HL Deb 14 March 1879 vol 244 cc886-92
LORD THURLOW

My Lords, in putting this Question, of which I have given Notice, I will not detain your Lordships many moments. On the one hand, I feel it would be very unwise and very unfair to prejudge the causes which led to the disaster at Isandula; but, on the other hand, I feel that it would be still more unwise and still more unfair to shrink from the earliest and the closest and the most minute investigation into a catastrophe that has deprived this country of the lives and services of over 1,500 men. I dread the feeling gaining currency at home and abroad that this House and this country are indifferent to the lives of its soldiers and to the results of this campaign; and I deprecate the growing tendency of the age to accept with philosophical resignation whatever calamity may befall this country, and to seek for consolation in the sorrowful reflection that all displayed the utmost gallantry, that every man did his duty, and that nobody was to blame. I myself will not venture to apportion the blame; but I hold, and I maintain this country holds, that it is impossible to lose 1,500 men in a conflict with savages, however bold or well-armed and disciplined, without serious blame attaching to somebody or to some system of tactics pursued; and it is in the hope of receiving some assurance from Her Majesty's Government that a really competent Court of Inquiry has been appointed to discover where this blame attaches that I ask the first portion of my Question; and it is with a view to derive the utmost advantage from their Report, and to reduce to a minimum the chance of any repetition of the disaster, that I throw it out as a suggestion whether it might not be wise to delay the prosecution of offensive warfare in Zululand until the Report of this Court of Inquiry may be received and fully considered. There is only one other point to which I desire to refer. I was yesterday informed by a noble and highly distinguished Earl and General Officer opposite (the Earl of Long ford) that he took exception to the wording of my Question, as liable to give pain and to wound the susceptibilities of the Army; and I then replied to him, and I now repeat it, that I sincerely hoped that such would not be the case, as nothing was further from my wishes than to cast any doubt upon the integrity and honour of the Service; and I will now add, that before placing my Notice on the Paper, I submitted it to another and equally distinguished General Officer, to whom it conveyed no impression of the kind, and I therefore think that he has been somewhat over-sensitive in this matter. It is for all these reasons, my Lords, and in no carping spirit of criticism, and, above all, in no feeling of wanton hostility towards Her Majesty's Government, that I ask the Question that stands in my name—namely, Whether they can give the names of the officers appointed by General Lord Chelmsford to examine and report upon the recent disaster at Isandula; and whether, in the opinion of Her Majesty's Government, such Court of Inquiry is composed of elements sufficiently independent of their commanding officer to justify the hope that their Report will be as unprejudiced and authoritative as the magnitude of the disaster renders desirable; and whether, in the opinion of Her Majesty's Government, it would not be wise, now that the opportunity of acting before the Zulu harvest has been lost, to delay a further invasion of Zululand until the Report above referred to shall have been received and fully considered?

THE EARL OF LONGFORD

Before the noble Viscount the Under Secretary of State answers this Question, I request to be heard. This matter concerns others besides the Government. The Government is here to answer for itself. The others are not here; for them I claim to speak. This Notice in itself appears to have come from some pigeon-hole of the Circumlocution Office. It is a pity that it was not allowed to remain there. The noble Lord disclaims any intention of giving offence either to those who may be serving abroad, or to their friends here. But his whole Notice is an offence. It imputes to Lord Chelmsford an errorin judgment or more, and its language has been read elsewhere as meaning a great deal more, in having, upon an important occasion, summoned a Court of Inquiry so composed that it could not be expected to make a trustworthy Report; and it imputes to the military officers appointed to conduct that inquiry, who, in such a case as this, would obviously be officers of a certain rank and experience, that they would be so prejudiced, or so dependent, or so weak, that no credit could be attached to any opinion they might express. On behalf of Lord Chelmsford, for whose honour and good faith I will answer with my right hand, and on behalf of the officers of the Army who are insulted by these imputations, I say that there is no sound reason for the suspicions put forward by the noble Lord. Lord Chelmsford's public conduct is, of course, open to challenge, at the proper time, on proper information; but I repeat that the noble Lord is not justified in asking this Question on mere conjecture, nor in suggesting to Parliament and to the public to discredit beforehand a Report which has not yet been written. A French military writer, in describing the difficulties of a General in command, reminds him that after the most careful consideration of his plans, and the issue of his orders with all details, he must be prepared for every possible contrariety of circumstances; for floods in summer, droughts in winter, miscarriage of his combinations, mistakes of his subordinates—here he might have added, and ungenerous criticism at home. I assume that the noble Lord has spoken under a sense of public duty. My view of public duty is altogether different from his. I think that public servants engaged upon an arduous enterprize abroad are entitled to expect the cordial expression of our goodwill and support—certainly, not the discouragement of gratuitous suspicion. I, for one, will raise my voice here or elsewhere to protect those who are not here to speak for themselves from the uncalled-for imputations that this Notice conveys.

LORD TRURO

My Lords, I think it scarcely conceivable that the noble Earl who has just addressed the House can be serious in what he has said. I appeal to your Lordships whether any Notice has ever been presented to the House with more fairness and more modesty? It disclaimed, in the strongest manner, any desire to impute anything either discreditable or dishonourable to any body of men—officers or men—engaged in the service of their country. As I understood the noble Lord (Lord Thurlow), his solo object was to point out the great difficulty that must necessarily arise from appointing officers of inferior rank to Lord Chelmsford to decide upon the conduct of the noble and gallant Lord in this matter. There never has been a man in the position of Lord Chelmsford who, in circumstances similar to those that have occurred, has been visited with less of censure and less of unkind remark than has that noble Lord and gallant Officer. There is no man who is more beloved and popular, or who will command more sympathy, if it should prove that he has made a mistake; and I can see no harm in a Member of your Lordships' House pointing out the possibility of officers appointed as a Court of Inquiry being unduly influenced by their feelings of sympathy and affection for their commanding officer. I have no doubt that if it is the intention of Her Majesty's Government to send out officers of high rank to conduct the inquiry, the fact will be plainly stated to your Lordships. Speaking as one who has had some experience in Courts of Inquiry, I hope I may never have to say of the one which is about to be held that it has been of an unsatisfactory character. I cannot remain silent without protesting against the language in which the noble Earl (the Earl of Longford) has characterized the Question of my noble Friend, and the manner in which it was put to Her Majesty's Government.

LORD STANLEY OF ALDERLEY

My Lords, I regret that the first part of this Question should have been asked; and all criticism in this House of the commanding officer is to be deprecated, because it is liable to be unjust to him and to discourage him in the midst of his difficulties. Besides, what most concerns the House and the country is to fix the responsibility of this war, which is more important than the disaster of Isandula, which is to be taken as the fortune of war. I desire to support the second part of the Question, which asks for a delay of the invasion of Zululand, not until the Report is received, but until the country has been able to express an opinion. There is already a cessation of hostilities, for Cetewayo has not crossed the frontier. There are three reasons for this. The first and most generally received is that he has suffered too much at Isandula, at Rorke's Drift, and in the action with Colonel Pearson's force; the second is that he wants to got in his harvest; and the third, which I have seen mentioned in private letters from Natal from well informed authority, is that he has given orders to the chiefs of his regiments not to cross the Tugela, and only to defend their own country; and that he still relies upon British justice. Her Majesty's Government have instructed Sir Bartle Frere to temporise and not to engage in this war; they have thus shown that they thought it unnecessary, and therefore it was unjust, and should not have been undertaken.

VISCOUNT BURY

I cannot too highly thank the noble Earl behind me (the Earl of Longford) for the manly and outspoken way in which he has given voice to feelings which my mere prosaic duty of answering a Question would render inopportune in me. I think the Question which has been put by the noble Lord (Lord Thurlow) is founded on a radical misapprehension of the real meaning of what a Court of Inquiry is. On reading the Notice, I must confess it struck me as containing an imputation which it would be my duty most energetically to repel—an imputation that the Commander of Her Majesty's Forces in South Africa had seized the occasion of the appointment of this Court of Inquiry to place upon it officers so immediately under his own control that they would be likely, in plain language, to "whitewash" him. There can be no other interpretation placed on the Notice, which the noble Lord did not read to the House, but which, if the House will allow me, I shall read. The noble Lord's Question is as follows:— To ask whether, in the opinion of Her Majesty's Government, such Court of Inquiry is composed of elements sufficiently independent of their Commanding Officer to justify the hope that their Report will be as unprejudiced and authoritative as the magnitude of the disaster renders desirable? My Lords, in answer to that I have to say, that the only information which the Government are possessed of with regard to the constitution of that Court is one paragraph in the despatch of Lord Chelmsford, in -which he mentions that he has not received from Colonel Hassard, commanding the Royal Engineers, the Report of the Court upon which he sat. We only know this indirectly—that Colonel Hassard was the President of that Court; but we conclude, from. Lord Chelmsford's despatch, that such was the case. Now, Colonel Hassard is the second officer in command. He is a man highly distinguished and highly respected in his profession, and, as a British officer, he ought, I should think, to be shielded from such imputations as are conveyed in this Question. But I have another and a more complete answer to the imputation conveyed—and that is, that by the very nature of a Court of Inquiry, any kind of collusion between Lord Chelmsford and those composing the Court is rendered absolutely out of the question. A Court of Inquiry such as this is held under the Prerogative and not by Statute. It is a Court which can call before it witnesses subject to military law, but only by virtue of their position as military persons. It cannot take any evidence on oath. I will read from the Queen's Regulations the conditions under which the Court sits— A Court of Inquiry may be assembled by any officer in command to assist him in arriving at a correct conclusion on any subject on which it may be expedient for him to be thoroughly informed. With this object in view, such Court may be directed to investigate and report upon any matter that may be brought before it; but it has no power (except when convened to record the illegal absence of soldiers as provided for in the Articles of War) to administer an oath, nor to compel the attendance of witnesses not military. A Court of Inquiry is not to be considered in any light as a judicial body. It may be employed at the discretion of the convening officer to collect and record information only. Now, My Lords, Lord Chelmsford was absent from Isandula at the moment of the disaster. He could not from his own personal observation send home an entirely satisfactory account to the authorities in this country. There was but one course open to him—to order the assembly of such a Court of Inquiry to inquire merely into matters of fact and not into matters of opinion. If that Court of Inquiry had been directed, or if it were directed, to express an opinion, then it would be open to anyone to question the motives on which that opinion rested. But, as it is, it was appointed simply to collect facts for the information of the Commander-in-Chief, which he might employ as he thought best and send home to the authorities on his own responsibility. The terms in which the noble Lord has been pleased to couch his Question, therefore, makes it fall to the ground, and it loses that unfortunate significance with which it is now invested. I wish it were now my proud duty to follow the noble Lord in the first few word of his remarks, and to offer a panegyric upon those brave men who fell at Isandula, and those who distinguished themselves at Rorke's Drift. It is not my duty to do that—I must confine myself to the Question—but no Englishman, in speaking upon this subject, can resist a passing tribute of admiration to their courage. In answer to the second part of the nobleLord'sQuestion—Whether it would not be better to delay a further invasion of Zululand until the Report above referred to shall have been received and fully considered?—I have to say that Her Majesty's Government are giving their best consideration to the state of affairs, and will take that course which circumstances induce them to believe is best for the public interest.

House adjourned at a quarter past Six o'clock, to Monday next, a quarter before Five o'clock.