HC Deb 05 July 1933 vol 280 cc339-457

Motion made, and Question proposed, That a sum, not exceeding £124,278, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1934, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Department of His Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.

3.23 p.m.

Mr. LANSBURY

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

Let me say, first of all, how glad we are to see that the Foreign Secretary is in good enough health to be present this afternoon. I understand that he is taking a sea voyage to get away from the troubles and difficulties which surround us. We hope that he will come back in good health. I am also glad that the Economic Conference has not called him away this afternoon. I do not intend to apologise for once more raising the question of Foreign Affairs and Disarmament. We are living in an age of conferences. There are three on the stocks. There is one at Lausanne dealing with debts, which has come to an end for the present, but I hope the right hon. and learned Gentleman will be able to tell us whether any negotiations are being carried on by himself, or by any other Department, in regard to the American Debt. We prefer not to discuss the World Economic Conference at any length to-day, but I must give the Government notice that on one of the remaining Supply days, whatever may be the conditions relating to the Conference, whether it has been wound up or is still in being, we intend to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer to come here and make a statement as to the progress in order that the House of Commons, before it adjourns, may be in possession of all the information which the Government can give them and that the Government may be in possession of the views of the House of Commons.

With regard to Disarmament everyone will agree that we are meeting in different circumstances from whose which have obtained during the past 20 months. In other cases, a conference has been in being or, if it has adjourned, there has been some hope of ultimate agreement, but Mr. Henderson, who I think has won for himself the admiration of all lovers of Peace and Disarmament has asked that the Conference should adjourn until October. In the statement he read to the General Commission, he set out his reasons. They are 14; and he reminded the General Commission that there were a large number of other questions. I do not propose to read the list, because every hon. Member interested in the subject has probably read them. We agree that the adjournment of the Conference was inevitable, and, whatever our views may be, everyone must hope that the pilgrimage of Mr. Henderson and others to the various capitals may result in solving some of these problems. Unless there is a will and a spirit for peace, on which Disarmament depends, unless there is a real desire to create conditions in the world which will make peace possible, no amount of talking or writing will bring about the desired result. Questions which affect the world economically, as well as political questions, form the reasons which bring about war and compel Governments to go in for armaments.

That consideration brings me to my next point. In our judgment, the World Economic Conference is of more importance in bringing the world nearer to peace and harmony than any other Conference that may be held, because it is on the solution of economic difficulties and the settlement of economic rivalries between the nations that peace ultimately depends. We cannot hide from ourselves the fact that in the pursuit of trade and commerce and in the pursuit of the raw materials for carrying on trade and commerce there is tremendous international rivalry. We who sit here have our own view on that subject. The President of the Board of Trade, of course, might say to us that if a vote were taken we should only be a tiny fraction of the whole on that question, as was the case in the World Economic Conference, where, he told us, only one vote would have been registered if any vote had been taken, and that vote would have been Mr. Litvinoff's. We believe, however, that the beginning of peace must be the internationalisation of world supplies of raw materials and the use of those supplies, not for the purpose of mere money-making, but for the purpose of meeting the needs of the peoples of the world. That is all I propose to say on the economic situation.

I come now to one of the most serious charges or grievances that we have against the Government. I do not blame the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs for the case which he put up at Geneva on air bombing. I am aware that a Minister at a conference of that kind has to represent the views of the Government, but I seriously challenge the position which was there taken up by the hon. Gentleman. I think that for the British Government of all Governments to make a reservation on the question of air armaments and bombing is very bad indeed. The defence that it is for police purposes is really a scandal on the lips of an Englishman. I have read some accounts—I dare say hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite have also read them—of air bombing, especially one which, I think, appeared in the "Manchester Guardian" on 12th June over the signature of Sir John Harris. He gives the story of an air bombing expedition which took place in South Africa, and this is what he says at the end of the letter: Towards the end of the attack on the 'rebels"— No one knows who they were rebelling against — the Governor managed to encircle the whole tribe with all their cattle, and the report says it then became 'a hopeless matter for the Hottentot forces. They were confined in a narrow area, they were mixed up in the hills with women and children, with their cattle and household belongings. They could inflict no serious harm on forces hemming them in, while the aeroplanes and machine and mountain guns could deal with them at their pleasure.' I do not think that our country would sit down under that form of police control. I should have thought that every decent-minded man and woman would protest against that kind of thing, arid I hope very much that we shall hear from the right hon. Gentleman to-day that the matter has been reconsidered and that the Government intend to withdraw their claim that we should be treated differently from other nations in this respect. We on these benches are still resolutely in favour of the total abolition of air warfare, as of submarine warfare, and we are also strongly in favour of the internationalisation of aviation. We recognise that it is a very thin line which divides the commercial machine from the bombing machine.

I feel that the young men in this House, and the young women too, have some duty in this matter. They cheered the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Lord President of the Council on the horrors of bombing, and, although I am old enough to be great-grandfather to most of them, I was carried away myself by that speech, and I think so was the whole House. I went home that night feeling that the House of Commons had been moved by real human feeling. Well, where is it now? What are you going to do about this? The right hon. Gentleman on that occasion said that we old men had brought the world to its present state. He said that it was the young men who must take these things in hand. I am looking for them to do so. I am always being told that the young men do not get their chance. Here is their chance. What are they going to do about it? They have heard of these horrors; they cheered the denunciation of the right hon. Gentleman. Are they also going to cheer the reservation as to air bombing made in the name of this House Are they going to cheer the proposition that we should be one of the stumbling-blocks to the removal of this outrageous and barbarous method of warfare?

Mr. VYVYAN ADAMS

You know we do not.

Mr. LANSBURY

Well, you will have an opportunity to-day. I am, I hope, a realist and I recognise that there is only one way in which to put a view definitely before a Government, and that is by voting in the Lobby. I ask then that, on this issue, we shall be supported by those to whom the right hon. Gentleman opposite appealed some time ago. I should also like to quote some words used by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham (Sir A. Chamberlain) in the House of Commons on 13th April. He said: I think that the position in Europe, the state of public opinion and the actions of Governments are more menacing to-day and threaten peace more directly than anything which we have known since the close of the Great War."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 13th April, 1933; col. 2754, Vol. 276.] Since April things in Europe and the Far East have grown steadily worse, and in my judgment the position becomes worse every day that passes. It is not a nice thing for any of us to feel, relatively speaking so few years after the Great War, that such a statement as the right hon. Gentleman himself made and that the sort of thing that is in my mind and in the minds of tens of thousands of others, that war is looming ahead of us, should be possible. I have been reading the story of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) that has appeared in the Press of the events preceding the Great War. I have read the statements of a good many of the men who took part in the War and in various Governments preceding the War, but in almost the last article I read the appalling statements made by the right hon. Gentleman as to the sort of futile footling, if I may use the expression, of statesmen during the years and later months preceding the Great War; and the lack of knowledge in the country of what was going on was very terrible indeed. The conclusion he arrived at was that we really tumbled into the War, because of the failure of statesmen to do their duty. I am not saying whether the right hon. Gentleman is entirely right or not, but the fact that a statesman of his standing, a man who was in the Cabinet during the five years preceding the War and who was right through the War and the days of peace, should write that judgment of statesmen must lower the standing and prestige of statesmanship in the eyes of the peoples of the whole world. Because I feel that, I feel that this House ought to grapple with the conditions that are prevailing in the Far East and in Middle Europe.

I have again and again called attention to the state of affairs in the Far East. Almost immediately the Japanese took action, I asked a question and was very severely taken to task for calling it international piracy. Since then it seems to me that the actions of the Japanese Government have confirmed the judgment that I formed at the beginning. It is no use talking about covenants, pacts, treaties, and agreements. I remember the scream that went up in the world when it was said that Bethmann-Hollweg talked about "a scrap of paper." I can see the posters now, in my mind's eye, with the scrap of paper being torn up and the appeals made on behalf of the sacredness of agreements. This House knows the number of agreements and treaties that have been simply torn up by the Japanese. I think it was in February that I spoke here and said that I felt inclined to recommend that someone representing our country should go to the League of Nations and ask that it, be wound up. The right hon. Gentleman said afterwards that he thought, on reflection, I should think that what I had said then was a mistake. Perhaps it was, but not for the reasons, if the right hon. Gentleman will allow me to say so, that he gave. He said the League of Nations represented the public opinion of the world, which had great force, and he expressed the opinion that the Japanese Government would find a means of meeting the public opinion that was being expressed through the League.

The Japanese Government have done nothing of the kind. They have blasted their way through Manchuria and into other parts of China. An armistice, we are told, has been concluded some weeks ago, but nobody believes that there can be any real peace. The Chinese Premier, Mr. Wang-Ching-Wei, has emphatically reaffirmed the determination of his Government to maintain resistance with every possible means and never to negotiate except on the basis and by the methods laid down in the Assembly Report, and Mr. T. V. Soong, the Chinese Finance Minister, has told the World Economic Conference that the suggestion is being made that, in return for China acquiescing in the occupation of Manchuria, Japan would help her to put an end to foreign domination, foreign concessions, and so on. I do not know what the House or the League of Nations are going to say on this matter. We get no information from the Foreign Secretary and none from the League itself. The League sent out a document urging the nations associated in the League not to recognise Manchukuo and in fact to leave the matter just where it was.

I should like to ask one question on that matter, which I think is important. Who is there in Manchukuo looking after British nationals, British trade and commerce? Who will be responsible if any British company or British individuals are attacked, or if their money and goods are confiscated'? Who does the right hon. Gentleman deal with in matters connected with Manchuria or Manchukuo at the present time'? I understand that we have not recognised the Government there, but what sort of relationship have we there? Do we still recognise the Chinese Government as the sovereign power in Manchukuo If not, does that not mean that, without putting it on paper, we are acquiescing in the invasion and capture of that country? I should like the right hon. Gentleman to tell us what is the position. I should like also to say, on the question of armaments and disarmament generally, that the Press in this country has very lately reported that a National War Council has just passed a vast military, naval, and air budget in Japan, and that there are great accumulations of munitions and war materials; and I would like the Foreign Secretary to tell us whether he has any information with regard to the purchase of war material in this country, and whether he has information with regard to the purchases of war material by either China or Japan in Europe.

It is an extraordinary thing that while some nations can scarcely keep going within their own domains, armament firms are quite willing to trust them and to give them credit for buying war material. The Chinese, we are told, are determined to do their best to stand up against this enemy which is ruthlessly and in defiance of their treaty engagements occupying vast stretches of their country. I should like the right hon. Gentleman to tell me categorically what is the position of the League of Nations with regard to the Japanese occupation of Manchukuo. Are we to take it as an accomplished fact, and are all the obligations given to the Japanese in one form or another to go by the board? It is no use the right hon. Gentleman replying to me as he did on a previous occasion to one of my colleagues, by asking if we want to go to war. There was at any rate an inference that we were very bellicose about it. I put it to the right hon. Gentleman that it is no use taking that line with us. Under the Covenant of the League of Nations certain definite steps had to be taken to discover what was wrong between Japan and China. A commission was sent out, and its report declared Japan to be in the wrong. The report was accepted by the League Assembly, which has called upon its constituents not to recognise the actions of the Japanese Government. I want to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether that is where the matter is to be allowed to stop. Is nothing else to be done? If it is to remain where it is, it is certain that other people will not think very much of the obligations entered into by the nations under the Covenant of the League.

In Europe we can see the effect of all this. There is a gentleman called Mr. Frick, who is Minister of the Interior in Germany. Before Mr. Hitler came to power in that country he said something which shows the spirit which is abroad because of the neglect or the inability of the League to take action with regard to Japan. He said: I pay my respects to the League, but I thank Japan for her example. Herr Von Papery in his notorious "cannon fodder" speech asked if it was right that the members of the League should hypocritically object to Germany's merely moral fight against an immoral treaty so long as they did not raise a finger to stop nations resorting to arms and waging illegal war. I beg the right hon. Gentleman to give me as clear an answer on that matter as he possibly can, because the League must justify itself in regard to the Sino-Japanese dispute. If Japan is allowed to remain in possession of that territory after the protest of the whole world, it seems to nice to prove that the League as a means of preserving justice and fair play is really impotent. The last time that I spoke of this subject I called attention to the fact that Mr. Hitler had made a reassuring speech, but since then—and I think this is extremely serious for the world—there have been continual statements made on fairly good authority that in Germany to day there is a terrific revival of the war spirit. That spirit is now expressing itself in devotion to the air. Everybody must fly, the youth of Germany are being told. Vast sections of young people are being trained to fly. Here again I would ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he will inquire what orders 'are being placed in this country for aeroplanes or parts of aeroplanes for Germany. I am told that a considerable business is being done in that direction.

We who sit on this side want Germany to have fair play in regard both to aviation and armaments, but we are not, without protest, going to see Germany re-'arm and become a tremendously powerful force in the centre of Europe. We believe that the best method of dealing with that position is for this country in connection with our Allies to carry out in the letter and the spirit all the implications of the treaty of peace and to challenge the German Government to adopt the same policy. We think that even now there ought to be some investigation in regard to armaments in Germany. We are told —but we have no means of verifying this —that a very considerable amount of rearming is taking place. If the Disarmament Conference could by any means have come to an agreement on the question of reducing armaments, it would have been possible to carry also the further proposition that a Commission should be appointed to examine the state of armaments in the various countries. We on this side view with great apprehension this re-arming under the control of such people as are in power in Germany to-day as a great menace to the peace not only of Europe, but of the world. The German people will know nothing of what we are saying here because everything is censored, but I wish that we could by some magic let the German nation know that, so far as the masses of this country are concerned, any more working for "The Day" is something which is an abomination. The only day we want the masses to work for is the day when armaments shall cease in our own country and throughout the world.

I come to another side of this question, and I claim the traditional policy of this country in doing so. I am not going to apologise either to the German Government or to anyone else for calling attention to the brutal, ruthless persecution reigning in Germany to-day. I want to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether it is not possible, under Article 11, to bring the action of the present German Government to the notice of the League of Nations? The duty of looking after Minorities is imposed on the League of Nations. The present Government in Germany is ruthlessly persecuting, sometimes in a most bloodthirsty manner, those who belong to minorities. We are told stories which I should like the right hon. Gentleman to investigate. I call his attention to the fact that 80 years ago, speaking from here, I think, Mr. Gladstone and others called attention to what happened in connection with prisons in parts of Italy, and our country protested. I would also call attention to the fact that when a certain European general, who had been guilty of similar barbarities to those which are happening in Germany to-day, visited this country, he was horsewhipped by the brewery men in Barclay Perkins brewery. I am perfectly certain there is as good and healthy a public opinion in this country to-day in regard to these persecutions. The right hon. Gentleman, I think, will remember the incident quite well.

The point to which I would call the right hon. Gentleman's attention is that, whatever one's opinion of Communists may be, they are human beings, and there are in prison now some Communists kept in chains, charged with an offence of which all the evidence that is available proves that they are not guilty, and their friends are wondering when they will hear that they are dead, because it will be said that they have tried to escape. Then I would like to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he has any information in reference to other prisoners, I mean prisoners of our own nationality, or Indian nationality. We have had the names of some, and, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, they were treated rather badly—in our judgment rather worse than the British prisoners in Russia. We should like an investigation by our Ambassador and by our Consuls throughout Germany as to what number of Britishers are concerned. Just before I came into the House a friend was going to 'phone me—but I did not want to wait—a long list of names of British people who had been arrested under one charge or another. I think that this Committee is entitled to know from our representatives how many have been dealt with in this manner.

Then I should like to call the right hon. Gentleman's attention to the fact that there are now many thousands of late residents in Germany—German citizens—who have fled from that country, and are State-less. I have already had some correspondence with him on this subject, and I have gone into the matter with my friends who know more of the subject than I do. Could not the right hon. Gentleman bring the case of these State-less persons, not only those who are outside Germany but others of various nationalities, before the League of Nations, and get arrangements made by which these men and women may be supplied with Nansen passports? It is a terrible thing to be driven hither and thither and to feel that you have no nationality in a country, and no one to whom you can appeal. The Nansen passport was brought in to deal with that. I do not know who was Foreign Secretary at the time and I do not remember the Government, but I know well that whole masses of people in various countries were dealt with under the late Professor Nansen, and received settlement through what is known as his passport system.

In that connection I will put another question to the right hon. Gentleman. It may very well be that he will tell me that this is hardly in his Department, but he will remember that we raised the question of Palestine in connection with Jewish refugees, and we would like to know, if he is able to tell us, what extra number he has been able to deal with. There is another matter all in line with this, and it is that there are many thousands of people—breadwinners—in camps and in prisons in Germany just now. I am informed that their dependants are given no assistance whatsoever. Is it not possible that the International Red Cross could be called in aid of those people? The International Red Cross exists to deal with the victims of strikes, and very often it has dealt, or helped to deal, with the victims of famine and flood, and so on. Could not the right hon. Gentleman, either through the League or through his own good offices, call upon the International Red Cross, of which, I believe, Germany is a member, to send to Germany the necessary food for these women and children?

Of all the barbarous things that have been done in Germany, I think that this is one of the most barbarous. The only crime of their parents and husbands, so far as any of us can learn, is that they are Jews, or Communists, or Socialists, or somebody whom Mr. Hitler and his friends do not like. In these circumstances the civilised world ought not to sit by and see women and children victimised in this way. I believe there would be plenty of money forthcoming to maintain and help those people if it could be taken in and safely distributed, as even in war time the Red Cross is allowed to operate. Therefore, I ask that during this terrible civil war the right hon. Gentleman should take action in this matter. So as to encourage him to do so, I would like him to read a part of a statement made in October, 1919, on behalf of Germany. Many of us who read that statement and other statements at the time believed that Germany was on the high road to become one of the leading nations along the pathway of peace and freedom for men and women, but it will be seen how far the present Government has departed from those principles, though I do not believe that the bulk of the German workers have departed from them. This is the statement: Germany advocates in principle the protection of national minorities. This protection may be settled to the best purpose within the scope of the League of Nations. I want the right hon. Gentleman to take this statement at its face value and call upon the League of Nations to take action: Such minorities must be afforded the possibility of cultivating their German characteristics, especially through permission to maintain and attend schools and churches.…The right of self-determination must not be a principle which is to be applied solely to the disadvantage of Germany. It must, on the contrary, be equally valid in all States. We agree to that: and must especially be applied where a population of German origin desires adherence to the territory of the German Empire.

Sir AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

Will the right hon. Gentleman forgive me for asking what statement he is quoting?

Mr. LANSBURY

A letter to the International Conciliation Conference, held in New York, in October. 1919.

Sir A. CHAMBERLAIN

From whom?

Mr. LANSBURY

It is an extract from the German Government's letter to the International Conciliation meeting. It was sent on behalf of the German Government. I do not know the individual who sent it, but it will be noticed how particular the German Government was to claim rights for its own nationals while conceding rights to minorities in its own territories. I have read that statement to emphasise the fact that at that time the German Government was quite willing to trust the League of Nations with this question.

When speaking here I have often referred to speeches I have heard in this House, and, thinking this over, I remember the whole of the agitation carried on by Mr. Gladstone in similar circumstances for people in the South-East of Europe who were struggling for freedom. I think that the one tie, perhaps, I have with the real old Liberalism—Liberal, I mean, in the sense of freedom for individuals to express their thoughts in their own way—dates from the time when I went on Blackheath and I listened to Mr. Gladstone. I heard in this House one of the greatest speeches that Mr. Gladstone ever made—at least the late Lord Balfour said it was—and that was the speech in which he asked the House of Commons to take action in regard to the peoples of Bulgaria, Montenegro and all those who were under the heel of the Turks. I am reading it in the hope that it may inspire the Foreign Secretary and the Committee to go forward in this business not only of protest but action in regard to the German situation and the Japanese situation, and to take their stand upon the tradition that belongs to the British people in this connection. Here is what Mr. Gladstone said: Wherever in the world a high aspiration was entertained, or a noble blow was struck, it was to England that the eyes of the oppressed were always turned—to this favourite, this darling home of so much privilege and so much happiness, where the people that had built up a noble edifice for themselves would, it was well known, he ready to do what in them lay to secure the benefit of the same inestimable boon for others. I appeal to an established tradition older, wider, nobler far, a tradition not which disregards British interests, but which teaches you to seek the promotion of those interests in obeying the dictates of honour and justice. It is in the spirit of those splendid words that I am here this afternoon to make an appeal to the Committee on this whole question of disarmament and peace. The years in which we live are terribly difficult. We are living, I believe, at the end of an epoch or era in the history of mankind. I am unable to say it as Mr. Gladstone would say it, I am unable to say it as many other men in the House would say it, but I say from the very bottom of my heart that I believe that unless we can exorcise the spirit of war —economic war, international war—and all that makes for war, out of the minds of men and women, this civilisation is doomed; and as to Hitlerism on the Continent, I believe that all that makes for that sort of economic nationalism, that sort of nationalist creed, as it were, or that sort of pride in race in order that that race may have domination—I believe that that is all of the devil, and so far as we have been guilty of it we have got to repent of it and change our ways. I want to see our country leading the world in this matter. I am a Socialist, but, as I have said before, I love my country. We have done many big things in the history of mankind, we have done many bad things in the history of mankind, but I believe we are the only nation now, the one and only people, that can lead the world along democratic lines to peace and freedom; and in moving the reduction of the Vote to-day I move it only in order that we may express our faith and our belief in that idea.

4.19 p.m.

Sir A. CHAMBERLAIN

The words of the right hon. Gentleman will, I think, find an echo in the hearts of all of us who know him as we see him in this House and listen to his speeches, however much we differ from him on many of the subjects we discuss. The right hon. Gentleman said that he might differ from us, but he loved his country, and nobody will doubt that his country is very dear to his heart. But may I add that it is only this country which could have produced the right hon. Gentleman. In his speech, as is almost inevitable in a Foreign Office Debate, he has covered a vast field, sometimes skimming rapidly over the gravest and largest questions and sometimes dwelling lovingly upon what are comparatively small details. I say that is almost unavoidable, and equally unavoidable is the spice of criticism, and perhaps the reduction of the Vote, which are the accompaniments of a speech from the Opposition Front Bench. But any foreign observer of our proceedings would make a profound mistake if he exaggerated the differences that exist in this House on the main features of foreign policy at this moment. There are differences, but those differences do not run altogether on party lines. Upon the main features of British foreign policy, however, and in our national outlook on events that are passing in the world, it is not too much to say that there is no distinction of consequence among the parties in this House, and that we are a united nation, with a united mind and a common policy.

I say there are differences, but those differences, as I have also said, do not run wholly on party lines. Very early in his speech the right hon. Gentleman dealt with the subject of police bombing. I do not know whether an experience I have often had in this House, and, indeed, in meetings outside, is as common to others as it is to me. It is to feel that I am in sympathy with a speaker's thesis until he gives his reasons, and then to feel that if he continues much longer I shall be forced to go against him. I am wholly unable to put bombing as a weapon of war into a category by itself. I am wholly unable to distinguish between the moral quality of bombing and, let me say, a long-range bombardment, between the moral qualities of bombing and a blockade of the coast of a nation. I think that those who feel, as I do, that the Government's decision on this so-called police bombing is wrong in the circumstances, damage their own case by the exaggerated or easily-disproved arguments which they adduce in support of it.

I do not think bombing as applied to military affairs is more inhumane than is gunning. Except for its range I do not think that it entails more suffering upon the civil population, in given circumstances, than other weapons of war to which no such peculiar condemnation is applied. I go further, and say that it is my profound conviction that, for the sole purpose for which the British Government desire it to be used, for such operations as we have to undertake from time to time on the North-West Frontier of India —or have had to undertake—for such operations as we may take in a wide country where land troops can move only very slowly and with a great train of supplies—it may be in the Sudan or it may be in Iraq—I say that not only am I unable to distinguish morally between the use of the bomb and other means, but that I believe the aeroplane as a fighting machine is the most humane instrument that you can employ. I will give one reason only, and that is the speed with which you can act and the ability, therefore, to nip trouble in the bud, and prevent it spreading.

Therefore. I cannot argue the case for the abolition of bombing as it has been argued by the right hon. Gentleman here, or by any outside who agree with my conclusion though they differ from my arguments. My case is that this question arises now in relation to a general disarmament convention. I shall have more to say on the general question presently. Can you expect other nations to allow you to be the exception to a general rule? If we have a North-West frontier, if we have responsibilities in the Sudan or in Iraq, has France no responsibilities, no similar or comparable difficulties of transport and of rapid action in Morocco? Can you claim this exception for us, and not allow it to France for North Africa? Can you admit that France has a claim which cannot be disregarded and refuse a similar claim by Italy in respect of her North African possessions? While our aeroplanes might conceivably be in distant parts of the world, whence it would be difficult to recall them for a sudden outbreak of war in Europe, aeroplane forces in North Africa could cross to Europe in a, night and become part of the available European forces. Therefore, however much, by your own consciousness of never intending to abuse this weapon, you justify its use to yourself, how can you justify your claim to the minds of other nations? That, to my mind, is the decisive argument in the present circumstances.

I have come to my conclusion reluctantly. I have come to it under a profound sense of the responsibility I am taking and of the increased sacrifices that might be involved for our own people. I am not thinking of money, I am thinking of blood, lives, broken homes and desolate hearths. I come to it with an intense sense of responsibility and with a deep sense of the sacrifice we are making, but I say to the Government: Can you allow a disarmament conference to break down by your insistence on this system? The answer is inevitable. The right hon. Gentleman remarked that there was no way of bringing pressure to bear upon a Government except by voting against them. There is somewhere at the back of my mind a jingle about the different arguments which can be applied to the two older Universities: Cambridge admits no force but argument, But Oxford knows no argument but force! The right hon. Gentleman is of the Oxford school. Like my right hon. Friend, the Lord President of the Council, I owe my education to Cambridge. I am not going to vote against the Government. I appeal to argument in the hope that I may persuade them, and, if they are not immediately persuaded to-night—do not expect an announcement of the reversal of their policy in the course of this Debate—perhaps they will think the matter over again and presently be drawn to the same conviction as I have been. That is all I want to say.

I now turn from comparatively small matters to what I may call the two great areas of disturbance of which the right hon. Gentleman has spoken—the Far East and Central Europe. I would speak first for a moment about the Far East. I am a profound adherent of the League of Nations. Whatever failures it endures in its course, I believe it gives us the best hope that we have or can have of a better state of civilisation and a new international comity. I am not to be discouraged by passing misfortunes or defeats, because I never supposed that this or any other great institution could develop its full strength in a day. I knew that it must be a matter of slow growth in the institution and of slow and gradual education among the peoples themselves. The right hon. Gentleman, I think, is inclined to press dangerously those particular provisions of the Covenant which deal with sanctions against the aggressor. I am far more inclined to stress those which are directed not to the punishment but to the prevention of wrongs.

It is not a very pleasant act to criticise the League's handling of the Manchurian question. For my part, when the trouble began I had great sympathy with Japan, and I think the League showed an in- sufficient appreciation of the difficulties with which Japan had been confronted in the anarchical condition of China and the failure of China to observe the ordinary decencies of international relations in her treatment of Japanese citizens and Japanese trade, and I think that if more stress had been laid at first on the obligations of China and a little more allowance had been made for the provocation that had been offered to Japan, it might have been wiser. As events developed, I thought that Japan put herself increasingly in the wrong. For the operations at Shanghai I can see no shadow of excuse or palliation, and I think the League might perhaps have concentrated more particularly on them and allowed a little more latitude than it did in Manchuria. Perhaps thinking only of the written obligation and allowing too little weight to the practical possibilities of action, the first demand upon Japan was for something which, if they had thought, they would have known at that moment it was not possible for Japan to give, and I think if they had made a rather more moderate demand at that time they might have got more.

But we are confronted with a situation in which those who have always been proud to have been associated as members of the Government with our old Anglo-Japanese Alliance, made in a critical moment of Japanese history, who have always wished that though the Treaty ended the friendship should remain unimpaired, find it impossible to defend the course of action which Japan has pursued or to pretend that that course of action is reconcilable with not one but two or three solemn international engagements; but do not let us forget that, while we are entitled to take the report of the Lytton Commission as a basis for our judgment upon facts and upon which side finally was in the wrong, it was part of the Lytton Commission's Report not merely that Manchukuo as it exists at present is not a free national movement but that the restoration of the old status quo was not a possible solution.

When my hon. Friend comes to reply for the Foreign Office, may I ask whether any effort has been made at Geneva either by the Japanese representatives or by the Council—well, the matter was taken out of the hands of the Council by China—but by the Committee of the Assembly, its technical committee of 21, to frame the alternative, which the Lytton Commission evidently had in mind—a solution to take the place of a Manchukuo established by Japanese arms and only maintained by them and the restoration of the old status quo which they declared to be impossible. Is it not perhaps possible that, in following out that indication in the Lytton Report, there may yet be reconciled the admitted interests of Japan in Manchukuo and the admitted sovereignty of China over that country—something in the nature of a really-autonomous and free State, requiring help no doubt in the beginning to establish itself, but a State which is autonomous and still part of the Chinese Empire, a State which observes its treaty obligations to Japan as a condition of Japan's observance of its treaty obligations to it, and which provides protection and safeguards to those large and vital interests of Japan which all the nations of the world have recognised they are to have both in the existing and in the future Manchuria?

I leave the Far East with one final reflection. The right hon. Gentleman opposite is inclined to say that it is the failure of the League to assert its authority in the Far East which has encouraged Powers nearer home to look to achieve their ends by equally illegitimate means, by violence and force. I think the right hon. Gentleman is confusing cause and effect. As I read the situation, it was the confusion in Europe, the known rift between the Great Powers which a little time ago were working harmoniously together, that encouraged the developments of Japanese policy in the far East and pushed them forward regardless of obligations and regardless of the League. I come back to what is my profound conviction, that it is not merely the peace of Europe that depends upon the policy of the Great Powers in Europe, but their policy, the balance of forces here, and above all our own relations with other Powers are the key not only to the peace of Europe but to the peace of the world.

The right hon. Gentleman spoke temperate but grave words about the situation in Germany. I suppose it is natural to an old Foreign Secretary to speak with great reserve and caution about the internal affairs of another country. One may so easily utter noble sentiments at the cost of somebody else. Denmark might perhaps never have been involved in a war over the Duchies had not British statesmen used words of generous sympathy which were interpreted as a promise of support. We have always to understand in these matters that we are dealing with other people's affairs, and we must be careful not to do more harm than good, but I think it is safe to say, and the right hon. Gentleman's speech goes to show it, that it is not a sentiment of one side of the House only, that it is difficult for this country to be on really friendly terms with a nation which banishes from its policy every idea which is fundamental to all British parties. A Communist may give excuses and reasons for oppressive measures. Members of the Jewish community, or members of any other religious body, may give excuses and reasons. But can we be really friendly with a nation which proscribes, on racial grounds, a race within its own borders, and refuses to treat its own citizens as equals and fellows? Is it possible, if Germany desires our cooperation and our help, that she should expect to receive it while she outrages every sentiment implanted in our breasts by the whole course of our history those sentiments which are common to every party, and which, whatever our differences, unite us in moments of crisis and danger? It is difficult to deal as a really cordial friend with a nation which pursues an internal policy so hateful to those of our tradition. I hope the Committee will forgive me if I repeat myself, but, if I do so, it is because the spirit shown within Germany to Germans is a menace to every nation beyond her borders, and to any other race over which she might ever succeed in establishing her domination.

I feel strongly on this matter. Perhaps it is because, for four or five very busy and responsible years, I worked my hardest, and, as I thought at the time, not without some measure of success, to bring Germany back as an equal into the comity of nations, to end the bickering and pin-pricking which she had no doubt suffered ever since the War, to put our relations on a friendly and even a confidential footing, and to go forward with old friends and new friends to build a better future for our country and the world. I see all those hopes, if not destroyed, adjourned, delayed, postponed, by this new spirit which is prevailing in Germany. It is not only the internal aspect, it is not only the internal events in which the new spirit finds expression. Locarno stood, for a time at any rate, as a symbol of peace and reconciliation, but in the new Germany the name of Stresemann has no respect, Locarno is a word of abuse.

Is there any part of the Peace Treaty which the new Germany accepts What of those speeches about Schleswig, where the Danes very wisely refused to receive any part of their own territory back again except by the choice of the people who inhabited it, and had restored to them a territory in which a plebiscite showed, I think, 75 per cent. voting in favour of reunion with Denmark? That is no more sacred than the Corridor or Silesia.

If Germany wants revision of the Treaties, if Germany wants disarmament, she has got to convince the world of two things. She has got to convince the world that a reasonable readjustment of the Treaties will satisfy and end the question. Whether you read the story of the 20 or 30 years which preceded the War, or whether you read the story of the post-War years, you will find the same thing. While something is refused to Germany, it is vital. If you say, "Well, we will give it to you, and now our relations will, of course, be on a satisfactory footing," it loses all value from the moment that they obtain it, and it is taken by them merely as a stepping-off place for a further demand. Until Germany shows that there is a moderate, reasonable and acceptable readjustment of the Peace Treaties which would be final, and would be treated as final by her, no man is a friend of peace, no man serves the interests of peace, if he allows the Germans to suppose for one moment that arty revision is possible.

I come now to disarmament. The right hon. Gentleman began by saying that you could have no solution of the world's difficulties, economic, political or otherwise, until there was a will to peace in the world. That is profoundly true. The right hon. Gentleman is not the first to say it, but he cannot say it too often. It is profoundly true. Disarmament—physical disarmament—only becomes possible when there has been that measure of moral disarmament which makes nations feel that physical disarmament is safe. As long as every speech made in Germany, as long as every bit of their propaganda is menacing, inflammatory, biased, one-sided, how can they expect that those whom by this propaganda they menace should disarm in order that Germany may be in a better position to attack them? If Germany would revert to an earlier mood, if she would show a real desire to fulfil, a real intention to observe, her obligations, if she would cease to menace her neighbours, she would then assure the world that, in asking for the disarmament of those who have not disarmed, she was seeking her own security, and not simply trying again to reach a position in which she would be able to challenge and to break the peace of the world. I am not sorry that the Disarmament Conference is adjourned. The moment was not propitious for its progress, and, for my part, I beg the House of Commons, and I beg our Government, to beware how they take the responsibility of pressing other nations, nearer to the point of peril than ourselves, to lessen their armaments, until at least we can be assured that we do not endanger their safety, and thereby place upon ourselves and our own people a moral obligation greater than any written obligation to go to their assistance if they are attacked.

The measure of the concession which can be made, in this matter or in any of the other matters with which we are concerned—the measure of the concession which can be made to Germany depends, not upon us, but upon Germany herself, and she must realise that by these inflammatory incitements to her own people—a people which, only the other day, was plunged in misery and despair, and is now in an almost hysterical state of excitement and jubilation—she must realise that by these incitements to her own people she delays the accomplishment of her wishes, and, still more, by the menaces which those excited people proffer to her neighbours, she makes it impossible for a nation as detached as we are from the immediate struggles of the Continent to give her the assistance and aid which, if her people were in a happier mood and her Government were more wisely and prudently conducted, it would be our pleasure to render.

4.58 p.m.

Brigadier-General SPEARS

In the first place, may I congratulate the Foreign Secretary on the happy result of his negotiations with Russia? Most Members of the House will, I think, have noted with extreme satisfaction the happy result of a firm policy. After all, foreign policy is not so unlike ordinary life. If you only know what you want, and hold firmly to your purpose, the chances are that you will get it. But I would like to confine my remarks this afternoon to some observations concerning the Four Power Pact. As that Pact has finally emerged, there is no doubt that it is a very considerable achievement. It embodies certain very important features, which should contain the germs of fruitful collaboration between the four Powers who have signed it. The Pact, as signed, is a very different document from the original document submitted to our Ministers when they went to Rome. Indeed, it is a very different document from the draft Pact which was presented by the Italian Government on the 26th March. This latter document, I understand, seems to have reflected what was probably the point of view of British Ministers in Rome. The Four Power Pact, as finally signed, is a vast improvement on that latter document. The original draft, and the second draft produced in Rome, gave the impression that it intended to deal exclusively with treaty revision. This naturally startled the Little Entente and disquieted France. It was made plain to us, and to all concerned, that any attempt to revise treaties—and by that was meant the revision of frontiers—without the consent of the nations concerned, could only be done by force of arms. The wisest remarks were made by the Belgian Government on the original draft and were embodied in a communication from the Belgian Government to the French Government on 2nd April. The Belgian Government said: But while it is wise to adjust by common agreement international engagements to new conditions, or to seek means to overcome the disadvantages of applying them, it is correspondingly dangerous to propose as the aim of the Powers in collaboration to revise the treaties as a general and abstract objective. To adopt such a programme would lead to the risk of weakening the respect for treaties and gravely to compromise international order; and such a step, far from restoring confidence, would have as a result to shatter it irremediably. The Belgian Government pointed out that, although Article 19 of the Covenant of the League of Nations permitted revision, the Covenant surrounds that Article with guarantees from which it would be a grave danger to dissociate it. The Belgian Government also pointed out that Article 19 was bound up with the undertaking scrupulously to observe all treaties and to respect and maintain against external aggression the territorial integrity and political independence of all the States members of the League. Those observations were eminently wise. They were embodied by the French Government in Article 2 of the French project, which Article has in turn been embodied in the Four-Power Pact as signed, and it is there also numbered Article 2. Article 2 of the Four-Power Pact is of title utmost importance, because it puts the three most important Articles of the Covenant —10, 16 and 19—on an equal footing. Article 2 does something more. Whereas the original proposals paid a kind of lip-service to the League, and were polite but distant, the final text is very positive in this matter, and strengthens the League by falling within the four walls of the Covenant. With reference to Articles 10, 16 and 19, it says: The High Contracting Parties decide to examine between themselves and without prejudice to decisions which can only be taken by the regular organs of the League of Nations, all proposals relating to methods and procedure calculated to give due effect to these articles. This Article 2 is, repeat, of absolutely major importance. The French Government drew the attention of the Little Entente Powers to it when it notified them of the signing of the Pact. The Little Entente accepted the final text of the Four-Power Pact, but made it clear by a joint declaration of their Foreign Ministers at Prague on 30th May that they understood the Pact to be now such that in no circumstances could it be found directly or indirectly a means of bringing about a revision of their frontiers. This being so, they declared politely that as the Four-Power Pact could not possibly affect their interests, they welcomed it, and they hoped that it would help the four signatory Powers to solve their own difficulties. They added pointedly that they hoped that the signing of this Pact would bring about a calmer atmosphere in Central Europe.

It is very important to make this point clear, for whatever may have been implied by or read into the original draft the declaration of the Little Entente leaves no doubt whatever on this all-important point that it cannot be used as a basis of negotiations the effect of which would be frontier revision. I am very glad that this ghost has been laid, for so long as there was a chance or even a suspicion of imposing treaty revision by outside forces, so long was there the chance of immediate war. Divested of its early obscurity, the Four Power Pact, we can perceive, has considerable merits, in its rather bare framework. In my view, it justifies the initiative of the Prime Minister in having gone to Rome, which was a very wise step. Even if that step is only considered from the point of view of being a courteous act, it was wise. As a result of those negotiations, the four great Powers who signed this Pact, 'two of whom have acute differences between themselves, have agreed to collaborate and to find peaceful solutions within the Covenant of the League of Nations to those difficulties, and to consult together upon economic questions. This is no small achievement.

There is another point. Everybody is aware that in recent years there has been a dangerous rivalry between France and Italy. The Pact has enabled a peaceful solution to be found to the difficulties between those two countries. The difficulties between France and Italy to-day are no greater than the difficulties between ourselves and France at the beginning of the century, and our difficulties were solved without the intervention of a third Power. There was not then as there is now another country, prepared to go forward and help to smooth out the difficulties. I submit to the Government that we should insist upon a peaceful solution being found. I say "insist" advisedly, because we are a great Mediterranean Power, with immense interests in those waters, and in the countries bathed by those waters. We seem to have forgotten in late years how strong is our influence for good in that theatre. I hope that we shall use that influence to help to find a solution to the difficulties that exist between France and Italy.

There is another very important feature of the Four Power Pact, and that is that it has brought Italy and ourselves closer together, which is something which will be welcomed in all quarters of this Committee. It has revivified the Treaty of Locarno, because it has brought together again, and put into closer contact than they have been in for a long time, the two chief guaranteeing Powers, Italy and ourselves. As Locarno is one of the pillars upon which peace is supported, this is no small achievement. Perhaps the most useful achievement of the Four Power Pact is that it has substituted a council of four for the rather dangerous grouping of Powers which we had observed in latter years. The friendship between Italy and Germany has, up till recent times, caused a good deal of uneasiness and suspicion in France and in the countries of the Little Entente. It will be a great step forward if controversial questions are to be discussed a quatre rather than by those negotiations à deux, which have caused so much disquiet in the past. We may hope that Germany, sitting on an equal footing with the other Powers that have signed this Pact, may find it possible to present her case with confidence, feeling that her just claims will be given a sympathetic hearing.

Germany will, I hope, appreciate that no one in this country has the desire to interfere in her internal affairs. If the way she conducts them leads large sections of people in other countries strongly to dislike and disapprove of her methods and to react accordingly, that, after all, is her own affair. I hope she has realised that Europe will not tolerate any unilateral repudiation of treaties, and will not for a moment countenance any trespassing. In this connection, I hope that the French people have learned a lesson also. I hope they have noted that it is this country, which was bound by no definite treaty, save that of Locarno—that it is we, the freest agents in Europe who, nevertheless held the firmest language to Germany during the recent disturbed period. I wish to thank the Secretary of State for War for the very firm language that he used in another place some time ago. I hope also that Germany will appreciate the fact that Europe will not tolerate any tampering with the liberty of Austria. The attempted bullying of Austria, the ruining of her tourist traffic, which is vital to her, by imposing a charge of 1,000 marks for a visa is bringing a kind of economic pressure which I think is well nigh intolerable, and I hope that very strong representations will be made.

One thing that is more important still is that we ought to make it clear to Germany that no invasion of Austrian territory even by the most irregular of Germany's irregular troops will be tolerated. This is a question of the peace of Europe. What Germany should understand is that, should there even he a serious threat of invasion of Austrian territory, Austria's other neighbours will immediately take action, and Austria will then become the helpless battlefield of a new war such as Belgium was in 1914. The truth is that Austria is the Serbia of post-War Europe. For this reason, as well as for others as cogent but perhaps less imperative, I beg the Government to make it quite clear that we will not tolerate any interference with Austria. I think our admiration must go out to the plucky little country which has put up such a game struggle for independence against such heavy odds. Financially, Austria is the only country besides our own with a balanced Budget, and she has achieved this result by the strictest economy. She has managed to reduce her expenditure to the enormous proportion of 25 per cent. That, surely, is a great achievement. At the moment, Austria is attempting to obtain satisfactory trade agreements with a number of countries, and I hope, in so far as we are able to do so, we shall help her in this respect. I take off my hat to Austria. I admire the way in which the different elements of her population, whose interests are so conflicting, have yet held together in their desire to keep their country free from outside domination. The Socialists of Vienna are just as anxious as the Austrian Jews or the Austrian Catholic peasants to resist the rule of the Nazis.

May I say one last word about the Four Power Pact? Let us hope that the close and friendly co-operation with the three other Powers with which she is associated in the Pact will help to dispel Germany's mistrust and lead to the German people showing the great qualities which we know they possess. The good will of all is required in the hard times through which we are going. It requires no particularly perceptive ear to detect the rumblings in the financial edifices of some countries. We cannot forget that political upheavals can always be traced to economic causes. Democracy, save In this country, is not doing particularly well. It remains to be seen whether a panel of dictators will do better. But, be this as it may, the Four Power Pact is undoubtedly a step in the right direction. It is an attempt by four Powers to come together and solve their own difficulties directly across a table. The Government are very much to be congratulated for the initiative they have taken in this respect.

5.24 p.m.

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

I feel sure that all Members of the Committee will agree as to the exceptional value of this Debate so far as it has at present proceeded, and, on behalf of the Government, I should like to express our gratitude for the speeches that have been delivered. My hon. and gallant Friend who has just spoken devoted the greater part of his speech to the Four Power Pact. The Foreign Secretary hopes to be able to reply later, when he will deal with that among other subjects. The Leader of the Opposition, in the review with which he opened the Debate, travelled, as he himself expressed it, over a very great part of the world. Certainly there could be no complaint about that. The Foreign Office Vote is an excellent occasion for travel. But I noticed that in the course of his wanderings he omitted one country which interested him very greatly on a previous occasion when the Foreign Office was under discussion. The omission, perhaps, on this occasion was the better part of valour, for the country was Russia. I rather expected that, perhaps, the Leader of the Opposition would have expressed satisfaction at the outcome of the recent conversations between my right hon. Friend and M. Litvinoff. I feel confident that all parties in the House welcome their outcome, as do all persons in the country. I, for my part, feel equally confident that the overwhelming majority of the people of the country were equally emphatic in support of the action which alone, in our judgment, has made this outcome possible. I expected that hon. Members opposite, who are always emphasising to us, quite rightly, the importance of all markets, and notably the Russian market, to this country, would have expressed their satisfaction with the Government's action, and the subsequent agreement to reopen negotiations, which have made it possible, we trust, to conduct these negotiations in conditions which would not otherwise have been possible. Looking back over the history of recent weeks and months, we can claim that the Government action was fully justified both as protection for the present and as insurance for the future.

The right hon. Gentleman devoted a considerable part of his speech to events in the Far East. It seemed to me, as I listened to what he had to say on that subject, that the criticism of the League's action or, as I suppose he would prefer to call it, inaction, was based upon a conception of the League's responsibilities different from mine and different, I believe, also from his in other circumstances. It seemed to me that he was complaining that the League had not fulfilled a role for which, in my judgment, it was never cast. The substance of his complaint was that it had not been able to act as a super-State. I do not believe it ever could or should act as a super-State. It may be that, if we allow our judgment to be influenced by that conception of the League's opportunities and responsibilities, we shall be asking it to achieve results which by its very nature are beyond its present powers. The right hon. Gentleman offered no constructive suggestions as to action which should have been taken either by this country or by the League itself which has not been taken. We have, as a Government, played our part with other nations in arriving at a decision in respect of a set of problems which, admittedly, are almost unique in their complexity. In the nature of them, and in the history that lies behind them, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham (Sir A. Chamberlain) rightly drew attention, I do not think the League has any need to be ashamed of its record in these negotiations; indeed, there seems cause for congratulation that there should have been virtual unanimity in February last on the resolution which the Assembly then adopted.

The right hon. Gentleman asked me if I could give some information as to what has been proceeding at Geneva since the Assembly Resolution of last February. The Committee will perhaps be aware that the Assembly then set up a committee of 22 nations charged with watching the events in the Far East, and more particularly to concern itself, as in fact it did, with two particular tasks. One was the examination into the problem of the arms embargo, and in respect to that matter I would only remark that no action in respect of an arms embargo in any part of the world by the League or anyone else can be effective unless, in the first place, it be undertaken by the unanimous decision of all countries, and unless, in the second place, all the countries have equal legislative powers to put the resolution into force. Unfortunately, that equal legislative power does not at present exist, and until it exists it is impossible for the League of Nations, or for any other body, effectively to take steps in respect of an arms embargo in any dispute anywhere. The first step to be taken, and for my part I wish it could be taken, would be that nations should be in a position to exercise the power which we in this country have to control the export of arms in order to make an embargo operative if it should be decided upon.

Therefore, since the Committee could not proceed with that work, the work upon which it has been engaged, in order to carry out the Resolution of the Assembly in February, has been the necessary technical work in connection with the non-recognition of Manchukuo. That work has been done, and what I might call the machinery of non-recognition has been agreed upon by that Committee.

Mr. LANSBURY

Can the hon. Gentleman tell me what representatives there are in Manchukuo responsible for giving advice and help to our nationals.

Mr. EDEN

Perhaps the right bon. Gentleman will be good enough to await the reply of my right hon. Friend later in the Debate. I can tell him now, however, that there is consular machinery in existence in the territory of Manchuria, though, of course, there is no recognition of Manchukuo. To come to European matters, I was glad to hear the right hon. Gentleman approve of the procedure which has been followed at the Disarmament Conference, and which seems to be the only procedure realisable in present conditions. The Committee will recollect that on the 9th June the Disarmament Conference adjourned for a period to allow of the President of the Conference to undertake the noble work with which he charged himself of entering into conversations with a number of the heads of delegations. It was—and I think that it is common knowledge—the intention of the President to carry on those conversations here in London at the time of the opening of the World Economic Conference. Unhappily, for various reasons it was not possible for those conversations to take place then. In my view, they are just as necessary now as they were on the 9th June. I would ask the right hon. Gentleman and the Committee to look upon the decision of the Conference, not as an adjournment, but rather as a change of method. Instead of proceeding by public discussion at Geneva, we are to attempt the method of private interchange of views between the heads of delegations under the guidance of the President. I believe that decision to be wise, and that many good reasons could be adduced in support of it. We have now completed the first reading of the United Kingdom Draft Convention. The Conference will need a little time before it can embark upon the second reading, if only because before we do that we must seek to regulate some of the differences which still exist. The only alternative is to proceed by votes. Although votes of the House of Commons are decisive, the votes of International conferences decide nothing at all except to show where differences of opinion lie. Though some of our discussions on the first reading were admittedly indecisive, they have not, I think, been altogether without result. They have enabled us to regulate a large number of minor technical difficulties, some of which should, no doubt, have been regulated before even the Conference met. But the regulation of these problems is necessary before it is possible for the Conference to take decisions on the major political issues. We are now ready for those decisions to be taken, if they can be taken, and until they are taken we can make little further progress.

I would ask the Committee, in visualising our difficulties in the Disarmament Conference at Geneva, to weigh some of the very cogent arguments used by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham a few minutes ago. Geneva, in present conditions is, after all, little more or less than the sounding board of Europe. If events take place in certain parts of Europe which foster suspicions and arouse apprehensions, their reactions are felt at once at Geneva. It is not possible to ask the nations to continue their work upon the technical materials of disarmament as if all were well at Geneva without their being, at the same time, heedful of what is going on in Europe so very close to them. In present conditions in Europe it is surely not surprising that the nations require a. little time before they can be asked to take these vital decisions, without the taking of which the Disarmament Conference cannot reach a conclusion.

Perhaps at this stage I might deal for a moment with a point which loomed large both in the speech of the Leader of the Opposition and that of my right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham—the problem of the reservations in respect of bombing in outlying districts. I have no ambition to repeat what I said to the Committee previously upon this matter, but I would like again to try to put it as fairly as I can in what I believe to be its true perspective. There are two problems. There is the prohibition of bombing in respect of which our reservation applies in outlying districts for police purposes, and there is the problem, which, I confess, in my judgment, is infinitely more important, of the final and permanent abolition of military and naval air forces. The latter is infinitely more significant than the abolition of bombing. For as long as military aeroplanes exist the abolition of bombing cannot become fully assured. These are two separate problems. It is in respect of bombing alone that this reservation of ours applies. The right hon. Gentleman argued that this reservation was in itself some new horror. Of course, it is no such thing. This thing which is called police bombing, and which he denounced so thoroughly has been in force for some considerable time and was of course in force when. was a member of the late Socialist Government. Though in respect of this matter we may be steeped in sin, we are by no means steeped in original sin. What is the reason why we put this reservation before the Conference? It is well known to the Committee, and it is unnecessary for me to labour it here. I am absolutely convinced that the Conference appreciates the immense strength of our local case in respect of this reservation. I am equally convinced that for us not to have mentioned this reservation, not to have put it forward nor to have explained our difficulties would have been to neglect our responsibilities in certain parts of the world.

My right hon. Friend has made a new appeal to me. He has said that it would be a terrible thing if the Conference were to break down on this issue. I am heartily in agreement with him on that point. It would indeed be a terrible thing if the Conference were to break down upon this issue. Let me also assure him that there is not the least question of it. The size of this problem in relation to the size of our other problems is minute. If the occasion arose when the only thing which stood between the signing of the Convention and the agreement on the Convention was this reservation, then indeed a very different situation would have arisen from the situation at the present time. I can only reassure my right hon. Friend that the problem can be put in its true perspective by examining the time we spent upon it at Geneva in relation to the 18 months we have been there. I think it occupied four hours of our total deliberations on the subject. It is one of the problems which will have to be regulated if, and when, we come to the Second Reading. I can assure him that I should feel as strongly as he the terrible responsibility of any breakdown of the Conference upon such an issue.

May I, in order to emphasise the perspective of this problem, quote the remarks of the Belgian delegate, who has been throughout a firm supporter of our Convention. I want to try to show to the Committee what I believe is still the main issue of the Conference beside which all other issues are entirely subsidiary. This is a quotation from the official record of a speech of Monsieur Bourquin as long ago as last May: What, indeed, was the core of all the difficulties with which the Commission was faced? It was undoubtedly the problem of land armaments. M. Bourquin did not say that the other questions were not important and did not wish to underestimate them, but it was quite obvious that, from the political point of view, the chief obstacle lay there. It was land armaments, and, to put it more clearly, the land armaments of continental Europe. If that obstacle could be overcome, the Convention would be made and the success of the Conference assured. If no agreement were reached on that point, a convention might perhaps be made, but it would be impossible to disguise the real failure of the Conference's work. That is undoubtedly true. Surely, it is no less true that behind the question of Continental European land armaments lies the major political issue to which my right hon. Friend referred a short time ago. I think I detected in the speech of the Leader of the Opposition some complaints—and there are certainly plenty of excuses for them—of the slow progress which the Disarmament Conference has made. I would not wish the Committee to be discouraged by that. Slow progress is inevitable in what we may call the new methods of diplomacy.

What is the wider aspect of this question of the Disarmament Conference? After the War the nations agreed to try a new method of settling their differences in order to avoid a recurrence of the events which lead to 1914. Let us call that new method, consultation. We thought that we would seek by personal contacts, freely and frequently exchanged, to avoid the repetition of the misunderstandings which led to 1914. The very essence of the policy of consultation is that differences should be aired and discussed, a process itself long, difficult and sometimes anxious. The very length of this process leads some people to say, "Your prolonged conferences with their continuous repetitions do more harm than good." What is the alternative? Unless we persist in the method of post-War diplomacy, which is the method of consultation, I can see no alternative open to us but to go back to the methods before 1914. It is easy to refer to the countless delays of the committees, upon which everybody for some unknown reason wants to sit, but, while all these things may be said and while they have been said, the alternative remains that we must either attempt to work the new method of consultation or we must allow the difficulties, as they did before 1914, to gather strength unseen until eventually the avalanche breaks on a world wholly unprepared to sustain it.

When we review the work of recent months I for my part so far from re- gretting that the Disarmament Conference should have been in session at such a time am confident that even the exchange of views there between those of us who have taken part has done something to ease a situation which might otherwise have been worse. If at the end of our efforts a convention is realised, what will even two years of work upon realising that convention count in the scale against the consequences of a failure which would mean the yielding up by the nations of their efforts to work in consultation? We have in these long weeks and months battled through a Convention which contains no fewer than 96 Clauses. Despite a. severe battering those 96 Clauses are still there, and they have been accepted as the basis for the Convention itself, which shows that the nations are agreed that they will not find a better or a fairer basis than that which the United Kingdom Government took the responsibility of putting before them.

My right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham asked a very pertinent question when he asked could a Government to-day take the responsibility of urging the nations which are still armed to reduce their armaments, even though it be by stages, to the level of the disarmed States. I am prepared to admit, and I do not think that any one of us should blind himself to the fact, that there is a risk in the signature of a disarmament convention at this time, but we must not forget the risk that there is in failing at this time to get agreement upon a convention. If a convention was desirable when the Conference opened, when conditions were more stable than they are in Europe to-day, I fear that a convention is no less necessary at this time. It has to be admitted that the conditions for these negotiations are infinitely more difficult, and the task which lies before us is to seek to bring such an appeasement in Europe as will enable the nations to have the necessary confidence to put their names to a convention embodying disarmament.

That is the task on which His Majesty's Government Can labour, but it cannot labour alone. It needs the assistance and the co-operation of every other Government in Europe, and more particularly of those who in the past have complained of their unequal status in arms. In that difficult task we can only hope that the statesmen of those countries who bear such responsibilities in this respect will, in the next few important months for Europe, give in a full measure their cooperation, and that they will have the vision to see, the faith to act, and the courage to persevere.

5.52 p.m.

Mr. AMERY

I should like to say a. few words on the general subject with which my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary dealt so eloquently in the concluding sentences of his speech, but before doing so I should like to address myself to the very important and by no means "minute" question of the maintenance by this country of the right to use its Air Force in the most effective way possible for the maintenance of its position and responsibilities in the Near East and in India. My right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham (Sir A. Chamberlain), in a speech the courage and cogency of which immensely impressed me, said, in the course of the only part of his speech in which I differed from him, that you could not maintain this reservation on air armaments unless you conceded a similar reservation to France in Morocco. I think that is absolutely right. I have used that argument in this House before. My right hon. Friend went on to say that that was decisive. I agree, but decisive of what? Decisive, not that we should abandon what I believe to be vital to our security and for the maintenance of the British Empire, but decisive of the unwisdom of putting forward the whole of this proposal for the abolition of the use of the Air Force.

Take our position in the East. I am glad that my right hon. Friend agrees, and no one who knows the facts will disagree, that if you have to have military operations, if you have to have loss of life, then both in its immediate effect and still more in what it saves ultimately in lives and money, the use of the Air weapon is by far the most humane and effective weapon that you could possibly avail yourselves of. The casualties in the last 10 years of Indian frontier operations have been absolutely insignificant to our own airmen and to the tribes as compared with the losses that were inflicted upon our own troops, the tribes and their dependants in the old business of elaborate, costly ground operations on the frontier, with their attendant sickness, loss of life, and the inevitable and terrible hardships inflicted upon the tribes. It is not only that this new method is far more economical and far more efficient, but I would put it a good deal higher than that.

The whole problem of the maintenance of civilised government in those regions of the world is one as to whether civilisation is in a military sense more efficient than barbarism. There was no doubt of the superiority of civilisation when civilisation had firearms and barbarism had bow and spear. There was a good deal more doubt when barbarism had home-made jezails and Martini Henry rifles against modern rifles and machine guns. Even then it was a, problem of arithmetic and as Mr. Kipling put it, the captives of our bow and spear are cheap alas! as we are dear. To-day, barbarism is armed throughout the Eastern world with the modern rifle and in some measure with repeating and machine guns, and so far as ordinary land forces are concerned, the superiority which we used to enjoy has been enormously reduced. Speaking from no little personal experience in dealing with these problems in Iraq, in Somaliland and on the frontier of Aden, I say that our whole system of Government in the East would have broken down hopelessly in the years since the War if it had not been for the efficiency and power of the Air Force. Iraq, for instance, could not possibly have maintained itself against the Turkish menace or the desert menace, or against the internal danger from the Kurdish tribes, but for the Air Force, and it could not do so in the future.

Nor do I believe that it is possible in the long run to maintain the security of India, the most essential of all safeguards for India's future, except at an utterly prohibitive expense which neither we nor India would be prepared to face, unless we retained the Air power. We are all of us, whatever our different points of view may be, anxious about the future in India. We know how grave are the risks involved in that great constitutional experiment to which we have committed ourselves. That experiment is bound to break down unless at least two conditions are present; in the first place external security, and in the second place some measure of financial stability. If you weaken India's defence in this respect and deprive her of the security of her frontier, and of a cheap and effective method of defence, and impose upon her an infinitely more costly method of defence by ground troops, you will destroy at the outset any prospect of a future Indian Federation being a success. India runs far graver risks at Geneva than at the meetings of the Select Committee.

I was astonished and dismayed to hear the Under-Secretary refer to this question as a minute one. On the contrary, I believe it to be one of the gravest questions affecting the whole future security of the Empire, far more important, far more real, than anything that has been done at Geneva. Here you are dealing with a real present danger. What are you going to get in exchange? Security against a hypothetical European war into which I trust the policy of this country will not allow us to be dragged for a century to come. But what security? Not real security, only a hypothetical security; the hope that any convention of this character will be observed when the hour of danger comes. When it comes those countries which have superiority in military or civil air forces will not hesitate to use them for bombing, for the purpose of saving themselves, for winning any war in which they may be engaged. As a matter of fact, I do not think that there is any real prospect of any convention in this matter being reached. I cannot imagine Japan or Italy or the United States in the last resort consenting to disarm themselves in the sense put forward by us.

Unfortunately we have put ourselves in a very false tactical position. We have put forward what, I think, is a wholly unworkable and impracticable general proposal, and coupled with it a qualification which is so illogical as to enable those who want to escape being committed to our main proposal to throw the onus of breaking down the Conference upon us. Now we are drifting into a position in which the Under-Secretary for State goes so far as to say that we are not going to let the Convention break down on that point. He went so far as to say that he aimed at the complete abolition of all military aviation. Does anybody imagine that you are going to exclude from the field of war what is rapidly becoming the normal means of communication for the whole world, or that you can stop the development of aviation by international supervision any more than you can stop the development of the motor car or the lorry by international supervision? You can no more prevent them being used in time of war than you can prevent the motor lorry being used for carrying shells and soldiers. To put forward proposals so unreal and so impossible of fulfilment weakens your chance of getting some acceptance for more practicable proposals.

I see no reason why aerial warfare should not be codified and limited as land and sea warfare have been limited. I see no reason why you should not make a distinction between areas used for military purposes whether fortified, or military railway and munition centres, as you have done in the case of naval bombardment. No doubt the areas would be larger and the number of civilians taking some risks in such areas would be greater, but that you can arrive at some measure of agreement which would have some chance of being accepted and supported by the opinion of the entire world is to my mind a hopeful possibility. When you go beyond that for the sake of making an impression at Geneva, of showing how strong we are in the cause of peace, it only endangers the chance of doing anything really effective. Let me deal with the closing sentences of the Under-Secretary of State in which he urged the necessity of something coining out of the Convention because it has sat so long, seven or eight years with all its preparatory commissions, and because of its 96 Clauses accepted as a basis for something or other. I wonder how far these Clauses will ultimately get; and when they are accepted what anybody will do about them.

The whole of the discussion has been based on the entirely false premise that armaments are the cause of war. Disarmament, by itself, can really do nothing much to help the cause of peace. I know no instance in history where the competition of armaments has of itself played any serious part in bringing about war. Wars are brought about by causes far deeper than armaments. Armaments are the instrument by which those who wish to change the state of affairs in the world hope to achieve their aim, and also the instrument by which those who wish to maintain the present state of affairs are enabled to preserve it in peace against those who would change it. The problem of the world is not disarmament in the abstract but how to disarm the aggressor and maintain the superiority in armaments of those who love peace. That is a problem which we have solved in our several communities. The peace of our own country, on our streets, is maintained by the fact that there is not only the police, but behind the police the whole of the armed strength of the country, and that the law-breaker has very little chance of succeeding. The same consideration applies to the world as a whole, and it applies with particular force to the position of Europe to-day.

We have done no good in recent years by trying to upset the margin of superiority which has been enjoyed by the victors in the late War over the vanquished. When you have had a serious operation, amputated a limb, you want to keep your patient as quiet as possible for some time, and the only chance for peace for a time in Europe was that Germany, and those who shared her fate, should not expect or hope to reverse the decision at an early moment. Many of us consoled ourselves with the thought—I was one—that the situation had changed, that the temper of the German Government was such that you might arrive at a much greater approximation in disarmament between the European nations. We have all been profoundly disillusioned in that respect by the events of the last few months. Does anybody imagine if we now disarm to real equality that it would conduce to peace in Europe'? Where would the freedom of Austria be to-day if her gallant Prime Minister had not been prepared to use her armed forces for the defence of the country, and if it were not certain that Austria's neighbours would support her if any attempt was made to deprive her of her freedom?

Freedom and order and justice in this world, while they are far more important than force, while they have their own compelling qualities to enlist the increasing support of mankind, have never been able wholly to dispense with force. As long as there are in the world those who mean to use force, whether barbarian or civilised, as long as there are those who desire to substitute tyranny for freedom and oppression for justice, armed force will be necessary. It was not without the use of armed force that the Barons of England won Magna, Carta seven centuries ago. It was not without force that most of our liberties have been established and maintained. It is not without a reasonable superiority of armed strength in its support that the peace of Europe will be preserved. Nor in an age when a new conflict between the principles of liberty and the principles of tyranny, the all-powerful state embodied in a single party, may hold the field, and prove the greatest issue for the next generation, is it the time to diminish the armed strength of an Empire whose essential principles are freedom and justice.

6.12 p.m.

Colonel WEDGWOOD

I do not quite like this new vision of the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook (Mr. Amery). "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian." The voice we have heard has been the voice of the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook, but the words are uncommonly like the words of Adolph Hitler. The right hon. Gentleman believes in force. He thinks that everything in this country has been secured by force. So does Hitler. I warn him that it is just that creed which, if it spreads in this country, will do more to destroy that democracy of Which he and I are so proud than any ridiculous weakness, sentimentality or Christian feeling in this country. His whole argument is this; he puts the safety of the State first. What we must always put first is a principle based upon humanity and justice. If you put the State first, you can justify any crime in the past and any crime in the future. In the interest of society people have been burnt at the stake. The argument of every Government in the past has been the safety of the State, that the State must be armed with superior powers in order to save itself. Save itself from what?

Take the question of bombing from the air. The right hon. Member and I are in absolute agreement that we would like by international agreement to abolish the use of the air forces in war, and perhaps in peace as well, all over the world. It would really be a great step in advance. I believe that the Government and the majority of Members of the House would be delighted if we could put an end to this terrible threat of bombing from the air; and that we are not prepared to preserve the power of bombing the barbarian if the demand prevents a limitation on the general use of the aerial arm. May I say how much we on these benches welcome the declaration made by the Under-Secretary on that point? Whatever other stupidity we may commit, it will not be the stupidity of stopping a great step forward in civilisation because we think we ought to secure for the State the most efficient weapon for the suppression of barbarians. If I may be so grandmotherly I would say, how delighted I was with the whole of the hon. Gentleman's speech. It reminded me very much of the speeches of Sir Edward Grey in the old days both in the manner of its presentation and its distinction.

Let us be quite clear about this question of air bombing. We do not like air bombing, not because we fail to realise that, if it were done away with, it would be more expensive in future, even in human lives, to keep order on various frontiers. If you abolished that particular arm it might be more expensive in our men's lives and in our cash, to keep the frontiers of India and of Iraq and elsewhere. But at least we can say that it will not be as expensive as it was 50 years ago. The superiority of civilisation over the barbarians is infinitely greater to-day than it was in the days of the Sudan campaign. But the question of its cheapness as a method of warfare is not the final test to which we should submit the use of force. There are certain things that we do not do. There are certain things which the police do not do; and there are certain things which you have no right to ask any armed force to do. In this category is bombing; such as the bombing of the Bondelzworts natives in South Africa. That is inhuman and you do not use inhuman weapons if you are a civilised State and if you consider the feelings of your own people and the traditions of your own race.

We have always been a little bit ahead of other nations in the treatment of all these problems—in the treatment, for instance, in gaols of people who have committed offences, even in the treatment of poachers, and in matters of that kind. Bad as our record has been, we have generally been, with our Howards and our Clarksons and our Buxtons, a little bit ahead of the rest of the world. For goodness sake let us remember that reputation which we have for being a little ahead of the rest of the world in the humane treatment of these problems. Let us regard it as one of our most precious possessions and resolve that we are not going to sacrifice it in order that it shall be a little easier for us to control frontier tribes in India or Iraq. This is a moral problem and not merely a question of efficiency. It is not a question of the safety and convenience of the State but a question of justice and of our standards of civilisation and Christianity.

I pass from that to another subject. It seems to me that in public opinion in this country there has been developing within the last week or so a sort of antagonism to the United States, and I think it deplorable if, because of a few somewhat roughly turned sentences in a President's message, we should begin to say that America. is not playing the European game, is antagonising Europe and the gold countries of Europe and even, among others, ourselves. My personal opinion is that President Roosevelt is perfectly right and that our Chancellor of the Exchequer is perfectly wrong. I think that instead of complaining of what President Roosevelt is doing we ought to be following him and working in harmony with him. That, as I say, is a mere personal opinion. The important thing from the point of view of foreign affairs is that we should not have the Press of this country ranged against the President of the United States and the leader of the Democratic party in that country. He is doing the best he can for America—and he is doing something more than talking about it. I believe he is doing the best he can for the world.

That we should be led by the international banking fraternity into an attitude of caustic criticism of the American President would he a very serious thing for mutual understanding and good feeling between the British and the American peoples. I think it would be useful if a hint could be dropped to people who are now making sarcastic speeches about President Roosevelt that it was undesirable in the public interest, if not in the interest of justice, that they should make such mistakes. The real strength of the foreign policy of this Government ever since its inception has been that it has tried to work hand in glove with the American people. There has not been that continual gibing at what the American Government was doing of which we have known so mulch in the past. Everyone who studies foreign policy to-day knows that the goal of the future is complete unanimity of aim, in foreign affairs between us and America, whether it be in Manchuria and China, or in Germany, or on the question of disarmament, or on the question of inflating the currency.

Mr. de ROTHSCHILD

May I ask the right hon. and gallant Gentleman what is to happen if the President again changes his mind?

Colonel WEDGWOOD

The President of the United States has not changed his mind. He has been in favour of inflation ever since be came into power, and international bankers will not be able to stop him from carrying out his policy. May I ask the hon. Member for the Isle of Ely (Mr. de Rothschild) whether he himself has not, perhaps, Changed his mind as to the insistent necessity of remaining on gold and retaining the at the old parity? The President's view on this question has been clear throughout, and the banking fraternity have endeavoured to read into his words something which is not there. They thought that he wanted to stabilise and to get back to gold and they read that into his first declaration but it was not there. Read what he sent out yesterday and the statement which he made when the Conference was called and it will be seen that they are identical. He is going to get the American dollar down to what he considers to be the right level to produce the prices of 1928 and, when he has got it down, he is content to stabilise at that figure. That is much the best policy for America and I may add for us too.

Mr. O'CONNOR

On a point of Order. Is it in order to inaugurate a discussion on the action of the personal head of a friendly Government? Would not that be a rather unfortunate line for this Debate to take?

The CHAIRMAN

The matter with which the right hon. and gallant Gentleman has been dealing is one which we can hardly avoid in this discussion. I am sure that in referring to it the right hon. and gallant Gentleman will not go beyond the limits of what is allowable and will not go into questions of personalities.

Colonel WEDGWOOD

I should not have gone into it as far as I have gone, had I not been interrupted by the hon. Member for the Isle of Ely. I was using this instance as an illustration of the way in which bad blood can be made between peoples and of the urgent need for keeping close touch between the American people and ourselves in foreign policy. I was about to point out that here before us to-day is a question on which we might operate in conjunction with America. I was about to refer to the position of the Jews in Germany. We know that the same feeling pervades the whole of the intelligent people in this country and in America on the subject of what is going on in Germany. Every speaker on this question seems to qualify his remarks, however scathing they may be, with the statement: "Of course we would not interfere with the internal affairs of Germany." Why, "of course"? In the past this country has led humane sentiment throughout the world. Gladstone's reputation outside this country rested almost entirely on the magnificient way in Which he expressed British public opinion regarding affairs in Naples, in Italy, in Turkey and I may add in Syria. Before Gladstone, Palmerston did the same.

In fact it might be said that throughout the nineteenth century British foreign policy consisted largely of the expression of British views on what was going on in foreign countries. The expression of British public opinion had much to do with freeing Italy from the foreign yoke —not more than Garibaldi of course, but the support which Garibaldi and Mazzini got from this country was a powerful element in freeing Italy. In the same way this country, whichever party was in power, consistently supported the minorities in Turkey against the oppression of the Ottoman Porte. In Macedonia and in Bulgaria to-day, not merely do people still worship the memory of Gladstone, but when Charles Roden Buxton goes out there he is treated like a demi-god. In the nineteenth century this country consistently took the Liberal line on these questions, and, even at the risk of offending the Powers in other countries, we sent Notes to them—Notes not accompanied by whispers from a Minister that it was unnecessary to pay any attention to them. The work in foreign affairs of statesmen like Palmerston and Gladstone has been a great asset to this country. I do not believe that the attitude of the people in America on these questions has been at any time different from ours. They, too, broke down slavery. They, too, have carried on the torch of liberty and democracy.

This seems to be an occasion when one might again take up the old role, and take it up in conjunction with America, thereby strengthening our hands. An identical Note issued to Germany to-day seems to me the only way in which anything can be done to rescue the civilisation of Germany, and we are not entitled to fold our hands and let things go on in Germany as they will, simply because we are afraid that this would not meet with enthusiastic support from the Government with which we should have to communicate. There has never been any question but that if these things had happened in. Rumania, Hungary or Austria, we should have interfered. Are we afraid to interfere in Germany in the same cause because we are antagonising people who are more powerful than the small nations? But Germany is not more dangerous today than a good many of the smaller nations. She is not more dangerous because she is not yet re-armed, and if we do our work properly, she will never be allowed to re-arm. She is not more dangerous because the Government of Germany to-day would never dare to put arms into the hands of her people. The cause of justice and humanity demands far more clamantly to-day than ever in my lifetime, or away back into the nineteenth century, the exercise of that leadership, guidance and humanity for which the British Government has always been renowned and on which our reputation is based.

6.33 p.m.

Wing-Commander JAMES

In spite of listening to speeches from no fewer than four right hon. Gentlemen and the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, I venture with the utmost humility to suggest that this question of air bombing is still capable of being put into clearer perspective. I believe that there is a double under-current of misunderstanding, first in relation to so-called police bombing, and secondly in relation to wartime aerial bombing in general. I suggest that the actual term "police bombing" is of itself extremely misleading, not only to a great many members of the general public, but also to Members of this House. The phrase derives not only from the British declaration of policy at the Disarmament Conference of November, 1932, but also from the phrase used in Article 34 of the Draft Convention. I submit that the whole essence of this type of bombing is that it is not comparable with any ordinary form of police action, because it is applied to territories that we do not in any way administer or control. I believe that if it were called preventive bombing, it would tend to put the whole case into its proper perspective.

The object of this type of air activity is not to police an area in the ordinary sense of the word, but rather to prevent irruptions from an area that we do not police. I do not put this forward as a mere euphemism. We live in an age of euphemisms, when a lunatic asylum has to be called a mental hospital, but I put it forward because it might well help to clear away misunderstanding, if it were possible to adopt the phrase "preventive bombing." No other European Power is as concerned as we are with this form of air activity—I say this with the utmost respect for the remarks of the right hon. Member for West Birmingham (Sir A. Chamberlain)—and therefore, it is very easy for other Powers, not one of whom has in any way approached us in the matter of disarmament, to express pious horror at this type of air activity.

The case of France has been mentioned by the right hon. Member for West Birmingham, but there is no parallel here, because the whole policy of France in North Africa is to occupy and administer the country, but our whole policy in relation to these areas that we are discussing is to avoid having to occupy them. In relation to French activities in North Africa, that have been referred to, to-day's "Times" hears that contention out. The first few lines in its main column on foreign affairs read as follow: Dispatches from Rabat and Casablanca announce that French forces operating in Southern Morocco made important progress during the course of last week, and that the complete pacification of the country south and west of Marrakesh is now in sight. It is outside our policy to attempt to bring about the occupation of Waziristan, of Kurdistan, or of the hinterland of Aden. All we want is to prevent irruptions from them. This question of preventive bombing, I submit, cannot be considered by itself and in isolation, but must be considered in relation to the whole of our Imperial responsibility, defence, and—and this is very important—communications. To-day, whether we like it or not, the fact remains that from Suez, east and south, the whole of British power rests upon the air arm. I say this with no professional pride because I happen to have been for some years in the Air Force. Indeed, I confess I was very much happier when serving upon a horse than in an aeroplane, and my whole bias would be in favour of the older method, but one must recognise facts as they are, and this fact is indisputable, that the whole of British power east and south of Suez to-day rests upon the air arm.

Again, the relationship of our communications with the East and our relative position there with Japan cannot be divorced from this subject. The object of this reservation by the British Government of preventive bombing is simply and solely to preserve peace in areas for which we are responsible, to protect, for example, the North-West Frontier of India from trans-frontier tribes; and incidentally, when, as we hope, India accepts further responsibility for her own frontier protection, Indians will be the first to refuse to relinquish this method of self-protection. Then Aden has to be protected from the tribes of the hinterland of Yemen, and Iraq has to be protected from incursions from Kurdistan. I submit that if the Pax Britannica is worth anything, not only to us, but to the world in general, this reservation is one which we cannot lightly discard.

There is one rather interesting point which might be new to one or two Members of the Committee, and that is the difference in the burden of air occupation as compared with the ground occupation of a country. To maintain not only our own prestige, but the prestige of other people in, say, Iraq, would involve a force of not less than two divisions in that country, with, of course, an equivalent force at home for reliefs. But the same peace is preserved by a very small personnel maintaining the necessary aircraft, and in a country like that, where supplies are scarce, this small body of personnel imposes a much lesser strain on the resources of the country than the much greater ground personnel that is the alternative. Another point is that air occupation is actually in many cases beneficial to your friends in the country. For example, in Southern Arabia, if a local Sultan needs to see the Political Officer, instead of coming over a long and perhaps dangerous journey across the desert into Aden, he sends in a runner taking seven or 10 days, perhaps, an aeroplane is sent out, and he is brought back. He rather enjoys the trip, and he has his interview and is sent back again. Similarly with doctors, who are often sent out by air to urgent cases.

I suggest that the real problem confronting this Committee is how to secure in war effective prohibition of the air bombing of towns, of the civil population, and, above all, the prohibition of gas bombing, a really serious thing. I remember some months ago hearing the hon. Member for Limehouse (Mr. Attlee) open. a Debate on disarmament by expressing the wish that the people in charge of various types of disarmament should have had experience of war under various conditions. He wished that the person concerned with infantry disarmament had been through the mud of Passchendaele, and that the person concerned with air disarmament had been severely bombed from the air. So far as the present Foreign Secretary is concerned, his wish with regard to bombing has, I can assure the Committee, been most amply satisfied. Indeed, in a fairly unpleasant and long connection with having projectiles of various kinds thrown at me, I never remember a more unpleasant bombardment in the whole War than one which I shared with the right hon. Gentleman the Foreign Secretary from a German aeroplane, an experience which, I am sure, he will never forget and I certainly shall never forget. If anyone talks about the horrors of bombing, the Foreign Secretary at least has personal experience of it.

I submit that this reservation is not an obstacle to this, the real main issue, namely, the general limitation of bombing in war. To assume that it is an obstacle is to assume that the present Cabinet are both knaves and fools—knaves because it is to assume that the Lord President of the Council's recent remarkable speech on bombing was delivered with his tongue in his cheek; fools because it is to assume that they are not as aware as every single Member of this Committee of the potential danger to the civilian population of air bombing. I believe we can get international agreement and limitation of bombing in war because the majority of the civilised people of the world want agreement on this question.

I believe that it is possible to obtain some real and valuable agreement by convention and by the codification of the laws of aerial warfare. After all, conventions have mitigated the horrors of the older forms of warfare. In the last War nobody used dum-dum bullets and nobody poisoned wells. I well remember a case of a reasonable adjustment in air bombing even. In the early part of 1918 near Arras a hospital was being bombed by German aeroplanes. The officer commanding the 15th Division asked me whether I thought that the display of a large Red Cross on the ground near the hospital would stop the bombing. I said that I thought it was worth trying. He put a large Red Cross on the ground and the Germans—to their credit be it said—did not bomb that hospital again. Why should not a convention which has reduced the horrors of war in the older spheres be applied to aerial warfare? I believe that it could be done. It is true that in the last War the Germans used gas and also used submarines against merchant shipping, but while one readily admits a German Government to be capable of almost any folly in peace or war, I do not think that they or any other Power could derive much encouragement from their breaches of convention in the last War. I suggest that the agitation against, preventive bombing is to a large extent based on a misconception, and that it weakens the hands of our Government in securing what is a far greater issue, and one that is attainable, namely, the limitation of air warfare by convention and agreement.

6.47 p.m.

Mr. BERNAYS

The Committee has just listened to a powerful plea for the maintenance of the reservation on aerial bombing. I cannot boast of the experience of these matters of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Wing Commander James), but I would like to suggest to him this practical consideration, leaving out ethical points altogether. Surely we in this country stand most to gain from the abolition of aerial warfare. London is the most vulnerable city in the world. It is appalling to think of the consequences of aerial bombardment. The hon. and gallant Gentleman may be entirely right in all the practical considerations that he has put before us, but surely it is insanity to weigh the police considerations on the extremities of the Empire beside the safety of the Empire itself at its heart. I am sure that everybody who is struggling for disarmament will be grateful to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham (Sir A. Chamberlain) for his splendid championship this afternoon. It is not the first time that ho has made speeches of that kind in this Parliament.

I have just returned from Germany, and I should like to testify to the enormous effect that the speech of the right hon. Gentleman had on German public opinion when he addressed the House just, before the Easter Recess. Over and over again, when I was trying to put to the Nazi leaders the feeling in this country aroused by their actions, I was met by the statement: "Your whole country is run by the Jews; your Parliament is run by Jews, your Press is controlled by Jews, your lawyers are Jews, your publishers are Jews," and I was able to answer by one name on which there could be no attack, and that was the name of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham. I am delighted to think that the speech he has made to-day had the same effect on His Majesty's Government as his previous speech had on German public opinion. I am sure that the great majority of the Committee are delighted with the assurance which the Under-Secretary has given that the aerial reservation will -not be allowed to stand in the way of the abolition of aerial warfare. It is only fair to the Under-Secretary to remind the Committee that he implied in the speech he made some weeks ago that he would take this line. There, however, his assurance was only implicit, and now it is explicit. It is a very welcome declaration.

I should like to touch upon the point raised by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition with regard to the persecution of the Jews in Germany. As far as I can estimate, the position of the Jews in Germany is really worse now than it was six weeks ago. The actual persecutions, the actual physical atrocities are over, but there is a persecution quite as systematic and cruel as any that has gone before. The persecution is in the actual regulations passed by the Government against the Jewish community. They involve nothing less than the deprivation of the Jews of all hopes of livelihood. It is sometimes suggested that this persecution of the Jews may be relaxed, but I must confess that I saw no signs of it. After all, the persecution has given Mr. Hitler 500,000 jobs, and that is all that he is able to deliver to the German people. I should like to join my feeble plea to that of the Leader of the Opposition in asking whether the Government cannot do more than it has already done for the Jewish exiles. I do not speak as a Jew myself; I am not a Jew by religion and only remotely a Jew by race. What has happened to the Jews is surely an outrage on civilisation, and it is for civilisation to show not only that it is shocked, but that it is shocked into action. When this question was raised at the beginning of the persecution my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said that the alien regulations would be interpreted generously. I wonder whether they are being interpreted generously. France has taken something like 17,000 Jewish refugees, and I believe that we have taken in rather less than 1,000. I fully recognise the tremendous difficulties involved, but I should like to have an assurance, if it is possible, from my right hon. Friend that he believes that the alien regulations are being operated as generously as possible.

I desire to raise the question of German re-armament so far as it 'affects the attitude of this Government at Geneva. I do not pretend that I got anything more than an aeroplane view of the situation in Germany, but I have come back with the profound conviction that, so far as re-armament is concerned in Germany, the situation is profoundly disturbing. I do not suggest that the Versailles Treaty is being violated in the letter, but it is being violated in the spirit every hour. Take the army. They have still got on paper only 100,000 members of the Reichswehr prescribed under the Treaty. As the Committee well knows, however, they do not stand alone. There are the Stahlhelm and the S.A. and S.S. detachments of Nazis numbering 500,00 in one case and 1,000,000 in another. Ostensibly, they are the auxiliary police to aid the Government. I do not think that that plea could be maintained in a court of law. It is as if the defence force organised by His Majesty's Government in 1926 to deal with the threat of the general strike had been increased to upwards of 1,000,000 and had been kept in perpetual existence. In addition, there is something very like military training in the universities. It is called Wehrsport. We are told that it is merely physical training, but it is compulsory, and it includes military exercises. The same applies to the compulsory labour colonies to deal with the unemployed; much of the work there is simply military training.

It is the story again, I suggest, of the aftermath of Jena. Just 'as Stein and Hardenberg bamboozled Napoleon with their secret armies, so the Nazis in Germany are deceiving public opinion with their police force and physical training squads. Admittedly, the Nazis have no weapons; they carry bayonets but no rifles. Admittedly also, there is no big gun manufacture going on. The working classes are so disgruntled that the secret would undoubtedly escape to France. There are still no bombing aeroplanes. It is not easy to generalise about poison gas, but fortunately most of the chemists 'are Jews, and they are now vindictive exiles. You do not need rifles, however, to start training a soldier. I am told on high military authority that if you get a man drilled and disciplined, he is half trained. That means that Germany have to-day something like 1,500,000 half-trained men. The old persecution complex in Germany has come back. Once again she regards herself as the victim of a policy of encirclement. She finds herself surrounded by hungry enemies. You see in the shops horrific diagrams of the armaments of Germany in comparison with the armaments of her neighbours, and hair-raising pictures of aeroplanes swooping down upon defenceless citizens of Germany. Appeals are made everywhere to the inhabitants to take part in classes to teach them how to protect themselves against gas attack, and you actually see gas masks in the shops side by side with soft hats.

It is a feeling of insecurity far more than any desire for an immediate revision of the treaty that has created the militant spirit in Germany. More serious than the actual re-armament is the strength of the re-armament spirit. I hope the Committee will forgive me if I indulge in a personal reminiscence oh this point. In Unter den Linden there is a large shop containing an exhibition of War relics—bombs, aeroplanes, cylinders for poison gas, and the like. When I first saw it I thought in my innocence "Here at last is the League of Nations Union propaganda." I had only to read the inscriptions, however, to see that it was clear that it was not a warning against war, but a glorification of war. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham talked about Dr. Stresemann and how his work had been undone. I saw while I was in Berlin that, with the extraordinary foolishness that seems to be an accompaniment of the military spirit, that not only had Germany destroyed his work but were at that moment destroying his name over one of their streets. Pacifism is a crime. That is what is so difficult for an Englishman to understand. I lunched with the proprietor of a big stores in Germany who had been recently maltreated by the Nazis in a Brown house. I said to "What was your crime?" and he replied, "I have always been a supporter of the League of Nations and, when I inherited my father's business, I was determined that tin soldiers should not be sold in my shops."

To be a supporter of the League of Nations is to be regarded as a friend of France, and a traitor. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham talked about inflamatory speeches. When I was in Frankfurt a leading professor in the university told the students that it was more important to study the mechanism of a machine gun than to learn chemistry books. All this evidence of the re-creation of the war spirit is truly terrifying. Military propaganda is ceaseless and systematic. Some of it can be accounted for as an astute method on the part of the Nazi Government. They have no plan for unemployment, and it obviously has to keep the population amused. The easiest way of keeping a young German amused is to put him into uniform and give him something to hate. But one can well understand the terror of France. Fortunately the German Government realise their defenceless position. They are anxious to conciliate foreign opinion. It is significant that Herr Hitler has issued a rule that no Nazi in uniform shall come within 10 miles of the frontier. Their attitude, I believe, would be very different if they had armament behind them. I do not believe in the danger of immediate war, or war in five or 10 years. But if this spirit is allowed to continue, war within a generation, is, in my opinion, inevitable.

What can be done? I cannot believe there is a solution in the remedy propounded by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill) in Paris on Monday—that France should continue to rely solely on her own strength. Admittedly the continued isolation of Germany is very important. She regards herself as surrounded by a ring of enemies. While she is in her present mood, we should make that ring a ring of steel; but that is surely only a lever to get disarmament. It cannot be a permanent solution of our international problem. That way lies a new race in armaments between France and Germany, arid, in that race, Germany with her superior resources of man-power and industrial strength is, in the end, bound to win.

The task of Geneva is surely to give France such guarantees as shall persuade her she has no cause for alarm in a measure of disarmament. I have returned from Germany with one conclusion I had not got before I went there. That conclusion is that if we are to make any progress in the Disarmament Conference we have to go some way to meet the French point of view. I suggest that rearmament above a level agreed upon at Geneva should be regarded as constituting a hostile act, and an act of aggression, and that when that act takes place the full economic sanctions of the League should be put into operation. We should press for the most ruthless rights of investigation of Germany's arsenals. I do not mind how many inspectors come over here to see what we are doing, as long as we have the fullest rights to see what they are doing.

There is a return in Germany to the old philosophy that the interests of the Sate justify everything, however dishonest. It is the scrap of paper mentality all over again. Searching guarantees are imperative to avoid deception. The situation in general with regard to disarmament is surely more serious now than at any time since the War. For years we all believed passionately in disarmament, and it has been urged upon the Government that if we did not disarm Germany would re-arm. Now these words are tragically coming true. This week is the anniversary of the Battle of the Somme. The terrible thing about a visit to Germany is that one feels that all we fought for in the War is slipping from our grip. I have returned from Germany profoundly convinced that all those ghastly sacrifices will have been in vain if the nations of the world do not act, and act quickly.

7.7 p.m.

Miss GRAVES

There can be no doubt in the mind of any of those who have had the privilege of listening this afternoon to some very great speeches, as to the intense gravity of the situation. I hope this Committee may not misjudge me when I say that the immediate reaction in my mind has been in the direction of our assets. It would seem to me that in the discussion of such a subject as the Foreign Office Vote, we are entitled to take account not only of present conditions, but of the very undoubted assets we possess in facing these conditions. First, there comes the entire justification of the action of His Majesty's Government at Lausanne a year ago. Without that action, the world would to-day be sorry wreckage. The Lausanne resolution on reparation constitutes, to my mind, the only logical basis and a formidable asset in the future discussion of War Debts with the United States of America.

Following on that, I see the World Economic Conference, which is a very powerful asset, despite the disaster which a section of the Press would like to count it. It is true that monetary stabilisa- tion is not to be discussed, but that, to my mind, is in accordance with all that lies implicit in the history and political situation of the United States. I see in the World Economic Conference an approach to an economic Kellogg Pact. I look for results from this World Economic Conference, although it may be temporarily suspended, of a very far-reaching kind. None of the delegates to this Conference can mistake the possibility of a tragedy in the world situation, or the necessity for inter-action in regard to that situation. We cannot look at things from too close a perspective. I hope the Committee may not think I am too optimistic, but I remember that many years ago when trouble arose in the East the late Lord Salisbury told us not to get into a panic, but to look at a smaller scale map so that we could have a proper idea of the centre of trouble in relation to the whole.

Our attitude towards this World Conference must be fraught with hope for the future, and not with disappointment, which, after all, at present is not entirely confirmed as a disappointment. May I also remind the Committee that much depends in the future on our relations with the United States? Anybody who has been to Germany lately knows that they are dreaming of a permanent Pan-European alliance. Germany is building for a European situation in which she sees herself, Italy and Great Britain in an incredible alliance against France and against an isolationist United States. Because, as Germany very well knows, the United States will tend to remain isolationist and will not transgress the Monroe doctrine. The German situation has been dealt with this afternoon, and I do not wish to weary the Committee, but I would like to endorse what has been said by the previous speaker. We have been in Germany within a few weeks of each other and each of us has come back shattered by what we found. The hon. Member is possibly a greater lover of Germany than I am and he returned with more unhappiness of mind and harder hit than I was, because I have never lost my reason about Germany. But Germany to-day is a menace to the world.

The Committee may well wonder what assets we can find to set against that world menace. I say that we have no illusions about Germany. In 1913 I was living in France, and perhaps I shared something of the appalling mystery of the German menace. Now there is no mystery and we know exactly where we are. We know of the expansion of Germany and what it means. We know what the Wehrsport means. It means for instance that hundreds and hundreds of young men in training at eight o'clock in the morning run round a stadium to military airs. In Germany's training of her youth lies her strength. We know that Germany is capable of training to the last ounce—at present for work, and in the future for world domination. It is an asset that this present generation should have had already the warning of the result of German expansion. We have seen it once, and we know what we may have to expect. There can be no mistake about Germany's intention. Geographically and physically she must expand, and I put that expansion at a less optimistic date than the speaker who immediately preceded me. I would ventur to say that outside, and just outside the limit set by the Four Power Pact we shall see the first results of that expansion.

Turning for a moment to the question which was so happily dealt with by the Under-Secretary of State this afternoon—that of a bombing reservation in respect of Disarmament—I would put a point which so far has not been put this afternoon and that is what will Germany and what will Europe do with this reservation? Whatever we may say in this Chamber, Germany at least is going to arm, and she is going to arm exactly as she chooses, although for the present her arming may be secret. When she arms and when she starts, as she will do, that race with France in armaments, and when France starts, as she will do, that race in armaments with Germany, we must have no bombing reservation that can form a handle in the hands of either Germany or France for bargaining against the peace of the world. I know that every soul in this Committee hopes that we may be able to limit bombing from the air, but that Great Britain should stand out alone for the reservation is, to my mind, lacking not only in common humanity, but in common sense, if the Committee will permit me to say so.

Finally, may I say a word on something that struck me forcibly the other day? I had a very humble part in the inaugura- tion of the mandate experiment, perhaps the best thing that emerged from the Versailles Conference. If ever there was a signal sign of vitality in this race it was when the King of Iraq gained full sovereign rights for his country and we handed over the Iraq mandate. There was only a short notice in the newspapers and many of us thought, "Well, that is the end of Chapter I of the experiment." But when the King of Iraq came the other day and I went to stand in the Mall to do my part in welcoming him, I thought there never can have been a better example of what is seldom mentioned, which is the vitality of Great Britain. Another sign of vitality, another sign of the assets which I have ventured to insist, is that General Smuts accompanied the King and Queen to the opening of South Africa House. It is the first time on record I think, when a Dominion Minister has been in attendance on such an occasion. History records General Smuts in another situation. That sign of British vitality, coupled with what I recognise in the visit of the King of Iraq as the subtle strength of the British Empire causes me to think that the situation, dark as it is, can be faced, and will be faced, with these assets in our firm possession.

7.19 p.m.

Mr. McGOVERN

I have listened with attention to a number of speeches on the subject which I regard as being worthy of the discussion that has taken place. In connection with bombing and the reservations claimed by this country, I wish to say at the outset that I regard all this talk about the elimination of bombing from warfare as being entirely unreal and illogical in every sense of the term. In my belief, we can no more eliminate bombing from warfare than we can abolish any of the other means of life destruction used in ordinary warfare. But I find in the speeches of a number of Members a tendency to point out that the elimination of aerial warfare would give this country an overwhelming advantage over all the other countries of the world. If that is to be the main reason advanced for the elimination of bombing, it is a very poor one indeed to put forward in this House.

On the other hand, the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook (Mr. Amery) advanced a very sensational and true argu- meat when he said that we must retain the right to bomb, because bombing is an economical method of dealing with tribes which indulge in rebellion. He said we could not face the cost of quelling tribal warfare or insurgents and instanced India, saying it was his belief that this country could not have held India but for the power and the threat of aerial bombing. He went on to point out that this Empire was held together at the present time by either the use or the threat of bombing. If the British Empire is to be held together by either the use or the threat of bombing, it is time the British Empire in its present form was completely eliminated and complete self-government given to every one of its parts. But I believe he did suggest the real argument behind the scene, namely, that the use of bombing is to be retained by this country because we can use this brutal and fiendish method upon tribes in order to quell disturbances. I want seriously to cross swords with those who say that it is for the good of these people that bombing should be retained. Instead of using bombs and aeroplanes, we might consider what is the cause of the disturbances in various parts of the Empire and attempt to give the people some decent form of government.

I hope the speech of the right hon. and gallant Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Colonel Wedgwood) although delivered from the Opposition Front Bench, is not to be taken as representing the view of the Labour party on what he put forward as the benevolent spirit prevailing throughout Britain down the ages and her ambition to bring about complete civilisation in the world. I believe he was speaking rather for himself, and I am glad to know that, because I think his attitude is a complete negation of all that history has taught us of the building up of the British Empire. I believe the British Empire has been built by murder and plunder, I believe it is being kept together by the use of brute force, and that we are denying people in all parts of the world the right to govern themselves. He instanced one or two cases in which British statesmen had intervened in foreign countries and attempted to eliminate some forms of fiendish cruelty which were being perpetrated there, but, as against that, wherever the British flag has been flown—in India, in Ireland, in Iraq and elsewhere—there is a trail of blood, there is the hand of the assassin, because we have had to put forth our full force against people who desired to retain their rule over their own country.

I seriously disagree with the right hon. and gallant Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme when he states that the civilising influence of this country has been such as he believes it to be. On the other hand, if Great Britain has this knack of using its power and civilising influence, I want to ask the Foreign Secretary to tell us whether, in his recent negotiations with foreign Powers, he has taken stock of the killings, the shootings and the cruelties which have been perpetrated on people in Germany, whether he has made representations in the proper quarters concerning these cruelties. They were instanced to-night by the hon. Member for North Bristol (Mr. Bernays) in a sincere and humane speech in which he pointed out the effects of the rule of "King Kong" in Germany. I wish to know whether we have made any serious representations to secure the elimination of all the cruelty and barbarism now being perpetrated in Germany at the present moment. It is not out of the question for us to make such an inquiry, because in a world where we are in close touch with other countries, and are seeking to bring about progress, we are entitled, in taking counsel with these people, to draw attention to the fact that they are not acting as a civilised State and that their rule is against the instincts and feelings of every person in this country who has any progressive humanitarian or Christian outlook.

When we are told that Germany is not armed at the present moment we are bound to go back to the end of the War, when Germany was disarmed, not by example but by the power of the Allied nations. Germany to-day is only prevented from arming secretly, as we were told by the hon. Member for South Hackney (Miss Graves), because doing so would play into the hands of the political opponents of "King Kong," who rules Germany to-day, placing in the power of the Socialists and Communists of Germany a weapon which they could use against "King Kong" to set up some form of stabilised and decent Government in that country. Therefore, Ger- many is creating instead a Nazi movement, with sports clubs of all. kinds and outdoor recreation clubs, in which people are training and drilling and being equipped ready, if necessary, to take the field in a war of aggression against France and against any who may support France in the event of such a war. Therefore, people are being brought into the fold in Germany, and are giving their oath of allegiance to defend a form of Nazi Government, and the whole of that force, that kept force of what we might term ruffianism in Germany, is being used against the people who differ from the rulers politically and racially. The force is being used in the most oppressive form of which any human being could conceive.

It is the duty of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to make serious representations on this matter to the responsible people in Germany, with a view to ending that form of domination and to returning to a proper basis of ordered government. The very threat from this country that we were so serious in our desire for ordered and decent government that we should not be prepared to negotiate with a country whose representatives had no sense of decency, in regard to those who differed from them politically and racially, would have a tremendous effect in Germany, would add to the prestige of this country and would assist in the successful progress of ordered government throughout the world. If the answer is given by the Foreign Secretary that we cannot intervene in the internal affairs of another country, I would point out that we have already intervened in the internal affairs of another country.

I am not suggesting that we should go to war with Germany in order to establish civilised government in that country, but I would point out that we spent £100,000,000 in Russia upon expeditions, in an attempt to overthrow an economic order different from that which was prevailing in our own country. I am not suggesting the spending of large sums of money upon armaments and expeditions, but that the most stern warning that could be given by any country ought to be given to those who are ruling Germany, pointing out that those who are held in prisons and tombs in Germany and are being tortured and bludgeoned, should be liberated, and be allowed to take their places in their ordinary civil occupations. The warning should say that if that is not done, Britain will be bound to turn her back upon a nation of that description until the people of that country begin to realise that we are living in 1933 and not in 1733. I believe that the National Government could do something useful in that respect. They have power, influence and prestige throughout the world. An hon. Friend points out that the spoken word and warning of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham (Sir A. Chamberlain) in this House has had a tremendous effect on the powers that be in Germany. If an ordinary Member of this House, with influence and power outside the ordinary Governmental circle, can have that effect, what a tremendous effect would be created if an official declaration came from the Government Front Bench that Britain was looking at the happenings in Germany with horror and detestation, and was determined to make the utmost representation with a view to ending them.

If such things were taking place in this country, and if other Governments were making representations, we have to imagine that we should consider that they were entitled to make those representations to the very full. This country protested not so long ago, making the utmost use of the House of Commons, because two or three Britons in Russia were put on trial for the reason that they were alleged to have committed some serious crime against the internal Government of Russia. If we can make such representations, and break off trading relationships, threatening another Government that unless it releases two or three individuals held to be guilty of some crime we shall use our whole power against that Government, surely we are entitled, when tens of thousands of people are held in bondage, some being secretly shot, or their throats being slit, and others being done to death in the most vile fashion, to expect the Government to use their utmost power to protest against those horrors.

I therefore ask that the Foreign Secretary and the Government should make representations at the earliest possible moment. If they do not feel disposed to make those representations, they might, in winding up this discussion, express in the strongest possible terms their horror of the crimes that are happening in Germany. In that country, the will of the majority is not allowed to operate, and people are being driven out of every form of ordinary commercial life because they belong to the Jewish race. Boycott and brutality are being used to the extreme. Surely we are entitled to expect at least condemnation of these outrages. I can only say that I hope that if nothing else emanates from this Debate we shall get an expression of the repulsion and horror of every decent-minded individual in this Committee at the terror used against people who are only guilty of differing in race or in politics from those who have stolen power in Germany, and who are using it to the disaster of the German population.

7.39 p.m.

Mr. NUNN

I do not intend to follow the very interesting address which we have just heard from the hon. Member for Shettleston (Mr. McGovern), tempting though it is to do so. I was very struck with one thing that he said. The hon. Member devoted a very great part of his speech to dealing with the difficulties of the German community, and one had very great sympathy with what he said. In passing, and by way of an illustration, he referred to what has happened in Russia. I did not notice any note of congratulation, either in what he actually said or in the way in which he said it, to the Government for the rather remarkable success which their policy has achieved. The plain fact has emerged in the last two or three days that the two men who have been held in Russia have been released. That is very distinct evidence that the Government's policy has been entirely successful. I want to raise a very lone voice here in congratulation to the Government on having succeeded with that piece of work.

Having said that, I wish to apologise to the Committee for asking them to return to the subject which has been very lightly dealt with this afternoon. I was unfortunately not able to be present when the Leader of the. Opposition made some reference to what has been going on in the Far East, and I trust that the Committee will accord me some minutes in which to make reference to the problems that exist there. Those problems may seem to be very distant. We have been discussing matters more or less at our own door. Although the Far East is a very distant spot on the earth, its problems are very closely united with our own. This country is more interested in curing unemployment than in anything else; the Far Eastern problem is so closely united with that question that I do not feel that I ought to have apologised to the Committee for asking them to listen to me. For the last 20 years, China has failed to make any marked progression. There was a decided progressive movement throughout the Far East 23 years ago when there was a desire to attain to some form of democratic Government—quite a laudable desire, I have no doubt, but democracy has to be paid for. That desire disturbed the whole of the arrangements of China, and since that time progression has been held up. Had China been progressing at the same rate during the last 23 years, this country would have been providing for her, particularly in heavy materials, as much in the way of goods as would have made a very valuable contribution to our unemployment problem.

That is my excuse for carrying this discussion back to China. I gathered from the speech of the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs that a reference has been made to the work of the League of Nations in the dispute between Japan and China. We do not all think alike on the subject of the League of Nations, but I think that we all agree that that particular problem was threshed out in Geneva—although not, perhaps, as we thought it was going to be. When the Under-Secretary said that the League of Nations had not entirely failed, I think that he was quite right. The League has been the means of ventilating this question in a way in which it would not otherwise have been. As the Under-Secretary pointed out, it has left matters in the position that Manchukuo does not exist in the eyes of the League as a recognisable State. That may not seem to be particularly important to Manchukuo, but it will have the effect that, so long as that position obtains, there will still be a necessity resting upon Japan to take her steps with extreme care, and to remember that the rest of the world have their eyes upon her.

I am not one of those who believe that Japan was entirely and utterly wrong in this matter. I believe that Japan had grown impatient, that she realised that something drastic had to be done, and, although she was prepared, with some urging, to take the question to Geneva for arbitration, she was not prepared to see the whole of the Far East going into utter disorder without making some attempt to do something herself to put things straight. I believe that we have an entirely wrong idea of the position of Japan in relation to China. It is a physical impossibility for Japan, or any other nation, ever to conquer an area of country which is occupied almost entirely by Chinese. I had the pleasure of suggesting the other day to a. very eminent Chinese statesman, who is at present in this country, that there are certain points of resemblance between this country and China. One is that both of us have been conquered several times, but neither -of us has been absorbed; and nothing can ever absorb the Chinese.

Chinese go to a new country and settle there, but they remain Chinese. Their greatest desire, when they know that death is near to them, is that their bones shall be taken back for burial in China. I have known many Chinese who have spent the whole of their lives in places like British Malaya, where they have actually become British subjects, who have quite conveniently maintained their own domestic households in Malaya, and also, for the purposes of occasional visits to China, another household there—who have been entirely associated with the country in which they were living, but, at the same time, have remained at heart Chinese. Therefore, when people say that they fear Japan in regard to what is happening in China, there is one thing which they need not fear, and that is that any Japanese Government can ever override entirely any area which is occupied by an overwhelming proportion of Chinese. That, however, does not prevent Japan from doing what she can, within reasonable limits, to assist the Chinese to put their own affairs in order, and I think that, if we look at this matter dispassionately we shall see that, however it (may have worked out, that has been the main object of Japan in intervening in China. We may see further develop- ments. It is too early yet to prophesy, but there may yet be further developments in the North of China.

In my opinion, this problem of the Far East cannot be left entirely to the League of Nations. The League of Nations is too remote. The people who meet together at Geneva are too varied in their interests and in their races ever to be able to acquire the necessary attitude on the question of China. China requires dealing with, and she requires dealing with with very great sympathy and tact. The greatest thing in connection with the Chinese is the saving of face. The Chinese will accept almost everything so long as he does not spoil his face, and, in dealing with this question of China, that is the most important thing to consider. I know of no way in which those very mixed people who gather together in Geneva, a very large number of whom have never had any contact whatsoever with the Far East, can ever succeed in getting real work done for China and at the same time saving her face.

I think it was the right hon. and gallant Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Colonel Wedgwood) who reminded us that in former days statesmen of this country had been accustomed to intervene with great effect in foreign politics, and certainly that was the case in China. We have had many notable statesmen in China. My mind goes back to one in particular, Sir Harry Parkes, who did a great deal in settling the serious questions which arose at the time when he was in the Far East. Again, I think of that wonderful Ambassador that we had there, Sir John Jordan. The striking feature of Sir John Jordan's contact with China was that he was not only a diplomatic representatives of this country, but was a trusted adviser of the Chinese. Although I do not in any way deprecate giving the League of Nations every opportunity to do what it can towards putting the problems of China straight, I feel that the time has arrived when we should attempt to recover something of our old position and prestige in that country, and I hope that, if an opportunity should arise, as I believe it may; for a change in our representation in China, His Majesty's Government will make a very strong point of endeavouring to get our representation put in hands which will not only be capable, but will impress the Chinese with something of our old prestige.

It is a very vital question. The Chinese are anxious at the present moment, I fully believe, to join hands with us and with any of the other two or three nations who may be willing and able to help them. I am convinced, from conversations I have had, that the Chinese will welcome any friendly nation in assisting them to put their house in order. At present the Northern area is reasonably quiet. It is true that General Li Chi-chun made an incursion into the Northern territory the other day, but I think he may possibly go on a foreign voyage, as his predecessor did, which will be all to the good of China. North of Peking there is a more or less established area. South of Peking, until we come to the region which is more or less under the control of the Cantonese, there is a great area, with a population of something like 170,000,000, which is, at any rate nominally, governed from Nanking. That Government has recently made it plain that it desires, within the limits where it is at any rate in nominal control, to do something of real value in restoring law and order, and I think we can do no greater work for our fellow-creatures in the Far East, or for ourselves and our industries, than by assisting the Nanking Government in the best way that we can, certainly by advice, and by the actual lending of experts, to get order established in that great Yangtse Valley. It is not only a question of getting order established there; it is a question of stemming the tide of disorder which is very likely indeed to pour in upon the Yangtse Valley from the West and from the South. If something is not done soon, if we do not back up the mere handful of men who are trying at the present moment to put things straight there, I fear the opportunity may not arise again.

We have not only that problem, but we have the problem of Shanghai to deal with. Shanghai is the only remaining portion of China where we can be quite sure that, for the time being at any rate, there is a definite system of law and order and security. Shanghai is likely to come under disturbing influences in the very near future. Greater Shanghai is making attempts to display some signs of being truly civilised. It is run, as no doubt Members of the Committee will know, by a municipality which is not elected, but merely nominated—I am speaking of Shanghai outside the Settlement—and it is making great attempts at the present moment to "make a good show." It is doing that for one reason. If it can succeed in convincing the foreign Powers that it is governing itself adequately and vigorously, it may be able to put in a claim for the complete handing over of the Foreign Settlement, that is to say, Inner Shanghai itself. That, however, until there is an established Government in Nanking with full power throughout that great area, would be extremely dangerous. I would take this opportunity of reminding His Majesty's Government, though I am sure it is not really necessary for me to do so, that the problems of the Government of Nanking and the establishment of its power within its own area, together with the great problem of Shanghai, are problems which demand urgent and immediate attention. I have made these few remarks because I feel that we now have this chance, which may never present itself again if it is allowed to slip by, and, if we do not take this opportunity, we shall never be in a position to get China restored to that reasonable prosperity which she ought to enjoy.

If hon. Members will realise what has been happening to the people of China through these constant disturbances during the last 23 years, they will see that this question is one of very great importance. I suppose nobody can estimate how many millions of unfortunate peasants have died in the last 20 or 23 years—not as a result of warfare, because warfare in China is a very minor affair, consisting largely of firing guns, running away, and then returning to gather them up so as to be able to fire them again on another occasion. That has not been the cause of the trouble in China. The death rate in China has been caused by famine and flood. For the last 23 years the resources of civilisation which ought to have been at the disposal of China have been shut out from her. Whether it be Britain, America, France or Japan, someone must get there to assist China to put her house in order, and to prevent these continual floods, which at one time can carry off 100,000 or 200,000 human beings, who are referred to in three or four lines at the tail end of a column in a London newspaper as though they did not matter at all. This has been going on year in and year out. I beg His Majesty's Government, not merely to rely upon the League of Nations, but to rely upon their own efforts, which will be stronger than any efforts the League can make, to get together America., Japan and France in order to see if at long last some good work cannot be done for these people in the Far East.

7.58 p.m.

Mr. JANNER

I had hoped that it would not have been necessary to refer again to the tragic and horrifying actions of the Nazi regime in Germany. I had hoped that the forcible expressions of public opinion throughout the world against these occurrences might have had the effect of making those who are in power in Germany realise that the action which they were taking, arid the manner n which it was taken, ought to stop, and that civilisation and civilised beings would not tolerate activities of that kind. I am not surprised that we have heard this afternoon from all quarters of the Committee, and particularly from the Leader of the Opposition and from the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham (Sir A. Chamberlain), expressions of condemnation against these happenings, and I am not surprised that Members who have visited Germany have returned with a determination to assist if they possibly can in suppressing these methods, which have gained ground during the last few months in Germany so rapidly and with such strength. Herr Adolf Hitler when he first produced his book "Mein Kampf" wrote: To win the sympathy of the broad masses you must tell them the crudest and most stupid things. He also wrote: The German has not the slightest notion of how a people must be misled if the adherence of the masses is sought. Surely that is the policy winch is being adopted by the Nazi regime to-day and by its leaders day in and day out. I imagine that Herr Hitler and his followers must have in mind the desire expressed in two famous lines from a poem written years ago by Milton. There Satan said: Evil, be thou my good; by thee at least Divided empire with heav'n's King 1 bold. I think the world in general agrees that if anything is behind the motives of the Nazi leaders it is that spirit of hate and of racial discrimination and this is regarded rightly throughout the length and breadth of the world as being a menace to the peace of the world -and a menace particularly to those who live within the four corners of Germany to-day. Just imagine, 600,000 people confined within Germany are being gradually deprived of their means of livelihood and are being gradually driven to a state of desperate penury with no hope of any employment in that country. It is not correct to say as my hon. Friend thought that the system of physical persecution is finished. On the contrary, day by day we are getting sad illustrations of the actual physical violence to which Liberal, Communist, and other politicians, and particularly members of the Jewish race in Germany, are being subjected.

I am not speaking without the book. I should like in the first place to refer to the position of the children. This horrible system of persecution is being practised on people of all ages. The child, as I said in a previous speech in this House, is being made to sit in different rows of seats from those of his fellow children in the very school in which he is being taught; he is being subjected by the teachers themselves to all sorts of ridiculous and contemptible insults. Children of tender years with whom that child is supposed to be learning are encouraged to treat the child in a vicious manner. How can the world look on, particularly may I say with respect how can the Jewish people in the rest of the world look upon, measures of that description without feeling strong resentment and anxiety that the position may be speedily relieved? Some days ago over 200 children were arrested by Nazi brown shirts when leaving a memorial meeting organised by the Zionist Federation of Germany for the late Dr. Chaim Arlosoroff, one of the great leaders of the Jewish national movement, who was recently killed. Unable to find any reason for arresting any of the adult members of the audience, the storm troopers then turned their attention to the children who had accompanied their parents to the meeting, claiming that the white shirts and black ties which some of them were wearing constituted a uniform. The Nazis herded the children into the waiting police trucks and drove them off to the police station. Some of the arrested boys and girls were under 10 years of age. In spite of the late hour, the terrified children were not allowed to leave the police station or to communicate with their parents who assembled outside the station in a state of panic. Not until the early morning were the children released and after their names were taken by the police.

May I quote other instances which have occurred recently? I should like the Committee to know that the statements which I am making are taken from reliable sources. Consequently, I propose to quote one or two cases which have been extracted from responsible journals in this country. Suicides which naturally follow this type of treatment are continuing day by day. May I quote this; Moritz N. Oppenheim, the well-known Frankfurt jeweller, and his wife, have committed suicide. Herr Oppenheim, who was 85 years of age, and his wife are stated to have decided on this desperate way out because they could no longer endure the thought of the new conditions in Germany. At first the Frankfurt Press concealed their identity, reporting only that a well-known aged couple who at one time played a great part in the merchant life of this city. have taken their lives because of spiritual depression. The 'Frankfurter Zeitung' now pays a great tribute to the important services which Oppenheim rendered to Frankfurt and to Germany and particularly to German science, but does not say even now how he met his death. Moritz Oppenheim belonged to a family that has been engaged in the jewellery trade in Frankfurt for about 300 years. He was a great benefactor of Frankfurt University, which he endowed with the chair in theoretical physics. He also presented the Frankfurt Observatory with the great Oppenheim refractor. One of the smaller planets discovered by the observatory was named Mauritius in his honour. He was also greatly interested in marine science and he endowed the aquarium in. Heligoland, and was for that given the freedom of the island. On his 80th birthday the city of Frankfurt presented him with a silver shield of honour. That is the type of man criminal, according to German theories, who is being driven by the very process which is being adopted in Germany to the most extreme stages. Day by day this system is being developed; day by day, even to this very day, the oppressive measures are be- coming more and more serious. May I quote from the "Times" to-day: The latest regulations issued by the Berlin Chamber of Lawyers carry the 'Ayran clause' to the farthest extreme. It is laid down that no lawyer admitted to practise may have any sort of professional relations whatever with any lawyer excluded from practice or from the government service as being of non-Ayran descent or Communist outlook. It is expressly forbidden to enter into a partnership arrangement or an arrangement for sharing offices between lawyers of Ayran and non-Ayran stock, and any such existing arrangement entered into since September, 1930, must be dissolved. These regulations effectively put an end to any arrangement for 'devilling' in the background, by which an Ayran lawyer not inspired by racial fanaticism might seek to assist his Jewish colleagues. This system of discrimination which is extended into all branches of life, into all activities, into every professional and industrial concern, must ultimately mean that those who are subjected to it will be deprived in such a way of their means of livelihood that they will not be able to obtain even bread for their sustenance. It is true that the Jewish people is renowned—I say it with pride—for the manner in which it looks after its own poor. It is true that that is possibly the reason why it is not obvious that so many Jews are unemployed. In my constituency there is very much unemployment among the Jewish people. The Communist received as big a defeat there as he received in any other part of this country. I do not say it for any political reason, but merely that the Committee may understand that the suggestions which are made in Germany that the Jew is of one political section only are entirely wrong. It is argued to-day in Germany with regard to the Jew that he was never unemployed. The many who were unemployed there were helped by the local Jewish communities. These are being impoverished more and more each day, and they now look to the rest of the world quite naturally to help them.

The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs I know understands the position—it is not necessary for me to elaborate it—he knows what is happening in Germany very well; so does the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. They know very well that these matters, which could be elaborated at great length, are actually happening in Germany. I ask them if they will not consider the position again in its proper light and approach the League of Nations, or, through the League of Nations, approach Germany by means of the very machinery which has been created to deal with nations which transgress against civilisation and humanity in this manner. I have endeavoured on several occasions to impress the importance of this matter being dealt with under Article 11 of the Covenant of the League. The second part of Article says: It is also declared to be the friendly right of each Member of the League to bring to the attention of the Assembly or of the Council any circumstance whatever affecting international relations which threatens to disturb international peace or the good understanding between nations upon which peace depends. Surely, there can be no question, when vicious brutality of this description is brought to bear against sections of the community, that the peace between nations is being impaired. How can it be said that when the Nazis are not only conducting this type of coercion in their own country but actually endeavouring to spread it throughout the length and breadth of the world, it is not creating a position which is dangerous to the peace of the world? Can it be denied that to-day they are attempting to impose upon Austria the very system against which every decent person is protesting throughout the world? Who is paying for that? Is it not the Government, either directly or indirectly, of Germany, and how can that Government have the effrontery to-day to come forward and ask for concessions in respect of its debts, from its creditors, when it is utilising moneys for the direct and indirect propagating of this particular type of policy? It is a matter of extreme importance to the nations of the world and to us in this country. We have intervened in the past, Britain has taken its place in alleviating distress among other peoples in the past, and I think the advent of the League of Nations has not weakened the position in that regard. The League of Nations Covenants have undoubtedly strengthened the position. I believe it was the Leader of the Opposition who referred to an undertaking that Germany itself had given, at the time when the posi- tion of minorities was being considered at the Peace Conference. It was originally proposed to include in the Covenant of the League a Clause prescribing the principles of equal citizenship and of freedom of conscience. Why was that left out? Certain countries, including Germany, had declared their definite intention to observe these principles, and they were trusted to observe the obligations which they themselves were placing upon other countries in respect of minorities. Germany herself said that she was determined to treat ethnic minorities within her territory in accordance with the same principle. Are we not entitled to say under Article 11 that the undertaking has been broken and that, the very name of civilisataion is being scandalised and brought to nought?

I took another stand in respect of this matter on what was shown to be safe ground. I asked, and other Members asked, that the matter should be considered from the point of view of the terms of the German Polish Convention, when it was definitely stated that the Germans would observe the same regulations and restrictions as far as minorities in Upper Silesia were concerned as the Poles would do in the adjoining territory. It is true that we had to wait until a petition was presented by an individual who had certain interests in Upper Silesia. The Bernheim Petition came before the League of Nations Council and I am happy to acknowledge that our representative expressed himself on the hearing of the petition in no uncertain terms with regard to the position. What is the result to-day in Germany? I should like to know whether my hon. Friend could assist us in this regard. Has the undertaking that was given by the German Government been respected either in the letter or in the spirit? It was actually stated by authoritative bodies that, although this undertaking had been given and they had to allow individuals to resume their positions, it was not proper for any German to patronise or in any way have anything to do with those who had been allowed to go back.

If that is the spirit in which the position is accepted, ought not the League itself, and ought not responsible members of the League to take the matter up? It is the opinion of the whole of the enlightened peoples of the world that this matter should be rectified. Throughout the length and breadth of this country meetings of protest have been held by non-Jews. Many Members have expressed themselves in no uncertain terms in the House and outside against this persecution. The Archbishop of Canterbury him self at a large protest meeting held in the Queen's Hall recently uttered words of condemnation against this oppression and so have all those who love liberty and justice. That being the case, may I make my appeal to the hon. Member to do what he can to relieve the position? I fully recognise that he has endeavoured to do much, and he has achieved a considerable amount. He is willing to help, but I urge upon him the immediate necessity of this help because, if it does not come within a very short space of time, it may be too late to save those victims who are being so miserably afflicted in Germany.

8.23 p.m.

Captain McEWEN

I hope the hon. Member will not think it discourteous of me if I do not follow him in exactly the same subject with which he has been dealing. It would require some temerity to follow a speech suffused with such evidently deep feeling and profound knowledge of the subject. I should like to say a word on the subject of aerial bombing. I, too, in common with my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Wing-Commander James), have dropped a bomb or two from the air in my time. Whether for that reason or for another, I had not made up my mind exactly what attitude I intended to adopt in this matter. But to-day a very disturbing and rather remarkable thing happened to me. I was convinced, in the course of the Debate, by listening to the speech of the right hon. Gentlemen the Member for West Birmingham (Sir A. Chamberlain). I say it was a disturbing thing, and I hope it will not occur too frequently. I thought that the arguments that he put forward in so very lucid and interesting and engaging a manner were extraordinarily good, so good in fact, that, as I say, I was completely convinced that the case that he was making out against the retention of aerial bombing was a good one. But, even had I not been convinced by the right hon. Gentleman's words, I think the statement made by the Under-Secretary, that the question would not be considered to be a pivotal question and, therefore, the Conference, if the worst came to the worst, would not be wrecked upon it, was equally satisfying. In fact, this very difficult question of aerial bombing has been to a large extent satisfactorily dealt with to-day.

I should like to join with those who have congratulated the Government and the Foreign Secretary on the successful conclusion of their policy with regard to, the prisoners who were detained in Moscow. This has been a perfectly straightforward case from the beginning. Nothing could have been simpler in its essence, and nothing could have been more completely justified by the results obtained. The reason for this happy outcome is not really very far to seek. Stalin long ago realised that a Twentieth century revolution, with Fourteenth century agricultural and industrial systems, to conquer a world with all the technical advantages of the machine age, was not possible with those handicaps. He therefore set himself, long ago, the immense task of fitting his country to carry out this conquest. For that reason it was obvious that he would not let so small and comparatively trivial a matter as the retention or the release of two individuals stand in the way of trade which, as it happened, was essential to the existence and well-being of his country.

There is, I understand, a new agreement now in course of preparation, and I hope sincerely that it may be of value to us in this country, but I confess that I cannot give it, and shall not be able to give it when it comes, anything but a somewhat tepid welcome. I regard trade in any form with the Soviet Government as a humiliating necessity at best. I would not view this merely from narrow and bigoted prejudice, but, after all, if the Russian experiment succeeds at the end of the day, as far as I can see, it can bode nothing but ill to this country and to the Empire. We have their word for it. We are continually being told by the important Members of the Soviet Government, and their meaning is plain and cannot be misunderstood. Therefore, it is rather too much, surely, to expect that one should give the new agreement a, very hearty welcome, or should wish the Russian experiment the best of luck.

I turn to the last subject upon which I intend to dwell to-night. It has reference to what was said by the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Colonel Wedgwood) in the course of the speech which he delivered this afternoon. He advocated a closer understanding, a hand in glove co-operation, with the United States of America. I should like in a very general way, and, I hope, with becoming modesty and humility, for these are questions of very high policy indeed, to consider the general policy of this country with regard to world policy. There are, roughly speaking, three avenues of approach to world peace and world prosperity, and all are within the structure of the League of Nations itself. The first one is what I may call, for the sake of convenience, the policy of the Anglo-Saxon bloc, and it is the policy which, to a large extent, the right hon. Gentleman was advocating from that Box this afternoon. That policy is heard frequently from speakers both in private and in public. It forms, I am told, a very frequently used peroration for after-dinner speakers at Pilgrim banquets. It is based upon a study of the comparative density of blood on the one hand and water on the other. It advocates close co-operation between what are sometimes referred to as the English-speaking races. I consider this policy to be nothing more or less than a will o' the wisp. It sounds an attractive and a high and possibly achievable ideal, but I do not believe that it is. Time and time again we have come up against the hard and solid fact that it means very little indeed.

If one thinks for a moment, a close relationship of the same kind and nature between the United States and France is every bit as likely to succeed, and is every bit as probable. If we base our connection mainly upon the Pilgrim Fathers, why France has a much more recent and more glorious connection through La Fayette, and we are very apt to forget in this country that the little finger of La Fayette, as far as the United States is concerned, is thicker than the thigh bone of the oldest pilgrim of them all. If any hon. Member thinks that I am possibly exaggerating the romantic side of this subject, I would only point out to him that because Lord Byron died at Missolonghi over 100 years ago Greece has been our solid and sure friend in good times and in evil ever since. For such reasons it is a very ponderable and important matter. But now another great check to the idea of an Anglo-Saxon bloc has come in the shape of policy boldly announced by the President of the United States. I am not seeking here to criticise that policy in any way; I would merely point out that it is an isolationist policy.

The second possible avenue is the one which is sometimes referred to as that of a Teutonic bloc. It is based on what are the now exploded and erroneous ideas expounded by the late Professor Freeman, which are, roughly speaking, that the northern part of Europe is populated by what is called the Teutonic race. The question is causing some excitement in Germany at the present time. Is this, I ask, a fruitful line of approach? At this moment, having listened this afternoon to speech after speech marked by the deepest possible feeling, and based upon first-hand information and knoweldge of what is going on in Germany to-day, one would say that this particular policy was not likely to be very popular at the present time. I was one of those who, frankly, was not particularly surprised at the outburst of Hitlerism in Germany, because I believe, without wishing to indict that nation in any way at all, that that quality of civilisataion there is of a very different kind altogether from our own. For that reason, also, contrary to the generally accepted belief, I do not think that we have, except purely superficially, very much in common with the German people as a people. For that reason also, and for other reasons which I have not time to expatiate upon, the Teutonic bloc seems to me to be a will-o'-the-wisp, and something that is not worth following.

What remains? There remains one policy, which has been tried and not without success, and that is the policy of closer co-operation and understanding with our nearest neighbour, France. Some time ago that would not have been a popular policy to put forward. Even now, there might be hesitation about it, but, apart from other considerations, such as the common bases of civilisation which we share with France, we have to remember that the post-War years which were probably the peak years of progress towards peace, order and prosperity in the world were the years from 1925 to 1929. That was what one might call, roughly, the Locarno period. The Locarno Pact upon which that progress was based was worked out—I do not think that anyone will contradict me—by the right hon. Member for West Birmingham (Sir A. Chamberlain) first and foremost on the grounds of an understanding with France. Subsequently Germany was brought in, and the late Dr. Streseman, to whom sympathetic reference has been made to-day.

On the basis of the Locarno Pact there were four years of swifter progress towards order, peace and understanding between the countries of the world than there has been before or since the War. That was based on an understanding with France. I think, therefore, that it is worth while considering whether a renewal of that understanding, which is not in the least difficult to get, because at the present time certainly we should be met half way, might not be for the betterment of Europe and the world. I will content myself with pleading that that particular policy should receive consideration. In the words of Mr. Pitt, that policy could be— the master feather in the eagle's wing.

8.38 p.m.

Mr. MANDER

My hon. Friend opposite has referred to the Locarno policy and has pleaded once more for a policy of friendship with France, but I would point out that that policy was based on a friendship not only with France, but with Germany, too. It was the League of Nations policy.

Captain McEWAN

It was based on friendship with France.

Mr. MANDER

Yes, and concurrently on a friendship with Germany, without which it would have been ineffective. I am sure that if the Government pursued the same policy now they would be acting very wisely. I should like to call attention to a matter which has not been mentioned so far. It relates to a small part of the world, but, in. spite of all the troubles that are going on in the larger countries, we still have to look to our responsibilities in the smaller places. I should like the Foreign Secretary, when he speaks, to be good enough to tell us what the position is in regard to Liberia.

There were two reports on the situation in that country recently, the Brunot Report of the League of Nations, which dealt with ill-health and the lack of medical treatment, and the Christy Report, an international report, which is best described in the words used by the British Chargé d'Affaires, who said that the Christy Report— constitutes a shocking indictment of the administrative methods of the Liberian Government. He went on to say: His Majesty's Government are unable to regard this programme of reforms as either adequate or satisfactory. They are convinced that, without assistance from outside Liberia, no Liberian Government would be able to carry into effect the full programme of reforms recommended by the Commission. It would be very useful to know what the position is to-day in regard to those reforms. What has happened in regard to the appointment of the recommended white advisers? Has that recommendation been accepted? Can the right hon. Gentleman say who will appoint them, and precisely what their powers will be? In regard to financial assistance it was suggested that the American Firestone Company should supply a loan and reduce the rate of interest. Has that company accepted the proposal with regard to the loan and have they agreed to reduce the rate of interest from 7 per cent.? I hope my right hon. Friend will be able to say something about this matter, because there is a black spot in Liberia where, owing to the twin evils of indolence and corruption, 2,000,000 natives are being treated with oppression and cruelty by the 15,000 Americo-Liberians who have had charge of the country for 100 years. I hope he will give us some indication that, even amidst our other troubles, these troubles are not being overlooked.

In regard to Russia, the Under-Secretary regretted that he had not been praised by the Leader of the Opposition for what the Government had done there. I cannot associate myself with all the bouquets which the Under-Secretary gave to himself, because I do think that in many ways the situation was very much mishandled by the Government. At the same time my right hon. Friend is to be very warmly congratulated on the settlement he made the other day, which I hope has initiated a new era of relations between the two countries, and that the negotiations for a new trade agreement, which were progressing so satisfactorily when they were broken off, will in a very short period be carried through to a successful conclusion.

Coming to the Far East, I should like to follow up the questions which I have been putting to my right hon. Friend recently in regard to the Advisory Committee of 1921, which has been referred to as 1922 this afternoon. That committee, which is watching over the situation in Manchuria, has two sub-committees which have been meeting from time to time. They have generally met in secret. I think it is a great pity that some of their meetings are not held in public. The great weapon that the League possesses is publicity. In private, States will take up a position which they would not be prepared to defend publicly. I hope the Foreign Secretary will consider asking the British representative to raise this matter on the committee, and to ask whether the time has not come for a meeting to be held to discuss the question in public. I think two answers which the right hon. Gentleman has given to me are a little inconsistent. In one question I asked him whether the matter of economic sanctions had been considered, and he said it had not, and when I asked him another question as to whether the withdrawal of Ambassadors had been considered, he said he did not know, because the meetings were secret. Perhaps he had overlooked the reply which he had given relating to the other question.

May I make a reference to the Four-Power Pact, in the conclusion of which the right hon. Gentleman played such an admirable part? I am glad to think that Articles 10 and 16 are going to be studied, because they affect very closely the success of the Disarmament Conference. I hope the result of the examination will be that further assurances can be given to France that we do in fact intend to carry out to the full all our obligations and, if necessary, to take our part in the pooled security which the League has to offer. In regard to Article 19, I hope the result will be to make the Council come to the conclusion that the most effective method of approach is the appointment of impartial expert committees, such as were Appointed in the Aaland dispute, the case of Mosul, and more recently the Lytton Commission. Such questions as a revision of the Treaty of Trianon and the boundaries of Hungary, when they have been studied in an objective way by a neutral Commission, will assume new aspect which may lead to a peaceful and friendly solution of the situation in the Balkans. The real solution there is to persuade these people, if we can, to adopt the principles of tolerance and fair play towards minorities, racial, linguistic and religious, which are adopted in the British Empire. If we could get them to adopt these principles the question of protecting minorities would become a very minor one indeed.

With regard to air bombing, it has been satisfactorily dealt with by the Under-Secretary of State in his reply, and I need not dwell upon it. It is only a minor point in the very much larger problem o the abolition. of military aviation altogether, which is the declared policy of the British Government. The great danger is the conversion of civil aircraft into military aircraft, and it is incumbent on those who are supporting the Government in their proposals to get rid of military aviation altogether to propose some alternative. The view which l know is held by many men of a professional standing is that if you are going to guard effectively against this, in a world where there are no military Aircraft, only civil aircraft, you must have a professionally trained body of airmen to deal with them, and that you should, therefore, have under the League of Nations a small body of airmen trained to the highest pitch of efficiency who would be able to destroy with little difficulty any converted civil machines which might be got together by the aggressor Government. I do not put that forward on my own responsibility, but as the view of those who have made a careful technical study of the matter from a professional point of view.

I asked the Foreign Secretary the other day to make some inquiries as to the alleged arming of the air police in Germany. We had a fantastic story in the Press about a raid on Berlin, when offensive leaflets were said to be dropped. There are not many who believe that the raid ever took place, any more than there are many who believe that the Communists set fire to the Reichstag. It was obviously a piece of political propaganda; but it represents a serious menace if it is to be used as an excuse for arming aircraft in Germany. The policy of the Government in regard to the Disarmament Conference is wise. There was no other course but to adjourn the Conference and allow the personal negotiations under the President to be pursued, and then at a later stage, on the lines of Lausanne and Locarno, to get together again when mutual concessions can be made—serious concessions ultimately will have to be made—and thus arrive at a complete settlement of the whole problem. If we do that no excuse is left to Germany for rearming, and, if Germany went in for unilateral rearming, we should be fully justified in using whatever Sanction is necessary to compel her not to do so.

I need not elaborate on the question of the German treatment of the Jews. The Debate to-day will, I am sure, render great service to the Jews in Germany. They take great account of public opinion in this country and the expression of opinion in this House, and I am sure that nothing will render more service to the Jews than the speeches which have been made this afternoon by Members like the right hon. Member for West Birmingham (Sir A. Chamberlain). When one meets leading Germans in this country or abroad, unless they are downright Nazis, they are really ashamed of what is going on in Germany, and they put forward the theory that it is only a transition period and that in the end every thing will be all right for these Jews. One would like to think that to be true, I think it is utterly untrue; and I hope that the pressure of public opinion in this country will be successful in compelling the Germans to alter a policy which, if it is pursued, will prevent them obtaining concessions to which they would otherwise be entitled.

There is one other thing I want to say, and I do not think it should be left unsaid in a Debate of this kind. There has recently retired from the Secretary-Generalship of the League of Nations a very great and distinguished Englishman, Sir Eric Drummond. It has been of great advantage to this new international institution to have had a man of that type, trained in all the best traditions of the British Civil Service, who has been able by his character, ability and experience to build up an international civil service for the first time in the history of the world, a service which is loyal to the League of Nations, which thinks of it first and foremost and not of their own particular nationality. When, as years go by, the League of Nations becomes the firm basis of world order Sir Eric Drummond will be looked upon as one of the builders of that great institution.

8.52 p.m.

Mr. BANFIELD

May I draw the attention of the Committee to what I think is one of the most significant features of the last few months. I am expressing the opinion of millions of people in this country when I say that the weakening of the influence of the League of Nations during the last few months has caused tremendous uneasiness throughout the country. We have heard expressions of opinion which show that the nations of Europe are reverting to the old ways, nations being grouped on this and the other side, and the general impression is that in spite of all the efforts of the Foreign Secretary the probabilities are that this country is getting nearer and nearer to another war. The League of Nations Union in this country has done tremendous work for the cause of peace, but we must remember that the old generation, which knew the days of the War, is slowly passing out, and the newer generation which knows but little about the War is liable to be stampeded in this country, as in other countries, by the roll of the drum and the appeal to patriotism.

I appeal that nothing should be done by well-thinking men and women to lessen the influence of the League of Nations, but that they should do all that they can to strengthen it. Certain public speakers and newspapers go out of their way to decry the work of the League. I have heard sneers at the League, and I have heard expressions of suspicion regarding it. I have seen newspaper articles suggesting that the League of Nations is of no account. If that spirit is to continue, if people are led to believe that the League counts for nothing, then we must be prepared to face once again the horrors of war, on a considerably larger scale and with circumstances of far more terror than existed from 1914 to 1918.

I want to put the view of the man in the street. The man in the street scarcely understands the interplay of foreign politics, but he feels that in some way or other the will for peace which was dominant for a few years after the War is growing weaker and weaker and that there is to-day a real danger of another war. I have been surprised to hear responsible men talk glibly of the possibilities, indeed of the nearness of another war. I have been surprised to hear men to whom one looks up, telling the old story about courage on the battlefield and so forth as though there was not as much courage in everyday life as has ever been shown on the battlefields of the world. It is that 'spirit which the House of Commons and the Foreign Secretary ought to do their best to keep in check. There is no easier appeal to make than the appeal to warlike instincts, and all kinds of reasons will be given to show why this country should embark on another war. Recent events have increased and strengthened the war spirit in this country, and it is up to all men and women of good will, irrespective of party, to do their best to show that there is as much honour and justice in fighting the battles of peace as in fighting the battles of war.

We have seen the development of Fascism and while it may be the humour of the moment to laugh at Fascism in this country we on these benches do not underrate its danger. We are aware of the propaganda, the newspaper articles, the people who are pulling the strings and deliberately encouraging the spirit of Fascism in this country, just as was done elsewhere. We know that if it came to the point those people would be prepared to put it into force in this country by precisely the same means and in precisely the same way as Hitlerism has been put into force in Germany. We may say that the traditions of our nation are against it, but it would be stupid and foolish not to realise the positive dangers which confront us. I hope and trust that every encouragement will be given to the work of the League of Nations. I hope that this Government will unreservedly, on all occasions, support the doctrine of world peace and that men and women in the House of Commons will back up that attitude and will show their readiness not to glorify war but to do what they can to bring about and to preserve peace in our time.

9.0 p.m.

Duchess of ATHOLL

I wish to put forward certain considerations which seem to me to be very important in connection with the negotiations for a new Russian Treaty which I understand are shortly to be opened. In connection with the opening of these negotiations, no doubt our export industries hope for orders from Russia, but I earnestly hope that the Government will bear in mind that there is more than one market open to the exporting industries, whereas there are other industries in this country which have only the home market to look to arid some of these have been severely injured in that market by imports from Russia. No doubt the Government will feel bound under the new trade treaty, to reserve powers which would enable them to implement the clause in the Ottawa Agreement obliging them to exclude all goods dumped here by State aid which would injure the value of any preference given to Canada. I would ask them to extend to British producers the protection which the Ottawa Agreement requires them to give the Canadian producer in our market.

In spite of the embargo that has lately obtained in regard to most Russian imports, we have had imports of Russian butter at prices from 13s. to 20s. a cwt. below the prices at which butter can be sent here from Denmark or from our Dominions. That means severe competition and a severe loss to the British dairy farmer and it inevitably depresses the purchasing power of other countries from which we import—countries which are anxious to do all the trade they can with us. It is not only our agricultural industry which has suffered in this way. Russian doors have been coming in at a price little over 3s. each, c.i.f. The duty on these has recently been raised but it is doubtful whether it has been raised sufficiently to prevent the prices of British doors being cut down to an unremunerative level. I am informed that the British door cannot be made remuneratively for less than 9s.

We know that no orders will be given by the Soviet Government to this country without extensive credits and I would ask the Government to consider whether it is any longer safe, from the point of view of finance and the interest of the taxpayer, to grant those credits. The "Frankfurter Zeitung" of 26th February last, in what appeared to be a well informed article spoke of the Russian external debt at the beginning of the year being about 1,350,000,000 roubles and if we take the rouble at 2s. that represents £135,000,000. It has been estimated by one whose figures, I believe, can be regarded as reliable, that from £64,000,000 to £65,000,000 of this debt will mature in 1933. The reserve of gold and precious metals in Soviet Russia is said to be at a low ebb, and it is estimated by the same writer that there is not more than from £70,000,000 to £75,000,000 sterling on which Russia can count this year for meeting the large portion of her debt which then falls due and for financing part of the expense of her imports.

Russia's production and exports were falling last year. Her exports last year were only 54 per cent. of the 1930 figures and from the accounts of the seeding for this year's harvest it appears likely that the harvest will be considerably less than last years. All these calculations go to show that there will be very little money in the till for financing imports. Mr. Gareth Jones, who is well known to many Members of this House, both as former secretary to the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) and on account of articles which he has recently contributed to the Press on the results of recent investigations in Russia, says frankly that he thinks Russia will be able to place very few orders for machinery this year. I would also remind the Committee that the Lord President of the Council, speaking a week or two ago, said that trade with Russia was trade which we had largely to finance ourselves. I therefore feel that this question wants very close consideration as to, whether it is financially sound to give any credit to Soviet Russia at this juncture.

Another question which inevitably arises is whether we are justified in importing into this country any of the foodstuffs and other necessaries of life which we have accumulating evidence to show are so acutely needed in Russia. Mr. Gareth Jones and Mr. Muggeridge, the latter a son of a Member who sat on the Labour benches in the last Parliament—a young man who admits that he went out to Russia an ardent Communist —have lately given us heartrending accounts of the conditions which they have found among the people of Russia, and more especially among the peasants, and in the richest grain-growing areas of the country. We heard a, month or two ago of houses in which no bread, even of the poorest quality, had been seen for weeks, of many people, months ago, who were living only on cattle fodder, and of peasants dying from hunger. More recently we had a letter in the "Times" telling of epidemics and starvation among hundreds of thousands of the Russian people, and there was a letter from Mr. Kerensky in the "Times" a few days ago speaking of people in the North Caucasus feeding off the bark of trees and in some parts being reduced to eating human flesh. It is a most terrible picture, of which I think it is impossible to form any adequate idea.

Let us at least realise that everything that we know that Russia exports is needed at home by her own people, not only food of different kinds, but clothing, boots, and timber, for fuel and for building houses for the many workers who are housed in peat hovels little more than holes dug out of the ground. Only yesterday I was hearing from someone who was working in a part of Russia last summer, of how many of the workers with whom he was employed were living in roofed-over holes in the ground. Russia had a, terrible famine in 1921, but that famine was confined to the Volga area. Now authentic accounts are to hand that there is famine, not only in the Volga, but in the Ukraine, in North Caucasus, and in West Siberia—all the richest grain-growing areas. In 1921 we were allowed to send help to those starving people. The United States sent generous help, and we sent a good deal of help through the "Save the Children" Fund from this country. I am proud to remember that in my county I was able to make a collection for that fund, and I could feel that I had done something to help those pitiful people in the Volga. area.

To-day, however, news of the terrible disaster is being kept from us, and yet it is far more extensive than before, and, far from sending help, we have people who no doubt, now that the embargo has been removed, are looking forward once more to making money out of importing Russian food, dirt cheap, and selling it again at higher prices. I beg that the Government will grant no more credits without any condition being attached to those credits that may inure to the benefit of the people. After all, loans have been made by the League of Nations to Austria and other countries, and conditions have been attached in order to ensure that the money should be spent for the real benefit of the country concerned, and it seems to me that the credit should be given to Russia without some condition being attached that would allow freedom of trade and, above all, that would allow peasants to keep the product of their tilling of the soil—that people should be allowed to keep for their own use, to save themselves and their families from starvation, the food that they raise, without having it torn away from them, as we know has too often been the case.

Because we have at this moment, and hope we shall continue to have, a Conference sitting to discuss the world economic conditions, it seems to me that this is a question which really concerns that Conference. I do not see how the Conference can properly survey the whole of the problem which it seeks to solve unless it takes into consideration these wholly abnormal and very terrible conditions existing among a population of some 160,000,000, and I urge the Government to use their influence to suggest to the Conference that an inquiry might be made into the conditions existing in Russia, and that no credit should be granted by our Government until reports have been received from an impartial commission of inquiry and they feel that they would be justified, from those reports, in making such a grant.

9.12 p.m.

Mr. V. ADAMS

I must abbreviate what I have been waiting five hours to say, but I would like first to mention something that was raised by the hon. and gallant Member for Wellingborough (Wing-Commander James) when he told us, in a very interesting manner, that we were using wrong terms with regard to bombing. He said it should be called preventive bombing. I have a glorious spectacle before me of a Wazir standing beyond the North-West Frontier of India, looking at the ruins of his home and saying to a companion: "Look what a police bomber has done to me." How he would he comforted if he were told: "That's not a police bomber; it's a preventive bomber."

I want to advert to the remarkable speech delivered by the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook (Mr. Amery) earlier in the Debate, because I think it has not yet been adequately answered. Each public utterance which the right hon. Gentleman makes astounds me more and more. As time passes his roots seem to sink deeper and deeper into the past. To him history seems to have begun with Magna Carta and ended with the late Victorian cadences of Rudyard Kipling. The peoples of the world are presented with a glorious opportunity at Geneva of eliminating one of the most terrible threats to civilised humanity, yet the right hon. Gentleman solemnly, and with all the subtlety at his command, advances a ease for keeping this terrible instrument alive. He would give the politician of the future the appalling temptation—and it is this that makes war—to strike, without warning and in a flash, a knock-out blow against some neighbour who had, he imagined, insulted him. The right hon. Gentleman talked about the barbarians beyond the North-West Frontier, but does it not occur to him that this kind of treatment must necessarily perpetuate their barbarity? However active he is in this discriminatory treatment against coloured men, sooner or later they are not going to remain uncivilised. Two thousand years ago this country was a marshy land, covered with green trees and bogs, and men went about half naked, yet this we now claim to be the most civilised and humanitarian country in the world.

The right hon. Gentleman used the remarkable statement that India runs far greater risks at Geneva than in the Joint Select Committee. I would say to him, if he were here—and I deplore his absence—that civilisation runs far greater risks in Sparkbrook than in the Foreign Office. He must surely realise that war, which he spent part of his speech apparently reprobating, is made much easier to start with an Air Force. He asked if it were possible that France, Italy and the United States wanted disarmament. I would reply to him in these terms. If these three countries are governed by the same type of statesmen as the right hon. Gentleman, it will certainly remain impossible to get a condition which will render war impossible. He then, in a most extraordinary passage, solemnly advanced the theory that you can define a limit beyond which aerial warfare cannot operate. Does he not know that the Fairey monoplane that lately flew from Cranwell to the Cape could be loaded with a cargo of bombs, fly 1,200 miles, drop them, and make good its return? That means that if there remained a military aerodrome in North Africa, even London would be exposed to attack. I suggest to him with the greatest possible respect that it is slightly indecent to watch him preparing to shed the last drop of our blood in some future contest.

I wish to refer to three matters before I sit down. I am not going to omit the Russian question, and I should like to congratulate the Foreign Secretary on the manner in which he has composed this extraordinarily difficult problem. I think that the Government were correct in taking the power to impose the embargo. Anyone who disputes that, but approaches the matter with a fair mind, would be easily convinced by reading the third telegram of the first White Paper, where it was reported that without a trial a number of Russians were executed together on the same charges with which our own nationals were faced. I wonder if the Members of the Labour party now think that the correct policy at that time was one of masterly inactivity. I am going to modify my congratulations with one observation. Though it was perfectly correct to take these powers, I think that the Government made a mistake when they applied them with precipitation without waiting to see whether the Russians really intended to carry out the sentences of imprisonment which they inflicted on our nationals. In my view, their lives were completely safeguarded directly that enabling Bill was passed. We can never know, but it may be that for 10 weeks Thornton and Macdonald were incarcerated unnecessarily. At any rate—a large volume of trade—trade which I do not deplore, whatever the Noble Lady the Member for Perth and Kinross (Duchess of Atholl) may say, was certainly sterilised.

The whole circumstances of the Russian trial filled me with great apprehension.

While the Foreign Secretary was being applauded to the echo on the Floor of this honourable House, the Press outside was zealously dragooning public opinion, or apparently seeking to dragoon it, into readiness for a first-class war or a first-class row against a first-class Power. A certain section of the Press knows perfectly well that there is nothing with better news-value than mud-slinging against the foreigner. However, the episode is now over, and these two consequences have emerged—that our nationals can now proceed safely on their lawful occasions in Russia, without being made the tools of some political experiment, and that we may not have constantly imputed by certain sections of the Press a complete lack of human attributes to the countrymen of Tolstoy, Dostoievsky and Tchekov. With regard to the apprehension about the balance of trade with Russia, what seems to me to matter is that our general balance of trade, that is to say the balance of our total imports against our total exports, should approximate to equilibrium. Those who are most keenly apprehensive of the bogey of Communism and are always stressing the disequilibrium of trade with Russia, seem to forget the considerable volume of imports that may go into Russia indirectly through other countries. Surely the fact is that the trade of the world is so seriously paralysed that we cannot afford the virtual extinction of any one single market. I was going on to deal with the question of Communism vis-à-vis Hitler and the Nazi menace, but I have not time to do it now.

I want to refer again to the police bombing question. Here I must take to task my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition when he ironically suggested that the young men of the Tory party would be invited to cheer the reservation. As a matter of fact, I deplore the reservation.

Mr. LANSBURY

I do not remember saying "cheer." I said, would they vote for it?

Mr. ADAMS

I think that I am in the recollection of the Committee when I say that the right hon. Gentleman said to the young Members of the Tory party, "Are you going to cheer this reservation with regard to police bombing?" We shall discover from the OFFICIAL REPORT. At all events, whether he said it or did not, I am going to clear myself of that charge, because I have already raised this matter on numerous occasions inside and outside the House. Indeed, I said in the House on the 13th June something very relevant indeed. I devoted a whole speech, lasting, I regret to say, for 20 minutes, to dealing with this topic. In the course of it I quoted the peroration of one of the most remarkable speeches delivered in this Parliament by the Lord President of the Council, in which he said in relation to the young men: Let them remember that they, they principally or they alone, are responsible for the terrors that have fallen upon the earth. Immediately afterwards, I would ask my right hon. Friend to observe, I said this: I, at all events, being a comparatively young man, am not going to expose myself to the charge that I wish the obscenity of bombing to continue. I hope that that language is violent enough for my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition. I concluded my speech in these terms: If, in the course of some future catastrophe, a gas-filled bomb, owing its survival to our own predilection for the principle of air-bombing. were to crash through the delicately illuminated ceiling of this Chamber … I hope that any older statesman who happened to survive the first shattering detonation would not try to lay the blame upon the young men. Let them remember, as they choke and sweat in the article of death, that they, they principally, or they alone, are responsible for the terrors that have fallen upon the earth."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 13th June, 1933; cols. 89-91, Vol. 279.] I am tired of the Labour party arrogating to itself a monopoly of interest in peace and Disarmament. It is axiomatic that at Geneva each Government behaves badly when its own interests are touched. That does not seem to me to be a convincing reason why Great Britain should add to the sum-total of ineptitude. We are told sometimes that nations go to Geneva for the purpose of "angling for position," but that has always seemed to me one of the silliest phrases ever invented. No position, upright or supine, vertical or horizontal, has ever been known to respond to any bait. I am not going to suggest that this police bombing reservation is the chief or, indeed, a major factor in causing the delay at Geneva. The factors are all cumula- tive, and the fact surely is that the longer the Disarmament Conference drags on in abortive frustration, the more exasperated does public opinion become. Directly I saw this reservation in the Draft Disarmament Convention, my heart sank, because I saw trouble ahead. I do not know whether we are to infer from the speech of the Under-Secretary to-night that the Government are going definitely and finally to waive this reservation, but I am going to be hopeful that that may occur.

With great subtlety the Under-Secretary tried to separate the two problems, the problem of bombing and the problem of the total abolition of military and naval aircraft. I suggest it is almost impossible to separate the two problems, because it is an almost inalienable characteristic of a military aeroplane that it is going to be used for bombing. He also said it was a minute problem. I cannot agree with him, because in my view the whole future of European civilisation may well depend upon it. If we preserve it at all, this weapon is going to be used indiscriminately, whatever the right hon. Member for West Birmingham (Sir A. Chamberlain) may say. If one takes the short view about police bombing, it is perfectly true that it is expedient though very selfish, but, if one takes the long view, it is nothing else than suicide. I believe this to be a plain statement of the problem—if nation A reserves to itself the right to bomb area B, sooner or later all the sophistry, calculation and argument in the world will not prevent nation C from claiming the right at her own convenience to bomb nation A.

The Government have got themselves into a hopelessly illogical position over this matter. They proposed, perfectly correctly, at Geneva that by complete aboliton we might extirpate this frightful terror which besets civilisation. This general principle, which was the logical consequence of the speech of the Lord President of the Council on 10th November, was acclaimed at Geneva with quite surprising unanimity. Then simultaneously, by means of the reservation, the Government tried to stultify their own child. They had, so to speak, conceived an angel and brought forth a monster, legless, armless, blind and yet winged and snarling defiance at civilisa- tion through the sharpest teeth in the world. If I had time, I was going to quote from a remarkable speech made by the Foreign Minister in 1924, which states absolutely and completely the case against air bombing. It is said definitely better than I could say it and, in the course of it, he mentions the necessity for international limitation. The Government now have a chance not only of international limitation but of universal international abolition, and I entreat them not to lose this golden opportunity.

The nimble policitian executes a dozen somersaults in his career in the gymnasium of Westminster, but I hope and almost pray that I may never be compelled to make such a complete meal of my words as seems to threaten the Foreign Secretary and the Lord President of the Council. I hope with all my heart they are only masticating and ruminating before they decide to swallow. If they need support from the House of Commons for what, I am sure, they believe is the right policy, they have only to ask for it. The heart of England lies uncovered in the meantime through the existence of naval and military aeroplanes, beneath a sky heavy with danger. That peril will persist just so long as Air Forces remain in the armouries of the nations of the world.

9.29 p.m.

Mr. MAXTON

I had not meant to intervene at this late stage to deal with the general issues of the Foreign Office. The Minister has had a relatively good day, for reasons totally unconnected with his activities. In the minds of the Members of the House the enormities of the German nation on the one hand, and of the Russian nation on the other, have bulked so large that he has appeared a perfect Foreign Minister in a welter of wicked foreign ministers. That is not the view I hold of him, and I would have preferred if the Debate to-day had examined the concrete results of the Foreign Secretary's operations during the last 12 months. I am afraid they would not have totalled up to any very big bulk. I gather from the Press that the right hon. Gentleman is going away on a holiday. I never in my life grudged any man a holiday and I have never grudged myself a holiday, so I do not grudge it to the Foreign Secretary. I have no doubt that his labours entitle him to a holiday, but on payment by result he would not be entitled to a holiday. I admit he has had a difficult task and has been hampered by a Government which, of course, has no basic principles to help him in his work. It is therefore, perhaps, not entirely his responsibility that failure should result.

There were invitations from the Government side of the Committee for congratulations on the success of the Russian negotiations. I congratulated M. Litvinoff last night, and it would be churlish of me not to congratulate the Foreign Minister to-night, because I know that, in that particular type of difficulty it needs two men with accommodating minds to get results. I hope, however, that the right hon. Gentleman will not be influenced by the speech of the noble Lady the hon. Member for Kinross and West Perth (Duchess of Atholl) who, if I do not misunderstand her, makes the suggestion now to the Foreign Minister that, after an honourable agreement has been come to between Russia and this country, we should now proceed to try dishonesty to evade the implications of a new Trade Agreement.

Duchess of ATHOLL

I do not know what the hon. Member means by that. I hope that in these negotiations His Majesty's Government will be ready to give the British producers the protection which they should get as the result of the Ottawa Agreement.

Mr. MAXTON

I assume that, without any special instructions from me, the Foreign Secretary will look after the interests of Great Britain. All I am hoping is, that, when a bargain is entered into that trading will be resumed and a new trade agreement come to, it will be honestly carried into effect, and that the Government of Great Britain will not try to negotiate themselves out of their bargain on the cheapest and meanest scale.

The point I rise to put to the Foreign Secretary may be regarded, probably, as a very minor one, but it is of importance to me, and I think it is of importance to Parliamentarians generally throughout the world. He has been asked, in many speeches, to intervene to whatever extent he can on behalf of political victims in Germany. I recognise the limitations that are on him on that matter, but I asso- ciate myself with those general demands, and I ask if he will make a special intervention on behalf of Herr Torgler, who was the leader of the Communist party in the Reichstag, who was a distinguished figure in that Reichstag, and was, judged by our standards, a good Parliamentarian.

On the night when the Reichstag was fired Herr Torgler heard of the occurrence, knew at once that the odium of the act would be thrown upon his party and his political point of view, and at once put himself into the hands of the authorities, dissociating himself and his party from the act and stating that he was prepared to appear in a court of law to prove not only that his party was not responsible for the firing of the Reichstag but that such an act would be contrary to the political philosophy and practice of the party. Herr Torgler was seized and has been in prison ever since. He has been kept in chains, in solitary confinement, I think, and has not been brought to trial, although he has constantly asked to be brought to trial. This state of affairs has continued for some months, and I think that Parliamentarians in this country in particular should be prepared to use whatever influence they have—by representations on the part of the Government and of the British Parliament—to see that this man, who was a perfectly constitutional politician in Germany, who acted in a way that redounded to his own credit in the difficult circumstances of those days in Germany, is not treated as some degraded criminal or insane maniac, but dealt with by the ordinary judicial methods of any civilised country. That is the only point I rose to make, and I hope the right hon. Gentleman will interest himself very specially in this case.

9.38 p.m.

Mr. MORGAN JONES

I think hon. Members on all sides of the House will agree with me when I say that this Debate has been thoroughly worth while. We have heard a series of speeches which have been entrancing in their eloquence and brilliant in the way in which they have approached the subject. I am sure the Committee would like me to offer congratulations to the hon. Member for West Leeds (Mr. V. Adams) on the very courageous speech which he made. He does not belong to the party to which I have the honour to belong, and therefore he is entitled to feel that we appreciate very much the very great courage and tenacity of purpose he shows on all occasions when discussing that particular matter.

The discussion has ranged over innumerable subjects, from the Far East to our own country, and I do not propose to go into each one of those subjects, but would first make a short reference to the case of the Moscow prisoners. The Under-Secretary of State seemed to twit my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition on having made no reference to the conclusion of the agreement which has happily led to the release of the last two prisoners. He seemed to imply that my right hon. Friend was not entirely glad that this agreement had been reached. I did not observe any exuberance in the speech of the Noble Lady the Member for Perthshire (Duchess of Atholl) when she spoke two minutes ago. There was no word of congratulation from her concerning the conclusion of the agreement. Why do the Government ask for congratulations? Why do they invite bouquets? They have no right to any. It is true that we can congratulate them and the Russians on the simple fact that an agreement has been arrived at whereby these two people have been released, but I submit that the right hon. Gentleman and the Government are not entitled to any undue measure of congratulation upon that simple fact. I would remind the Committee of a speech which the Lord President of the Council made in Scotland a. week or so ago, in which he made it abundantly clear that before His Majesty's Government would even consider the raising of the embargo they would demand as a pre-requisite, first, the unconditional release of the two prisoners, and, second, the lifting of the embargo by the Russian Government. Those two pre-requisites have not been achieved. Happily, the controversy, so far as that country is concerned, is now over, but we are not quite out of the wood in relation to certain problems which seemed to arise out of that incident.

I ask the Foreign Secretary to tell us precisely where we are, and where we are to be in future in relation to the rights enjoyed by British citizens living in a foreign country. I listened with very great care to the Under-Secretary of State, who said that the action of the Government was justified as protection for the present and insurance for the future. What does insurance for the future mean, exactly? If I may refer again to the speech of the Lord President of the Council in Scotland he said: These men had been subjected to a course of justice in Russia which was not our form of justice. That, of course, is true, but I want to ask specifically, Are we to take it that whenever in future a British subject is charged in Russia, or in any other country—rightly or wrongly charged—with having broken the law of that country, that the Government of the day here are to declare in advance that he is innocent and that there can be no charge against him? It is on the basis of that proposition that the whole of this incident has been sustained. I am going to state two other instances in which this attitude has not, been adopted. Let me take one example. My hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Mr. Cocks), during the period when these men were incarcerated in Moscow, raised the collateral case of Mr. Fraser, who is, I think, a journalist, and who was kept in gaol under the Hitler regime for over a month, without any sort of trial and without any form of charge against him. Nothing comparable by way of action on the part of the Government was taken in the interests of Mr. Fraser.

What was the extra consideration which induced the Government to take a special line of action with regard to the gentlemen in Moscow, and precluded the same sort of action being taken in regard to the man in Berlin? I will carry my illustrations a little further. This evening, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, raised a question to which I sincerely hope that we shall have a reply. I am sure that the Foreign Secretary will do his best in relation to questions as to the rights of British nationals in an area like Manchuria. My right hon. Friend wanted to know who was in charge of the duty of safeguarding the rights of citizens in the Manchurian area. I mention the case to show how important it, is. There is a person by the name of Mr. Lennox Simpson, who has recently been subjected to treatment which, had it happened in Russia, might easily—it would undoubtedly—have led to an em- bargo upon trade with Russia. Mr. Simpson's case very briefly is something like this: He is a person who happened to own a newspaper called the "Herald." He has been living in the neighbourhood of Harbin for something like 16 years. Mr. Simpson owns, and I think edits, the paper, and he also controls a fairly substantial publishing business in Manchuria.

Mr. Simpson is a person of democratic sympathies, but never in the whole course of his activities in that area has he identified himself with any political party there, yet he has suddenly been called in front of the Manchukuo authorities and ordered to leave the district, and he runs the danger of losing property worth about £5,000. The charge is that of having published in his paper certain propagandist statements, and Mr. Simpson has submitted his case to the local consul representing British interests. In point of fact, the statements to which objection has been taken were actually lifted out of other newspapers circulating in the area and owned by native people. Those statements, before they were published in the other newspapers, had been submitted to the censor for the area. Therefore the statements which Mr. Simpson published had already passed the censor, before they were published in those other local publications, but on the basis of that, this gentleman is turned out of the country, runs the risk of losing £5,000 worth of property and loses the result of 16 years' patient. endeavour in building up a business. Why is it that no vigorous action was taken by the Government in regard to him?

What was the extra circumstance that made the Government take such vigorous action in one case, and be so dilatory, and almost pedestrian, in regard to the gentleman in Berlin and to the other in Manchuria? It is the business of the Government to absolve itself from a suspicion that political considerations entered into the Moscow business, whereas less acute political differences were present in the Berlin and the Manchurian cases. I gave notice to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs that I would raise this point, and I ask him to give me some information concerning the rights pertaining to this British national in Manchuria that have been so abruptly invaded by the Manchurian authorities.

I pass from that subject to the subject of disarmament. I think that I shall carry the Committee with me generally when I say that it has been apparent in the discussions that have taken place in Geneva and elsewhere that most nations are ready for the achievement of some substantial measure of disarmament forthwith. Unfortunately, we still associate the security of our respective nations with the prevalence and permanance of arms. The Lord President of the Council made a speech to which adequate reference will never be made in this House, so splendid a speech was it, on the defendability of air armaments from the standpoint of giving absolute security. He made the statement that no expert would commit his reputation to a statement that, however much air armament you might provide, you would be able to give absolute and complete security to a nation.

The same is true of naval armaments. I read the other day of an experiment which had been conducted under the aegis of the American Government who had lent a battleship for the purpose of an experiment in aerial warfare. They were testing the capacity of aerial bombing, and those in charge of the experiment dropped upon that battleship, which was the target, something like 2,000 lbs. of bombs from aeroplanes circulating overhead. No direct hit was registered, but so tremendous was the explosion occasioned by the dropping of the explosives that the ship turned turtle. I wonder whether it is not a fact that, as aerial development proceeds, naval experts are less and less able to give us a guarantee that naval armaments can give security. If that be so, clearly it is time that the nations, and our own in particular, which lays so much stress upon naval armaments, should examine afresh this question whether we are right in relying so much upon naval and air armaments.

I do not want to delay the Committee unduly, but there are certain points which must be kept in mind with regard to this question of disarmament. In the first place, we must make up our minds upon the principle of non-recourse to force. I believe that the Government themselves, in November and December of last year, propounded in their plan the principle of non-recourse to force in regard to Europe alone, but the other nations at the General Commission urged the application of the principle to the whole world. I very much hope that the Government will consider the advisability of abandoning what I might call this British Monroe Doctrine, that is to say, trying to build a wall round territory in which we have a direct interest, and saying that within that territory this principle shall not be fully applied, and that we ourselves shall be the final arbiters as to whether it shall be applied or not. If I remember rightly, the United States indicated that, if they could only get a world-wide agreement on the principle of non-recourse to force, that agreement might well be embodied in a pact of non-agression.

In the second place, we cannot go far without having an agreed definition of what we mean by aggression, or by an aggressor. The Under-Secretary chided my right hon. Friend for not having referred to the recent agreement with Russia. I wonder whether it, was an accident that made him forget to make even some sort of oblique reference to the two pacts which were concluded yesterday at the instigation of Russia. If I read my "Times" aright, they themselves regard that as so important an event in European politics that they devote a second leading article to the subject to-day, and extend their congratulations to M. Titulesco, the Rumanian Foreign Secretary, and to M. Litvinoff. They put the name of the Rumanian Foreign Secretary first, but perhaps that was an accident. Obviously, it is a very substantial contribution to the pacification of Central Europe, anyhow, that all these nations along the Russian border should be brought into a pact of nonaggression, in which the word "aggressor" is defined, and that the Little Entente should have been brought into a similar pact. That, in my judgment, is a tremendous contribution towards the stabilisation of peace in a very disturbed part of Europe.

In the third place, not only must we define aggression, but we must speedily define what we mean by weapons of aggression, and it seems to me that we must get away from our subservience to the expert mind in this matter. It was, I believe, conclusively proved, in a memorandum issued some time ago, that a tank was just an instrument of defence, and not of aggression; but really, in the view of many non-technical people, that proposition has only to be looked at to be laughed out of court. Clearly, a tank cannot be anything other than an offensive and not a defensive weapon. We must arrive at a conclusion as to what we mean by weapons of aggression, as well as what we mean by an aggressor.

I desire also to refer, although it has already been referred to by Members in all quarters of the Committee, to the subject of internal affairs in Germany. For my part, I fully and absolutely subscribe to the abhorrence which everyone feels concerning the state of affairs which now prevails in Germany. I say quite categorically that every person, whether he be a Conservative or a Communist, a Jew or a Gentile, has the right to declare She truth as it has been revealed to him, come what may. Therefore, I can have no part or lot in a system such as prevails in Germany. But I do not think it is entirely fair to date the beginning of this trouble from the coming of Herr Hitler, for the leaders of the Allies who set their signatures to the Treaty of Versailles, and have maintained that Treaty intact ever since, must take their share of responsibility for the creation of the spirit which we have seen rising steadily in Germany in recent years. I do not believe that this condition would have come about in Germany if we could have given to young Germans a belief that their country was getting a fair deal in Europe, and it is because of the revulsion of feeling on their part that the Hitlerite movement has made so successful an appeal to them. Therefore, it seems to me that Herr Hitler's response to President Roosevelt's appeal, indicating readiness not to demand rearmament with what are called aggressive weapons for five years, was an offer that ought to have been seized with much greater eagerness than it was.

I come now to a point to which my hon. Friends on this side attach a good deal of importance. We believe that the time has arrived when we must exercise greater supervision and control over armaments. The hon. Member for North Bristol (Mr. Bernays), in a speech which was obviously delivered with very great feeling, but which was hardly conducive to the prevalence of good feeling and the allaying of ill ease in the public mind in this country, invited us to exercise the right of inspection in Germany. I am all in favour of that—it has been done before —but not in Germany alone. The time has come—

Mr. BERNAYS

If I might interrupt the hon. Gentleman for a moment, I made the special point that, speaking for myself, I was perfectly willing that there should be the fullest supervision of our armaments here, but it must include Germany as well.

Mr. JONES

I quite recall that sentence, and, if I unfortunately forgot it for the moment, I apologise. The hon. Member did say that he had no objection 'to its being applied everywhere, and not to our own country and Germany alone. An international commission should be appointed whose primary duty it would be to exercise supervision and control over these armaments, so that it might be known exactly what weapons of aggression there are available in the world.

The fifth point I want to make is that we ought to have also Budgetary limitations, for that, after all, is a not unimportant element in the problem. Lastly —and here I think is perhaps one of the greatest sources of danger in the world—we ought to insist now that the private manufacture of instruments of war should be brought to an end, and that it should be centralised under national control, so that the nations themselves should be able to exercise their own supervision in the way they think fit. I have tried to emphasise these few points because they seem to us to be absolutely part and parcel, indivisible from the general problem of disarmament, that has been the subject of discussion at Geneva for so long.

I want to say one last word if I may. Hon. Gentlemen have quite rightly invited our attention to the disastrous condition of affairs as we see it now prevalent in Germany. Perhaps they will forgive me if I make this observation. I do not intend to hurt anyone's feelings in the slightest degree, and I take second place to nobody in my desire to debate the claim of the Jew to be free from this kind of persecution in Germany, but, while I am with hon. Gentlemen in making that appeal for the Jew, I ask them not to forget that equally innocent men—Socialists, Communists and Catholics—are now in gaol. If we believe in freedom, let us believe in it for all men. I think my hon. Friends are wrong in concentrating upon the Jewish case. Let them concentrate upon the case for freedom and tolerance, because without tolerance the lamp of liberty will indeed burn low.

10.9 p.m.

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

I agree most fully with the hon. Gentleman the Member for Caerphilly (Mr. M. Jones) when he said that this has been both a useful and an interesting Debate. I should doubt whether in recent years, at a time when this country is at peace, there have been so numerous a succession of discussions in a single year on the topic of foreign affairs. The fact that it is so is, I think, a true reflection of the feeling of the people of this country whom we are sent here to try to represent, for there is, I am convinced, a more widespread and more sincere interest in international relations than there ever was before, and it is more than ever important to study them, and to understand them, and to try each of us to do what we can to influence them in the right way. I have had the advantage, and the whole House shared it, of the reply made from this bench earlier in the day by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, who dealt with a large number of these almost innumerable topics, and, while I will do my best briefly to deal with some of those that remain, I do not think the Committee will desire me to occupy a long time, especially as we have other business to conclude before the night is over.

I should be quite willing to have left the topic of the recent discussions and settlement with Mr. Litvinoff entirely aside. From my point of view, what matters is that some British subjects who were entitled to look for such aid as we could give and were promised such aid, were given it, and they have been released. I do not think other things matter very much as compared with that, but as hon. Gentlemen opposite discussed this subject, I will just say this. There has been no question of picking and choosing in this matter. We were faced, in the matter now happily concluded, with what seemed to us to be a very flagrant wrong. The main accusations were palpably absurd, because in so far as they were an accusation that these men were engaged in what is called the Secret Service, I have said at this Box that it was not true; and in so far as they were an accusation that these engineers were engaged in deliberately wrecking their engineering plant, you might as well accuse Mr. Speaker of deliberately breaking the windows of the House of Commons.

The only other matter which remains is this. I have heard a good deal of discussion outside the House as to whether or not the course pursued by the British Government would accelerate these men's release. I have heard it suggested that, if we only acted with more deliberation, with a deliberation which no doubt would have characterised the action of hon. Gentleman opposite, an earlier release might have been secured. I can contribute one fact for the information of the Committee, and it is that Mr. Litvinoff told me himself within the last few days that, according to the regular course of Russian justice, when a man has been convicted and sentenced and then makes a petition for the reconsideration of his sentence, in the ordinary course six months must elapse before the petition is even considered. I am glad to say that at the end of little more than two months these two men got out of prison. It only remains to say that in this matter I believe all of us, without distinction of opinion or party, are very grateful to Mr. Strang who, at a most difficult time, was Chargé d'Affaires in Moscow and who, I believe, has conducted this matter with great discretion and due regard to the susceptibilities of the Russian authorities, without which of course nothing could have been done.

Let me refer to one or two other matters which have been raised. My hon. Friend just now endeavoured to introduce a comment on the Russian case by referring to the case of a gentleman named Mr. Lennox Simpson. He even seemed to insinuate, without the smallest justification, or so far as I can see, the slightest reasonable ground, that in this matter we have been very anxious to do what we could in the case of the prisoners in Russia, but acted quite differently in the case of Mr. Simpson in Manchuria. I have made inquiries and I find that nobody, not even Members of the Opposition, has ever put a single question on the subject of Mr. Simpson. I was warned during the day that the point might be raised, and I have, therefore, been provided with some information.

Mr. MORGAN JONES

Mr. Simpson put his case in the hands of the Consul at Harbin some time. ago. I heard of the case this week myself. I make no accusation against the right hon. Gentleman, and I hope he did not understand me in that sense. I merely stated that the same vigour and the same methods had not been used in his case as in the Russian case.

Sir J. SIMON

We will not spend any time in discussing whether that involves an accusation or not. As far as I have any responsibility for the conduct of foreign affairs, I desire to do my utmost, as my duty is, on behalf of the British Government, for any British subject who is in difficulties in foreign parts. Mr. Simpson was apparently the proprietor of an enterprise called the "Harbin Herald," and he was informed that the authorities had decided to close his printing office and ask him to leave the country within a week. He appealed to the Consul-General, who protested against the threat to deport him. The Consul-General was directed by us here to continue that protest. strongly both orally and, if necessary, by sending semiofficial notes. As far as I can discover from the papers, there is nothing that could very well have been done which was left undone. We even went so far—I do not know whether this will receive the approval of hon. Members opposite—as to solicit the assistance of the Japanese Government in the matter. They will, no doubt, realise that the position that the British Government will not recognise the Government of Manchuria raises certain practical difficulties. We did, in fact, communicate with the Japanese Government and ask them to use their influence. The Manchurian authorities refused to withdraw the order that this gentleman should be deported. Ultimately, we were able to arrange that, although he was to be moved, he was only to be moved to Dairen, which is in Japanese territory. His agents at Harbin were allowed to carry on his bookselling and library business, and Mr. Simpson left for Dairen on 28th May. Whether that is entirely satisfactory to him or not I do not know, but what I have said shows that we do the utmost that we can for any British subject abroad.

I was asked at the beginning of the Debate what, in fact, were the present arrangements by which we could in necessary cases get into touch with the authorities inside the area of Manchuria. While we are loyally standing by the decision of the League of Nations that there should not be recognition of the new State, at the same time we maintain inside the area our Consuls and the Consul-General. We, of course, keep in communication with them. In present circumstances that is the most satisfactory arrangement. If there is anyone in the House who thinks that, in view of the Sino-Japanese situation, the British Government, in respect of Manchurian affairs, can communicate with no one except the Government of China, I very much fear that we should not get any very active assistance inside that area because, of course, the Government of China is without any authority there at present.

Mr. LANSBURY

That is exactly the statement I wished to get from the right hon. Gentleman, because it proves conclusively that force in this case on the part of the Japanese Government has put the Manchurian State in the position that Governments with nationals there are really obliged, although not actually officially recognising them, but because they must protect their own nationals, to recognise what has been done. I think that that is one of the most terrible results of the Japanese invasion.

Sir J. SIMON

I follow the point of the right hon. Gentleman, and I may say, with respect, that it is a fair point enough. But for practical purposes I think he will agree that, while, of course, we maintain most strictly the promise which we have made to the League of Nations, at the same time, in the interests of British subjects in the area, we are bound to make some representation on their behalf.

Another point which I do not wish to omit was that mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for East Wolverhampton (Mr. Mander). He mentioned the subject of Liberia. May I occupy two or three sentences in giving a very short answer? There has been a prolonged consideration of this very difficult Liberian problem at Geneva by a Committee of the Council of the League called the Liberian Committee, and associated with it, and taking part in the consideration, I am very glad to say, has been a representative of the United States, as well, of course, as the Liberian Government. As a result of these elaborate discussions, in connection with which we are all very much indebted to Lord Cecil for the part he has played in speaking for the British Government, a mission has been set up composed of a member of the Secretariat of the League and a representative of the Government of the United States. The Mission consisting of these two persons is leaving England for Liberia., I think, next month, with a view to obtaining the assent, if possible, of the Liberian Government to the proposals which the Liberia Committee has elaborated. These proposals, to state them briefly, contemplate the extension of assistance to Liberia in the administrative sphere by the appointment of a chief adviser and other administrative officials who will be appointed by the League of Nations combined, on the financial side, with suggestions which, we hope, will be adopted for the allocation of the revenues of Liberia in a way which will not merely cover the expenses of this administrative help and of the Secretariat of the League of Nations, but will afford some provision for the discharge of Liberia's indebtedness to her foreign creditors. That is the present situation in the matter, and I agree with my hon. Friend that, although this is a question which we do not very often discuss in our Debates, it Li a very important matter, and is one of the cases in which the help of the League of Nations might prove invaluable. express the very sincere hope of His Majesty's Government, that these proposals will be accepted by the Liberian Government and that we may be able, by the help of the League of Nations, and co-operating with the United States of America, both to improve the adminis- tration of this immense area and also to do something to correct the state of its finances.

Mr. MANDER

Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether the Firestone Company have come in on the financial side?

Sir J. SIMON

I should be glad if my hon. Friend would put that question down. I should not like to give an answer without checking the information. A good deal has been said to-day on two other subjects, and I will say a few words on each of them. Something has been said about the Four Power Pact. I am grateful to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Carlisle (Brigadier-General Spears) for the careful and useful analysis he made of that arrangement. I. may be permitted to say that I think that -not enough attention has been paid to what I believe to be a really valuable contribution in the direction of maintaining and promoting peace in Europe. Of course those people who say that no sort of pact or agreement or signature is any good will not think anything of this Pact, but I do not take that view. Having played a part in the visit to Rome and been very closely connected with the negotiations ever since, I can only offer it as my opinion that I believe the making of the Four Power Pact is a matter on which we are entitled not as a Government but as the British people to find some satisfaction, and grounds for hope.

The true position was this, that there was a real danger that you would get developing in Western Europe two opposing blocs of Powers, with special relations or special associations binding one set to one view and another set to another view. These things grow almost without being clearly observed, until you find yourselves face to face with some rigid opposition which is almost impossible to break down. When the Prime Minister and I went to Rome last March, I think it was, we came to the conclusion that that most remarkable man, the head of the Italian Government, was sincerely anxious to make a contribution of a different sort. The conclusion of the Four Power Pact, which is a further step towards securing peace, has been largely due to the practical initiative of Signor Mussolini who, in close co-operation with his Sovereign, has achieved such a notable result in restoring a spirit of confidence in his own country, in spite of the depression and the sense of disillusionment which succeeded the Great War in so many parts of the world.

The negotiations for the Four Power Pact are in themselves especially gratifying, because they show how Signor Mussolini is devoting his energy to establish a system of practical co-operation and friendship between each of the four Powers. That is the sort of statesmanship which is so valuable at the present time, because it is becoming daily more evident that it is only if we can get cooperative friendship that we can hope to preserve political stability, to say nothing of promoting economic revival in Europe. I will give an example. I have been asked a number of questions to-day on the very difficult situation in Austria. I say without any hesitation that the whole sympathies of this country are with Austria in her effort to preserve her independent position. It is most fortunate that the Four Power Pact should be negotiated and initialed, because it does given an opportunity, which I hope will be used, to assist that country and Dr. Dolfuss, to maintain her undoubted rights in the face of very grave circumstances. The Four Power Pact, as a matter of fact, has only been initialed; not signed. There seems to be a difference between initialing and signing. From a lawyer's point of view there is no difference, but in diplomacy there is. We all hope that there will be signature very shortly, and I am glad to learn to-day from Paris that they have reason to think that the French Senate is prepared to approve the Pact—the French Chamber of Deputies has already done so—and I hope that it will be signed at Rome before the end of the month.

I was asked by the Leader of the Opposition some questions about the prospects of further discussions with the United States on Debt settlement. He does not expect or desire to discuss that question to-clay. The Committee will remember that shortly before the 15th of June we had the satisfaction of putting forward a suggestion which, on the one hand, avoided payment then and there of the full instalment which fell due under the terms of the bond and, on the other hand, proposed making a modified payment, which the President of the United States, as far as his responsibility went, declared in his view and judgment did not constitute default. Now comes the much bigger issue; what can we do about the Debt as a whole' I think it is well understood that the approaching discussions will have to be with the whole Debt and not merely with any particular instalment. President Roosevelt stated that he was in a position to entertain the representations of the British Government concerning the entire Debt settlement, and he stated quite clearly that the British Government had requested that such an opportunity should be found. He suggested that we should make our representations as soon as convenient. The present position therefore is that negotiations will be entered into somewhat later in the year at Washington, the exact date has not been settled. The object of the negotiations will be to obtain not some adjustment of a particular instalment but to obtain such revision of the existing agreement as a whole as may be compatible with the revival of prosperity. It would be entirely at variance with all precedents and foolish of me to make any further statement, or to hint at instruction or policy about it. In this, as in similar matters, the Government must ask the House of Commons to give them a measure of discretion. May I quote one precedent, very relevant, and one which will be recalled by hon. Members opposite. I remember the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) asking Lord Snowden when he was at this Box as Chancellor of the Exchequer what would be the Government's policy he was going to pursue at the Hague Conference; and Lord Snowden said: I feel sure that hon.!Members will realise that in speaking on this subject today I am in a somewhat delicate and difficult position. Indeed, I feel a certain amount of hesitation in dealing with the matter and I envy the right hon. Gentleman his position of greater freedom and less responsibility."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 26th July, 1929; col. 1676, Vol. 230.] Indeed, he envied him so much that he has since changed his own position, but for those of us who are still manacled and rivetted to, this Bench I must ask for the right to exercise a full measure of discretion now.

Lastly, much of the Debate has been taken up, quite rightly of course, with discussing and considering the very grave situation that exists in Europe, the present attitude and condition of Germany, the effect of all this upon the Disarmament. Conference and its prospects and so on. I shall not attempt to repeat what has been said on that subject by the Under-Secretary but I take upon myself, quite deliberately and solemnly, to repeat what I. myself said on behalf of the Government in an earlier Debate which we all recall. There have been very general indications of a feeling of distress and concern about the situation and more particularly the situation in which certain minorities find themselves in Germany—and I, by no means confine myself to the Jews. I will only say, as I said before that I am perfectly convinced—and it is well that others in other countries should realise it—that what has been said to-day is not said in any spirit of narrow criticism or sectionalism. It is the real expression of the reaction of the British people as a whole. We have an attachment to the principles of tolerance and of justice. They are in our blood and in our history and we should not be true to ourselves if we did not say how deeply we feel distressed at any view in the contrary sense.

I will add this. There is in this country and there has been for many years past, a great body of opinion that has been by no means blind to the claims of the great German people to sympathetic consideration in view of their position after the War. The tragic thing is that events that are happening now and that have recently happened, have done so much to forfeit in the minds of those very people who are most sympathetic to the German people, some of the sympathy which, I presume to say, Germany needs. The British people, and I say it, I believe, without any self-complacency, are in these matters a just and generous people, but there are some things which they find it very difficult to understand. We earnestly desire that the time may come when we. may with a good conscience and a full heart contribute to the solution of the problems of Europe, hut we can only contribute if we have complete confidence in the treatment which minorities receive in all parts of the world. This Debate, like all similar Debates, has provided a full day for the Foreign Secretary and my hon. Friends below the Gangway would agree no doubt that it is very good for his soul that he should receive a measure of candid criticism. At the same time I should be churlish indeed if I did not thank the Committee for the great measure of kindness and indulgence which they have shown. The conduct of foreign affairs is the responsibility, of course, of the whole Government and not of one man, but I do not believe that the subject has ever been more important and I venture to doubt if it has ever been more difficult, and I am certain that there has not been a time in my experience of the House of Commons in which the Foreign Secretary has had more reason to be grateful for the friendliness and at the same time the critical encouragement which he receives from hon. Members in every part of this Assembly.

Mr. LANSBURY

May I ask the right hon. Gentleman to answer two questions that I put to him—first, whether it is not possible, through the International Red Cross, to get some aid to the very large number of people who are living in semi-starvation, and also in regard to the people who have no State, who are Stateless, and who are wandering around Europe?

Sir J. SIMON

With regard to the first point, I dare say the right hon. Gentleman would not mind if I were to look into it first, but I appreciate the importance of the suggestion. As regards what lie calls the Stateless people, we must face the difficulty. These people are not Stateless in that sense. They are German citizens, and that does in fact make a good deal of difference and, I am very much afraid, prevents them coming within the Nansen category. There were two other things which the right hon. Gentleman asked me, of which he has been indulgent enough not to

remind me. He asked rue about refugees from Germany seeking to get entrance into this country, I made some inquiries —and this is a reply about Jews admitted to England from Germany—and. I am told that the work has been carried on in a. way which appears to have given satisfaction to the Jewish community here; and very properly the authorities here have done their best to keep in touch with the very responsible representatives of the Jewish community, in this House and out of it, who have been themselves concerned in the matter.

As regards the question of Palestine, I have made inquiries, and I am told that this is the answer: that all applications which have been made by the Jewish agency in Germany have, according to our latest information, been granted. The Committee may remember that I told them on the last occasion that we arranged to have a committee in Germany that would handle these applications. I believe they have all been granted, but here again I will make fresh inquiries in the light of what the right hon. Gentleman has said, and I will inform him, and then be able in the ordinary way to give information to the House.

Mr. LANSBURY

I am much obliged to the right hon. Gentleman, but I wish to press him that he will leave behind him instructions that the question of the International Red Cross relief shall be investigated, and I would ask the Department to go again into the question of the Nansen passports. We are glad to know that the Jewish community are satisfied with what has been done, but I hope that the same consideration will be given to people who do not happen to be Jews.

Question put, "That a sum, not exceeding £124,178, be granted for the said Service."

The Committee divided: Ayes, 34; Noes, 222.

Division No. 255.] AYES. [10.4 p.m.
Attlee, Clement Richard Grenfell, David Rees (Glamorgan) McGovern, John
Bantleld, John William Hall, George H.. (Merthyr Tydvll) Maclean, Nell (Glasgow, Govan)
Brown, C. W. E. (Notts., Mansfield) Hicks, Ernest George Mainwaring, William Henry
Buchanan. George Jenkins, Sir William Maxton, James
Cooks, Frederick Seymour Jones, Morgan (Gaerphilly) Milner Major James
Cripps, Sir Stafford Kirkwood, David Parkinson, John Allen
Dagger, George Lansbury, Rt. Hon. George Price, Gabriel
Edwards, Charles Lawson, John James Salter, Dr. Alfred
George, Major G. Lloyd (Pembroke) Logan, David Gilbert Smith, Tom (Normanton)
Greenwood, Rt. Hon. Arthur McEntee, Valentine L. Thorne, William James
Tinker, John Joseph Williams, Dr. John H. (Lianelly TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—
Williams, David (Swansea, East) Williams. Thomas (York, Don Valley) Mr. G. Macdonald and Mr. Groves.
NOES.
Acland, Rt. Hon. Sir Francis Dyke Grimston, R. V. Peto, Sir Basil E. (Devon, Barnstaple)
Acland-Troyte, Lieut.-Colonel Guest, Capt. Rt. Mon. F. E. Peto, Geoffrey K.(W'verh'pt'n, Bilst'n)
Agnew, Lieut.-Com. P. G. Gunston, Captain D. W. Pickering, Ernest H.
Allen, Lt.-Col. J. Sandeman (B'k'nh'd) Guy, J. C. Morrison Pike, Cecil F.
Amery, Rt. Hon. Leopold C. M. S. Hacking, Rt. Hon. Douglas H. Ramsay, Alexander (W. Bromwich)
Apsley, Lord Hales, Harold K. Ramsay, T. B. W. (Western Isles)
Aske, Sir Robert William Hall, Capt. W. D'Arcy (Brecon) Ramsden, Sir Eugene
Atholl, Duchess of Hanbury, Cecil Rankin, Robert
Baldwin, Rt. Hon. Stanley Hannon, Patrick Joseph Henry Rea, Walter Russell
Banks, Sir Reginald Mitchell Harbord, Arthur Reid, Capt. A. Cunningham-
Bernays, Robert Hartland, George A. Reid, David D. (County Down)
Birchall, Major Sir John Dearman Hellgers, Captain F. F. A. Remer, John R.
Bird, Ernest Roy (Yorks., Skipton) Heneage, Lieut-Colone, Arthur P. Roberts, Sir Samuel (Ecclesall)
Boulton, W. W. Herbert, Capt. S. (Abbey Division) Robinson, John Boland
Bowyer, Capt. Sit George E. W. Hills, Major Rt. Hon. John Waller Ropner, Colonel L.
Braithwaite, J. G. (Hillsborough) Holdsworth, Herbert Ross, Ronald D.
Briscoe, Capt. Richard George Hope, Sydney (Chester, Stalybridge) Ross Taylor, Walter (Woodbridge)
Broadbent, Colonel John Hornby, Frank Runge, Norah Cecil
Brocklebank, C. E. R. Horsbrugh, Florence Russell, Albert (Kirkcaldy)
Brown, Ernest (Leith) Howard, Tom Forrest Russell, Alexander West (Tynemouth)
Browne, Captain A. C. Howitt, Dr. Alfred B. Russell, R. J. (Eddisbury)
Buchan, John Hume, Sir George Hopwood Rutherford, Sir John Hugo (Liverp'l)
Buchan-Hepburn, P. G. T. Hunter, Dr. Joseph (Dumfries) Salmon, Sir Isidore
Burgin, Dr. Edward Leslie Hunter-Weston, Lt.-Gen. Sir Aylmer Samuel, Sir Arthur Michael (F'nham)
Burnett, John George Jackson, Sir Henry (Wandsworth, C.) Samuel, Rt. Hon. Sir H. (Darwen)
Butt, Sir Alfred James, Wing-Com. A. W. H. Samuel, Samuel (W'dsworth, Putney)
Campbell, Sir Edward Taswell (Brmly) Jamieson, Douglas Scone, Lord
Campbell-Johnston, Malcolm Joel, Dudley J. Barnato Shakespeare, Geoffrey H.
Caporn, Arthur Cecil Johnstone, Harcourt (S. Shields) Shaw, Helen B. (Lanark, Bothwell)
Cazalet, Thelma (Islington, E.) Jones, Henry Haydn (Merioneth) Shaw, Captain William T. (Forfar)
Christie, James Archibald Jones, Lewis (Swansea, West) Simon, Rt. Hon. Sir John
Clarke, Frank Ker, J. Campbell Sinclair, Mal. Rt. Hn. Sit A.(C'thness)
Clayton, Sir Christopher Kerr, Hamilton W. Skelton, Archibald Noel
Cochrane, Commander Hon. A. D. Kimball, Lawrence Slater, John
Collins, Rt. Hon. Sir Godfrey Law, Sir Alfred Smith, Bracewell (Dulwich)
Colman, N. C. D. Lees-Jones, John Somerset, Thomas
Colville. Lieut.-Colonel J. Leighton, Major B. E. P. Somervell. Donald Bradley
Cook, Thomas A. Lennox-Boyd, A. T. Southby, Commander Archibald R. J.
Cooke, Douglas Little, Graham-, Sir Ernest Spears, Brigadier-General Edward L.
Copeland, Ida Llewellyn-Jones, Frederick Spencer, Captain Richard A.
Crooke, J. Smedley Locker-Lampoon, Rt. Hn.G.(Wd.Gr'n) Spens, William Patrick
Crookshank, Capt. H. C. (Gainsb'ro) Lovat-Fraser, James Alexander Stanley Mon. O. F. G. (Westmorland)
Croom-Johnson. R. P. Mabane, William Stones, James
Cruddas, Lieut.-Colonel Bernard Macdonald, Sir Murdoch (Inverness) Storey, Samuel
Curry, A. C. McEwen, Captain J. H. F. Stourton, Hon. John J.
Davies, Mal. Geo. F.(Somerset, Yeovll) McKeag, William Strauss, Edward A.
Dixon, Rt. Hon. Herbert McKie, John Hamilton Strickland, Captain W. F.
Duckworth, George A. V. Maclay, Hon. Joseph Paton Sueter, Rear-Admiral Murray P.
Duncan, James A. L. (Kensington, N.) Macmillan, Maurice Harold Sugden, Sir Wllfrid Hart
Eden, Robert Anthony Macquisten, Frederick Alexander Summersby, Charles H.
Edmondson, Major A. J. Mallalieu, Edward Lancelot Tate, Mavis Constance
Elliston, Captain George Sampson Mander, Geoffrey le M. Templeton, William P.
Elmley. Viscount Margesson, Capt. Rt. Hon. H. D. R. Thompson, Luke
Emmott. Charles E. G. C. Marsden, Commander Arthur Thomson, Sir Frederick Charles
Emrys-Evans, P. V. Mason, David M. (Edinburgh, E.) Titchfield, Major the Marquess of
Entwistle, Cyril Fullard Mason, Col. Glyn K. (Croydon, N.) Todd, Capt. A. J. K. (B'wick-on-T.)
Erskine, Lord (Weston-super-Mare) Mayhew, Lieut.-Colonel John Todd, A. L. S. (Kingswinford)
Erskine-Bofst. Capt. C.C.(Blackpool) Merriman, Sir F. Boyd Touche, Gordon Cosmo
Essenhigh, Reginald Clare Mills, Major J. D. (Now Forest) Vaugban-Morgan, Sir Kenyon
Everard, W. Lindsay Mllne, Charles Wallace, John (Dunfermline)
Flelden, Edward Brocklehurst Moore, Lt.-Col. Thomas C. R. (Ayr) Ward, Lt.-Col. Sir A. L. (Hull)
Foot, Isaac (Cornwall, Bodmin) Morgan, Robert H. Ward, Irene Mary Bewick (Wallsend)
Fraser, Captain Ian Morris, Owen Temple (Cardiff, E.) Ward. Sarah Adelalde (Cannock)
Fuller, Captain A. G. Morris-Jones, Dr. J. H. (Denbigh) Warrender, Sir Victor A. G.
Ganzonl. Sir John Morrison. William Shepherd Wedderburn, Henry James Scrymgeour-
Gault, Lieut.-Col. A. Hamilton Mulrhead, Major A. J. Wells, Sydney Richard
Gilmour, Lt.-Col. Rt. Hon. Sir John Munro, Patrick Williams, Charles (Devon, Torquay)
Gledhill, Gilbert Nation, Brigadier-General J. J. H. Williams, Herbert G. (Croydon, S.)
Gluckstein, Louis Halle Nicholson. Godfrey (Morpeth) Windsor-Clive, Lieut.-Colonel George
Goldie, Noel B. Nunn, William Wise, Alfred R.
Goodman, Colonel Albert W. O'Donovan, Dr. William James Womersley, Walter James
Gower, Sir Robert Pearson, William G. Worthington, Dr. John V.
Granville, Edgar Post, Charles U.
Graves, Marjorie Perkins. Walter R. D TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—
Gretton, Colonel Rt. Hon. John Petherick, M. Captain Austin Hudson and
Mr. Blindell.

Bill read the Third time, and passed.

Original Question again proposed.

Motion made, and Question, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again," put, and agreed to.—[Captain Margesson.]

Committee report Progress; to sit again To-morrow.