§ Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Captain Margesson.]
§ 3.36 p.m.
§ Mr. LANSBURYIn ordinary circumstances we would not have asked for this discussion to-day. We would have preferred to let the questions that we discussed on the Vote of Censure the other night dealing with the Government's White Paper on armaments remain until after the visit of the Foreign Secretary to Berlin had been concluded. Circumstances have arisen, however, which, in our judgment, make it necessary that we should take this opportunity of putting before the House some considerations on the question of peace and disarmament. We are fully conscious that normally it might be stated, and with some truth, that during the last 10 days the subject has on the Estimates, and previously, been fairly discussed, but the events of the last five or six days are such that we feel that before the right hon. Gentleman goes to Berlin we should put some considerations which we desire to emphasise in this country and abroad. On a previous occasion, I told the House that I attended the first meeting of the Peace Conference that was held in Paris. At that conference one of the most notable speeches was made by the late President Wilson, who said that in the work they had in hand the one object they must try to attain was to satisfy the common people of the world and bring about peace and security.
We are living in the twenty-first year after the beginning of the Great War and the seventeenth after its conclusion. I believe that the events that happened in Germany sent through this country last Saturday afternoon and evening and Sunday such a feeling of shock, and almost despair, as is only to be compared with what happened in August, 1914. We are of opinion that, unless something is speedily done by the statesmen of Europe and the world, not only will the common people not be satisfied but that very large numbers of them will not be alive to be either dissatisfied or satisfied. The mentality in this country and abroad is a mentality of war. [HON. MEMBERS: 1394 "No!"] I propose this afternoon, if I can help it, not to say anything outrageously provocative, but can anyone deny that every Government is saying exactly the same thing: "We are not arming for war, we are arming for peace, and only because other nations are arming"? No one will deny that, and we have only to read extracts from the foreign Press, translated, and from our own Press, to know that most people are feeling that with Europe more fully armed with more devastating weapons than ever before we are not marching towards peace but towards war. Nations do not arm for amusement; statesmen do not pile up aeroplanes and guns and shells merely in order that they may be looked at. Statesmen do not ask tremendous sacrifices of their own people unless there is something which they fear, and it is fear that is in the world to-day.
Like the Attorney-General, I spend my week-ends in the country, and I tell the House that never in all my experience, except at the beginning and during the War, have I ever found such a feeling of expectation that something dreadful was going to happen as I did last week-end; and I believe that anyone who got into touch with ordinary people in the train or in the street must have experienced what I did. I wish to ask the House whether the time has not arrived for us to take some new steps. I am speaking in the presence of men—I was just looking to see whether the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) was present—who have attended various conferences since 1919 up to the present moment. I have sat in the House and joined in welcoming them home. Our hopes have risen very high, and we have said to ourselves, "Thank God, we are now on the road to something like disarmament and peace." I am not standing here to attempt to apportion blame or to rebuke anyone, or to do anything to censure any individual or any group of individuals, but I am here to say that we who represent the people of Britain have a responsibility. [HON. MEMBERS: "You!"] By "we" I meant all of us. We ought to be doing something more than has already been done.
In spite of all we have been doing, however well-intentioned it was, and however much we have striven, the result is what we see to-day. Every Government 1395 puts it on to somebody else. The Germans put it on to the Versailles Treaty; the French put it on to something else. The Russian Government, which in spite of what some people may say of them I am sure do not want to fight outside Soviet Russia, defend their armaments on the plea that they fear attack either in the Far East or along the shores of the Baltic. The end of it all up to the moment is that Germany has, as it were, flung down a challenge to the world, and is demanding what is called equality of status in the comity of nations, an equality of status which not only recognises her as a great Power with equal rights and privileges with other nations but the right to tear up the Treaty and to embark on a policy of armaments which everyone in this House and in the world knows must inevitably lead to a race in armaments which must plunge us ultimately into war and, as has often been said, the destruction of civilisation. We think quite definitely that in these circumstances the Government—I will not say the Government, I will say this House—ought to recognise that we have an imperative duty to make the very greatest effort possible to save civilisation. I am not going to attempt to argue unilateral disarmament, but the real difficulty about armament is that once you say that you are bringing your forces up to a certain point those who think you may be a potential enemy feel that they must go above that point. We think that in going to Berlin the Foreign Secretary should go there with an altogether new mandate.
I have often said that Great Britain is the greatest imperialist Power in the world to-day, that is to say, our Dominions stretch right over the world. We have been performing a great service during the years of our existence in opening up the great waterways of the world, and in any question of disarmament we have, I admit, the most to give. I want us to give that—full measure, pressed down, running over. I want our country to take the lead in saying to the world: "We will lay on the altar of disarmament this business of aerial warfare. We are willing to give up for good and for all, with other nations"—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"] Yes. I want us to fling down a challenge on the conference table, that Great Britain will be ready 1396 to give up aerial warfare everywhere, and will also be willing that the great airways of the world shall be internationalised and open for the aircraft of the world, together with the fuelling stations and everything necessary for the carrying on of civil aviation.
I want our country to say that we are willing—we, the great British Empire, are willing—to take our chance of what will happen in an earnest endeavour to put an end once and for all to this foul business of fighting from the skies. I believe, if we did this, that most other things would fall into their proper proportion. When I say "I," I am speaking for all my friends too. We feel this terrifically, because we are convinced that if we start with Germany armed, admitting her right to arm and getting her into the League armed, with France armed and the world armed again, this deadly business of aerial warfare will come again, and will once more threaten the whole future of mankind. It is said very often, and it has been said here before, that other people will not do this. I repeat that we want that our country shall make the challenge. If we are not successful, we cannot help it. At least, we shall have tried. We shall have done what one nation can do to show the world that we are really in earnest on that side of the question.
§ Mr. LANSBURYThe point I made is, I think, quite understood. I want to go one step farther. We who sit here cannot agree that the Foreign Secretary shall go to Berlin and say that our country agrees to the rearmament of Germany in the fashion in which she has been rearming. I am not asking that the Foreign Secretary to-day shall give us an answer on that, although I hope I shall hear something about the first proposition, but we want to make it absolutely clear that our view of pacts, and our view of peace or preparations for peace, are based not on rearmament but on disarmament. The country outside is distressed beyond measure, those who are thinking about these questions, that after 20 years we should now be discussing peace pacts and peace treaties on the basis of each nation piling up more arms in order, as is sometimes said, to be ready to do their quota 1397 in defence of the pacts, treaties, covenants and the rest of them. I do not believe that anyone ever imagined, when we started out on this question of bringing security, that we would reach the stage which we have now reached, when we say to one another, as nations: "We will sign this, agreeing not to attack one another, and agreeing to defend each other," and then immediately go home and commence arming against each other, or for each other, however you choose to put it. Ordinary people in the street who have to bear this burden do not understand that kind of reasoning, and I do not either. So I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will do his best to make the nations of Europe understand that the policy of His Majesty's Government is peace based on disarmament and not upon rearmament.
There is one other question I want to raise. Nations fear one another for reasons. There is reason in unreason very often. We are convinced, and we want to put this on record, that the Government, and not our Government only but all Governments, committed a great blunder in not reassembling that economic conference which broke up a little while ago. We have all made fun, or tried to do so, about certain happenings there, but there is not a man who has thought about these things but knows perfectly well that until the economic relationships between nations are put on a different footing from what they are to-day we shall never have peace or security. Therefore, we hope that the Government will not only devote their minds and attention to the disarmament that comes from lowering your effective force for fighting, but that they will devote their minds to bringing about such a world conference as will deal with the questions which divide nations and bring about quotas, tariffs, restrictions and so on. There is not an hon. Member or right hon. Member opposite but would agree that if we could get the world to mobilise raw material and to organise markets, that would be an infinitely better thing than all this fiddling with tariffs and quotas and the rest of it.
The real thing is that we want to get the Government to take the line that there is room enough in the world for all, raw material enough in the world for all, and markets in abundance for all, if they were 1398 properly organised. The world is faced with an economic condition which is not made by God or nature, but has grown up haphazard into a rather chaotic system, and which now calls for the highest wisdom of the statesmen and others who rule in the world. We want the Government, instead of giving so much time to what we consider is the secondary part of the problem, to get down to the consideration of a fundamental of the problem. This I would say in conclusion: I do not believe anybody in any country really wants war. I do not believe there are any people who enjoy killing. I know there are brutes in the world, but I am speaking of nations. "You cannot indict a nation." I think it was Burke who said that and it is true. There are brutes, there are people, who appear to be outside the pale everywhere, but the common, ordinary people in the world want to live in peace and harmony with one another. The "Times" the other day gave a report of a football match in Paris. A wonderful story was told. I read another one to-day of French and German horsemen in Berlin. It proves that if you ask the ordinary people, all that they want of one another is the opportunity of exchange in sports, to emulate one another, or to interchange their goods with one another. What stands in the way? I believe it is the bankruptcy of statesmanship which stands in the way everywhere. We stick to-the old ideas. We stick to the notion that in some way the evil of someone else may be our good, or that our good cannot be obtained unless it is at the cost of someone else. We do not believe that.
I want, finally, to say that while there are not many men here of my age, there are some who have lived through perilous, terrible days. A big price was paid in 1914–18, and the cry then was that only by those means could we destroy militarism. You cannot cast out war by war. You can only cast out war by the way of peace, and in no other way, and all the world, and ourselves especially, had better face up to that. In the name of my friends and myself, I appeal to this House not to let the days and months slip away until we find ourselves once more plunged into a war to destroy militarism. Let us destroy it now, by putting it out of our hearts, and putting in its place not merely the love of peace but 1399 the way of peace; and let us say that at all costs we will find that way, and we will find it not merely for the benefit of the British people, but the people of the whole world.
§ 4.4 p.m.
§ Sir HERBERT SAMUELThe right hon. Gentleman has spoken to the House to-day, and to the country, with all his accustomed sincerity, and, I think, with even more than his accustomed force. He has expressed sentiments which must find an echo in the hearts of all of us. We must all desire that these general ideas of peace and disarmament, and the abolition particularly of aerial warfare, should come into the sphere of international politics, and result in something definitely accomplished. I think that to-day the House will not wish to engage in any general, protracted or controversial Debate, although I confess that I could very much desire to take advantage of this opportunity to offer some reply to a speech that was delivered ten days ago by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham (Sir A. Chamberlain), in which I was unfortunate enough to suffer under his animadversions—a speech very effective at the moment, but which, I venture to think, would be open to easy reply on some occasion perhaps more suitable than to-day. To-day we are all thinking of the closely impending visit of the Foreign Secretary to Berlin. And we are very conscious that a Parliament cannot negotiate, that an assembly of 615 Members cannot draft protocols. It is only Ministers who can negotiate, and while we in this House may be able, in some degree, to convey what we think are the broad desires of the nation, it is for the Government to act, and for us to judge the Government by the results that are obtained.
Our first duty to-day, I think, is a negative one. It rests on all of us to do nothing and to say nothing that is likely to hamper or embarrass the Foreign Secretary in the most difficult and momentous negotiations in which he is about to engage. The right hon. Gentleman who has just spoken in no degree used language of exaggeration when he described the effect upon the mind of the British people of the declaration of Germany last Saturday. There has been here, and, I am sure, also in 1400 other countries, a widespread feeling of alarm, of resentment, and, indeed, of anger at this event, and it is natural that the first reaction should be a desire to enter an immediate protest, and, perhaps, an indictment. Those—and there are very many in this country—who feel a deep aversion from many of the features of the present regime in Germany, which exalts force over justice, entertain even more than others this natural sentiment which I have just expressed. Natural these sentiments are, but we have to consider whether merely to vent them will lead to any substantial and useful result. The greatest service that Great Britain can render to France at this juncture is to secure effective results towards the objects which we have in common, and I am inclined to think that during the last year or two we might have effected more if we had proceeded more than we have done on our own initiative and in our own way.
I believe it has been a mistake in these prolonged negotiations for one group of nations to act as a group, and to agree among themselves, not indeed upon the text of proposed documents, but upon the general principles of pacts and declarations, and then, as a group, to make those agreements public to all the world, and afterwards to present them to the other party, namely, to Germany, to be accepted, or rejected or amended. That procedure has not proved very successful hitherto, and I am not disposed to criticise His Majesty's Government for having on the present occasion taken a somewhat different course. I can well understand that this has evoked a feeling elsewhere of annoyance. This country, unhappily, has sometimes a reputation in other lands of unreliability, and occasionally we are accused of perfidy. I think the reason is that the British nation has been trained, by long centuries of experience, to try to look at these great matters from other people's point of view. That quality is a sign of strength and wisdom in a nation, but when we do that, those who have been, and are, and will be acting with us, fail to understand our attitude, and think that we are weakening, or abandoning the standpoint which we have taken in common.
We have done it in our own Imperial affairs. When great crises have arisen 1401 in Canada, in earlier days, or in South Africa, we have tried to understand the other people's point of view, and to meet whatever is reasonable in it, and by such procedure we have usually arrived at a settlement. Where we have not done that, as in the case of the Irish, we have failed; and if we do not do it in the case of the Indians to-day, we shall fail there. Never was this quality more necessary than in these days in connection with Germany. Undoubtedly, the position stated in the French note just published is, from the juridical point of view, unanswerable, and if the matter were merely one of international law there could be no two opinions as to what the judgment must be. But the events of the last 16 years have undermined the moral basis on which any juridical action might be taken. The neglect of the great allied Powers to reduce effectively, and on a large scale, their own armaments, has, as I say, taken away the foundation for any action that might otherwise be taken at this moment. We declare that this country could never agree to unilateral disarmament for itself, and the French say the same. We declare that unilateral disarmament would be contrary to our own honour, and would imperil our own safety. We are not likely to be willing to take any strenuous action in order to enforce unilateral disarmament upon another people, and therefore it has long been apparent that Part V of the Treaty of Versailles, failing general disarmament throughout Europe, could not have remained indefinitely as a feature of the international life of Europe. That is of the essence of the present situation.
But when that has been said, not all has been said—far from it. That is the present phase in which we see the liquidation of the impossible position created by the Treaty of Versailles. But what is to be the next phase? We all know that there is a school of thought in Germany which has a poor, indeed a contemptuous, opinion of all that is summed up in the words "a collective system of control." They may cynically pay it lip-service for the time being, in order to keep the attention of others occupied while they arm and re-arm more and more in order to make themselves wholly self-reliant and independent. They are not ready to take any genuine part in working a collective 1402 system of international control, or, if they came into it, they would come in with the concealed intention of showing that it is futile, and perhaps helping to make it so. As soon as they were strong enough, they would be prepared to declare that they had no intention of accepting any agreed limitation, but would be determined to arm to the utmost extent possible according to their numbers and resources. They do not fear a race of armaments, because they are sure that they would be able to win it. And let the House remember this one point, that while this country is terribly handicapped financially in any measures of self-defence it may require to take, by the enormous national debt which rests upon its shoulders—£7,000,000,000 and more—Germany, through the inflation of currency and other measures, has almost wiped out its pre-war and war debt, and has a debt at the present time in the neighbourhood of £600,000,000 or thereabouts, compared with the £7,000,000,000 on which we do, or should, pay interest and sinking fund.
This school of thought in Germany attaches importance to the ideas of might, of struggle and of victory, thinking that these alone are the things worth while in human life; seeking power for the sake of power, and predominance for the glory of predominance, and holding the idea that the warrior is the only hero. Weltherrschaft oder Niedergang—world lordship or downfall. These ideas are based upon the philosophy of Neitzsche and the politics of Treitschke, and, we know, are exceedingly powerful among a very large body of that virile nation. We can well imagine their saying, not publicly, but in their hearts, "We have been successful in shaking off the yoke of this dictated treaty; the circle surrounding us has been broken; Britain and France have fallen out, and it is clear once more that a single resolute united nation is more than a match for five or six quarrelling Powers, each split into a number of irreconcilable political parties." We should be foolish indeed if we were to blind our eyes to its existence. It may be now, or it may become, dominant in Germany, and in this critical hour it is right that warning voices should be raised in this and in other Parliaments that those who hold these views in Germany are profoundly misunderstanding 1403 the situation if they think that the British people are either ignorant of or indifferent to it. Equality of status for Germany, yes; military predominance, no. It is certain that the next phase will be this: If those ideas which I have described become predominant in Germany, the neighbouring countries will draw more closely together, not for the sake of hostile encirclement of Germany, but for their own mutual protection. There is a maxim which that school in Germany would be well advised to remember:
He who makes many afraid of him has himself many to fear.Within each nation there will come about a consolidation of opinion of people of all parties, and those who most hate war and militarism will be not the least ready to join in the defence of the collective system which they regard as the only alternative to a lasting world anarchy. Let Germany, therefore, having insisted upon and secured the liquidation of the impossible position under the Treaty of Versailles, not think of defying world opinion for a second time. Let her rejoin the comity of nations; let here return to the League, and let her work with others for the maintenance of that peace which is essential to the welfare of her own people as of all the other peoples in the world. I trust that the outcome of the visit of the Foreign Secretary may be that, after an interval for negotiation and discussion, the interrupted work of the Disarmament Conference may be resumed, and perhaps on a new basis. Let us hope especially that those measures dealing with air fighting to which the Leader of the Opposition has referred may secure again a prominent place. We should deeply regret that the League of Nations should become, or even have the appearance of becoming, nothing more than a collective council of the Powers allied in the War. It is essential that its structure should be completed.We in this House have, of course, our domestic differences and controversies on some of these questions, and it is right and wholesome that it should be so. A House of Commons which only applauded the Government of the day, and never criticised it, even when Members thought that criticism was required, would be of small value either to the nation or, indeed, to the Government itself. We on these benches must maintain, 1404 and will maintain, the right, which we also regard as the duty, of criticising the conduct of diplomatic affairs and the absence of the results which we have desired should be obtained. But when the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs of the day, whoever he may be and whatever may be the colour of the Government of which he is a Member, goes abroad on difficult and momentous negotiations in pursuit of objects which are common to all of us, he goes as the emissary of the nation, and he ought to be assured in this House that he has behind him the full force of combined national support.
§ 4.20 p.m.
§ The SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Sir John Simon)When on Monday last the Leader of the Opposition gave notice that he wished the opportunity for a debate to be provided on this subject this week, before the Berlin visit was undertaken, there were, I suspect, other Members besides myself who doubted very much whether a debate here to-day would be of public advantage. Nothing, if I may presume to say so, could have been better calculated to respect the public interest than the way in which the two right hon. Gentlemen who have spoken have framed their speeches. The Leader of the Opposition made an appeal, all the more impressive because of its sincerity and its simplicity of statement, and the Government are greatly indebted both to him and to my right hon. Friend who has just sat down for abstaining, as they have, entirely from words which would complicate an admittedly very difficult task. Certainly, for me, this occasion greatly restricts what can be usefully or wisely said on behalf of His Majesty's Government to-day. There are occasions when we are all disposed to feel, and more particularly to feel about one another, that it is well to abstain even from good words.
After all, we hope to have in a very few days' time a frank discussion with the Chancellor of Germany—for the Berlin visit calls for complete frankness; and a discussion of that sort cannot be preceded by a public rehearsal at Westminster. And there is another point. It is well understood in this House and outside that this series of visits about to be undertaken by the Lord Privy Seal and myself to Berlin, Moscow and Warsaw, are exploratory in character. 1405 They are for the very purpose which was well defined just now by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Darwen (Sir H. Samuel) when he said that what you had to do was to inquire and learn the points of view of others rather than to reach a precise position of your own and then present it to other people to accept. Of course, the time will come when whatever may be the outcome of these visits will be considered hereafter, and I shall not be found then willing to urge upon the House a restraint which I do urge to-day.
I think it would be useful, before these visits take place, to remind the House, and to take the opportunity of reminding the country outside, how it has come about that the proposal for this visit to Berlin has been accepted. Everybody realises that the suggestion emerged from what are called the London conversations, and from the joint communiqué that was issued on the 3rd February, after we had had here in London, British Ministers and French Ministers, two days of very fruitful discussion. If the House would allow me, I would quote three very short passages from the London communiqué which was then issued. First, the opening words were that the object of that meeting was
to promote the peace of the world by closer European co-operation … and to remove those tendencies which, if unchecked, are calculated to lead to a race in armaments and to increase the dangers of war.Secondly, in the course of this declaration at the beginning of last month, the British and French Ministers set out that the progress must be continuedby means of the direct and effective cooperation of Germany";and near the close of the document there is a statement which is well worth quotation again:They earnestly desire that all the countries concerned should appreciate that the object of this proposal is to reinforce peace—the sole aim pursued by the two Governments.That was the origin of the visit which is now about to take place. Some 10 days later the German Government published its reply, and in that reply it proposed an Anglo-German meeting. It is sometimes the impression that we have dealt with the matter entirely ourselves, without the help and consideration of others, but that is not so. Let me just 1406 give the dates. We received that communication on the 15th February, and considered it. Before we answered it we communicated with both the French and the Italian Governments. We received from both those Governments an answer expressing their approval of the visit proposed, and it was after getting that intimation of approval that I had the duty of stating to the House—and I took the first opportunity here in the House of making the announcement, at the Monday sitting on the 25th February—that we had accepted the German invitation, and that the French and Italian Governments had approved of the course of action proposed. Not only so, but before the dates originally fixed for the Berlin visit I had the opportunity, through being in Paris, of having a personal consultation with the French Government, and I think it is quite clear that the decision which was arrived at to pay this visit to Berlin was one which was approved, not only at home, but abroad.I would like in a sentence or two to point out to the House the two considerations which I thought then and which I think now are vital. The first is this: There had been a meeting, a bilateral meeting, a meeting of two Governments in Rome, the French and the Italian. There had been a meeting, indeed more than one, bilateral again, in Paris. There had been a meeting—the one to which I have just referred—here in London, all of them meetings between two Governments, not always the same Government. There had been no meeting with Germany. And here we were issuing this London Declaration, in which, as I have just reminded the House, we said that the time had come for pursuing these efforts by means of the direct and effective cooperation of Germany, and we received from Germany the answer that they recognised the fair and the friendly tone of this document and invited us to come.
That was the first consideration which I thought at the time was a very strong and indeed an overwhelming reason, for deciding on this visit. The second consideration was, before you undertake a visit of this gravity you must have some clear understanding of what is the scope and the purpose of the discussion. Mere general compliments, just like mere 1407 generalities on so many other things, will not carry the matter materially further, and therefore, even after the exchanges which I have just described between various capitals—we were not yet satisfied, and we addressed ourselves again to the Germans in order that we might have it made entirely clear that the scope and purpose of the meeting which they proposed was not to be limited to some particular item raised in the London Communiqué but was to have the full width of subject matter dealt with in that communique, and indeed was to have the fourfold basis, exchange of views on the subject of security, exchange of views on the subject of armaments, exchange of views on the subject of the return of Germany to the League of Nations, and exchange of views on the subject of the proposed Air Pact. It was only when we had the assurance that it was intended on the German side that the discussions should be as wide as that, that we communicated with other Governments and reached conclusions, and let the House observe this, because this is the point, that not only were those four topics thus marked down, but it was the basis of our proposed meeting that they should be discussed with a view ultimately to reaching a solution by agreement.
It was in those circumstances that the event occurred at the end of last week to which the Leader of the Opposition referred in such grave, and, I think, such appropriate terms just now. He was not exaggerating at all when he said that all over this country the German announcement of last Saturday came as a profound shock. It has inevitably provoked protests from this Government and the French Government, and the Italian Government, but I want to put to the House—and I shall of course, do it in the most measured language—what I think is the real point of the difficulty which has been raised in so many minds by that declaration a few days ago. Of course, there is a long history behind all this, and we should indeed be foolish if we forgot that history. Nothing that I am saying is designed to prejudice any issue or to dismiss any grievance on any side, but for the purpose of this meeting the real point is that the object of the impending discussions was to promote adjustment by agreement. I must say that that is 1408 the very reverse of adjustment by unilateral pronouncement, and a very grave question arises as to the proper course to be taken. Everybody can see—I should do no good if I attempted to suppress so obvious a reflection—that unilateral denunciation, whatever the explanation may be, inevitably raises questions as to the value of agreements, and that is a very bad preparation for future agreements.
I am sure that everybody will agree that in those circumstances we were bound to protest, but I present to the House the view—and I trust that it will be approved—that, none the less, the course which we have tried to take with reference to this most grave event is the wiser course. To refuse to go, to cancel your engagement, why Sir, it leads you nowhere. We demanded and obtained an assurance that the scope of the conversations which I have already described should be in no way restricted. We are satisfied that the present state of suspicion and unrest in Europe cannot be allayed without securing by negotiation and agreement a result on all the four matters which I have mentioned, and in those circumstances, adding that reservation and protest, we have taken the view—I believe it to be the true view, and I am sure it is the long view—that it is neccessary and right to continue this visit.
But there is one more observation that I must make about the German announcement. It is not only the date of the announcement; it is the nature and contents of the announcement which throw such a disturbing light on the prospect of settlement by agreement. Nobody would wish that we should enter upon figures to-day, but this is the point to be borne in mind, the figure indicated by that declaration for German effectives is so large, is so considerable an advance over figures suggested less than a year ago, and indeed exceeds what any Power in Western Europe at the present time could match. That, as has been pointed out in our despatch to Germany, raises grave doubts as to whether, if such figures were persisted in, agreement with some of Germany's neighbours would be possible.
I trust that I have spoken with discretion but with plainness—it is necessary to be plain—about a very serious event, but that does not in our view 1409 affect the desirability of carrying out the Berlin visit. We go there, as everybody knows, as the sincere friends of general peace, determined to do everything that Britain can do to promote it and to secure it, and I will take the opportunity of saying this with great deliberation, by one means or by another means the peace of Europe has to be preserved. We are not going to bear the reproach—the British people I am sure would never willingly do so—of leaving anything undone which might help to make peace more secure by the better means. The object of British policy has been—and this is the better means—to help to bring this great State back into the councils and comity of Europe on terms which are just to her and which are fair and secure for all of us, so that she with her great talents and resources may contribute with a full sense of equal status and dignity to the task which every good European who wants peace has got to share, and that is the task of sustaining and strengthening general peace by good relations and by agreement and by co-operation between neighbours.
The right hon. Gentleman who spoke last said that the Government would be judged by results. Well, the responsibility does not rest entirely upon this island. Other people have to make their contribution too, and Germany will have to make her contribution if we are to agree. That is the better method, and that therefore is the task which I am sure everybody here wants to promote and to sustain. For if that is not the method, then what is the alternative? The alternative is bound to be a far less satisfactory system, a system of select and special combinations for assistance againt the danger in our midst, whereas what we are striving for, what we are all striving for, is increased confidence between all European States, based on firm understanding and general agreement.
Holding those views—and I believe they are views which are shared by practically all my fellow countrymen—it is scarcely necessary to say that we are not contemplating any special agreement between this country and any other. Visiting Berlin, or Moscow or Warsaw does not mean that we have turned our back on Paris, or Rome or Brussels, and, I would add, or Geneva. But a European system 1410 can only be solid if it is comprehensive. Whatever may be the regional agreements which my right hon. Friend below the Gangway pointed out in his speech the other day should underpin, or whatever should be the wider structure of, the League, it is the gaps in the ranks of the League which undermine so much of its strength, and in this effort to promote contribution and co-operation between all, I am sure everybody is glad to note that my right hon. Friend the Lord Privy Seal will be meeting Signor Suvich, representing Italy, and Monsieur Laval in Paris on Saturday, and that after this series of visits which we are undertaking is over, there will be further meetings—how glad we should be if Germany would take part in them—in which, among others, Signor Mussolini himself intends to take part. There can be no misunderstanding more gross than for anybody to suppose that these meetings, wherever they may be, are directed against somebody else. Our object is to get everybody to face the facts and to face them ourselves, and all the facts. For that purpose, I submit to the House that direct contact and complete frankness are the only hopeful methods. Failing to meet, striking people off your visiting list—that is only going to increase the danger of Europe drifting down to the whirlpool.
No one has better reason than my right hon. Friend and I to know the tremendous difficulties of these problems; no one is less tempted than we are to magnify in advance the possibility of good results; no one is more deeply conscious of the importance, the overwhelming importance, of doing our best and of giving every chance for useful results. Whether the results are good or bad, whether they are positive or negative, they will be important. It is no easy road which my right hon. Friend and I are setting out upon, but it is the duty—as the Leader of the Opposition said, the imperative duty—of Britain to undertake the part worthy of our universal devotion to world peace; and in entering upon this new stage of our country's task, I feel confident that we shall undertake our part in it with the good will and the good wishes of the House and the country. For the road that we have chosen, difficult though it be to tread, is the only possible way to better and deeper understanding.
§ 4.49 p.m.
§ Mr. MAXTONI rise partly because I wish to raise a critical voice in the House of Commons. I think that nothing could be worse than the idea that the Foreign Secretary for Great Britain is speaking for a country that is all of one mind and that there are not different angles of approach to this problem. That is the terrifying thing about the position of Hen Hitler in Germany, the terrifying thing about his great diplomatic stroke of this last week-end, announcing his conscription measures, that this voice is heard from Germany and not a single dissent, not a single critical voice, is heard. That is the essence of dictatorship, and if we are going to adopt devices of hush, hush in the British House of Commons, we are arriving at the same end by a different route.
I want to raise my voice here very briefly. I question the desirability of the right hon. Gentleman's visit now. It is all very well to say that it would be foolish to cut these people off our visiting list, that that never does any good. Certainly it was a policy that was pursued for an extended number of years so far as Soviet Russia was concerned. It was believed to be effective in that case, because Soviet Russia had outraged certain principles held by Governments. The German régime has outraged the general standards of civilisation in a way unparalleled. There have been dictators in other countries and in other times, but I never knew yet the dictator who turned round and shot the people who helped to put him in power, within a month or two of his getting into power. It is horrible and revolting. [AN HON. MEMBER: "What about Russia?"] It has never happened in Russia. Never at any time did the Russian Government execute or imprison the people who belonged to what they call the old Bolshevist party. Whatever deviations there may have been, whatever differences there may have been, they never adopted drastic methods towards the men who put them in power. But do not take me off on to that.
We are not merely continuing diplomatic relations, but we are sending our Foreign Secretary on a personal visit over there to discuss, I do not know 1412 what. He is going to speak for Britain. I am a part of Britain, and I have not the faintest idea what he is going to say behind closed doors when he gets to Berlin. I do know that up till now, in the last few days, Great Britain has presented itself to the other nations with whom it was co-operating—Italy, France, and Russia—as having deserted them in a crucial situation. That is the impression that is created in Europe just now, that at this moment, by going to Berlin for friendly conversations, Great Britain has left its three associates, who are all supposed to be working towards common ends, in the lurch. [HON. MEMBERS; "No."] That is not the view of the Foreign Secretary obviously, nor is it the view of those who support the Government, but it is the view that one gathers from the Italian, the French, and the Russian Press. They believe that they have been deserted and that Britain has gone off on a line of its own. That is the impression.
I noticed that in the right hon. Gentleman's speech he prepared us for trivial or negative results. He does not seem to hold out to himself a very optimistic view of the possibilities of his mission, but having destroyed—or I will not say destroyed, but made poorer—the relationship with Italy, France, and Russia by his action in this matter, it will be indeed a pathetic act of foreign diplomacy if he goes to Germany, having reduced his relations with the other countries, and comes back with nothing as a result of that visit. For very many years—or rather, for I do not want to talk as an old man, each year—I have heard Foreign Ministers, aye, and Prime Ministers, making similar speeches, when we sent them off with Godspeed and all our good wishes with them to Berlin, or Vienna, or Warsaw, or somewhere else, and back they came. Conversations had taken place, undoubted progress had been made, and to-day we are facing a widespread rearmament of Europe as a result of all the successful visits and the private conversations that have taken place.
It seems to me that the era of this secret diplomacy is long past, that the public utterance of Herr Hitler last weekend, shouted out to the world, was a greater diplomatic stroke than all the conversations that have taken place during the last 17 years. It has given 1413 him the initiative in world affairs and left all the other nations blundering and wondering where they were, and it has horrified all the peoples. My view, held very strongly, is that diplomacy must not take place behind closed doors and between foreign ministers, but that the voices of the people should be raised and shouted across the frontiers to one another. After all, if the German situation, which I agree is the biggest menace to world peace to-day, is going to be solved, it is going to be solved by the German people. The German people, hammered at this moment down into silence, is not a different German people essentially from those with whom we were in friendly association, believing that they had very similar ideas to our own, a short matter of three or four years ago. That general German point of view still exists, though beaten down and crushed into silence, and British diplomacy, and certainly the diplomacy of the British working class, should be directed towards the end of making the voiceless German workers have a voice again.
§ The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Captain Margesson)I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.
§ Colonel GRETTONrose—
§ 4.59 p.m.
§ Colonel GRETTONI am not going to detain the House for more than a moment, and I very seldom speak, but I want to say that in some respects I am in agreement with the statement just made by the hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton). To some degree the Foreign Secretary has not communicated to the House all we should have liked to hear. He told us something, but not all. He did not tell us what his mission hopes to accomplish. The situation now is not in all respects the same as it was when he made his inquiries and found that the visit which he was intending would be acceptable in Berlin. Since that occurred there have been the announcements made in the last week of the very large increase Germany intends to make, without agreement with anybody, in her armed forces. Those 1414 announcements are not news to those who have troubled to inform themselves about the situation. They are very startling to those who listened to the comforting and soothing speeches and statements as to the limitation of armaments and the policy of the Disarmament Conferences.
In some respects I think it is a good thing that the German Government should have publicly announced their real intention. It has swept away a great deal of the misrepresentation and humbug which has been talked in this country and elsewhere in Europe. What I do regret, and I think it should be expressed by someone in this House, is the very hurried and, indeed, precipitate reply to, the German Note, sent apparently without explanation to, or the previous knowledge of, those Powers with whom there have been conferences and understandings in London. Surely it would have been more in accord with diplomatic procedure and courtesy that the French and Italian Governments should have been made aware of the terms of that communication before it was sent to Berlin.
The impression has undoubtedly been created in this country and on the Continent that in this matter the British Government are not acting in entire accord and conformity with the combined action and understanding believed to have been reached at the conference in London, to endeavour to arrive at some agreement on armaments and on the modification of the Treaty of Versailles with regard to German armaments by the mutual and combined action of several Powers. It is desirable that this should be said, and for that reason I have asked the indulgence of the House. In this matter, the Foreign Secretary and the Government have not entirely commanded the confidence of a good many people in this country, and as the Foreign Secretary truly said what is done in Berlin—whatever it may be—will be scanned and examined critically and with the gravest anxiety. We hope and trust, beyond all, that he will not, in anything to which he may agree, make Britain a sacrifice and victim to European unity.
§ Question, "That this House do now adjourn," put, and negatived.