HC Deb 04 March 1941 vol 369 cc864-79

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."— [Major Dugdale.]

Mr. Price (Forest of Dean)

The House has had a field day on its rights and Privileges in the discussion which has taken place on the Bill which has now received its Third Reading. I hope the House will excuse me if I take it for a few minutes on a small expedition into the same field concerning the rights and Privileges of this House. A Motion put down by a number of Members, including myself, some time ago was recently reprinted on the Order Paper. That Motion called attention to Regulation 18B so far as it affected the arrest and detention of Members of this House. I asked, if similar action was necessary in future, that this House should receive the reasons for the arrest and detention, set forth by a Committee of Privileges appointed by it. This Motion was supported by Members of all shades of opinion. Those of us who put our names to it do not claim any right to be regarded as above the law; nevertheless, we think that the part this House has played in the past in breaking down monopoly powers —the feudal laws of the Middle Ages and the privileges of the King—gives it a certain right and entitles it to a somewhat special position in matters concerning the arrest and detention of its Members under Regulation 18B.

Professor Pollard, in his great work "Evolution of Parliament," goes a long way along these lines when he writes, on page 179: The constitutional struggle of the 17th century was an effort to deprive the Kings of their liberty. Liberties in fact were transferred from the King into Parliament, and while bounds were set to the freedom of the Crown none were imposed on that of Parliament. I do not claim as much as Professor Pollard seems to claim in that statement, but I do say that this House must be on guard against the encroachments on its rights. One of its rights is that this House shall be consulted when the Executive wishes to arrest one of its Members. That surely was the issue in the famous case of the five Members when the House refused to hand them over without reason. That is a right which the House will abandon at its peril. Of course, we admit that the Executive in wartime must have greater powers than it has in peacetime, and for that reason this House has agreed to Regulation 18B, but that does not mean that the House has abandoned its right to have reasons for its Members' arrest, and it was just that which shocked the feelings of many Members when the arrest and detention of one of its Members was made not so very long ago, when it was discovered that the Committee of Privileges appointed to look Into the matter had no power to know anything about the reasons for the arrest.

Therefore, we say in our Motion that a Committee of Privileges appointed in future to inquire into the arrest and detention of any Member should have the right, which was withheld in the case of the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Peebles and Southern (Captain Ramsay), to know the reasons. I know, of course, that there is a point which has to be met. The Home Secretary may say the reasons are not reasons that can be given in public in wartime. We have met the point in the Motion. We do not ask that the whole House should be given the reasons. All we ask is that they should be given to the Committee of Privileges, if necessary in secret, and that the Committee should be under no obligation to pass the information on to the House. In other words, the House will select half a dozen of its most trusted Members who can share knowledge of the reasons with the Executive, and I believe the House would be satisfied if that was done. We realise the position in wartime, and we go a long way towards meeting the wishes of the Executive, but that is the very minimum, that the Home Secretary should have the right to arrest and detain, but that he must give his reasons before the Committee of Privileges. That is the minimum check which the Legislature has the right to claim from the Executive in a time like this. In the Debate that took place on the Report of the Committee of Privileges in the case of the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Peebles, the hon. Member for Central Leeds (Mr. Denman) made a speech containing a passage which I should like to quote, because I think it is important. He said: It is well to be vigilant and to see that the executive power is reasonably exercised, and that is the real control which we can and should exercise in this matter. I commend those words to the House and to the Home Secretary. This implies no lack of confidence in the Home Secretary or any other Member of the Government charged with the duty of operating Regulation 18b. It is a question of principle which transcends persons. I hope, therefore, that the Lord Privy Seal will give me some indication that at some future date the Regulation will be amended. I know that an Advisory Committee has been appointed by the Home Secretary to inquire into and to hear reasons for the arrest and detention of members of the public under Regulation i8b. I claim that the House has the right to ask for a Committee of Privileges to take the place of this Advisory Committee and to hear the reasons and have all the facts disclosed as to why a Member has been arrested and detained. If this is impossible under Regulation i8b, I suggest to the Lord Privy Seal that he should give some indication whether the Regulation could not be amended as soon as possible. I am satisfied that if he can given such an assurance, he will meet the wishes of those who put their names down to my Motion.

Rear-Admiral Beamish (Lewes)

I want to support what has been said by the hon. Member for the Forest of Dean (Mr. Price). I put my name to his Motion and I would like to say how the matter strikes me. Obviously I hold no brief for anybody who has conscientiously or unconscientiously, directly or indirectly worked against the State and subjected himself to the treatment which the hon. and gallant Member for Peebles and Southern (Capt. Ramsay) is now undergoing. I must confess, however, having been a Member of the House for some time, that it has struck me as not in accordance with the dignity of this House and the position it holds in the country and the world that one of its Members should be incarcerated in uncomfortable and undignified circumstances, without any trial and without any public investigation, or any method that will permit this House to know what it is all about, solely upon the word of the Home Secretary. I cannot help saying that that rather smacks of something else than democracy—of the sort of organisation and methods of administration which we see in excelsis on the Continent today. To this hour the House of Commons is unaware of what, if anything, the hon. and gallant Member for Peebles and Southern has actually done.

Everybody must agree in principle that we cannot leave the matter where it is. The antics and activities, the uniforms and the posturings of some of the movements that took place before the war were scandalous and altogether unworthy, and many of the people who acted in that way and who are now shut up deserve, in my view, all they have got. We have in the House a Committee of Privileges drawn from every part of the House and every section of opinion in the House. I cannot help feeling that if a case such as that of the hon. and gallant Member for Peebles and Southern were put before that Committee in secret, and if the Chairman of the Committee were able to come to the House and say, "This case has been put before us. We are pledged to secrecy, but we, as the Committee of Privileges concerned with the honour and integrity of this House, are confident that the Home Secretary is right and that the Member in question is shut up properly," the House would immediately applaud what he had said and accept it without another word. Let us make use of the Committee of Privileges, which has been established for so many years, to look after the interests and the honour of this House.

Mr. Mander (Wolverhampton, East)

I want shortly to say a word in support of the proposal which my hon. Friend the Member for the Forest of Dean (Mr. Price) has just described. I do not think that Members of Parliament ought to be treated in any different way from others of His Majesty's subjects in this connection, but I do think there is no reason why we should not have our own advisory committee to investigate for us the facts of the case, just as the Norman Birkett Committee does for the general members of the public. The reason why it is necessary for Members of this House to be treated in a different way from the general public is to prevent the possible misuse by the executive of their powers. We know that it is difficult to imagine the present Government doing anything wrong, or my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary doing anything wrong, and the Committee of Privileges, in their Report, stated definitely that there was no objection to what was being done. At the same time it is not a satisfactory position from the point of view of preserving the privileges of the House of Commons against any attempt by the Executive in times of crisis, to lock up people to suit themselves, however unlikely it might be, and I think we are right to ask for the investigation of the case of a Member of Parliament by a committee of his peers, a jury of Members of this House, who know him and who will do justice both to the Member concerned and to the State. It would not be introducing any new principle, and I hope that the Home Secretary will be able to say that when an opportunity arises for reviewing the Regulation such a provision may be put into it, or that if there is another occasion on which a Member of this House is involved, the matter will receive careful consideration by the Government.

Mr. Silverman (Nelson and Colne)

I imagine that no one will suppose that I have any greater degree of sympathy for the particular Member whose case occasions this discussion than have other Members of the House, nor do I suppose there will be any Member who doubts that in these times some such powers as those contained in Regulation 18B are necessary to the Executive. Those of us who have criticised the operation of the Regulation throughout have always conceded that the Executive must have extrajudicial powers in the times in which we live, and for the duration of the war. What causes us great uneasiness is the way in which the powers are being extended and operated.

This House rejected Regulation 18B in the form in which the Executive originally presented it to the House. I do not remember the exact words, but they were to the effect that, if the Home Secretary were satisfied of certain things, that was sufficient reason for detention. The House refused to accept that position, and the Prayer which was moved on that occation by the hon. Member who is now a member of the Government did not go to a vote because the Government took the matter back and reconsidered it, representing it, after discussions at which all parties were represented, in a different form. Now, it is not sufficient for the Home Secretary to be satisfied; he has to have reasonable cause to believe. When the new Regulation was presented, we were told that our point had been met and that matters would not be left to the unfettered discretion of the Secretary of State. There was to be some right of appeal. It was said that, by the substitution of the words "reasonable cause to believe "for the word "satisfied," the right of appeal would be given to people before the courts, which would decide whether the cause which the Secretary of State alleged he had was or was not reasonable.

Since those days there have been decisions in the courts. The courts have held, and it must now be accepted in law, that where the Home Secretary says: "I believe these things entitled me to detain, because a public servant whom I trust told me that he had made investigations and was satisfied," it amounts to reasonable cause. So that all that the House has achieved by its action is not a right of appeal to the courts, but merely an alteration in the form of affidavit which the right hon. Gentleman has to swear if his action is challenged. There have been all sorts of encroachments which are not consistent with elementary justice. I know of one case—I do not want to mention it by name, but I think the right hon. Gentleman will recognise it—showing how the Regulations were applied. It is understood that a person has to have three days' notice of the charge against him before he has to answer. In this case, the man was given on Friday evening a statement of the grounds, which amounted to no more than a paraphrase of Regulation 18B, and on Sunday afternoon he was told that his case was to be heard next morning. Next morning it was heard and the decision was given, without reference at all to the reasons.

I do not want to go in detail into these matters, although I would like the right hon. Gentleman to reply upon the particular point which my hon. Friend has raised and not upon the general question; but I appeal to him to review the general situation and to satisfy himself that the position which has now been produced by a series of Acts of Parliament and decisions is really that which he would have desired and which he contemplated pro during. I do not feel confident that it is. It is all very well to offer taunts and jeers about classical Liberalism, as my right hon. Friend did on one occasion. I was very sorry to hear him —

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Herbert Morrison)

My hon. Friend is quite wrong. I made no taunts and jeers about classical Liberalism. I said that classical Liberalism could not be applied in certain circumstances, but I should be the last to make taunts about classical Liberalism because I feel very great respect for its traditions.

Mr. Silverman

The only comment I wanted to make upon it—and, of course, I fully accept what my right hon. Friend has said—was that I myself would not have ventured to use a phrase which appears to mean that elementary justice is synonymous with classical Liberalism. It is nothing of the sort. The things of which we are complaining are not breaches of classical Liberalism, admirable as that political philosophy may be. What we are complaining of is that elementary justice is not being done. It is all very well to say, "In matters of this kind we cannot produce our witnesses in public." Of course, you cannot, and nobody asks you to do so. But if a foreign agent is caught in this country and charged with espionage, you are in the same difficulty. You cannot confront him in public with the witnesses, but you can get over the difficulty. You have a secret trial, and he is told the charges with the utmost meticulousness, such as is demanded by criminal law in other respects. You get over the difficulty of not being able to have the case in public by having it in secret, and by having the witnesses in front of him and giving him the proper right to defend himself.

Those who are criticising Regulation 18B ask that at least they should be told what the witnesses say and that they should know the gist of the charge. Do not be content with a statement of grounds which is a mere empty paraphrase of the Regulation itself, and tell the man no more than he knew at the moment of his arrest. It is not fair and not right, and not in the interests of the State. If it were, I should be all for it. The right hon. Gentleman knows that it would be quite easy to let every detained man know in detail what is alleged against him without revealing the sources of The right hon. Gentleman's information. I do not wish to say more on the general aspect now. I know that the right hon. Gentleman does not like these matters any more than i do. I know that he feels compelled to operate them under a compelling sense of his public responsibility in grave times, and we all sympathise with him. We do not want to drive him too hard about it, but we do feel that it has gone too far and that the time is come when the matter should be reviewed.

On the particular point that my hon. Friend has raised, I would say that the position as it now stands is that the Executive can at any moment detain any Member of this House whose political activities it dislikes. I do not say for a moment that any Member of the Government would abuse those powers in respect of a Member of this House, but that is not the test. The test is whether those powers are there. Nobody—not the man himself, nor the Committee of Privileges, nor the man's constituents, nor anybody in the world—would know what it was that had occasioned his arrest or continued internment. Why the Committee of Privileges and this House should not be entitled to know as much as an advisory tribunal passes all understanding, and I hope that on that point at any rate my right hon. Friend will be able to give us some satisfaction. The main point is that this matter has gone altogether too far, and the House and the country would learn with the utmost relief that my right hon. Friend was prepared to review the whole matter.

Sir Stanley Reed (Aylesbury)

I desire to express my entire dissent from the Motion in the name of the hon. Member for the Forest of Dean (Mr. Price), with the earnest hope that the Home Secretary will not concede it, nor accept the arguments which have been put before him in support. We sat in this House for many hours whilst this and other Regulations were considered with perhaps greater care than any legislation that has been put before Parliament. We examined the Regulation over and over again in detail, and this House deliberately and of set purpose armed the Executive with these powers for one object, and one only, the protection of the State in time of war and in the great crisis with which we are confronted today. To what do the arguments which have been put before the Home Secretary amount? They amount to this—that that power considered absolutely necessary for the safety and welfare of the State, shall be applied far and wide but not in respect of a Member of this House for activities outside his Parliamentary responsibilities. Every one of the conditions laid down in the Regulation has been satisfied with most meticulous care and with the most anxious desire to do the right thing. As I understand the information put before this House, the charge against the hon. Member concerned does not, in the least, affect his Parliamentary activities or responsibilities, but relates to matters quite outside, and to something which has nothing to do with his duties as a Member of this House. [HON. MEMBERS: "How do you know that?"] I never interrupt Members on the other side and I am not going to submit to any interruptions now. What this proposal amounts to is this— that the hon. Member concerned and other hon. Members, are to be placed outside the law in their non-Parliamentary action and in a position of special privilege. To that I am emphatically opposed, because it is not democracy, it is not protecting the rightful privileges of this House; but is arrogating to Members something quite outside their legitimate and proper Parliamentary privilege, which the House will always scrupulously protect.

The Lord Privy Seal (Mr. Attlee)

The hon. Member for the Forest of Dean (Mr. Price) gave me notice that he wanted to raise the specific point which he and other hon. Members have embodied in the Motion on the Order Paper. That is a narrower question than that of detention under Regulation 18B with which the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Silverman) was dealing. I do not propose to deal with the general question. I am dealing with this specific point concerning a Member of this House.

Everybody objects to not having the regular protection of courts of law, but this procedure was accepted by this House under war conditions, and was made applicable to everybody. The Motion on the Paper, and the point which the hon. Member for the Forest of Dean has put forward, try to differentiate procedure as between Members of this House and members of the general public. This Motion is really misconceived, because this House has already accepted a report from the Committee of Privileges and derided that detention under Regulation 18B is not a breach of Privilege. Therefore, the request contained in the Motion to furnish a Committee of Privileges set up by this House with evidence that the said Member has been guilty of acts which debar him from protection mistakes the whole point. It is not his acts or the fact that he may be guilty of certain acts which debar him; it is that this House has decided that detention under Regulation 18B by the Home Secretary in the exercise of duties laid upon him by this House is not a breach of Privilege.

Mr. Price

May the House not reconsider the matter?

Mr. Attlee

I will answer that. It is not a breach of Privilege. The Motion on the Paper seeks to set up a new Privilege. But it has already been accepted by this House as recently as the report of that very Committee of Privileges that the House should not claim new privileges, and it has in fact not claimed them. Let us look at what the practical effect of this proposal would be, because I do not think the hon. Member wants to claim special privileges. At present the Home Secretary—not the Minister of Home Security—is placed under an obligation under which, if he considers that certain persons ought to be detained in the interest of national security, he can and should detain them. But those persons have the right to appeal to an Advisory Committee which goes into the whole matter and gives advice. He can either accept or not accept their advice.

The hon. Member wants us to say, in effect, that in the case of a Member of Parliament there should be set up a special committee of this House. I think the hon. Member has confused his whole case by calling the committee a Committee of Privileges. What he really says is that a Member should be tried by his peers. Therefore, instead of appearing before an ordinary advisory committee, a Member would appear before a committee of Members of this House. In the first place, that means that the general public are to have something rather worse than Members of this House are to have.

Mr. Bevan

Or rather better.

Mr. Attlee

Anyhow, something different. I do not think the hon. Member would suggest that a Member of this House should be treated worse than others. A tribunal of this kind cannot be merely an advisory committee. The idea is that the committee would inquire into the substance of any case, and see whether, in their opinion, there is a case on which the Home Secretary should act. That is very different from the work of an advisory committee. The onus is on the Home Secretary now. This proposal would put it on certain unofficial Members of this House or on some Members who may be Ministers, and others who may not. Let us say that they will be detached Members of this House. They will undertake this Ministerial act. I am not clear whether they will report to this House. If so, suppose that they report, and that they say, "In our view, the Home Secretary is wrong." You get no further, except that you can say that you have more trust in those Members than in the Home Secretary. They cannot go further, and report the whole of the facts of the case to this House, unless you are to destroy the whole basis of 18B.

All that the hon. Member is doing is saying, in effect, that, for something outside his Parliamentary actions, a Member of Parliament should be put into a different position from any other citizen. I do not think anyone can stand over that proposal. When a case comes up, if there is any suggestion that it is a matter of Parliamentary prejudice or of political action, this House would be extremely vigilant; but Parliament has to trust its Ministers, or, if it distrusts them, to take action accordingly. I see no reason why one should say that because a person is a Member of this House we should scrutinise more closely any action taken against him by the Home Secretary than would be the case with any individual citizen. We should give the utmost protection we can to all citizens. I think it is wrong to say that the ordinary citizen is only to have a second-grade tribunal — because we should be setting up a special tribunal for one of our own Members, although the whole basis of the case against him is something that he has done in his ordinary capacity as an individual.

Mr. Silverman

The Lord Privy Seal said that if it were suspected by this House that any Minister had exercised these powers against a Member of the House on grounds of political prejudice or bias, this House would revolt. That may be so; but if the House is never to be allowed to know the reasons on which the Home Secretary acted, how can it do that?

Mr. Attlee

How can you do what the hon. Member suggests unless you make this House the judge? You may say that Regulation 18B is all wrong, but why should you make that contention with regard to a Member of this House and not with regard to other citizens? That is the real objection.

Lieut.-Colonel Sir Thomas Moore (Ayr Burghs)

When a Member, for instance, asks a question, the answer to which may not be in the public interest, the Minister asks him—and this is known throughout the House—to take the Question off the Paper, but is quite willing to give an answer personally. In other words, he does not want the information to be known to the country as a whole. That is the position we say should be provided now. We want to be given information so as to be satisfied that the Home Secretary is doing right and acting fairly on our behalf. That is all that we ask, and surely that is not too much

Mr. Attlee

I think the hon. and gallant Member is putting forward something which is not an analogy. If, as a matter of fact, it was right that the Home Secretary should tell Members of Parliament privately about the reasons for the detention of a Member of this House, he might equally be required to do it in respect of any other citizen. The point I am making is, that, by all means, we in this House should stand by our privileges, but we ought not to increase them.

Mr. Bevan

Why not? It might be necessary.

Mr. Attlee

I do not think so, and I am saying that this is something which this House itself has decided, and which it can change if it likes. This House, over a long period of years, has said that it will not, and should not increase its privileges. I am only saying that is what the House has to say at the present time. I do say that where we are, under the stress of law, denying to citizens the ordinary peacetime law with respect to something that does not arise out of Parliamentary duties or actions, it is an extremely dangerous thing to try to draw a line. I suggest that if you look at the whole course of Parliamentary Privilege you will find that, where actions were taken because of something held to have been done against the interests of the State and the community, Parliament was not concerned. Therefore, if you did this, you would be making Privilege the whole basis of the matter. I think that the hon. Member is not thinking so much of Privilege. He is simply asking that there should be a special advisory Committee, as against the Advisory Committee that is acting only for the general public, and I suggest to this House that what is good enough for the general public ought to be good enough for this House.

Mr. Stokes (Ipswich)

I want to deal only with two points following what the Lord Privy Seal has said. My views about the unfair operation of Regulation 18B are far too well known to need reiteration here today. This is a battle between Members of this House and the executive. As far as I see it, we have no safeguard whatever. We are told that we are fighting for liberty, yet the liberty of the Press has virtually gone. There is little freedom of speech. The B.B.C. are suppressing everybody who does not agree with the point of view of the Government, and here we are in this position. We are the last stronghold where people can express their views. We are at liberty to go about the country to say what we think, but the moment you become a nuisance to the Government you can be either appointed Governor-General of Canada or are put under Regulation 18B and got out of the way. I do not believe that people would feel disturbed that there should be a special Advisory Committee to deal with Members of Parliament. The average Member's constituents would, I think, be delighted to feel that their representative could say exactly what he thought without fear of suppression through saying something that was contrary to the ideas of the Government.

I believe the House would never have passed this Regulation had they realised what they were doing. I suggest that it was never in the minds of people that it would apply directly to Members of this House. However, that is only my personal opinion. But having regard to the circumstances which surrounded the arrest of the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Peebles and Southern (Captain Ramsay), and the chronological order of the events which led up to it, I very much doubt whether the Government or the Home Secretary would have got away so easily with that arrest had it been known what was going on at the time when his detention was ordered. The point I wish to make on behalf of detained persons is this: detention conditions are absolutely deplorable. I view with horror the idea that people should languish indefinitely in gaol, untried and unheard except by an unrepresentative body which savours very much of Star Chamber methods. If on top of that they are destined to remain in gaol, surely they ought to receive some guarantee that conditions of detention will be amended. These conditions are punitive and not preventive, and I hope Members of the House will realise that these conditions are not such as were intended when the Regulation was made.

Sir T. Moore

There is one point I wish to make with reference to the statement made by the Lord Privy Seal in his speech, He said, and we agree, that the Home Secretary bears a heavy responsibility for the actions he has undertaken with regard to Regulation 18B. He said that the Home Secretary was prepared to come to this House and answer for his actions, but that is exactly what we complain the Home Secretary does not do. Suppose, as is frequently the case, we either raise a particular case in this House or write to him direct about it. He tells us, either from the Front Bench or by writing, that he has carefully considered the matter, possibly consulted the Advisory Committee and has decided that detention must be maintained. That is no answer for his actions; that is merely restating his opinion. We are asking that the Home Secretary shall have the advantage of really answering for his actions to a representative committee of Members of this House, appointed by the House. It is not asking too much; it is not asking for extra privileges or asking that Members should be treated to extra privileges as compared with those outside. It is merely asserting, in the interest of the House and of decency and fair play, that when the Home Secretary takes action we shall have the opportunity of having that action explained to us through our own selected representatives.

Mr. Loftus (Lowestoft)

I listened with great interest, as I always do, to the Lord Privy Seal, and I would like to say a few words on his main argument. He asked why Members of this honourable House should be treated in any way differently from the general public. Whereas the general public have an overworked panel to deal with their cases, we are concerned with dealing with Members of this House by Members of this House. That is all we ask, but the Lord Privy Seal says, "That would mean treating a Member of this House differently from the general public." I submit that is necessary, and for this reason. The Government of this country, government by Prime Minister and Cabinet, in time of peace would be an autocratic, dictatorial Government except for two things—first, the fact that the House can always turn out the Government by the votes of ordinary Members, and secondly, the check of the constant stream of by-elections in the country. Of those safeguards one has gone. There are no by-elections at the present time. One check on dictatorial power by the Executive is finished.

A further point is that in wartime every Government must get more and more autocratic and dictatorial—it is necessary that they should do so—and the diminishing check consists in those Members who are not in the Armed Forces of the Crown, or engaged overseas, or holding office in the Government. But those Members are a diminishing number, as we know from the White Paper issued the other day. Therefore, it is essential that the ordinary backbench Members of every party shall have complete freedom, as they are the only check left on the Government, under the stress of war, becoming too dictatorial. It is in the highest interests of the country and the liberties of the country that there should be special safeguards for the freedom of Members of Parliament. We ask for this quite small safeguard, that when a Member is arrested under Regulation 18B there should be a small panel of his fellow Members acting as an advisory committee under the law. That would satisfy us. The Lord Privy Seal says, "But you would then choose between the Advisory Committee and the Home Secretary." I do not see the necessity for that. The Advisory Committee of the House would act just as the present Advisory Committee does. The proceedings would be entirely confidential, the report to the Home Secretary would be confidential, and the position would be in no way different from what happens today, except that the country would have the assurance that no Member of Parliament was put into prison except with the knowledge of a small panel representative of Members of all parties. As the war progresses, as we sacrifice—for we shall have to do so—large portions of our inherited freedom, it is right that the country should know that we are more jealous than ever, even at a risk, to preserve the one safeguard of liberty that is left, the freedom of the ordinary Member of Parliament, who is neither in the Government nor in the Armed Forces, and who is the only protection for those diminishing liberties in wartime.