HC Deb 16 March 1937 vol 321 cc2017-31

Motion made, and Question proposed, That a number of Land Forces, not exceeding 168,900, all ranks be maintained for the Service of the United Kingdom at Home and abroad, exclusive of India and Burma, during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1938.

12.14 a.m.

Mr. Ede

I beg to move, That a number, not exceeding 167,900, all ranks, be maintained for the said Service. The House can hardly have been satisfied with the replies received from the Financial Secretary to a discussion that seemed exceedingly sympathetic to the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary to State in the difficulties that confront him. I am bound to say I never heard a less sympathetic rejoinder. The Opposition could not be expected to be satisfied with the description which the right hon. Gentleman gave of the purposes for which he requires these men. He said we required the Army (1) to protect naval bases abroad; (2) to police the Empire; (3) for the defence of this country, and (4) for the provision of a field force. The last appears to me to be the one on which we have had very insufficient information from either the right hon. Gentleman or his Financial Secretary to-day. We can only imagine this is one of the many subjects which, apparently, are continually under review. I can only hope that the generals who review these matters will arrive rather earlier and more punctually at their reviews than they usually did when I, as a private soldier, had to wait their reviewing of the troops. I well recall an afternoon at Aldershot when we were to be reviewed by a certain Field-Marshal, accompanied by a French officer who had come to England, and although there was snow on the ground the generals arrived well over three hours late. I sincerely hope in these reviews that go on they will realise that the matter of time may be of the very essence of the question.

It is very regrettable, as showing the position in which the Army is placed at the moment in the thoughts of the Government, that we have not had the benefit to-day of the attendance of the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence for one moment as far as I have been able to observe. I have been here nearly every minute since four o'clock yesterday afternoon, and I cannot recall seeing the Minister on the Front Bench for a moment. The position of the field forces surely must have a very vital relationship to the general scheme for what is called the defence of the country? The right hon. Gentleman, in the closing sentences of his speech, tried to make out that there was no difference between the defence of the British Empire and the provision of collective security. I can only imagine that in the conversations that must be going on between this country and certain foreign Powers the contribution that we are to make towards hostilities must from time to time have been discussed. We appear now to be embarking on an attempt to be a Power with arms on a European scale both naval, in the air and in land forces. The right hon. Gentleman said this afternoon—and I was astonished that nobody on his side raised it afterwards—that we had to have a field force that was to be prepared to fight anyone anywhere. I did not hear him say "at any time," but I have no doubt that was a small thing after saying in the present state of affairs in Europe that you are prepared to fight anyone, anywhere. I do ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he is being quite fair to the House and the country when he says that, and then brings forward no further provision for an Army than the numbers which are in this Vote to-day.

The hon. and gallant Member for Altrincham (Sir E. Grigg) appeared to give a very serious analysis of the real striking power that remains in the numbers that are in this Vote, and I did not hear any adequate reply from the Financial Secretary. If we are expected to participate in a European war on the same scale as the War in which we were engaged between 1914 and 1918, is it contended that the provisions in this Vote are anything like adequate? I had imagined from my reading that this country and the Government were now reconciled to the position that, although we might make a very substantial contribution in a European conflict by the use of the Navy and the Air Force, it was not now considered probable that we should again send an Expeditionary Force of anything like the numbers that we had in the field during, let us say, 1917 and 1918. Having used this afternoon the phrase which I have quoted, I think the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State should tell the House whether it is proposed again to attempt to expand our professional Army to an army approaching the size of the great European conscript armies with which we should be confronted if we were prepared to fight anyone anywhere. I suggest to him that he should give the Committee some closer definition of the field force that he has in mind.

I want, also, to deal with the question of the concessions to the troops which the right hon. Gentleman announced this afternoon. It seemed to me that he had been sitting in the canteen on the day before the issue of pay, when nobody had very much money to spend and therefore had larger opportunities for conversation, that he had listened to every one of the soldier's individual grievances and had then instructed the Army Council to remove all of them. I am bound to say that, as far as they go, they are all reforms in the direction that every hon. Member will welcome, but to suggest that they are going to get him out of his recruiting difficulties is, I think, to show a complete misunderstanding of the real cause of those difficulties and the possible ways of overcoming them. If I take my own family as an example with regard to recruiting, I find that from the commencement of the Volunteer movement in 1859, all the male members of my family went into the old Volunteers as a matter of course. I did myself, at the age of 17.

Lieut.-Commander Fletcher

That is why we were never invaded.

Mr. Ede

May I say that my room certainly never looked the same as the room described by the hon. Member for North Bristol (Mr. Bernays) as being the room of a German undergraduate. But we really thought that if the country were invaded, the Volunteers would be a useful part of the Army of defence. During the past few years, every speech to which I have listened on the subject of the difficulties that might confront us in the next war has tended to belittle the role of the Army and to make it appear that the Air Force and the antiaircraft force will be the only things that will count. I think the right hon. Gentleman's announcement to-day that he has had least difficulty about recruiting for the anti-aircraft units is a reinforcement of the line of argument that I am adopting. After all, those who go into the Territorial Force in the way I have described want to be in the row if there is to be one, and if one belittles the role of one of the arms, I do not think one must be surprised if the fellows who are giving up their spare time in order to equip themselves to take part in the defence of the country on the next occasion do not take any very great amount of interest in that task.

My observation shows that there is no difficulty in persuading men to join antiaircraft units, because they believe that, in the event of an invasion, they will be "in the picture" and will take an active part in the defence of the country, if they belong to that branch of the forces rather than to any of the old infantry regiments—even those which have been mechanised. The absence of the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence from this Debate to-day is another example of the position in which the Army is placed; as a result of the attitude towards it of those who are responsible for the supervision of our defences I hope the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War will be able to convince the country that the Territorial Forces, apart from the anti-aircraft units, form an essential part of the defences of this country, and that the campaign of suggestion, in support of the idea that in the next war the only thing we need worry about is the air, whether in offence or defence, will not be further pursued. It has been made to appear that the Army will only play a subsidiary role in a future war. I am an old "foot slogger" and I am old-fashioned enough to believe that you prove your military superiority when your infantry are able to march into the capital of your enemy. I doubt very much, after all that has been said about the role of the Air Force in a future war, whether the role of the infantry will not prove to be very important also.

I would like the right hon. Gentleman to say whether cavalry and horse artillery have now been abandoned as parts of the armed forces of the Crown? Last year when we were discussing these matters several hon. and gallant Mem- bers who had served in cavalry regiments made a series of brilliant charges upon my hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Mr. Tinker) when he attacked the cavalry. To-day the horses have not been brought out of the stables. The lances appear to have been broken and the swords, if they have not been turned into ploughshares, have been turned into spanners. I have not heard one defender of the horse in to-day's Debate. I would ask the right hon. Gentleman, however, whether it did not appear from the recent Italo-Abyssinian fighting that there was still a part for the horse to play in those areas where sand caused a great deal of trouble to the mechanised units? In an Empire as far-flung as ours and with responsibilities as great as ours in different parts of the world, is it certain that the day of the horse is over? Certain experiences of my own in the last War convinced me that the nearer you get to the front line the less valuable are mechanised units. I agree that for bringing provisions and even troops up from the base, mechanised transport may be valuable, but within a certain distance of the front line, horse transport is less liable to disorganisation by enemy artillery fire and other enemy action than mechanised transport. I would like to be assured that if this is one of the subjects which has ceased to be continually under review at the War Office by the Army Council, good grounds have been found for abandoning the use of the horse. I suggest that the mechanised unit of transport, which has been put out of action by military action, is far more difficult to repair under fire, and get going again, than one of the older forms used in the Great War and up to quite recently.

I should like to know about the Officer Emergency Reserve. It has been called the National Reserve by one hon. Member. As a matter of fact, I was in the National Reserve when the late War broke out, and I was embodied back into my old Territorial unit. As far as I know, there is no similar body at the present moment for warrant officers and non-commissioned officers. Is there any reason why the idea of the old National Reserve for warrant officers and non-commissioned officers is not being brought forward at the same time? I am sure that the National Reserve during the five or six years before the last War did a very great deal in keeping together a body of noncommissioned officers and men who proved exceedingly valuable to the country when the War broke out, and it was necessary to have an immediate expansion of the Regular and Territorial Armies. Those men had been meeting from time to time and they already possessed a skeleton organisation which was of considerable assistance to the War Office and the county Territorial associations when they had suddenly to deal with the expansion of the Services.

The present activities of the Secretary for War are, apparently, confined to secure officers in that position. I have never been an officer myself, and I have always held the opinion that warrant officers and non-commissioned officers are, at any rate, very useful in times of stress, danger and crisis in the Army. I should have thought that if it were desirable to have an Officers Emergency Reserve, it would be equally desirable to have a reserve of warrant officers and non-commissioned officers, and that they would have been valuable for the purposes mentioned by the Secretary of State for War. I want to re-echo the plea made yesterday afternoon with regard to the recruiting of officers from the ranks. We get figures of 13 and 15 per cent. at the moment, and I would like to know how many are quartermasters, because I rather rule out from this kind of calculation the noncommissioned officer or warrant officer who is appointed a quartermaster and does not expect to go beyond being a quartermaster, and no one else does. There have been wicked privates who have suggested that one does not need to be anything more than a quartermaster. I have served for three weeks as a regimental quartermaster, and if I had been so for three years I would find it rather difficult to reconcile my conscience with sitting on these benches. I have recommended a very substantial increase in the number of genuine fighting commissions to be given to suitable men from the ranks. After all, the best two armies democracy ever had in the world were commanded by men from the ranks. They were the New Model Army raised by this House during the Civil War and the Army which the French revolution raised after the officers had deserted it.

I well recall that at one meeting I was told that if the Labour party got a majority the officers of the Army would immediately resign their commissions. I said I only hoped they would not be asked to reconsider their action because I was sure it would be possible to replace them by men who would make as good soldiers if the opportunity were afforded to them. Apart from such drastic action, if you are to attract the secondary school boy, and persons of that description, into the Army it must be on the understanding that there is a career open to talents in the Army as there is in the law or other of the learned professions into which these young men can go. The secondary school is a well-established part of our educational system. From them there are scholarships and exhibitions to the universities. They should be regarded as a suitable venue for searching for officers to control a democratic army. I sincerely hope that the Minister will see that commissions will be given not merely to those who desire to be quartermasters, but to men whose ambition it is to be real combatants in the various branches of the Army.

I am not quite sure how the mechanisation of the Army is going to affect the old problem of what is called a "crack regiment." It has always seemed to me that one weakness of our system has been the existence of what is called the crack regiment. I believe that an Army is really most effective when any individual unit can be replaced on a basis of equality by another unit of the same arm of the Service and the existence of the crack regiment in the past has militated against that kind of thing—sometimes one way and sometimes the other. I recall one difficulty I had as a sergeant when three or four men who had served in the infantry found themselves in an estaminet in France with a couple of Coldstreamers and they proceeded to express their opinion of the parentage of these Cold-streamers and the indignity inflicted upon the real fighting soldier by having to be there side by side with them. That criticism convinced me that it was not a regiment which regarded itself as crack that was regarded as crack by others.

I would suggest that the problem of the crack regiment will be very considerably increased by mechanisation because, so far as I can see, if there is one thing which will tend to bring units to a level it will be the equality of mechanisation. I do not believe that the spanner and the other weapons that will be very largely in the hands of the artificers of the mechanised units will be as effective as some of the accoutrements of the cavalry regiments and of the crack regiments of the past. I notice that the Secretary of State for War said that in 1861 a report from a committee of inquiry recommended the abolition of stoppages, and 76 years afterwards he is able to come down to the House and announce that the recommendations having been continuously under review will at last be brought into operation. I hope that the next stage of the requirements he has foreshadowed to the House will not have to wait 76 years before they are also brought into operation.

The defence made by the Financial Secretary to the War Office this evening of the Cardwell system was completely unconvincing after the attack made on the system by the various Service Members in the House. It did not seem to me to evoke a single responsive echo from anyone on his side of the House or from this side. I hope that consideration of the matter will not have to wait 76 years before some Secretary of State for War can come down and say that he proposes to effect alterations. The Secretary of State undoubtedly has a very difficult task to perform but, surely, even with the difficulties that confront him, it is better to carry through the requirements while we are still not engaged in exchanging shot and shell with the enemy than to wait until we are to carry through some of the changes asked for this afternoon. I think that we are entitled to feel that the Army is not getting at the present time the consideration from those responsible for the defence of the country that its importance and its historic past deserve. I believe that if we are unfortunately involved in another war the side on which we are fighting will be saved in the main—

Lieut.-Commander Fletcher

On the main.

Mr. Ede

No it will not be saved on the main even if the hon. and gallant Gentleman gets back on a ship, but it will be saved in the main by the financial resources of this country and the incomparable spirit of the British infantry. I believe that the last War was won in March and April, 1918, when the British infantrymen refused to be beaten in spite of all that seemed to be against them, and to see the Army treated in the way it has been this afternoon by the complete neglect of the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence does not convince me that there is any real thinking done in the Department, and entitles us to regard the proposals of the Government without any degree of confidence.

12.45 a.m.

Sir Ronald Ross

I want to raise some points which are purely Committee points, and I am sure the Committee will sympathise with me in my predicament. The points which I wish to discuss are in connection with the raising of the two extra battalions which come from the North of Ireland. We have been very proud of our recruiting record, which is the best in the United Kingdom. I think that having two more units to which recruits can go will encourage the recruiting, especially if the recruit is among his own people. There are four points I want to bring to the notice of the right hon. Gentleman. In the first place, how is the second battalion of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers to be designated? The old second battalion was the 108th which came from the Madras Europeans. I think the people serving in the regiment would feel more honoured by being the first and second battalion of the 27th Regiment, one of the oldest in the Army, and that would give great satisfaction. My second point is that the promotion in these battalions has been slow because the regiments were reduced to one battalion. I think it has been particularly slow in the Inniskilling Fusiliers and a little better in the Royal Irish Fusiliers. I would like to know whether my right hon. Friend is considering drafting any new senior officers to these regiments, because this would be hard luck on the officers who `have been kept back so much in promotion. I know there was one subaltern who had 19 years service and was still a subaltern. I hope it will not be necessary to put in many senior officers. I would also ask what is the position in regard to reserves. When the two new battalions are made there will be no reserves, and I wonder if any special provision has been made for the time which must elapse before such a reserve can be created.

My final point is to ask where the additional depot that will be necessary for the North of Ireland is to be situated. The present situation is that these two regiments which are being expanded share a depot at Omagh, and then if the Royal Irish Fusiliers go to Armagh, which used to be their depot, and that seems the appropriate place for them, it means that the Royal Irish Rifles will have to have an additional depot. I want to know where that will be. There is a belief that Ballykinlar, which is an excellent training ground but right in the heart of sand hills and far from amenities, is under consideration. I would suggest it would be well worth while to have the depot in Antrim at Carrickfergus where there is a good centre of population, and it would stimulate recruiting in those parts. These are the only points I wish to make, and as they are of some importance in the raising of these two battalions, I would be grateful to my right hon. Friend if he would reply to them.

12.50 a.m.

Mr. Cooper

I am grateful to the hon. Member who has just spoken for raising these points in connection with these two battalions, and I will try to reply to them as briefly as I can. As far as the title of the new battalion of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers is concerned, this battalion was raised to perpetuate the late 2nd battalion of that regiment. It has received the Royal approval as such, and it must therefore be known as the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, which was the 1o8th Regiment, and will retain all the ancient honours and distinctions of that corps. The new battalions cannot be formed unless a certain number of officers are transferred to them from other regiments. That must be apparent to any hon. Member. They cannot avail themselves entirely of the officers who are at present in the old battalion concerned. One battalion cannot furnish all the senior officers for the extra battalion, but such officers as enter the new battalion will join, of course, at their own free will.

Every effort will be made to take into consideration the important points the hon. Member has raised, such as the interests of the junior officers in the battalion. There will, it is anticipated, be no difficulty about Reserves. There are quite a number at present who belong to the existing joint corps of the Inniskilling Fusiliers and the Royal Irish Fusiliers. These will be available to either of the two. The question of the location of depots in Northern Ireland is not yet decided. I can assure the hon. Member that when a decision is taken we will bear carefully in mind the considerations he has put forward, and I hope that our decision when reached will be one that will give satisfaction.

The hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede)—whom I thank for the generous support he gave to the Army this evening—cannot charge me with ever having belittled the role of the Army in any private or public pronouncement, and I am glad to have his whole-hearted support in considering the role of the Army undiminished in its importance. I must say that in the course of his very interesting remarks there seemed to me one or two slight contradictions. Although at first he raised the question of horse artillery and remarked with pleasure on the success which his hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Mr. Tinker) had had in continued attacks on this corps, one might have supposed that he was going to pursue the retreating body of horse cavalry and sprinkle the last of them with machine gun shot as they retired, but to my amazement he seemed to change his tune. He considered it very doubtful if it would be wise to get rid of horse cavalry and he put forward the view that horse cavalry had a very great part to play in modern warfare.

Mr. Ede

I was not talking about cavalry, but about horse transport.

Mr. Cooper

As far as that is concerned, I did inform the House in my first speech that practically the whole of the Artillery is now on a mechanised basis, as are also the whole of the Engineers and the Corps of Signals. I do not share the view expressed by an hon. Member as to the part taken in the Italo-Abyssinian campaign by horse transport. As I indicated in my speech, there had been a certain amount of pack animals used, but these were not horses, and I doubt, on the whole, whether there is any real future for horse transport as against mechanical transport. Of course, there are occasions when it may not be so.

Mr. Lawson

Have we not horse transport serving abroad?

Mr. Cooper

Yes, we have some.

Mr. Ede

The question I asked was whether he could not get from the units sent out near the sphere of the ItaloAbyssinian dispute some indication as to whether in desert warfare mechanised transport was the only form that might be effectual?

Sir Joseph Nall

Surely the right hon. Gentleman is aware of the very considerable scale on which the German army has reorganised and re-equipped its horse transport?

Mr. Cooper

Yes, I am well aware that the German army is still making use of a great deal of horse transport. In reorganising any army on the enormous scale of the present German army, horse transport must be made use of, but when you have to deal with a very small army such as ours, all the army that we have must be highly effective and of the most modern kind throughout. Frankly, I do not think there will be much place for horse transport. It is true that in Abyssinia and elsewhere, many modern forms of motor transport have proved on the first experiment somewhat defective, and from the experience gained in sending reinforcements in the last few years we have learned a great deal as to the difficulties that that kind of transport may meet with in different kinds of country.

The hon. Member also raised the question of the Officers Emergency Reserve and asked me some questions about it. I do not think I can say more than I have said already. The Reserve will be for men between the ages of 31 and 55. They will not be expected to have any training in peace time, but some of them will be given opportunities of improving and bringing up to date their knowledge. As to the suggestion that a similar reserve of non-commissioned officers should be formed, that is an interesting suggestion which I will certainly look into. I am quite sure that if the hon. Member wishes to join the Officers Emergency Reserve, we shall be very pleased to have him.

Mr. Ede

I was never an officer.

Mr. Cooper

I did not quite follow his use of the term "crack regiments." That is a term not known to the War Office and it seemed to me, as applied to some of the very fine cavalry regiments with the oldest traditions, a rather objectionable term. Then the hon. Member asked me once again to define more closely the role of the Army. There, again, I think there was a slight discrepancy between two portions of his speech. He said he hoped never again would we take any part on land in a European war. Later on he said it was quite certain that the final settlement of such a war would be by British infantry.

Mr. Ede

The right hon. Gentleman does not appear to have followed me as closely as I followed him. I said I understood from speeches by right hon. Gentlemen on the other side of the House some months ago that this country would never again be drawn into a European war with our land forces on the same scale as they were in the last War.

Mr. Cooper

I agree with the hon. Member that it is the infantry who will finally decide wars of the future, as they have done in the past, and with his statement, as a great strategic fact, that wars will be won by the troops who march. Other forms of warfare have so far failed to decide the issue in Spain. Although many bombs have been dropped, the invading force has not yet taken possession. Whether we shall ever take part in a European war by the despatch of a field force is a question of great strategic importance. It is one of which I do not think I could suitably enter into a discussion at this late hour; and it is one which, on the

whole, I do not think is very suitable for discussion in the House of Commons. It is a question which, I am sure, does not really affect our problem. I have said that we need a field force. The hon. Member may wish to know what kind of force and what size it should be. I will tell him quite frankly that I think it should be a force of four or five divisions, highly equipped with the most modern form of mechanisation throughout. That force must be prepared to fight—we do not know against whom. If we had suspicions it would be wiser not to voice them in the House of Commons.

The instances I gave in my earlier speech showed the kind of dangers that we have run in the last 12 years and how less than 18 months ago we were within measurable distance of finding ourselves opposing a great modern European Power, not in Europe, but in another part of the world. There are hon. Members who would have urged us to take a line some years ago in Asia against the greatest Power in Asia. All I am asking the Committee to assent to is the principle that we should have as reserves a small, highly-trained force which in an emergency would be used according to the decision of the Government of the day on the advice of their military experts in the place and at the time where it would have the most effective and decisive result on the conduct of the war.

Question put, That a number, not exceeding 167,900, all ranks, be maintained for the said Service.

The Committee divided: Ayes, 53; Noes, 139.

Division No. 112.] AYES. [1.2 a.m.
Alexander, Rt. Hon. A. V. (H'lsbr.) Jagger, J. Smith, Ben (Rotherhithe)
Anderson, F. (Whitehaven) Jenkins, A. (Pontypool) Smith, E. (Stoke)
Barr, J. Jenkins, Sir W. (Neath) Smith, Rt. Hon. H. B. Lees- (K'ly)
Benson, G. Jones, A. C. (Shipley) Smith, T. (Normanton)
Buchanan, G. Lawson, J. J. Sorensen, R. W.
Cooks, F. S. Logan, D. G. Stephen, G.
Daggar, G. McEntee, V. La T. Stewart, W. J. (H'ght'n-le-Sp'ng)
Dalton, H. McGovern, J, Taylor, R. J. (Morpeth)
Ede, J. C. MacMillan, M. (Western Isles) Tinker, J. J.
Edwards, Sir C. (Bedwellty) Mainwaring, W. H. Watson, W. McL.
Fletcher, Lt.-Comdr. R. T. H. Maxton, J. Welsh, J. C.
Frankel, D. Paling, W. Westwood, J.
Garro Jones, G. M. Potts, J. Wilkinson, Ellen
Greenwood, Rt. Hon. A. Price, M. P. Windsor, W. (Hull, C.)
Grenfell, D. R. Pritt, D. N. Woods, G. S. (Finsbury)
Hall, J. H. (Whitechapel) Ritson, J.
Hayday, A. Rowson, G. TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—
Henderson, T. (Tradeston) Sexton. T. M. Mr. John and Mr. Mathers.
Hollins, A. Silverman, S. S.
NOES.
Acland-Troyte, Lt.-Col. G. J. Allen, Lt.-Col. Sir W. J. (Armagh) Balfour, Capt. H. H. (Isle of Thanet)
Albery, Sir Irving Aske, Sir R. W. Balniel, Lord
Allen, Lt.-Col. J. Sandeman (B'kn'hd) Astor, Hon. W. W. (Fulham, E.) Barclay-Harvey, Sir C. M.
Beaumont, Hon. R. E. B. (Portsm'h) Guy, J. C. M. Reid, W. Allan (Derby)
Bernays, R. H. Hannah, I. C. Remer, J. R.
Bossom, A. C. Hannon, Sir P. J. H. Rickards, G. W. (Skipton)
Boulton, W. W. Harbord, A. Ross, Major Sir R. D. (Londonderry)
Bower, Comdr. R. T. Heilgers, Captain F. F. A. Rowlands, G.
Briscoe, Capt. R, G. Herbert, Major J. A. (Monmouth) Russell, S. H. M. (Darwen)
Brown, Rt. Hon. E. (Leith) Holdsworth, H. Salt, E. W
Browne, A. C. (Belfast, W.) Holmes, J. S. Samuel, M. R. A.
Bull, B. B. Hope, Captain Hon. A. O. J. Scott, Lord William
Butler, R. A. Hopkinson, A. Seely, Sir H. M.
Campbell, Sir E. T. Hunter, T. Shaw, Major P. S. (Wavertree)
Cartland, J. R. H. Jones, L. (Swansea W.) Shute, Colonel Sir J. J.
Gary, R. A. Keeling, E. H. Simon, Rt. Hon. Sir J. A.
Channon, H. Kerr, Colonel C. I. (Montrose) Smith, L. W. (Hallam)
Clarke, Lt.-Col. R. S. (E. Grinstead) Kerr, H. W. (Oldham) Smith, Sir R. W. (Aberdeen)
Cobb, Captain E. C. (Preston) Kerr, J. Graham (Scottish Univs.) Southby, Commander A. R. J.
Cooper, Rt. Hn. A. Duff (W'st'r S. G'gs) Lamb, Sir J. Q. Stanley, Rt. Hon. Lord (Fylde)
Crookshank, Capt. H. F. C. Law, R. K. (Hull, S.W.) Stanley, Rt. Hon. Oliver (W'm'l'd)
Cross, R. H. Leckie, J. A. Strauss, E. A. (Southwark. N.)
Crossley, A. C. Leech, Dr. J. W. Strauss, H. G. (Norwich)
Cruddas, Col. B. Liddall, W. S. Stuart, Hon. J. (Moray and Nairn)
Culverwell, C. T. Llewellin, Lieut.-Col. J. J. Sutcliffe, H.
Davies, C. (Montgomery) Loftus, P. C. Taylor, C. S. (Eastbourne)
Davies, Major Sir G. F. (Yeovil) Mabane, W. (Huddersfield) Taylor, Vice-Adm. E. A. (Padd., S.)
Conner, P. W. MoCorquodale, M. S. Thomson, Sir J. D. W.
Dorman-Smith, Major R. H. Macdonald, Capt. P. (Isle of Wight) Titchfield, Marquess of
Duckworth, Arthur (Shrewsbury) McKie, J. H. Train, Sir J.
Duckworth, W. R. (Moss Side) Maclay, Hon. J. P. Tufnell, Lieut.-Commander R. L.
Duggan, H. J. Magnay, T. Turton, R. H.
Duncan, J. A. L. Manningham-Buller, Sir M. Wakefield, W. W.
Dunglass, Lord Margesson, Capt. Rt. Hon. H. D. R. Wallace, Capt. Rt. Hon. Euan
Emmott, C. E. G. C. Maxwell, Hon. S A. Ward, Irene M. B. (Wallsend)
Evans, Capt. A. (Cardiff, S.) Mayhew, Lt.-Col. J. Warrender, Sir V.
Evans, D. O. (Cardigan) Mills, Major J. D. (New Forest) Waterhouse, Captain C.
Everard, W. L. Mitchell, H. (Brentford and Chiswick) White, H. Graham
Fildes, Sir H. Mitcheson, Sir G. G. Williams, H. G. (Croydon, S.)
Findlay, Sir E. Nail, Sir J. Wilson, Lt.-Col. Sir A. T. (Hitchin)
Fleming, E. L. Neven-Spence, Major B. H. H. Winterton, Rt. Hon. Earl
Foot, D. M. Orr-Ewing, I. L. Wragg, H.
Fremantle, Sir F. E. Palmer, G. E. H. Wright, Squadron-Leader J. A. C.
Furness, S. N. Patrick, C. M.
Gibson, C. G. (Pudsey and Otley) Penny, Sir G. TELLERS FOR THE NOES.-
Gridley, Sir A. B. Petherick, M. Lieut. Colonel Sir A. Lambert Ward
Grigg, Sir E. W. M. Procter, Major H. A. and Sir Henry Morris-Jones.
Grimston, R. V. Rankin, Sir R.

Question put, and agreed to.