INTERNATIONAL POLICE FORCE.

HC Deb 13 December 1933 vol 284 cc445-502

7.37 p.m.

Mr. MANDER

I beg to move, That this House would welcome a declaration by His Majesty's Government of their willingness to consider the formation of an international police force tinder the control of the League of Nations with a view to increased security and the better maintenance of world order. I am very glad to have the opportunity of going over the top on this subject to-night with my hon. and gallant Friend, although it may be that all we shall endeavour to do on this occasion is to have an aerial reconnaissance. When any new proposal of this kind comes before the House it generally goes through three stages. It is first ignored and treated with silence; when that attitude can no longer be taken, an attempt is made to ridicule it; and at last it reaches the stage of serious discussion, such as took place in another place last week. I venture to think that to-night we are going to give the matter serious attention from the many points of view that will no doubt be put forward. I am fully conscious that opinion varies in all parties on this subject, but there is a measure of support for an international police force in all three parties. It is the official policy of the Labour party, and in the Conservative and Liberal parties there is a measure of support, although I have no means of estimating it. It may surprise some that those who are passionately devoted to the preservation of peace should be prepared to consider in any circumstances the use of force. I want to say at once that there is nothing illogical in that. I claim to be a realist in this matter, and what one has to recognise is that we cannot maintain peace and order in the word merely by passing pious resolutions and trusting in the good will of the people to carry them out. It is merely a question of the right use of force. It is clear that for many generations, for hundreds, and possibly thousands, of years to come, force will rule in the world to some extent. Is it hot better, therefore, that that force should be at the disposal of the judge, of some independent authority, rather than at the disposal of the parties to the dispute as has been the case in the past? We might just as well pass laws in this country and then disband the police force and trust in the good will of the population to preserve them and carry them out. I believe that the increasing gravity of the international situation—and I do not think it is possible to exaggerate the gravity of the crisis in which we find ourselves—is forcing us to consider any method, any way out that we can see, however contrary it may be to our past habits and conditions. I believe that people are being compelled now to give consideration to the question of whether the League ought not to be supplied in some way with the necessary teeth in order to see that its decisions are carried out.

It was the hope of many, if not most of us, that through the conciliatory machinery of the League of Nations, by the development of a special technique, and by the will to agree, gradually broadening down from precedent to precedent, we should find in course of time such a development of good will in the world that the nations would consent to disarm because they felt there was nothing to fear. There is no doubt that these hopes were at their highest during the period when the Draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance was being discussed, and the Protocol; and, above all, during those really splendid days when my right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham (Sir A. Chamberlain) was Foreign Secretary, those Locarno days when he co-operated in such a happy manner with Briand and Streseman; and, again, during the period when my right hon. Friend the Member for Clay Cross (Mr. A. Henderson) was at the Foreign Office. Those were the periods when the hopes of the League developing on peaceable lines stood at their highest. The League did a great deal in bringing wars to an end or preventing them between small Powers. It is interesting to recall that in the dispute between Greece and Bulgaria, an ad hoc police force composed of certain navies was definitely agreed upon by the Council of the League, though it was not brought into operation because the necessity did not actually arise. That was the embryo ad hoc international force which is implicit in Article 16 of the Covenant.

It was often said that that is all right for the small Powers, but what will happen when there is a dispute in which a great Power is involved? Unfortunately we know only too well the answer. There was a dispute in which Japan was the aggressor and was found guilty by the highest tribunal in the world—the Assembly of the League of Nations—without a dissentient voice, but nothing whatever has happened to Japan. The whole collective machinery of the League broke down and failed to operate. That has made many people think that we are coming to a choice possibly between the continuance of the collective system plus a specially organised force, and a return to the old theory of the balance of power and a race of armaments.

I want, first, to put before the House, not the practical plan that I am going to ask them to devote their minds to tonight as an immediate issue, but the vision of a coming necessity as many see it, though I do not regard it as practical at the moment. There are many persons in this country who are coming round to the view that, if we are to prevent chaos in the world, we must have an international authority with certain of the attributes of sovereignty, with the power to decide, not with unanimity, but by a majority, possibly, of two-thirds or three-quarters. It should be a tribunal that had the right to settle disputes. If they were justiciable, they would go to the Permanent Court of International Justice, and, if not, they would be referred to some impartial body of which the Lytton Commission is a very good illustration. It would be the duty of this international authority to bring the parties before the court and to see that the findings of the court were carried out, and not to be aggressive or offensive in any sense.

It is quite clear that the question of revision of treaties has to be dealt with at some time or other. Article 19 cannot remain for ever unused on the international statute book, and we should get, through some such machinery as I am sketching out, the possibility of progress along the lines of revision. No doubt this international authority would first of all apply the most lenient possible means. There would be diplomatic pressure, financial pressure and economic pressure, and finally, if they were no good, we should have to have a reserve of pressure, such as the police have to use inside a country, to be used in a different form in the world. Certainly under such a broad and large scheme as I am referring to now we should have to have all the ordinary forces—Army, Navy and Air Force.

It will be suggested, no doubt, that such a thing is entirely Utopian, and could not take place for the reason that no such surrender of sovereignty, even to the limited degree required in this case, would be contemplated or allowed. Tf we were to cast back our minds several hundred years into the minds of the then people of Scotland, England and Wales we should find that a suggestion that they were ever going to pool their sovereignty and join together in an authority to be exercised in the United Kingdom was something entirely unthinkable. But it has happened, and I venture to think that, on a larger scale, it is bound to happen again in the history of mankind. I think that if we do have to take what may seem drastic decisions in the future we shall not be held back by any clinging to the traditions of the past, however fond they may be to us. Heroic measures may well become absolutely essential, and when my right hon. Friend makes reference in his Amendment to such a scheme as this being a grave disaster, we have to look at the grave disaster that may be facing the world on the other side. In this life it is always a question of a balance of risks, and it may be that there are graver risks and disasters than giving real sanctions and authority to the international power of the League of Nations.

I will go further for a moment, and envisage briefly how this scheme would operate. It is suggested by those who have worked it out from a technical point of view that the international authority should be armed—and of course it would all be done by agreement and only by agreement—with all those weapons which are forbidden to Germany by the Treaty of Versailles, that is, all the post-War weapons. The international authority, therefore, would have handed over to it submarines, gas, tanks, aeroplanes, artillery, the newest types of ships, and all new discoveries. The nations themselves, for carrying out their own police purposes either at home or abroad, would have the same weapons that they had in 1914, which they then found perfectly adequate for their purposes. They would therefore have rifles, machine guns, armoured cars, pre-War artillery, and the older naval weapons. We should also have quotas of armed forces kept in each State to come to the support of the international force when called upon to do so. It may be suggested that they would not be likely to turn up when required. That is always a very great difficulty, but when it is realised that those nations would have given as hostages all their more powerful weapons, and would also be paying an annual sum of money for the maintenance of the authority and its international force, it is very unlikely that they would act in any other way than in complete loyalty to the scheme.

The question is very properly asked: What happens if your international authority gets beaten? I venture to say that it would not get beaten, for the very reason that one would never contemplate starting an international police force of any kind unless there were overwhelming support and strength on its side and those who stood out were small and ineffective in numbers and in power. But if, in spite of all that, the international police force were beaten, we should not be in any worse position than to-day, we should be exactly in the same position as that towards which, I am afraid, we are moving at the present time. I do not know whether, in the difficult and trying negotiations, as I believe, which are going to arise with Germany over disarmament in Europe, a stage is going to arise when it might be possible to say to Germany: "Now we can satisfy in a very new and realistic way your claims to equality. We are going to give you a chance of participating in an international force for the maintenance of world order as an equal, with all the attributes to which I have referred." Strange things are happening in these days, and I do not know that it is inconceivable that a situation of that kind might arise under certain circumstances, and if it does I trust it will not be overlooked.

At the beginning of the Disarmament Conference, France brought forward a plan for an international force, and was very keen on it for some time, and there would not be any lack of sympathy there, though I quite agree that the idea of a tribunal for the revision of treaties certainly was not in the French plan, and it would require some pressure to make them agree to a scheme of that kind. I believe the inescapable logic of events may well force us to make changes which are hardly dreamt of at the present time. The League of Nations is simply a new form of alliance, an alliance of all those countries which are prepared to back a collective system, and it may be that in the near future we shall have to press on with that alliance and associate together all those countries in the world—and there are a great many, the vast majority—which do believe in that system and are prepared to back it up by every possible means. I understand from the Press that the Government are likely in the near future to have certain proposals made by Italy. I have no doubt that those proposals will receive the most courteous consideration, and that if they are found to strengthen and increase the power and influence of the League they will receive every sympathy and support. It is not likely that a proposal such as I am referring to will come forward, but something not less startling may be put forward and I hope the Government will say to Italy that while they are prepared to consider sympathetically any proposals she may make for the improvement of the government of the League, we do stand unhesitatingly behind the collective authority of the League of Nations, which is the pivot and the basis now and in the future of the whole of our foreign policy, that we stand for the rights of the small nations—

Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Captain Bourne)

The Motion which the hon. Member is moving is limited to the desirability of setting up an international police force, and he must not go into the general question of the League of Nations.

Mr. MANDER

I was only making that point in passing, and I hope the Government will try to make it clear that they stand against any dictatorship of the great Powers. May I come to what I am going to ask the House to consider as a definite practical issue, capable of being put into force at the present time? I want to base it on the unassailable foundation of the Government's own disarmament policy. What is that policy? I think some Members are going to be a little startled when they hear how far—and I think rightly—the Government have already gone. Their policy, of course, is the internationalisation of civil aviation and the abolition of military aviation. That is the long view, the far picture. My hon. Friend himself has said at Geneva that that is the hope of the British Government, and that he himself is particularly keen on it, and I venture to say that the formation of a small aerial force of fighting machines is the logical consequence of the Government's own policy for the purpose of dealing with the real danger of the conversion of civil aircraft to bombing purposes by a traitor nation.

The Government's policy in the draft convention is in two parts. First of all there is the proposal that we should bring forward the one Power standard with regard to the air by wisely and properly bringing down other nations to our standard, instead of increasing the number of aeroplanes; and with a weight of less than three tons unladen we should have this country, France, Italy, Japan, Russia, and the United States of America with 500 aeroplanes each. I presume—and I am very sorry if it is so—that if the Government's present disarmament policy were carried out it would also mean that in the long run Germany would have 500 aeroplanes too. I think that follows logically, and that means a certain amount of re-armament. I have here the draft convention and will read two passages. Article 35 says: The Permanent Disarmament Commission set up under Article 64 of the present Convention shall immediately devote itself to the working out of the best possible schemes providing for (a) the complete abolition of military and naval aircraft, which must be dependent on the effective supervision of civil aviation to prevent its misuse for military purposes. That is the first task of the Permanent Commission. Lower down it says: In any case the measures referring to civil aviation set out in Annex II will apply during the period of the present Convention. What are they? They are rather startling and I think very good. Number 1(e) dealing with civil aircraft says that they undertake To allow duly qualified representatives of the League of Nations to have free access at all reasonable times to all civil aircraft, for the purpose of ascertaining that such aircraft do not in fact infringe the prohibitions contained in paragraph (a) above. NOTE.—The effect of these proposals would be to establish, under the direction of the League, a complete international register of all civil aircraft—comparable to the registers of shipping at present maintained by Lloyd's and similar organisations. The House will appreciate that the Government are committed during the preliminary period, when all the big Powers will have 500 aeroplanes, to allow inspectors of the League of Nations to come over to this country and inspect all our civil machines to see that they are being properly used and not diverted to other purposes. I think that is a wise proposal, though it is hardly appreciated as it ought to be. Many hon. Members will doubtless say that it is impossible to provide any effective scheme for the international control of civil aviation. It is very easy to say that a thing cannot be done if one is not keen, for sentimental or other reasons, to see it carried out. That arises again and again, but the will of man has been able to overcome even greater obstacles than the solving of such problems, which I believe could be solved, if there was the will and determination to do so.

One of the most valuable documents on the subject is the French Memorandum upon International Civil Air Transport of 14th April, 1932, where the whole thing is dealt with in great detail. I imagine that you would have to put all commercial air transport, both goods and passenger, under international control by means of some such scheme as you have in the Postal Union at the present time, where national units would be maintained but would work together for certain purposes. Those new units would form a sort of public utility company of international form, and there would be the amalgamation of all existing civil aircraft boards, including, of course, Imperial Airways. The new body would deal with the licensing and control of all machines, aerodromes, personnel and private machines. It may be said that it is a very far-reaching thing to imagine that that would ever be consented to. I may remind the House that, according to the Government's own disarmament plan, there will be general supervision by an international staff of all armaments in every country, and that the Government's plan is to bring League of Nations inspectors over to Woolwich, to our dockyards and to our aircraft factories, in order, very properly, to see that we are playing the game. What I am saying is not in any way inconsistent with the Government's own policy.

Nothing would do more for civil aviation than to free it from the chains of the military machine. Subsidies are being paid now from 35 per cent. to 90 per cent., and nothing is more suitable for world control and development than civil aviation. I believe that in spite of your international board you could maintain your national units and your particularly British and very admirable way of operating. Every service would still operate, in spite of the international scheme, but it would, of course, be subject to control and inspection by the international staff, and that would be the main difference.

The next point is as to how we are to deal with a traitor nation who, when the Government's policy is carried out to the full and all military aircraft is abolished, converts its civil machines by putting in bomb racks, and uses them for bombing purposes. Some answer has to be given to that question. It is a real danger. Anything that I say is not based upon my own imperfect knowledge, but upon expert advice—of some experts, at any rate. What you need is a force of trained fighters, or interceptors as they are sometimes called, working under the con- trol of the League of Nations. They must be trained, because a highly trained and disciplined force is always capable of dealing most effectively with an untrained and hastily improvised force such as those civil machines would be. Probably fighters would be quite sufficient, but if it were found that bombing machines were required in order to destroy the others in their nests, certainly let that be done. I am inclined to think that fighters would be sufficient. The force should be under the control of the League of Nations, because if you allow each country to have its own force of fighters, you would get exactly the same suspicion and competition that you have with separate national forces at the present time.

Let us take the worst case that would arise. Let us suppose that machines of the League of Nations were stationed, as they would be, throughout Europe, and that some were seized by one particular country to be used for bombing purposes—for which they would be of very little use, because they would be so light—or to he used as an escort. They would very quickly be dealt with by the greatly superior numbers of the fighters stationed elsewhere. I want to face the main practical difficulties—that is the whole point of this Debate—against the working out of a plan of this kind. I imagine that when the time conies for the destruction, in accordance with the Government's own plan—I cannot too often repeat that—on all military aircraft, the nation would hand over such machines as were suitable for the purpose to the League of Nations. The League would then enlist suitable pilots and air staff officers to control the force. There would be a very large number of people available in every country. I know quite well that such a job and such a position would not appeal to many officers, who would far rather fight in a purely national force, but I am equally sure that there are a number of highly trained officers to whom the idea of serving in support of world order would make a very strong appeal. I do not believe that there would be difficulties in enlisting the services at once of the right people in a body of this kind.

The question may be asked: "Who would command?" How would you get over that difficulty? The one person who would not command would be a national of the aggressor country. All nationals of the aggressor country would at once be suspended from duty. I think that that is an obviously wise provision, though it might not really be necessary, but I want to be on the safe side. I might point out that, in the case of the Ulster Rebellion in 1914, it was put to the British officers who were in Ireland then that they would not be expected to serve if their homes were in Ulster. That is an exactly similar case to that which I am putting. That is a wise and a humane precaution. It would be undesirable to have a national of one of the Great European Powers. The recent scheme for dealing with Jewish refugees from Germany, was in charge of an American. I imagine that if you wanted to do so you could find very competent air officers in America to take command of a force of the kind that I am suggesting. You could also find competent officers in the smaller States.

What is the actual history of international police forces? History proves conclusively that no practical difficulties will arise. Let me give you one or two instances. The Duke of Marlborough, when he was carrying cut his great military exploits in the wars of the Spanish Succession, had no less than six different nationalties fighting in his forces. The Duke of Wellington fought the Battle of Waterloo with British, German, Belgian and Dutch people in his forces, and they did not misunderstand his orders. There was no language difficulty there. They knew how to advance as a single unit, and they knew how to win. The same would apply to fighting in similar circumstances in the future. The Shanghai Defence Force has seven different nation alities in it. The force which went to Peking in the time of the Boxer rising had eight different nationalities. The Swiss Army at the present time has three different nationalities in it. The French Foreign Legion, which is often referred to, has a great many different nationalities.

I was reading a few days ago in a Service journal a proposal that the French Legion—this is not my proposal—should be used as the basis of an international police force. It was pointed out that it was started 150 years ago by Jacobite Scotsmen and Irish Catholics, that when it was turned into the French Foreign Legion about 100 years ago it had all the high prestige and tradition of a British regiment, and that is possesses a very high esprit de corps at the present time. I mention that as an interesting point. It is known that at the time of the Great War one of the first American brigades to come over had Germans in it, and they had no difficulty whatever in rendering most effective service on the Western Front. In all these, and in other examples which could be given, the question of language difficulty is ridiculous when brought forward as an objection. In any case, people can learn more than one language if necessary.

"Where," it is asked, "would these bodies be stationed?" I suggest that they would be stationed first of all in the mandated areas and territories, such as Dantzig. I contemplate also that you would have to have in different parts of Europe special stations where different sections of the force would be. You would have to lease specially selected territory by agreement from those different countries. There is a precedent for that. Washington, the capital of the United States, is on special territory not in any of the other States, the district of Columbia. In the case of the capital of Australia, a special State of Canberra was formed, which is not part of any of the other States. You would have to have places with extra-territorial rights stationed about in different parts of Europe.

A complaint was made the other day by the Foreign Secretary when he said, "You could not expect nationals of a country to keep the secrets of all sorts of plans. Would not they refer to their own war offices and tell them all about those secrets?" Would there be many secrets to hide? The one and only object of your international police force would not be aggressive—never. The force would simply be there in order to go into the air and attack and destroy the converted aircraft of other countries. There is nothing much to hide there. If it were a question of an intelligence system that would know what is being done, that cuts both ways. It might be that your international force would have something to say about what was going on in the potentially aggressor countries.

Then there is the question of the arms supply. Possibly ultimately you might arrive at the situation where the League had its own arms factory, but for the time being it would be perfectly safe if the League drew supplies of aeroplanes and other things from the factories of a number of different countries. The League might order them to specification, so as not to be dependent upon any one particular country.

It is very interesting to note that the proposal to which I am referring was before the Disarmament Conference this year. A scheme was suggested on these lines; in February and March last, the French Government proposed it and M. Pierre Cot fought for it brilliantly, vigorously and as hard as he could. The Spanish, the Belgians, and the Scandinavians all supported it. The only countries that were against it were Italy and Germany—I am not speaking of this country. At a later stage, on 29th May, the Germans indicated that in certain circumstances even their objections might be overcome.

I believe that this policy is the logical development of the Government's own policy. I claim to have tried to face some of the difficulties, because there are great difficulties and we can only overcome them, if they are capable of being overcome, by boldly facing them and getting down to brass tacks. I submit that this Motion is essentially moderate. It is asking the Government to consider the formation of such an international police force. It is not asking very much of the Government that they should consider a proposal made by other people. I rather detected a tendency for them to regard it as their whole duty in life to listen too much to the proposals of other countries, and to have nothing to say themselves. I am therefore not asking them to do anything which will strain their consciences or their policy by merely listening to proposals of this kind that might be put forward.

I understand that at one period of his career, not so very many years ago, the Foreign Secretary himself was in favour of an international force of some kind, so I should expect that he would listen the more sympathetically to any proposal of the kind that might arise. I venture to ask my hon. Friend, whose zeal, devotion and sincerity in the matter of disarmament are so well known, and for which too high praise could not possibly be given, will make as sympathetic a reply as he can, because I firmly believe that this matter of an international police force in some form, small or large, is going to be the fundamental issue in world politics in the years that are to come, and I commend it to the House now in the modest form of this Motion.

8.16 p.m.

Brigadier-General SPEARS

I beg to second the Motion.

I am all the happier in doing so because my hon. Friend who moved the Motion and myself do not often see alike on political matters. Another reason why I am happy to support this Motion is that I put down a Motion in similar terms nearly two years ago myself, but I was less lucky in the Ballot and it never came up for discussion. The idea of an international police force must, it seems to me, be considered from two angles. In the first place, you must discuss the general principle, and see whether it is desirable to have such a force or not. You cannot really talk about an international air force "in the air"; you must know what part it is to play in the scheme of things, and whether it is necessary to fortify and strengthen the League of Nations. If you are satisfied as to the general principle, you must then see whether it is technically a feasible plan.

Let me deal first with the general principle. Since its inception the League of Nations has been the subject and the battleground of two opposing philosophies, which I will call, for convenience' sake, the Continental thesis and the British thesis. The Continental thesis is that the League can never be effective if it has not the sanction of force behind its decisions. That point was put very clearly not long ago by M. Daladier, the late French Prime Minister, a well-known advocate of peace, who said: Justice can only prevail when it is reinforced by strength, for strength alone can impose respect for justice. This will be so so long as men are not angels, and nothing permits us to hope that they will become angels within a measurable time. That is the Continental thesis. The Secretary of State for Air stated what I would call the British thesis with great clarity in another place on the 7th December.

Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER

I must remind the hon. and gallant Member that he must not refer to a Debate which has taken place during the current Session in another place.

Brigadier-General SPEARS

I bow to your Ruling, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. It has been made very clear within the last few weeks what the policy of the Government was with reference to Geneva. As I understand I am debarred from quoting the actual words used, and am compelled to paraphrase, I would say that it would seem that in the view of the Government Geneva is to be merely a debating assembly, a place where in case of difficulties the nations assemble to discuss those difficulties—nothing more. That has been definitely stated. That thesis is the one that has prevailed at Geneva ever since the foundation of the League. It seems to me that it is really time to examine whether, after the League has been in existence for 13 years, that policy can be considered a success, either from the point of view of the League itself or from our own point of view.

We were told that it was necessary to carry out this policy of only considering the League of Nations as a kind of talking-house for the sake of bringing America into the League. But to-day the United States is as far from joining the League of Nations as it ever was, Japan and Germany have both left the League, and France and this country are the only two world Powers that still belong to it. The attempt to reach some measure of international disarmament has completely failed. Such is the dismal result of 13 years' work at Geneva. There are cracks in every one of the international walls, and it would seem that it is so draughty at Geneva that nobody can sit there in comfort. There is a complete lack of security everywhere. The prestige of the League, and, incidentally, our own prestige, have sunk so low that Italy, whose voice grows louder as ours becomes silent, declares that only a change in the League calculated to destroy its democratic character can save it. That is what is happening at Geneva. Here in London we are told that Geneva can only be used as a place for common deliberation. Deliberation on what? On the obsequies that are to be pronounced at the funeral of the League? I speak as a real friend of the League of Nations. I do not despair; I will not give up; I will cling to the last to the one good thing that emerged from the War. But I would ask the Government, if they believe in the League, if they wish it to be saved, whether they ought not to reconsider the policy which has resulted in the present state of affairs?

There is another point that ought to be considered. Should we not ask ourselves whether the conception of Geneva as a mere debating chamber, a kind of Oxford Union, is consistent with the Covenant of the League? The principles embodied in the Covenant, although they restrict the use of force, do not in any way forbid sanctions. Far from it. In Clauses 10, 12, 16 and others, they are implied. The truth is that the British thesis has been an attempt to make the League something different from that organisation which was prescribed in the Covenant. Let me utter a warning drawn from the pages of history. There has been at least one League of Nations before our own, the Amphictyony of ancient Greece. It met at Delphis, and we meet at Geneva. The delegates of the different Greek States met in conclave to discuss the affairs of their respective States. That assembly would have met with the entire approval of the Government, because they only met to deliberate. They could not do anything else. They talked and voted until finally they quarrelled. Some left the assembly. They did not slam the doors as they went—there were no doors to slam—but they shook the dust of Delphis off their sandals. Then some States, members of the League, rebelled, but there was no force at the disposal of the League to deal with them. There was no control over any excessive manufacture of bows and arrows that there might have been. So finally the League itself broke down in disorder and in war. This led to a long-drawn-out struggle known as the Sacred Wars, which in the end led to the domination of a strong external Power—Rome. Hon. Members would do well to ponder that episode.

I fully realise that the Government fear the creation of a kind of super-State, and perhaps they see in this international police force the beginning of such a super-State. I do not believe any of us really want that, but we must admit and accept that, when we gave our adherence to the League, we did in fact surrender some part of our sovereign rights in favour of international action. This Motion is an attempt to find a bridge between the policy of using the League merely as a debating chamber and the Continental policy. What is needed is to give the nations confidence, and the British thesis has so far conspicuously failed to give them that confidence. It was, in fact, bound to do so. An international police force of itself will not give complete security, but in conjunction with another step which I have often advocated in this House, which is that we should implement our obligations under the Covenant and go to the help of an attacked State, I believe we could achieve security and make disarmament a reality. Then my hon. Friend said you cannot escape from the fact that we at home consider it necessary to have a police force at the back of our Parliament and of our Law Courts. All that we who are supporting this Motion contend is that this is equally essential in international affairs. So much for general principles.

I now come to the second aspect of the question. Is an international police force technically feasible or not? I do not hesitate to say that the answer to that question is Yes, provided that you confine the idea to the creation of an international air force. I think the technical difficulties in the way of the creation of an international land force, or indeed an international navy, are so considerable as to make the proposal impracticable at the moment. The technical difficulties in the way of an international air force could, I believe, be overcome were there a real desire to do so. I believe, however, that it would be necessary, in order to make such a force effective, to restrict its activities regionally, that is, for the present purposes to restrict it to Europe. We cannot deal with the whole world at once. If we have succeeded in doing something towards solving the European problem, we shall have done a very great deal. There is, however, one great obstacle to an international police force, and that is that the Council as at present constituted is incapable of administering or directing such a force. Some machinery, therefore, must be devised for dealing with the question. Force in the hands of the Council as at present constituted would merely lead to confusion. The idea evokes a recollection of my own childhood when my grandmother and my great aunt attempted to direct the efforts of the village fire brigade when their house was on fire.

You have, therefore, in the first place to reorganise the Council of the League of Nations, not as the Italians would have it reorganised, by giving control to the great Powers, but by the creation of a special body which would administer and control the international police. Secondly, the value of such an international police force will depend upon its prompt action. It is absolutely essential that it should act with the greatest possible promptitude. To do that you must have an automatic definition of an act of aggression, so that when such an act is committed the international force will be in a position to act immediately against the aggressor. You cannot have security without immediate help being forthcoming for the victim without palaver and without argument. It used to be said that it was extremely difficult, if not impossible, to find a definition of an act of aggression. While our pundits were scratching their heads, the Soviets found one, and they have embodied such a definition in the treaties which they have recently made with neighbouring Powers.

The third condition is that an international police force should be stronger than any force it is likely to have to meet. It might be possible that the various national air forces might be called up as auxiliaries to the international police force, but the nucleus must be, so it seems to me, a League of Nations air force wearing League of Nations uniform and under League of Nations command. It would be recruited by voluntary enlistment just as the Foreign Legion is today, and I have no doubt whatsoever that in a short time it would be one of the most popular services in the world. The command would not, I think, be very difficult to organise. Time prevents me from going into this. Furthermore, I can but emphasise what my hon. Friend said concerning how you would deal with mem- bers of this force whose countries were involved in a dispute. Hon. Members opposite seem to think that it is extremely funny, but, speaking with a good deal of experience and knowledge of the Foreign Legion, I know that when the Foreign Legion was sent to France, the very large number of Germans who were members of the Legion were simply left in Morocco where they continued to serve as members of the Legion. The difficulty was very easily overcome.

There are two methods which would be very effective in ensuring that an international air force should be stronger than any opponents it was likely to meet. You could either give it a monopoly of machines over a certain horse power and with a climbing capacity greater than was normally required by civil aviation, or, better still, adopt the suggestion that was put forward the other day in this House by the hon. and gallant Member for Wallasay (Lieut.-Colonel Moore-Brabazon), who, I gathered, advocated that all civil aviation should be compelled to use diesel engines. I would adopt this suggestion by saying that the international air force should have an absolute monopoly of petrol engines. I think the suggestion is an excellent one and meets the case absolutely, because, after all, what you want is to establish the same difference between civil aviation and an international air force as that which exists to-day between merchant ships and battleships. It is neither practicable nor desirable to internationalise civil aviation or even the great international lines of communication.

I very much regret that the Socialist party have swallowed that section of the French proposals whole. I think that the suggestion would meet with the strongest, and in many ways justifiable, opposition. I would only consider it if it were absolutely necessary to do so, and we could not achieve our objective in any other way. Personally, I do a certain amount of flying, and I would be very sorry to have to do it in anything but an English machine. There are very many technical problems in connection with an international air force which others far better qualified than T have studied and have met. I cannot discuss these for lack of time, but none of the problems offered are insuperable given good will, but a great deal more work, thought, and good will will be necessary before this scheme or a similar one can be put into practice. I beg the Government to realise that the time of meeting this suggestion with ridicule is past. Let them think of the storm of laughter that there would have been 15 years ago had anybody suggested the idea of flying across the world. The Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary both poured scorn on the idea of an international air force, but their banter was as nothing to that of the right hon. Gentleman, who recently led the wandering Liberal tribes into opposition. To him an international police force was nothing else but the Archangel of the Apocalypse. It would, of course, be too much to expect the right hon. Gentleman to accept the suggestion at once. I am not nearly as good at Biblical quotations as he is, but I seem to remember that the Lord had to call Samuel three times before he would listen. I very much deprecate the idea of this question being treated as a party question. It is worthy of careful and unbiased study by the best brains in all parties in this House. Finally I would warn those who are opposing this Motion, that to emphasise its technical difficulties when what they are opposed to is the principle, is intellectually dishonest.

8.45 p.m.

Viscount CRANBORNE

When my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton East (Mr. Mander), a short time ago, announced in the House that he proposed to call attention to the subject of an international police force, I am afraid that in some quarters there were murmurs of protest and sounds of derision. I must say that I did not think those murmurs were justified or justifiable. Whatever hon. Members who take those views may feel, this is a subject which has captivated the interest of the public, and we owe a debt of gratitude to the hon. Member for having introduced the Resolution. But if I feel that I owe him a debt of gratitude, there are some of us who must profoundly regret the form which his Resolution has taken. I had hoped, and I expect that many of us had hoped, that it would be a general discussion on the subject of an international police force, and on that subject he would have found a great deal of sympathy and open minds in very wide portions of the House.

No one who has considered the subject can deny that the world is becoming internationalised and that it is being welded closer and closer together. If we go a long way back in history, we find that this country of England was originally seven little kingdoms. In time they were combined into one kingdom, with one force to maintain law and order. Later, there was added the countries of Scotland and Wales, and if we pass further on we find that these three became one unit in a vast confederation of the British Empire. Nor is there any reason to suppose that that process, which has been going on throughout history, is going to stop now. On the contrary, the increasing communications of various kinds are going to accelerate the process and, perhaps sooner than we imagine, all nations may become parts of one vast world confederation, perhaps not in our lifetime, but possibly in the lifetime of our children or our children's children.

If therefore the hon. Member had confined his Resolution to the general principle of an international police force, I do not think we should have had any reason to object, but, unfortunately, that is not the direction in which his Resolution aims. He is not looking into the future. He is looking at the present. His Motion calls attention to the necessity of an international police force and states: That this House would welcome a declaration by His Majesty's Government of their willingness to consider the formation of an international police force. I take it that that means at once, in some form or other.

Mr. MANDER

In some form.

Viscount CRANBORNE

I do not mean a fully-fledged army, but the hon. Member would like to see it in operation at once and that his proposal should have some part in the negotiations now going on in regard to disarmament as a practical proposition. If that is so, it is highly important that we should go into the question of what this international police force really is. That is what most of us came here this evening to consider. So far as the air is concerned we have had a little light and leading, but I am still very vague as to what functions an international police force as a whole is going to perform. The very name is liable to mislead people. My hon. Friend said that he did not object to force, which was rather surprising to hear, for the object of the name, "international police force," seems to me to be intended to assure a great many nervous people that there is going to be nothing military about the force. It is going to be like the car in Mr. Belloc's poem: Designed to captivate and charm, Much rather than to raise alarm In any English boy. Whatever the Mover and Seconder of the Resolution may have said here, the general impression that has been made upon people with whom I have talked is that this force, even if it is not going to be exactly like a very large detachment of the Metropolitan Police, has this is common with the Metropolitan Police, that it is going to maintain order by moral authority rather than by force. It is going, as it were, to hold up international conflicts by merely putting up its hand. But when we are considering whether an international force will have that moral authority we have to ask ourselves: what is it that gives moral authority to any police force, whether national or international? Why is it that, for instance, in this country the police force find their task comparatively easy. It is not any special virtue in a constable or an inspector that makes people obey, but because they have behind them the vast weight of public opinion in this country. Every body wants the police to win, and, except a very small criminal class, they are willing to help them in any way they can. Therefore, we find members of a small force, one or two constables in a widely-spread countryside, can keep law and order, and probably have very little to do.

Mr. MANDER

It is because in the long run they have an overwhelming force behind them.

Viscount CRANBORNE

Possibly; but the fact is that nowadays the police get their moral authority mainly by the acquiescence of the general population in the maintenance of law and order. If they had not that moral authority, how very much more difficult their task would be. This point is dealt with very clearly in the new play by Mr. George Bernard Shaw. I do not know whether hon. Mem- bers have been to see that play, but if they are feeling very strong and well and they think they can endure four uninterrupted hours of the exposition of Mr. Shaw's views, I strongly advise them to go and see it. In the play the Prime Minister of the day proposes to introduce some legislation which, in Mr. Shaw's opinion, would have been very unpopular with the working class. The Prime Minister congratulates himself in the Cabinet room in Downing Street that the police are on his side, and he will, therefore, have no difficulty in getting his legislation accepted; but the commissioner of police interrupts him, and says: "If you have not the people behind you, your police force will not Be nearly large enough. You would need two constables in every street, and even then it would not be large enough."

And to see that this is not a mere flight of fancy on the part of Mr. Shaw, we have only to look at the United States to-day, where in certain districts the police have not the same moral authority that the police have in this country, and consequently we read of people being dragged out of gaols and hanged or burned alive before their eyes, and the police have not the moral authority to stop it. Therefore, it is true to say that, whether you are talking of things internationally or nationally, the most essential qualification of a police force which is to rule by moral authority will be the over-whelming support of public opinion. Does my hon. Friend and those who support the Motion feel that that condition is satisfied in the case of an international police force to-day? In this country we are accustomed to accepting the moral authority of the police; but suppose the British Government were to make such a public declaration and follow it up by approaching the various countries, the Germans, the Poles, the Japanese, the Americans—all great nations bursting with national pride and at the same time highly suspicious of their neighbours. Do hon. Members think that we should find not only the Governments of those countries but the general population at all anxious at the present time to lay down what they consider to be their absolutely essential armaments and put themselves under the protection of an international police force?

Mr. MANDER

I endeavoured to point out that at the Disarmament Conference every country with the exception of Italy and Germany in the long run expressed themselves in sympathy.

Viscount CRANBORNE

I listened to the hon. Member and I noticed that Germany was not in his list, Italy was not in it, Japan was not in it, and the United States was not in it. That is a considerable proportion of the great Powers. Up to now we have had the greatest difficulty in getting other nations to agree even to some small measure of disarmament; and that is as far as they are likely to go at the present time. Take the case of Japan. Japan has already been offered an international police force. One of the proposals in the Lytton Report was that there should be set up an international gendarmarie in order to maintain law and order in Manchuria. The Japanese turned it down immediately, and I am afraid that they are not likely to accept such a proposal as this at the present time. And if the Japanese will not accept this international police force it is certain that their neighbours will not, and their neighbours are the United States, China, and Russia, a very large proportion of the population of the world. I feel, therefore, that a police force of this kind, based on moral authority, is out of the question at the moment.

My hon. Friends may say that they do not base it on moral authority but on force. In that case, what their proposal really amounts to is an army or an air force, just like an army or an air force of any individual nation, but rather larger and rather stronger. If it is going to be an army, and I do not think that we can exempt an army from the discussion, as the Motion simply says an international police force—it does not say specially an air force—if it is going to be an international army, then it will have to have big guns and tanks and bombs.

Only this year we had a discussion in which exception was taken to the British Government allowing air bombing for police purposes; and who was the hon. Member who took the greatest exception to it; it was the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, East. I think he took his stand on the ground of humanity, not because it was done by a national police force. I take it therefore that he will be against bombing by an international police force. His proposal is possibly that it should fly over these places and drop pamphlets. Otherwise, we must conclude that he has changed strangely since the summer. For if it is not humane for a national air force to bomb Iraq and the North West frontier of India, it is certainly not more humane to do it with an international air force.

Mr. MANDER

I never opposed it on the ground of humanity, I opposed it because it was holding up the Disarmament Conference.

Viscount CRANBORNE

In that case the hon. Member was completely misinformed, because the question never held up the Disarmament Conference for one moment. It was only discussed at one single sitting. But I do not wish to dwell on this point. To return to the main argument; apart from the fact that this army would have to be much larger than any other army or any other air force, it would, moreover, have to be very widely spread and distributed over the whole world. I was interested in the observation of hon. Members who said that this question should be limited to Europe. I am afraid that we must regard such a statement as a great confession of weakness. The real truth is that hon. Members who support this proposal do not believe that this international police force can be worked throughout the world, and that it is gradually being whittled down until it will end by consisting of a few fighting aeroplanes on the Franco-German frontier. But it is not only in Europe that war might break out. Take the two latest wars, that between China and Japan and the war in South America. Neither of these would have been affected by this proposal at all. If you are going to consider an international police force it is quite impossible to consider such a truncated idea. The proposal must embrace the whole world.

A month ago we had a speech which in my opinion did face this problem. It was a speech delivered by the hon. and learned Member for East Bristol (Sir S. Cripps) on foreign affairs. He was no more moderate than the hon. Member for East Wolverhampton. On the contrary, as I understood the hon. and learned Member, he wanted to do away with nationality altogether. But at least he had this merit, that he was more logical and more practical than the hon. Members who spoke to-night. The hon. and learned Member for East Bristol did not believe that it was possible at the present time to have an effective international army, and he therefore proposed that national armies should act as detachments of an international force. The hon. and learned Member referred to a speech made by the Minister of Agriculture in which my right hon. Friend said that if Great Britain had taken violent action in the Chino-Japanese dispute it would have brought this country to the verge of war. The hon. and learned Member accepted this statement, but said that it would not have been a very bad thing, because at any rate it would have been a war fought in support of the collective peace system. That is quite logical and much more practical than what is being suggested by the Motion this evening. At the same time, even if it is more logical and practical I cannot feel that it is any more attractive for that reason.

Fifteen years have now passed since the end of the great War, and during those 15 years we have heard a great many hard things said about "the war to end war!" Whatever may be said about the war to end war, there is something far more nonsensical, and that is a war to prevent war. If it were not so serious it would be highly ridiculous to think of the great nations of the world rushing into a conflict in order to prevent war taking place. You might just as well think of a man drowning himself in order to prevent himself being hung. Not only do I believe that such a proposal would not limit war but extend it, but I think that it is contrary to the whole conception of the League in the mind of many of its most ardent supporters. The people of this country do not think that the League of Nations should be a super State. We really regard it as a clearing house for grievances, through which all sorts of disputes can be taken by the various nations, and where the full light of the public opinion of the world can express itself. But supposing this public exposure fails in its effects, I do not think that English people as a whole—and here I represent far more people than my opponents on this question—consider that there is any obligation on the part of every nation to rush to the support of one particular nation. That is the point of view held far more strongly by the French. Indeed, I think that my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Carlisle (Brigadier-General Spears) was really putting forward more the French point of view than the English point of view. The very idea of an international police force has found its place in almost every French plan; the plan for the definition of an aggressor, the idea of far-reaching Continental commitments—all these belong to French ideas and not British.

Brigadier-General SPEARS

My definition of an aggressor was drawn from the Soviets, which represent people I do not generally quote.

Viscount CRANBORNE

But the fact remains that it has always been supported by the French, and was so supported all the time that I was at Geneva. It has always been on the whole, I shall not say opposed by Anglo-Saxon people, but Anglo-Saxon people were very sceptical about it. They do not believe that it is possible to find a definition which is really watertight. The policy of defining the aggressor belongs more to the Latin school of thought than to the Anglo-Saxon school. Our point of view, the point of view of the British—I use that term of set purpose—which has been followed by many Governments in the last 10 years, is a very much more pacific one. They aim at preventing war, or rather, aim at reducing the chances of war, by limiting the offensive weapons at the disposal of an aggressor nation. The point of view which I understand this country has always supported has been that war is a gamble, and a gamble which in the modern world depends on immediate success. For if a war goes on under modern conditions for a long time, it is absolutely certain that every one concerned in it will be ruined. If you can take away from every nation the weapons which make immediate success possible, you greatly reduce the chances of a war taking place, because even the most bellicose nation will not indulge in the gamble.

That is the principle roughly which underlay the Foreign Secretary's resolution on quantitative disarmament; it is the principle which underlay the Draft Convention introduced in March; and it is as far as the people of this country are willing to go at the present time, and as far as I believe they ought to go. There is in this country, as in other countries, a school of thought that is not nearly so much concerned with actual facts as with theories, which especially likes any theory that has a moral backing. They like to strike what they call a blow for the ultimate good, and they do not really care whether that blow hits anyone or could possibly hit anyone. They do not care if it is just beating the air. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for East Wolverhampton belongs to that school. I believe that if he and his supporters go into the Lobby in support of this Motion to-night they will have the sensation of Boy Scouts who have done a good action for the day.

Mr. MANDER

The Noble Lord is now trying to kill the discussion by ridicule.

Viscount CRANBORNE

No. I am not; I am not attempting that at all. But I say that the Government and the House cannot support so detached a point of view as that. We are face to face with definite facts, and we are asked by this Motion to bring pressure on the Government to take some definite action. What we have to consider is merely this: Whether the particular action which the Government are asked to take is likely to be useful or practical, or whether it is likely to make more complicated the already complicated disarmament situation. To my mind, for reasons which I have very inadequately put forward, I believe that to ask the Government to do this would not be practical, and for that reason, whatever one may feel about the general principles of an international police force, I must vote against the Motion, and I hope that any other hon. Members who have any respect for realities will do the same.

9.12 p.m.

Mr. ATTLEE

The Mover and Seconder of this Motion flew their aeroplane very skilfully, and when I listened to the Noble Lord he reminded me of the picture of the working man standing at the top of an extremely tottering wall, who looked up at the aeroplane and congratulated himself that he did not belong to a dangerous profession. The Noble Lord's speech was reminiscent of many of his distinguished relatives. There was more than a touch of the delightful humour of the Noble Lord the Member for Oxford University (Lord H. Cecil). I do not know whether there was quite as much of his uncle, the Noble Lord who is such a distinguished protagonist at Geneva; but when I heard the full extent of his speech I thought that eventually he seemed to be coming down on the line of his distinguished grandfather, for "splendid isolation," and that seemed to me perhaps the most dangerous position we could possibly be in at the present time. On the other hand, I was much cheered by the opening of his speech, when he traced the way in which good temper has gradually grown from the time of the Heptarchy, and he looked forward to a time in the somewhat distant future when the whole world would be one State.

I support this Motion exactly because we on this side do hold the view that we have consciously to work with some view of what we think the world should be. I think it is a tragedy that since the War on the whole the forces of nationalism in public opinion have beaten the forces of internationalism, and that all our expedients have been taken rather as expedients to tide us over a short time than as an attempt to build up a world polity suitable to the present age. I regard this suggestion as an essential beginning for a world State. We on this side cannot agree with the objection that has been put forward in Debate on behalf of the Government in this House and in the other House, that to make the work of the League effective is to build up a super-State, and that that cannot be contemplated. We think that you must come to a super-State. The Noble Lord did not take at all an extremist point of view, but I saw a report of a speech by Lord Lloyd the other day which did put the extremist point of view. It is called the Conservative point of view, but of course it is the anarchist point of view.

There are people who teach a doctrine for foreign affairs which they never accept for home affairs, and that is that nations must do what is right in their own minds. The Noble Lord has not taken that line. He agrees that if you have a League of Nations it is the place for settling your disputes. Where I thought his speech broke down was that it did not indicate what was to happen if you could not settle your disputes. The point has been raised of what happened in the case of Japan and China. In that case there was no force to chastise Japan and I do not see that even the Noble Lord's suggestion that, instead of having an international force, you should merely reduce all offensive weapons, would have helped China very much. If a strong nation is to invade a weak nation and if no one is to come to the assistance of the weak nation, the fact that neither of them has tanks or that both of them have been deprived of big guns will be very cold comfort for the weaker State should the stronger come in and trample over it.

Viscount CRANBORNE

I should have thought that that is just the sort of case where my suggestion would have been effective. If the population of China is, say, 300,000,000, and that of Japan 50,000,000, and if you take away these mechanical appliances from the Japanese, surely that is a case in which the 300,000,000 would make their presence felt.

Mr. ATTLEE

I agree, if the Noble Lord would go far enough but he stops short just at the point, or rather considerably above the point, at which numerical forces count. I agree that if you go back some thousands of years in history you find that then numbers counted. But in this case, while you propose to take away a certain number of offensive weapons, you still propose to allow all kinds of mechanical appliances and you are very far from having reached the point at which mere numbers count. Mere unarmed masses do not count for much against machine guns. I suggest that we have to face the question of how the world is to secure itself from war and I have not yet heard any answer to the question of what is to be done if you have not some sanction by which you can control the supposed right of an indivdual State to do what it will. When in this House we suggested that pressure of some sort should have been brought to bear on Japan we were accused of crying out for war although there were many sanctions short of war which might have been used. The fact is that no sanction was used. I suggest that the unwillingness of anyone apparently to take up the burden of acting on behalf of a League member against a State which had been found to be the aggressor, shows that that method of limited liability has not worked. One is driven not to say, "Let us make the League only a debating society," but to see whether we cannot go a great deal further.

I do not believe much in the limited idea of an international police force which is to be merely a sort of super-force over a large number of national armies, navies and air forces. We believe that it is necessary to get rid of all national armies, navies and air forces and to substitute an international police force for it. The Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary cast considerable scorn, some of it quite unjustified, on this idea of an international police force. Those statements were based on their conception that an international police force would only be something to hold in terrorem over a number of armed national states. I do not think you can succeed by that method. You have to go the whole way. I was rather sorry to hear the Seconder of the Resolution suggest that it was no use trying to secure the internationalisation of civil aviation. If you are going to have a national police force and if it is to be an air force, you must internationalise civil aviation and although I am sorry that it may upset the hon. and gallant Member not to be able to ride in British machines—although I do not know why he should be prevented from doing so—I think we must face even that eventuality in the cause of peace.

We ought to envisage the creation of an international police force as a deliberate attempt to build up a world State. I know that a great many points can be raised against it, but, after all, the objections are purely relative. I find the objections to the present system of qualified international anarchy a great deal stronger. The Noble Lord made a good point when he suggested that the kind of objection which is taken to this proposal is the kind of objection which would have been taken a few hundred years ago to many things which we accept to-day. I expect that the ancestors of the Noble Lord the Member for Hastings (Lord E. Percy) must have objected strongly when their right of private warfare was interfered with by the King. They must have resented the fact that they were no longer allowed to have private forces when the King's peace began to reign instead of a peace maintained by local forces. But that was a necessary process in the building up of the nationalism which has now run so widely throughout the world.

There is a further point which was recalled to my mind by the Noble Lord when he raised the question as between highly armed nations and nations that are mere masses of men. I believe that, with the progress of invention, the possibilities of having an armed police force for the whole world are much greater than they have ever been before. Even one hundred years ago it was possible to produce armies of a sort with extraordinary rapidity. Consider how Napoleon managed to raise new armies. But those armies were equipped with what we would regard as primitive weapons and followed what is from our point of view primitive methods of fighting. The more science progresses, the more expensive, complicated and difficult becomes the machinery of fighting and the more destructive it becomes to human beings, the more the fact is impressed upon us that we cannot allow these dangerous things to remain in the hands of nations, and that they should be placed under international control.

I do not wish to take up more of the time of the House on a private Member's Motion but I would like to point out that it is very easy to raise difficulties and dangers in relation to such a proposal as this. Yet the difficulties and the dangers which exist in the world to-day are quite as great as any that can be envisaged in connection with an international police force. My final point is this. In the British Empire as it is constituted to-day we have a remarkable example which might be followed. Over a quarter of the earth's surface and its inhabitants are protected to-day by an Imperial police force—that is the British Navy. There are also the armies of the Empire, some of them under the control, it is true, of Dominions who have practical independence in almost every respect. They are, in some cases, composed of men who speak a different language from ours and who are of a different race from us, but they are drilled on a common method of drill, they have a common tradition and they are available for the use of the whole Empire. If you can imagine the extension of that principle, by the development of powerful organisations, such as the organisation of transport in the hands of a federation, you begin to have a picture of the possibilities of a world State. That picture may, of course, be softened in the British Empire by the fact that poor old Great Britain has to pay the bulk of the money. You might have quarrels over the more exact definition of how the burden should be distributed.

But the fact is that this possibility exists, and, looking at it to-day, I think it is the thing to work for. I should like to see the beginning of a proved security made by specific States deliberately trying to create a force with a non-nationalist outlook and with an internationalist esprit de corps which would form the basis for something much greater.

9.26 p.m.

Lord EUSTACE PERCY

I hope that the hon. Member for Limehouse (Mr. Attlee) will not think me impertinent if I ask the House to come back to the month of December in the year 1933. The hon. Member for East Wolverhampton (Mr. Mander) said, quite truly, at the beginning of his speech that all nations end all citizens of this country were deeply concerned at the present moment with the whole prospects of international peace, with the whole situation of the League of Nations. We have a Europe torn by controversies and dissension, and to some extent by divergent interests—though I sometimes think that the verbal controversies are more widely divergent than the real interests of those nations. At any rate, that is the situation with which we have to deal. We are not what my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Carlisle (Brigadier-General Spears) called a mere debating assembly. We are the British House of Commons, charged with presenting a policy. What is the policy that the world needs? It is, at any rate, a broad, consistent and coherent policy which can make a compelling moral appeal to the peoples of the world. Is this Motion going to make that moral appeal, or is it just one of a number of bright ideas which might form part of such an appeal but which in itself cannot unite sentiment or heal differences? Even our own Debate to-night shows that this, of all possible Motions, if it is a proposal with any immediate relevance to the situation before us, is not going to heal and is not going to unite.

May I, in a very few moments—because I am not going to stand in the way of hon. Members on a Private Members' night—say what I have never had an opportunity of saying in this House before? I was, I think, one of the first people in this country to be actively concerned, in a subordinate capacity, with the drafting of the Covenant of the League and with the elaboration of the ideas of the League. What was in our mind in 1918? There were two ideas: one, the idea of the great co-operative commonwealth of nations, using in international administration in time of peace the experience which we had gained of international administration in time of war, and the other the idea of the armed guarantee of peace. Which of those two ideas was it that made the greatest moral appeal to the people of this country? Why did the people of this country regard the League of Nations, even in those cynical days of disgust shortly after the War—as my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Carlisle said—as the one good thing which has come out of the War? Cast your mind back to those early months of 1919. The people were not carried away with the idea of the armed guarantee of peace; they were the very men who were clamouring for demobilisation rather than stay one additional week to guarantee the future peace of the Caucasus and Asia Minor. The whole of the settlement of the Near East broke down because at that moment the people of this country, and the people of other countries too, refused to bear the burden any longer of maintaining the peace of the world. I speak with some feeling on this subject; I lost a most disastrous by-election in March, 1919, because, as one young fellow said to me, "I would vote for the Devil himself if he would get me demobilised !"

But those same people were moved by the moral appeal of the League, and it was the moral appeal of that great cooperative commonwealth on which my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Carlisle poured such scorn. After all, his speech meant this: "I demand that the League shall be a strong executive body for the purpose of levying war, but I refuse to allow it any executive authority for the purpose of organising peace, whether in civil aviation or in any other direction." That was my hon. and gallant Friend's real argument, and that was the real argument which we had to meet at the Peace Conference of Paris and have had to meet ever afterwards. We have indeed, had a Continental thesis of the League, and it is a thesis which has thrown its whole weight and emphasis on the armed guarantee of peace.

I am all for the armed guarantee of peace; it is a fine moral ideal. But what happened at Paris to weaken the moral appeal of that ideal for the people of this country and for the peoples of the world, especially the people of the United States? We saw increasingly that this great ideal of such a guarantee of peace as would make it impossible in any major disturbance in the future for there to be any neutrals in the world, but that all nations should band themselves together against the aggressor, was proving to be attractive to Europe chiefly because Europe was establishing, by the Peace Treaties, an international system based on the narrowest Mazzinian nationalism. That system was splitting Europe up into separate nations claiming independence on the ground of their nationhood, but too small to be able to guarantee their independence against aggression in the future. As the settlement of Europe began to appear to be more arbitrary and insecure, as people in this country and other countries came to realise how very flimsy a basis for nation-making was the mere estimation of percentages of racial population, the demand, led by the French Government, for security grew also, and at the same time the reluctance of other nations to grant these French demands grew also. That has been the deadlock, the trench warfare in which we have been engaged ever since.

I draw a very different conclusion from the history of the League from that of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Carlisle. To my mind, during the early years of the League, when the League was engaged in a number of the most practical, economic tasks, such as the financial salvaging of countries like Hungary and Austria, the League was strong. During that time security was to some extent in the background, but as those tasks were accomplished and as the disarmament question has come to the fore, the security issue has come to the fore also, and consequently in the last two or three years you have been locked in this trench warfare between, on the one hand, the demand, (which cannot be called now a Continental demand, for it is a demand almost purely from France and certain of the succession States of Europe, but not of Italy and not of Germany) on the one hand this passionate demand for security, which offer after offer and concession after concession have failed to satisfy, (for, remember, Article 16 in its present form, which does give an absolutely automatic sanction, was originally a concession to that French demand, and Locarno was a concession to that French demand, and none of those concessions or others have satisfied that demand) on the one side that demand, and on the other side the feeling which has at least as great a moral sanction, the feeling of the great mass of the people of this country, the feeling of 90 per cent. of the members of the League of Nations Union itself, I may tell my hon. Friend the Member for East Wolverhampton, the feeling that there is no authority in the British Government to enter into further commitments beyond the Covenant which would throw this country and the lives of citizens of this country into the scale of war against some nation which might merely be designated as the aggressor by a League Assembly.

That is the deadlock you have been in, and I am not arguing on either side of that deadlock, but I do say that if the British House of Commons is to fulfil its part, if His Majesty's Government are to fulfil their part of leaders, for what are we all asking the Government to do? To give a lead not only to us, but to the world. We have already had the cry in the House to-night, "Let not the Government remain silent and leave all the bright ideas to Signor Mussolini." But if we are asking for a lead from His Majesty's Government, surely we ought not to ask them to take that lead merely in the form of a renewed attack on that trench line where so many attacks have failed, and not a novel attack either. My hon. Friend the Member for East Wolverhampton thought that his opponents were clinging to outworn traditions, but we have been considering international police forces and armed guarantees of peace now for 12 or 14 years, and it has rubbed thin as an idea and is as old as Methuselah. Do you think that by trotting out that idea again you will solve this deadlock and focus the moral sense of Europe upon a new policy which will save the League and ensure peace? Surely not.

My idea—I must not emphasise it—is that there is a moral appeal which you are neglecting to make. If you return to the old idea of a great co-operative commonwealth of nations, with great administrative and not merely debating duties, for the securing of a peaceful international order, and if you apply that idea to the desperate state of unemployment of Europe and America, a problem which cannot be solved by any of your old national or international policies—if you focus the attention of the nations on that, and restate international policy in those terms, you may then indeed give a lead to Europe which will heal and settle, restore and guarantee peace in a way that none of your international sabre-rattling can ever do.

9.42 p.m.

Major HILLS

I agree with my right hon. Friend that the speech of the hon. Member for Limehouse (Mr. Attlee), and to a lesser degree the speech of the hon. Member for East Wolverhampton (Mr. Mander), dealt with a world which at present does not exist. If all Europe were united as closely as England, Scotland, and Wales are united, there might be a case for some sort of international force, but does he think that the world is moving in that direction? So far as I can judge, it has turned its back on that direction, for how long I cannot say; but I think that for several years, and perhaps for a whole generation, men's eyes will be turned inwards, and men will look at their own country and develop on those lines; and I may add that by doing so, they will not jeopardise the peace of the world either. But I must not deal with that, because I have several things to say which I want to say as shortly as possible.

I will deal very briefly with the immense practical difficulties involved in an international force of the kind described by the hon. Member for East Wolverhampton. He did not shirk the question, and he wanted an overwhelming force—army, navy, and air force. First of all, I would remind him that now four great Powers are out of the League, and so his international force would now—and he wanted it now—have to be started with only two great Powers in the League. Secondly, this force of his must have some local habitation. It cannot be up in the air. Therefore, all the contingents have to be stationed somewhere. Either they must be spread about in various parts of the world, in which case they are liable to sudden attack, or they must be collected together, and then they are not available for the defence of all parts of the world or of Europe. Further, nobody has got over the essential difficulty of placing a body such as the Council of the League, or any Committee of the Council, in charge of an armed force of this character. The conduct of war requires a different sort of action, a different sort of outlook from that possessed by the Council, which has to do work of a different character. You could not get instant action with an international force. It is absurd to suppose it would be any use when action was required immediately for the crisis might have passed before the members of the Council had time to take their tickets to Geneva. It is absurd to suppose that that body could ever be the apt body for war. War is war and peace is peace, and if you want a force it must be suitable for war and it must be commanded by someone who sees war as war.

I come to my real objection. By the setting up of an internatinoal force we should establish a super-state. As the hon. Member for Limehouse said, all the world is to be disarmed and over all the world is to be the League army. I am not prepared yet as an Englishman to put my country in that position. I may be in future, but I would certainly not submit my country to a body which might pass some judgment which conflicted with what I think is right. I am not prepared to go as far as that yet. I believe in the collective system, and I have worked for it, but nothing is so dangerous as going beyond what is possible. I do not suppose that the name of Bismarck will carry great weight with my hon. Friends opposite or with the Labour party, but he said a very wise thing when he stated that the most dangerous thing in politics was long views. They are very dangerous, and I am not prepared yet to see my country subjected to an armed super-state that would do practically what it liked with it. But perhaps more than that is the consideration which has just been stated by the Noble Lord the Member for Hastings (Lord E. Percy). I believe in the moral force of the League of Nations supported, when called upon, by the armed forces of all the Powers that compose the League. I believe that the League is much stronger by keeping free from armd force.

Is not the hon. Member for East Wolverhampton disregarding the slow process that must take place before we really reach a peaceful world? Both he and I want to see the rule of law. I do not know whether we shall live to see it, but we shall not hasten that time by destroying the instrument through which it will be brought about. On looking round the world, I believe that if this country shows a lead a much more peaceful world is possible than we have thought possible lately. I believe that things have got to such a pitch that anyone would welcome a move that would go a long way towards removing a condition of affairs in Europe where everybody is looking over his shoulder. We need great patience, and we should not mind setbacks. Do not let us forget that the League as it is can experience reversals. It had a reversal in the case of Japan, but its force was not impaired thereby for those who can keep their prospective. He who draws the sword must abide by the arbitrament of the sword. Some day some power or combination of powers might destroy the League army. It is no use saying, as my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Carlisle (Brigadier-General Spears) said, that the League army would be so strong that it could not be defeated. The world has known many armies but none have been invincible, and we must look to the possibility of the League force being destroyed. Then the League itself would be destroyed. We in this country are profoundly peaceful. I have never known since the War a time when the idea of peace has had a stronger hold on the people of this country than now. I like to think that other countries are the same. I suggest that we should not go in for this force, but should rather trust to the slow spread of the spirit of peace.

9.63 p.m.

Mr. EMMOTT

Consideration for the convenience of hon. Members shall impose brevity on the observations I shall address to the House, yet I hope that the House will find such observations as I may offer not without interest to it. This Debate has been a beautiful example of the operation of national principles in our proceedings. We have had a Motion proposed by the hon. Member for East Wolverhampton (Mr. Mander), a Liberal, and seconded by so stout a Tory as the hon. and gallant Member for Carlisle (Brigadier-General Spears). As one hon. Member truly said, it is not a party question, and so, as it seems to me, any Member belonging to any party is at liberty to express a strong view on one side or the other of the question without embarrassment. One would gather from the somewhat naked state of the benches that this is regarded by the House as a somewhat academic subject. I cannot take that view, and I think that the House as a whole does not really take that view. I have no doubt that if the supporters of the Motion had their way, the result would he anything but academic. The House, I think, is at a certain advantage in discussing this question. It is perfectly true that it is not an entirely new matter; but comparatively little has been said or written upon it in. the last few years and therefore we come to the subject with relatively fresh minds. At least I think I am right in saying that this particular topic has not been considered, in the form in which it now comes before it, by the House.

Let me for a few moments play the part of the aggressor. There is no difficulty to-night in the definition of the aggressor so far as I am concerned. I am going to ask the House boldly to oppose this Motion. The subject can be considered under two aspects—under the aspect of practicality and under the aspect of principle. The House may ask in the first place, is this proposal a practical one; and in the second, is it right in principle? On the first question I have very few remarks to offer, but I hope I shall be allowed to say that I cannot help thinking that the hon. Member for East Wolverhampton and the hon. and gallant Member for Carlisle have dealt somewhat too lightly with the practical aspects of the whole question. I think the hon. Member for East Wolverhampton made a very sincere and courageous effort to deal with the practical difficulties of the matter, but I had a feeling at the end of his speech that those difficulties had been to great for him. He considered a number of practical points; for instance, the question whether the international police force would ever suffer defeat. He brushed aside, as I thought somewhat airily, the suggestion that it ever would be beaten, but I cannot accept his assurance so readily. He seemed to be very easily satisfied that the international police force never would suffer defeat, but I am not so sure upon that point, and I think the House as a whole is not so sure. On the point of the command of the international police force he had to admit that in a crisis all officers belonging to an aggressor party would be automatically suspended, and also that no national belonging to any of the great Powers would be considered for command. When we have eliminated officers belonging to the great Powers and officers belonging to an aggressor party, we have eliminated a certain number of very important persons. He dealt briefly with another practical point. He said machines would be available in every country. But is he so certain that the machines, being distributed among different countries, would not at the moment of crisis be detained and commandeered by the Governments of those countries? Is he so very certain that they would be available for the service of the League of Nations?

But I will continue no further the examination of the practical aspect of the matter. I content myself with saying that they are very great, they are not easily superable; and even if the question of principle did not have to be considered at all, the very fact that the practical aspect of the matter is an extremely difficult one seems to me to bear upon the question of principle. If you have a principle which is right in itself, the practical application of which is nevertheless extremely difficult, you cannot really separate the two aspects of the matter from each other.

Let me now consider the real question of principle. Is this proposal right in itself? The Noble Lord the Member for South Dorset (Viscount Cranborne) has touched upon the point that I want to make and touched upon it very clearly, but I desire to drive his argument beyond the point at which he left it. The hon. Member for East Wolverhampton describes his force as an international police force: but what exactly is the import, the meaning of the word "police" in this connection? Has he really altered the quality of this force or affected the quality of it by describing it as a police force? I suggest that he has done nothing of the sort. At least I will argue first upon that supposition. Is not his pro- posal merely a proposal for the establishment of an international force for the maintenance of law and order? He began his speech by arguing the necessity of force to the maintenance of the rule of law. I think he hardly required to argue that point in this House. The use of force is necessary. But, then, is there any real difference between his so-called police force and any force composed, it may be, of military, naval and aerial forces? I will suppose that there is no difference. But surely it must be apparent to the hon. Member that he has already this very thing in Article 16 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. He spoke at one point of putting teeth into the system of the preservation of peace: but the teeth are already there. The hon. Member for Limehouse (Mr. Attlee) said that we must have some sanctions. I asked myself, as I listened to the two hon. Members, what had happened to Article 16? Was it not present to their minds? Already there is provision for the use of force in Article 16, and surely it is a somewhat ominous and curious fact that Article 16 has never yet been employed by the nations of the world. No one has yet dared to utilise that part of the Covenant. But if there is no real difference between the hon. Member's force and an ordinary military, naval or aerial force, then I say he already has all he wants in Article 16.

Let me consider the other supposition. It may be that there is something else in the mind of the hon. Member. I think the House should ask itself whether there is really another principle underlying this proposal, which justifies the use of the distinguishing word "police." I am going to suggest that if there is such other principle in the mind of the hon. Member, it is one to which he cannot appeal. The function of police is the maintenance of law and order by the exercise of the authority of a sovereign government. But the League of Nations is not a sovereign government. He did not himself dare to describe it as a sovereign government. He called it "a new form of alliance" for certain purposes, and the hon. and gallant Member for Carlisle said, "I do not believe any of us really want a super-State." That is to say, "I do not believe that any of us really want a sovereign government in the League.

The hon. and gallant Member for Carlisle said that policemen are at the back of Parliament and of the law courts in this country. Yes, officers of the law exercising the authority of a sovereign government. Really the hon. Member who moved the Motion was afraid of the logical consequences of his own idea. If his proposal is for the establishment of a real police force, then this force imports a sovereign government in the League. There is no such sovereign government in the League. I leave him on the horns of a dilemma. Either his principle is already in Article It of the Covenant; or if it is not in Article 16 of the Covenant, then it is a false principle.

Finally, I ask the House whether this is the moment at which to urge this revolutionary proposal? The League has fallen upon difficult days. The hon. and gallant Member for Carlisle himself said that the Council, constituted as it is at present, cannot command or administer this force, and he was driven to argue the necessity of reorganisation of the Council. Surely this is the worst time at which to urge upon the nations of the world a proposal so revolutionary. Well may the League of Nations cry, "Save, oh save me from my friends." In view of the considerations that I have set before it I ask the House to reject the Motion.

10.6 p.m.

Mr. VYVYAN ADAMS

The hon. Member for Springburn (Mr. Emmott), who has just delivered so interesting a speech, expressed apprehension that the international police force might suffer defeat in the field from the forces of some sovereign Power. He should recognise that a pre-requisite of any such scheme as an international police force must necessarily be a large measure of general disarmament on the part of the heavily-armed Powers, and, in particular, general disarmament of the aerial forces of the Powers involved. Otherwise you might get a position of crisis between the enormously strong international force and the forces comparably strong belonging to sovereign Powers. He argued that within the Covenant of the League of Nations there existed "teeth," and he mentioned Article 16. A moment arrived during the history of the last two years when the sanctions implicit within that Article might certainly have been applied. They were not applied, and for two reasons, that they were not automatic, and that the signatory Powers to the Covenant of the League were not prepared to use them automatically.

At the end of his speech he doubted—and this is a common argument on the part of those who object to the suggestion in the Motion—whether this was the moment to put the suggestion forward. I thought that I detected in what he said an echo of the eloquent speech of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Ripon (Major Hills) who, at the beginning of his observations, said that the Mover and Seconder were living in a world which does not exist. That is certainly true. If this proposal were carried into effect, it would necessarily change the complexion and the conduct of the world. To change the political behaviour of the world would be the result of a long series of international adjustments, and assuredly we should get a different world if we had some regional international police arrangement like this; we should certainly get a different Europe. He went on to say that he would not submit his country to control by an international police.

Major HILLS

I said "by force." I accept the control of the Covenant of the League.

Mr. ADAMS

I am obliged to the right hon. and gallant Gentleman. That objection on his part precisely epitomises the difficulty of any sort of international progress. The right hon. Gentleman said that he was prepared to accept the Rule of Law, and then he said, "provided that we were not too impatient to establish it." My answer is that we can no longer accept the proposition "My country, right or wrong." Any country which is sufficiently strongly armed can ignore and disregard the Rule of Law, provided that it possesses in its own hands a sufficiently overwhelming sanction of force. The rulers of any country, and even of our own country, may be guilty of political immorality, just as individual citizens may be guilty of crime.

I now refer, with the greatest possible respect, to the speech delivered by the Noble Lord the Member for Hastings (Lord E. Percy), who urged the House to face the immediate realities—to come down, as he said, to December, 1933. He exactly described the situation in Decem- ber, 1933—a Europe torn with controversies and dissension. He would probably concede to me that, as things are at the present time, we have no security against an explosion which may efface civilisation. He said that we were the British House of Commons, and not a debating society. I agree with him, and I think that in this great and incomparable Chamber we ought to seek to evolve some method by which we can preserve civilisation, which is presented with this possibility of effacement. He dealt with what I admit is the highest question of all, the moral purpose which underlies the League, and the moral sanctions with which the League should operate. The proposal now before the House has behind it and underlying it the highest moral purpose in the world. Briefly stated, it is that we want to inaugurate a reign of justice to the exclusion of the arbitrary will of sovereign states. He mentioned the structure of the League of Nations. If I have time I want to refer to one or two of the girders of the framework of the League of Nations, for whose architecture he claims, I think with just pride, some responsibility.

I want to join issue with the Noble Lord the Member for South Dorset (Viscount Cranborne). I congratulate him on his very skilful misapprehensions of the Motion which we are discussing. He objected to the phrase, "international police force." I admit that the phrase is not particularly euphonious, and I can suggest an alternative name for this force—this sanction—but I am afraid that it is just as cacophonous. I suggest "automatic sanction." Directly he started his speech he stated that this notion has captivated the minds of the public. I presume he admits that the attraction has operated here and abroad, and therefore it is likely that the force would have behind it the very necessary measure of moral authority which he thought an indispensable attribute to an international police force. In any case it is hardly holding a pistol to the temple of His Majesty's Government to invite them to express their willingness to consider the formation of an international police force, and so on—as the Motion runs. The Government may consider anything; if some of the answers to questions to Ministers are any test, His Majesty's Government must spend most of their time giving to all sorts of proposals their serious, vigilant and earnest consideration. He said that police bombing was objected to on humanitarian grounds. I admit that there is a case against police bombing on those grounds, but, if he were here, he would probably concede that I was rather vehement in the course of the summer in my objections to this police bombing reservation. My primary objection to police bombing or bombing of any kind being in the hands of any sovereign Power, is that the sovereign Power would be liable at any moment and in any situation to be imitated by some other sovereign Power; and this terribly sharp and swift weapon is, in my submission, too dangerous and too swift in its operation to be left in the hands of any single arbitrary sovereign Power, and still less in the hands of several individual sovereign Powers. There would, of course, be no rushing into Armageddon on the part of the Powers who contributed their quota to this international police force, because this police force would in itself constitute a deterrent against aggression. The Noble Lord said that the British view was in general opposition to this scheme, and yet at the beginning of his speech he said that it had captivated the minds of the public. It is very difficult to reconcile those two contradictory statements.

In the very brief time that I am going to consume—and I want to give way to some other Member before the Minister replies—I would like to submit to the House the reasons why I have, with great reluctance, and, indeed, in the early stages with a certain measure of horror, come round to a conviction in agreement with the proposal that has been put before the House to-day. My conviction is entirely due to the course of events in the Far East, and the multitude of evil consequences that have flowed from it. In my view the Sino-Japanese dispute, and the way in which it was allowed to drift and then to be forgotten—to lapse into oblivion as regards European memory—constitutes one of the ugliest precedents in international history since 1918. I immediately disown any facetious suggestion that might be made that I wish to go to war with Japan. Indeed, in a speech that I made with great presumption in this Chamber on the 27th February of this year, I expressly disowned such a suggestion. But let the House observe this: In spite of the fact that there were sanctions available, not a single one of those perfectly bloodless sanctions was set in motion against the aggressor State. The League of Nations showed itself to be as impotent as the Courts of the Old Bailey would be without the Metropolitan Police behind them. Not a single Ambassador was withdrawn from Tokyo; there was no generally applied embargo on the export of arms to Japan alone; no step was taken to establish a general refusal to accept imports from Japan.

But now that the conduct of Japan has developed from a mere infringement of international law into a visible threat against our commercial interests, one hears many novel sentiments in many surprising quarters against Japan. Japan, in fact, showed that with impunity, in spite of the League of Nations and in spite of Article 16, a State can, so to speak, spurn the conference table and plunge a dagger into the vitals of the collective organisation for peace. I would ask this House to reflect what might happen in Europe if we were presented with a situation analogous to the Manchurian situation. That seems to me to be the whole heart of the discussion to-night. Supposing that there is no better guarantee than now exists that the various States Members of the League will act collectively in the interests of law and civilisation, I suggest that the inevitable result must be a collision between heavily armed sovereign States, with the inevitable climax of the destruction and effacement of European civilisation.

In one moment I am going to sit down. But I wanted to deal at greater length with the alternative solution which is sometimes suggested, namely, unilateral re-armament. I was going, with great respect, to mention some resolutions passed by a certain conference at which unfortunately I was unable to be present, and I should like, in passing, to dissociate myself from the oracular, swashbuckling mugwumpery of Lord Lloyd. One hears sometimes that this country has, in the matter of disarmament, reached the edge of risk. It is repeated as a kind of talisman by very responsible persons as if an argument were clinched by the mere ejaculation of a slogan, whereas the phrase means nothing, because every nation in the world says precisely the same thing. France re- gards herself as ringed with edges of risk. Indeed, the same conviction animates the mind of Germany as anyone can see who chooses to read the propaganda that issues from Nazi headquarters. In any case the man in the street is not impressed with "the edge of risk" when we are spending £200 a minute on armaments. If we look on this problem of security from the basis of national and insular security, we must realise that we could not resist any possible combination of foreign Powers who are collectively spending £2,000 a minute against our £200 on instruments of destruction. By no increase of our Air Force could we secure national and insular security. Ten or 12 extra squadrons—what could they do? Even Lord Rothermere's modest little proposal of 5,000 to 10,000 extra machines becomes quite inadequate when one considers that any future war will be three-dimensional and not one or two-dimensional as former wars were. If you wish to protect yourself against bombing aeroplanes, you have to raise the number of the attacking force to the power of two or three if you want effectually to defend yourself. The most certain way to get national bankruptcy would be to take the advice of Lord Rothermere and certain other persons who believe that you can achieve security by increasing the national armaments and doubling the Navy, and soon we should realise the Socialist ambition of a £1,000,000,000 Budget.

I want to deal with two objections that might be raised against this proposal. The Foreign Secretary the other night, dealing with this same topic, used the word "Utopian." "Utopian" I am told, means existing nowhere. I suppose at one time the emancipation of the slaves was a Utopian proposition. The law itself once emerged from the mists of Utopia. A good many of the objections and difficulties which are advanced in opposition to this scheme are frivolous and not worthy of consideration. At all events, I suggest that the House ought to face the otherwise insuperable alternative to the control and canalisation of force. We know from the words of so great an authority as the Lord President of the Council that, when the next war comes, European civilisation will be wiped out, and by no force more than the air force. I suggest that the Air Force in itself presents a tremendous opportunity for forming an international police force.

I should like to deal with the two points, Who will command such a force and, Where will it be quartered? Quite clearly, command of an international police force must be limited to a specified short period of time, and, quite clearly, it should be quartered in the territories of States which are admittedly not obnoxious. There are various possible States—for instance, in Scandinavia. Clearly, if you were to station it in France, Germany or Great Britain those tremendously powerful individual States would have immediately under their control an overwhelming force by which they could implement their will against the interests of all. On the other hand, if you were to place it in one of the less powerful States, you would immediately have a guarantee against that contingency. My hon. Friend below me says "Switzerland." I can imagine many less fruitful suggestions than that. I am thinking primarily of this as a regional European question. [Interruption.] My facetious friend on my left flank is trying to draw a red herring across the Debate when he mutters Kamschatka, China or Japan. He might as well fling out the word "Utopia."

The usual objection to this new reform—and it is a very drastic and radical reform—in the direction of international co-operation is that before you have any international scheme such as this, the various nations of the world must evince a change of heart. I am convinced that His Majesty's Government, and, indeed, the Governments of other countries of the world, simply do not realise to what a large extent that change of heart among the ordinary individual citizens has come about already. The Governments of the world do not seem to understand that, now that the surface of the world is contracted through our mechanical inventions, aeroplanes, wireless, television, and the like, there is not a single Englishman, Japanese, Russian, or German in a thousand who wishes against any individual foreigner any violence whatsoever. War and its preparations are kept alive by nationally-minded politicians of the various States of the world and by sections of the Press. They are the organs which foster fear. Very often we have heard on the Floor of this House various motives attributed to our soldiers who gave their lives in the War between 1914 and 1918, and perhaps I shall not be entirely presumptious if I suggest that they went to their death largely in order to make Might and Right mean the same thing. I believe that by a proposal such as that which is before the House to-night there is a chance of uniting and of making identical those two elements in the affairs of the world. At all events, I entreat His Majesty's Government not to slam the door in the face of a proposal such as this which may, in my view, go a long way towards inaugurating a reign of justice between the nations of the world.

10.27 p.m.

Lieut.-Colonel MOORE BRABAZON

There are, no doubt, many things which are required internationally, but there is undoubtedly one thing which is required in this House, and that is a method of talking shortly. We have promised the Minister that he should be able to speak at half-past ten, and, far from developing any argument, I should only like to draw attention to the fact that on a private Member's Motion such as this we have had no less than four speeches of over half-an-hour.

10.28 p.m.

The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. Eden)

I think that the House will appreciate, whatever the length of some of the speeches, that the subject which the hon. Member has brought before the House is one of very considerable interest, and that he brought it before us in a speech both reasoned and reasonable. Perhaps the part of his speech which most appealed to me was that in which he was good enough to praise the United Kingdom Draft Convention. I was only sorry that, having delivered himself of that address, he thought it necessary somewhat to diminish its purport by complaining that we were only sitting still and doing nothing. I should have thought that the Draft Convention itself was a sufficient answer to that charge I do not believe that any Member of the House will question the utility of the discussion which we have had this evening but I agree that we must, more particu- larly in the times in which we now work, distinguish carefully between the ideal and the immediate objective; between general aspirations and practical work. If that is true generally, it is more than ever true to-day when the whole structure of international consultation is being severely stressed, and when those supporting the League of Nations are fewer and less enthusiastic than we should wish, and when the League itself is threatened with a serious loss of membership.

The hon. Member who moved the Resolution is a sincere believer in the League of Nations, so am I, so is His Majesty's Government. Successive Governments in this country have founded their foreign policy on support of the League of Nations, and I hope that future Governments will continue to do so. It is just because we are sincere believers in the League of Nations that a special responsibility rests upon us to ensure that we do not overstrain the structure, especially at a time when it is having extra burdens placed upon it from various causes. For my part I am not personally opposed to the ideal of an international police force. It may be that the day will come when such a force will be not only an ideal but a useful actuality. It may be that it will ultimately become the normal accompaniment of the machinery of world peace, but that time is not to-day nor, so far as I can judge, is it likely to be in the near future. I will tell the House as briefly as I can one or two of the reasons why I believe that the time is not now. In putting the difficulties before the House I hope that the hon. Member for West Leeds (Mr. V. Adams) will believe me when I say that they are not frivolous. Indeed, if these difficulties are not faced and overcome it will be quite impossible to transform the ideals of an international police force into anything like a practical policy.

What is the conception of an international police force? Is it to function in an armed world or in a disarmed world? On this issue there have been to-day two different points of view. Certainly, the Seconder, and I understood also the Mover, of the Resolution thought that it might to some extent come into force to-day, whereas the hon. Member who spoke for the Labour party quite clearly stated that his policy was a dis- armed world first. Let me seek to deal with the first conception, that an international police force is a practical proposition to-day. The usual conception of such a force is the conception of the hon. Member for West Leeds—an air force. What weapon is that air force to use? I presume that one of the most effective as well as one of the most denounced weapons of the air force is the bomb. I do not know that I should feel the happier in smithereens as the result of an international rather than as the result of a national bomb. However that may be, the effectiveness of an international air police force to-day would be extremely limited in range.

I am certain, and I do not think there can be any question on the part of anyone who has studied this problem, that if you were to try to introduce an international police force into the world as it is to-day it would have to be a super-force composed of all arms—Air, Navy and Land. It would require bases; it would be commanded by whom, and staffed from what nationality? The hon. Member who opened the Debate said that he did not think we should stress the national difficulty. I do not want to do that, but he knows and I know the difficulties there are at Geneva to-day in choosing the nationals of countries for comparatively insignificant purposes. What would be the situation when we were attempting to choose the chief of staff of an international air force? Believe me, I am not putting these criticisms in a destructive sense; they are constructive criticisms which have to be faced. Suppose you create this force, suppose your staff exists, a staff must have plans. Plans if they are to be effective must be considered beforehand. What is going to happen? The representatives of countries, A, B and C are going to sit round a table and work out plans for dealing with infractions by A, B or C. What are the representatives of the countries going to do? Is the representative of country A going to sit there while plans for bombing his capital are worked out or is he going to withdraw reluctantly from the room and return with alacrity to work out plans for bombing the capital of country B? These are factors which, if you attempt to work out these plans in the world as it is to-day, have to be faced.

And conceive the multiplicity of these plans. I am told that the working out of the plans for use against one country for one specific campaign requires innumerable considerations, geographical, climatic, political, strategical and tactical. Who is going to give the political direction on which these plans are to be based? I understand that the first thing a general staff asks is that the Government should give it a working assumption upon which it is to function. Who is going to do that? I presume that the Council of the League of Nations is going to give instructions covering the whole world, because it is not possible to limit the operation of this force. It must be universal or it cannot exist at all. And if it is to be universal just conceive what a task awaits the Council in drafting plans to meet the various military situations which will arise. If they do not draft these plans an international police force is absolutely useless; indeed, it is worse than useless; it is a dangerous instrument. The conception of course is not new. We have had some examples and I should like to give one. The Holy Roman Empire attempted to maintain its forces by drawing contingents from each of its member States, and those who have read Carlyle will recollect the sequence of disastrous failures which resulted from that attempt.

Even if the plans could be worked out, could they be carried out? If hon. Members will study the causes of the outbreaks of war during the last century only they will be interested to find how on almost every occasion the particular assumptions underlying an international police force could not work. What is the lesson? It is not that there can never be an international police force, but that there can only be an international police force in a disarmed world, and in a world which is disarmed far below the level of the present day. The Motion, therefore, is premature and unpractical, and because of this even undesirable.

There is another consideration which I should like to put to the House. The hon. and gallant Member for Carlisle (Brigadier-General Spears) spoke no word more than the truth when he said that the whole assumption upon which an international police force rests is that there should be a definition of the aggressor. If you are going to have an international police force you must first determine against whom you are going to use it, and, as that is a matter for international decision, there must be a definition of the aggressor. It is not necessary for me to enter again into the various reasons why in my judgment an attempt to define the aggressor has so far failed. We are fully aware of the contending points of view, and I enter this caveat that it is by no means a universal Latin conception that the aggressor can be defined. The most effective denunciation of an attempt to define an aggressor was given by a distinguished Italian jurist who recently died, Signor Scialoja. I believe that the fundamental misconception behind the attempt to define an aggressor goes very deep.

It is sometimes helpful to look to the past to see if we can gain guidance for the present. Polybius, the historian, of whom a Frenchman once said that he was a historian for statesmen and thinkers, remarks that the historians of his day fell into error as to the causes of war, because he said, "They do not keep a firm hold between a pretext and a cause, or again between a pretext and a beginning of war." I believe that to be fundamentally true. Wars break out perhaps or probably because of some long-standing secular dispute. Eventually one party or the other is so exasperated that a pretext is created. That is just the danger of an artificial definition, because it may fail to distinguish between the cause and the pretext. If hon. Members will apply however skilfully worded a definition to outbreaks of war in the last century, they will find some curious results. I confess I have been unable to find one case where the most popular definition of the aggressor has defined the nation which actually did aggress.

I have mentioned that because I do fear that these attempts, sincere though they may be, will result not in peace but in political manoeuvre. Generally on the subject of this Resolution might I respectfully suggest to the hon. Member who moved it that he might perhaps follow the very excellent advice which was given to him on this matter a few days ago by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Darwen (Sir H. Samuel), who I believe is the leader whom he usually follows? Indeed, the entangled relationships and divided allegiances of the members of the Liberal party who have not the fortune to follow my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, are no bad illustration of the difficulties that might beset an international police force. The attempt to move in military formation even within the circumscribed limits of this Chamber, from one side of the House to another, shall we say with reasonable synchronisation, has resulted, I fear, in the right hon. Gentleman losing some stragglers.

Sir H. SAMUEL

Very few.

Mr. EDEN

All these things are only relative. Some stragglers he has lost. To-night he has also some scouts who do not listen perhaps as they should to their master's voice. The hon. Member, I am afraid, is too ready and too rash and does not listen to his leader's bugle. I know that the note is not always easy to distinguish, but on this occasion there can be no mistaking it. The House listened with interest. He sounded the retreat away from the hon. Members on the Labour benches. This is what the right hon. Gentleman said: I believe that this proposal—[an international police force]—would not assist the League but greatly hinder it. Then again later, in the course of his speech, believing, as I suppose that all good argument consists in stating the case that you are going to make, stating it, and then stating that you have stated it, he said this: This proposal would try the League too high, and I, who am a convinced adherent of League policy and regard the establishment of the League as by far the greatest event in the modern history of mankind, would strongly deprecate the advocacy of this proposal, for I believe so far from helping, it would do the League of Nations injury at the present stage."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 13th November, 1933; col. 612, Vol. 281.] That view is mine also and if on this occasion I agree with the leader and not with the follower, I hope it may encourage the Mover of this Motion in the light of the most interesting Debate which we have had to withdraw that Motion. Certainly, for my part I could not vote for it and, if it went to a Division, I should have to vote against it because I share the view of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Darwen that it is not in the interests at present of the League itself. Can we not put first things first? We are now engaged upon an attempt to secure world agreement upon a limitation of armaments, desiring thereby to strengthen the structure of peace. Surely that in itself is an immensely formidable task. Do not let us confuse it by the introduction of other issues which we may be able to face later but which themselves only complicate our task to-day. That task is hard enough already. If we ever realise a measure of success, as we hope we may, which would give new confidence to the world the time may then come when a Resolution such as this might be useful and appropriate. In the meantime, I would hope that the whole House would assist the Government in its immediate task and not, by the Resolution, make it more difficult.

Mr. MANDER

May I ask the hon. Gentleman to be good enough to deal with the one point which I put as a practical issue before the House, that is the question of the use of a force under the League of Nations for dealing with civil aircraft which had been converted and used as bombers? That question was considered by the Disarmament Conference in the early days of this year.

Mr. EDEN

The hon. Member himself rightly described our Draft Convention. The purpose of that is to work out, if we can a scheme, for the control of civil aviation. If that scheme were successful and were made watertight the abolition of naval and military air forces would follow. Therefore, the question of what I think might be called a sanction force which he has in mind would not arise at all. Pending the working out of such a scheme, our proposal is for reduction in numbers, which I think myself is perhaps more practical than the idea which the hon. Member has at the moment.

Mr. MANDER

In responding to the hon. Gentleman's appeal may I say that he has given a really sympathetic reply in which he has declared himself a supporter of the idea of an international police force? In view of that fact I beg to ask the leave of the House to withdraw the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.