing with me in making that point, which is really of importance to a large section of my constituents.

Before I sit down I would like to make the point that the cause of disarmament in this country is, in my opinion, being gravely handicapped by the militant attitude of some of our pacifists. The bitterness of the attacks which are delivered upon Ministers and hon. Members of this House who dare to say a word sometimes in praise of our fighting services cannot but react unfavourably upon the general cause of progressive disarmament. Very shortly after I was elected to this House I delivered a speech in which I said that our soldiers in India, by maintaining order there at a very difficult time, were making a real contribution towards the peace of the world, and that their conduct was such that they were an example to everyone. For saying that I was bombarded with indignant letters from one organisation after another, attacking me because I had dared to make such a statement on the platform after having been one of the signatories to a Geneva petition in favour of disarmament by agreement. If those ladies and gentlemen would endeavour to maintain some mental equilibrium on this matter I am sure their cause would advance more rapidly than it is in fact doing.

Lastly, in considering the problem of naval disarmament, I am sure His Majesty's Government will not be unmindful of the possibility that after the Ottawa Conference we shall have arrived at trade agreements which will make it more essential than ever that the lines of communication across the sea between ourselves and our Dominions are edequately protected. If there are Imperial trade agreements it will be all the more necessary for us to have a number of small craft for the protection of commerce, for escort purposes, because then our whole Imperial system will be on an entirely different basis. May I say in conclusion how greatly I have appreciated the lucid statement of the Foreign Secretary? May I say, as a back bencher, that we were delighted when he was appointed to that office that we have watched with admiration the efforts he has made during an extremely difficult term of office in connection with the situation in the Far East and at Geneva, that he has our confidence and I am sure the confidence of the country, and that we believe that in his Department as in others the Rational Government will be worthy of the vote of confidence which the people gave it last October.

Mr. MAXTON

I do not rise to go into the merits of the question at all, except to say that I agree with the last speaker that the action of the Government with reference to Ottowa is an almost complete contradiction of their policy on the Continent of Europe. I agree with him that if we are to go in for a policy of high Imperialism, a policy of "The British Empire über Alles," we cannot reconcile that with an international disarmament and peace movement. It is just as well that the British nation should face frankly and openly the points which the hon. Member has just put before us, that if it is to be Britain fighting the world commercially for trade supremacy we have got to accept all the conclusions of that and arm to fight the nations on the military field and on the high seas.

Mr. BRAITHWAITE

I think the hon. Member is rather misinterpreting the statement I made. I was not in any way suggesting that the result of the Ottawa Conference would be a British offensive upon the world in an economic or military sense, but that if we are to co-ordinate our Empire economically as the United States are co-ordinated we shall have problems as regards trade routes which other nations will not have.

Mr. MAXTON

That is another way of putting it but, reducing it to its final analysis, if we are going to be internationalists let us be internationalists, if we are going to be Imperialists let us be Imperialists, but do not let us try to mix two policies which are in complete conflict. However, I will not go into that problem. I rise simply to lodge my strong protest, which the hon. Member also entered in his mild way, about a Debate of this magnitude being taken on an Adjournment day. I protest for two reasons. First of all, the subject which has been discussed here is one which has absorbed a very large proportion of the time of the Foreign Secretary, depriving the House of his presence over much of the period during which Parliament has been sitting, and now we are asked, on an Adjournment day, at the end of the Session, to engage in this first-class debate. I lodge my protest, and that protest is a criticism against the Government, and against the official Opposition if they were parties to it.

Mr. LANSBURY

Perhaps the hon. Member will allow me to say, as I stated on a previous occasion, that we should have been very glad to have this Debate on. another day, but that was not convenient to the Ministers concerned. We had to have it to-day, because we understand the right hon. Gentleman will be going back to Geneva, and we should not have been able to hear from him for at least a fortnight or three weeks. This was the only opportunity we had. Of course, assuming it is practicable, we shall have a full day later, and I hope there will be a much bigger audience for the right hon. Gentleman and a much fuller Debate.

Mr. MAXTON

That certainly exonerates the Leader of the Opposition from responsibility and puts the responsibility upon the Government for imposing upon this House a Debate of first-class importance upon an Adjournment day and an Adjournment day, as the hon. Member for Hillsborough (Mr. Braithwaite) put it, after a night like last night. I protest from that point of view.

I also make this protest, that in this Parliament private Members have had their rights filched away from them one by one. We have lost our ballot rights, our Fridays and our Wednesday evenings, our right of introducing Bills, and our right to put down Motions. There was left the Adjournment day, as the one day on which back benchers of various parties had an opportunity of raising matters which were of importance to their constituents or on particular topics in which they were specially interested. Now the Government take it, and we have a Debate which is largely monopolised—

Sir J. SIMON

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Member, but he is very mistaken when he says that the Government have taken this Friday. I was prepared to make myself available to the Opposition whenever I could, but I understood that the Vote on my salary was not going to be put down until after the holiday. It was then, at the request of the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, that it was agreed that this matter should be raised on the Adjournment. The last thing I wanted was to start a Debate, but the right hon. Gentleman opposite said he would like it to-day.

Mr. LANSBURY

I am sure the right hon. Gentleman the Foreign Secretary will allow me. I think every hon. Member will agree that it has always been the prerogative of the official Opposition to select the first subject on an Adjournment day, and for private Members to come in afterwards. There will be time now for any other discussion.

Mr. MAXTON

I regret that I was not here, and I apologise for not being here when the Foreign Secretary made his statement earlier in the day. I did not know when I left here at half-past five this morning that we were to open to-day with a first-class statement from the Minister on high Government policy, not upon any Adjournment day side-issue, but upon a review of his work since he came into office. I did not know that it was the Leader of the Opposition and not one of his back-benchers who was going to reply, nor did I know that an ex-Cabinet Minister, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill), was going to participate in the debate. I ask the Foreign Secretary, as a much more experienced House of Commons man than myself, whether that can be described in any sense of the term as an Adjournment debate. We are discussing the whole question of the nation's policy with regard to peace and war with only a handful of people present, nearly all of whom were up last night. Therefore, I hope, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that you will convey my strong protest to Mr. Speaker at any such use of our time, the last scrap of time that was left to private Members and which has not been used in its recognised and proper fashion.

On the merits of the Question, the group with which I am associated do not believe, with all the best intentions and desires of the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary and indeed of the ex-Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Arthur Henderson, who has spent a tremendous proportion of his time since he left the House of Commons on this job, that disarmament by agreement is an intelligent policy or one that can ever produce results, particularly when the groups, nationalities and Empires, while negotiating disarmament in Europe, are preparing aggressive trade plans at home. We do not believe that any results can come from that, except war on a bigger and more deadly scale than we have ever had before, or that any hope of progress is to be made, except along the lines of disarmament by individual nations by example. We must have a nation taking risks of disarming in face of an armed world, and of all the nations in the world upon which responsibility lies in that direction on this nation lies the heaviest responsibility. Those are the few remarks that I wished to make. I did not know that the Foreign Secretary was intervening again.

Sir J. SIMON

I shall reply to the points which have been raised by hon. and right hon. Members.

Mr. MAXTON

I welcome it. I regret that I did not hear the right hon. Gentleman's long speech, and I shall be very glad indeed to have something from him as to how he has been occupying his time during recent months.

Vice-Admiral TAYLOR

Every hon. Member will realise the immense importance of the Geneva Disarmament Conference and the immense difficulties which are being faced and will have to be faced by the nations of the world who are congregating there. I wish to draw attention to the statement by Germany— it was repeated by the Foreign Secretary in May, 1919—that her agreement to the disarmament proposals should be merely the first step and that other nations should follow the disarmament which had been forced upon her. I can say without fear of contradiction that this country has continuously, since that time, reduced its naval, military and air forces, and has carried out to the letter the statement which was made by Germany. Unfortunately, our example has not been followed by other countries in the world. In my opinion, that is entirely due to the fact that there is still a great fear among nations. There is not sufficient trust among nations. We have not got to the point of every nation trusting every other nation to fulfil the obligations which they have undertaken, or of the nations of the world having sufficient confidence in the League of Nations and international agreements to bring about a settlement of their disputes. Therefore, because of the possibilities of war which may arise in the future—and who can say that war will not arise in the future—each country is determined to maintain such forces at its disposal as shall give it a measure of national security. The time has not yet come when the nations of the world are sufficiently advanced for it to be possible to reduce armaments on the lines that have been suggested of an international police force. We have to change the whole mentality of the world. We have to bring about a real measure of security in the world, before the nations will risk their sovereignty and hand over to any international body the maintenance of peace.

There is a school which considers that armaments are the cause of war, and declares that all you have to do if you desire peace is to reduce the armaments of the world to any extent you please, and that thereby you will advance the cause of peace. I deny that claim entirely. Armaments are not the cause of war; policy is the cause of war, and it has always been policy. It is the policy of the nation which brings about war. Armaments are merely the active expression of policy. That has been the teaching of history, and therefore it is not a question of reducing armaments, but a question of the policy of the nation. That is what is going to determine peace.

If the policy of a nation be an aggressive one, it engenders apprehension and fear in the minds of other nations, and competition in armaments will ensue. In 1914 war was the result of that policy. Germany was not satisfied with the position which she held prior to the War, and she desired to impose her culture on the world. She desired to occupy a larger place in the sun. Germany started an aggressive policy, and it was owing to that policy that war was ultimately brought about. If nations do not carry out an aggressive policy, but merely have the forces necessary for their own security and nothing more, then there can be no apprehension on the part of other nations, and no fear, and war will not be brought about. All nations should keep such forces as are necessary for their own security and nothing more.

As far as I can understand the policy of this and previous Governments, we have been proceeding on no sound principle as to the forces we have in this country. We desire and must have the forces necessary for security. How can we base the quantity of those forces, by determining the number which we require to protect our territories from invasion and prevent our external communications from being cut? That applies to every nation, and is the basis on which we should map out the number of forces which we require. The nations which are most exposed to invasion and the danger of having their communications cut will require to have the largest forces at their disposal, but it must be left to the nation to decide what those forces should be. It is essential, if we are to have any solution of the disarmament problem, that all nations must have their needs based upon some sound principle. What has happened in this country up to the present time? We have reduced our naval forces in the opinion of those who are best qualified to speak on the subject below what is required for our security. How have we done it? Not on the principle of the needs for the protection of our territories through the world, and the needs of our people and our dependence upon sea communications, but on the principle of "parity" and "ratios", both of which are entirely divorced from the question of needs and security.

2.30 p.m.

The principle of parity and ratios was embodied in the Washington Conference and the London Treaty, and what has been the result? The result has not been a general reduction of forces, but an increase in the forces of the other nations which have signed the Treaty. There has been no such agreement made with France and Italy because they could not agree on the principle of parity. There is no sound principle underlying parity or ratios at all. Does equality mean equality of material? Does it mean equality of security? So far as we are concerned, it is applied to material, and the mathematical equality of material must mean in the various circumstances in which nations are placed geographical, economic and military, inequality of security. As a basis for the reduction of armaments both parity and ratios are false policies and will lead us nowhere. We shall never get any solution of this problem until we abandon the policy of ratio and parity, and substi- tute for these the only sound principle of what are our needs and what we require to prevent invasion, and for the protection of our external supplies.

There is one other matter to which I would like to direct the attention of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned Article 8 of the Covenant in which it is stated that: The members of the League recognise that the maintenance of peace requires a reduction of national armaments to the lowest point consistent with national safety and the enforcement by common action of international obligations. Here it is admitted by the League that each nation is allowed to maintain its own national forces for its own national safety, and that is the principle on which armaments should be determined. But even that statement must lead to the confusion of ideas as to the principle which governs armament reduction. The first point laid down quite clearly is that nations can have the forces which they consider are necessary for their own security. The second point implies that national security must take into account some international force coming to the help of each nation which is a member of the League. The first of these conditions is that you must rely upon your own forces for security and that is quite definite and can be relied on. The second condition that a nation may rely upon some international force is both vague and illusory and cannot be determined, and therefore cannot possibly be relied upon.

I think the Sanctions Clause in the Covenant is a great mistake and ought never to have been inserted in the Covenant at all, and I will give my reason for that statement. In the first place, America and other nations are not members of the League. That is a very important point, and I believe myself that, if we can get rid of the Sanctions Clause, there will be a great opportunity and a possibility of America joining in the League, but America will not be dictated to by the League or any other body as to what she will do if war breaks out. I think that is a strong reason why the Sanctions Clause should be left out of the Covenant. Another condition is that there has to be unanimity in the report of the Council before those sanctions are brought into operation. I do not believe that you will ever get the whole of the members of the Council of the League unanimous in regard to sanctions. But suppose that they are unanimous on that point, what happens? An economic boycott has to be instituted against the outlaw State by all the other nations. What does that depend upon? It must depend upon the employment of sufficient forces to see that the boycott is carried out and naval forces must be used to ensure that the boycott is carried out otherwise the boycott is very incomplete. That is not the only danger. There is the danger that non-members of the League have to have their communications cut off as well, and how is that to be accomplished without armed forces at sea preventing such communications, again as an example, between America and the outlaw state. There is immense danger in this as it must ultimately lead to a war with America.

I do not believe it is possible for the sanctions ever to be brought into being, and it is no threat to put the Sanctions Clause in the Covenant, if the nations of the world realise that it can never be put into operation. I do hope that consideration may be given to the question whether it would not be better, and more in the interest of the object that the League has a heart, namely, the peaceful settlement of disputes, that this Sanctions Clause, and the idea that an international force is going to assist in carrying out some order of the League can ever be put into operation, should be got rid of altogether, and that the League should be allowed to confine itself to endeavouring to create a better feeling and greater trust between the nations of the world, and to bring about a peaceful settlement of disputes by every means in its power. But, if that fails, let it be realised that war will break out.

I should like also to say something about the question of qualitative disarmament. To my mind it is a perfectly preposterous supposition that you can discriminate between those vessels or armaments which are offensive and those which are defensive, and I cannot conceive how it can ever have been put forward. The suggestion was put forward in 1927 by the Admiralty that cruisers armed with 8-inch guns were aggressive, but that cruisers armed with 6-inch guns were defensive. I do not know what arguments were put forward to support such a contention, and I hope that neither the National Government nor the Admiralty agrees with it now. Suppose that all the 10,000-ton cruisers armed with 8-inch guns were sunk at the bottom of the sea. Those are the aggressive ones, and, if they were sunk, the most powerful vessels would be the cruisers armed with 6-inch guns, which were defensive. Do those defensive vessels now become offensive and aggressive? If that is so, they also must be done away with, and if the idea were to be carried to its logical conclusion we should come down to the stage when every man-of-war, even if it were only armed with rifles, or, indeed, bows and arrows, would be aggressive, because it would be of greater power than any other vessel in existence. I do not know whether the idea is based on the size of the ship or the size of the gun, but the position is perfectly untenable that you can have one ship which is aggressive and another which is merely defensive.

The Leader of the Opposition mentioned battleships. He considered battleships aggressive. Why? A battleship is the most powerful ship that is built. It concentrates force in hitting power; it concentrates protection against attacks—that is to say, it is more immune from direct attack by shot and shell, it is more immune from attack by torpedoes under water, it is more immune from attack by the air by bombing, than any other ship. It sacrifices certain qualities—speed, manoeuvrability and so on; it is merely a concentration of force; and a fleet of battleships is a concentration of the greatest force which a nation possesses. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition says, "There you are: that is purely aggressive." One of the great maxims of war is, however, that you must concentrate your greatest forces at the decisive point at the right moment; but it does not follow that that concentration is always aggressive. Take the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon wished to invade this country; that was one of his great schemes. Why did he not do so? Because of the concentration of the battleships of that day—the wooden walls of England which made his heart so sore. They took no offensive action at all; they were purely defensive in character; there was no action fought; but, if it had not been for the concentration of forces by that battle fleet at that time, Napoleon would have been able to invade this country. There was no offensive action; they were acting purely in a defensive character; but what would have happened if they had not been there?

That is an example so far as the battleship is concerned; I would like to give two more examples bearing on this question. Take a mine. An enemy could lay mines at the mouth of the Thames and if any ship struck one of those mines the mine would explode. That is an offensive operation. But we also could lay mines in the mouth of the Thames, which would only be exploded at our will. Those mines would be offensive against the enemy, but they would be defensive so far as we were concerned. You would have an offensive and a defensive weapon with the possibility of both operations at the same time. If the question is one of size, I would remind hon. Members that nations with no ships of war at all, have created privateers, or even armed boats, and have used them in an offensive manner against other nations' merchant ships. It is not a question of size at all; it is the use to which the ship or the weapon is put. I do hope that this question of offensive and defensive weapons will not be carried too far at the Conference.

The last question that I would like to put to the right hon. Gentleman is a very important one as far as I am concerned. It is the question of the strength of our destroyer forces. Again we have the extraordinary fact that the Admiralty, in 1930, made this assumption: The size and total tonnage of the destroyer class must largely depend on the size and tonnage of the submarine class, but this can be reduced if the submarine programmes of other Powers are similarly reduced. That was dated 4th February, 1930, and the destroyer tonnage was reduced at the Conference in consequence from 200,000 tons to the present tonnage of 150,000, while the French submarine tonnage was 81,989 tons, and still remains so. There was a further Memorandum in 1931, in which this statement was made: Should it not be possible at the 1932 Conference to arrive at a satisfactory equilibrium between French submarine tonnage and British destroyer tonnage, the members of the British Commonwealth of Nations. will retain their right to make such increase as they may judge necessary in their destroyer figure of 150,000 tons. That assumption means that, in the mind of the Admiralty of that time, the destroyer force was merely concerned with foreign Powers' submarine forces— an entirely wrong assumption. I hope that this is not the policy of the National Government or of the Board of Admiralty at the present time. It takes no account whatever of foreign Powers' destroyer forces. France has 92 destroyers built or building, but, under the 150,000 tons that we are allowed, we cannot have more than about 110. Is it suggested that, if France were to agree to reduce her submarine tonnage, we should be able to reduce our destroyer forces from that figure of 110 without taking any account at all of the enormous destroyer force which France has at her disposal? I hope that the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs will give some assurance to the House on that very important point, which, apparently, has to be decided at the Conference which is now sitting. I hope that something will come out of this Conference. It would be a disaster if nothing did. But, at the same time, I am sure that, unless we in this country get on to a proper basis as regards the forces that we require for our security, no good result can ensue, and that it would be much better if we were to declare to the world now what forces we consider to be necessary for our security. That would not mean competition in armaments; it never did in the past. Our naval forces have never been a menace to the world at all, but they have undoubtedly been an assurance of peace.