THE WAR.

HL Deb 08 November 1915 vol 20 cc181-230

Debate respecting, resumed (according to Order).

EARL LOREBURN

My Lords, I moved the adjournment of this debate the other day because I thought that no adequate response had been made to the argument of my noble friend Lord Morley. There was no answer to it because no answer was possible. But I was disappointed in not observing in the course of the debate any prospect that the Government intended to change its course in dealing with these matters. No Government can prosper in this country unless it has public opinion behind it. That is what gives recruits, and that is what enables us to get our loans subscribed and to prevail against the mischief-makers in the industrial world and to preserve order better than any police can do. It is quite impossible to cut adrift from it, and the question which the Government have to answer is this. Is public opinion to be guided by a flow of ordinary information, subject always, of course, to the consideration that nothing which would be prejudicial to the conduct of the naval or military operations ought to be permitted; or is the picture to be so touched up and distorted by suppression that it becomes very near a caricature?

There have been complaints that the public has not realised the gravity of the situation. The reason is that the legitimate sources of information have been choked up. We are told that we shall encourage the enemy by discussing these public matters. The enemy know all about our affairs a great deal better than we know ourselves. What encourages them is inefficiency and extravagance, and the only way to correct those mischiefs is to discuss and to have full information. I need not pursue this subject further, because Lord Selborne has already twice expressed himself in the same sense with more authority than I can command, and I only hope he intends to stand to his guns. The scope of the debate was enlarged by the question and by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke, and I hope I may be permitted, after what has been said, to say that I believe that that noble Lord spoke, not maliciously, but honestly, in what he believed to be the interests of his country.

We are living now in a mist, and I think it is high time that we should step out into the sunlight. There is a censorship over the Press, and the Government do not inform Parliament of many things which we ought to know, and a veil has been cast over many of our misadventures. Let me give an illustration or two. Admiral Cradock's fleet was destroyed in the Pacific. It is said that he had asked for more ships. Is that true? Surely he needed more ships. Why were they not sent? We have not been informed about this, though questions have often been asked. Then there was the Antwerp Expedition. To us civilians that seemed a very strange adventure. Men who were wholly untrained and who belonged to the Naval Reserve were sent out to Antwerp. Did the military authorities approve of that before they were sent? We have been left in the dark upon that subject. Then there was the loss of the three cruisers in the North Sea—a very serious misadventure. Sailors tell you that these cruisers ought to have been recalled beforehand, and that they were recalled only just too late. No Court-Martial was allowed upon that loss; yet Courts-Martial on such occasions are an ancient tradition of the Navy.

I come to the Dardanelles Expedition. We know what that has been, thought we do not know to the full extent the blunder and the suffering that has been caused by it. We know, at all events, that at the beginning Lord Fisher opposed this enterprise, and that his opposition was overruled. Was it overruled by a Cabinet of civilians, or was it overruled only by a small body of men without consulting the Cabinet? How are we to expect confidence when men may make such a blunder as that, and then the curtain is let down so that we cannot check a repetition of such incompetence? Masked responsibility is no responsibility at all.

I have passed over in a few words what has been in fact a long tragedy. What is to be said about munitions? Can any one say where the blame lies for that? A Minister and an ex-Minister had a controversy upon the subject, and one of them intimated that he might be obliged to disclose the whole truth and not merely a piece of it. The public might have actually learned what were the facts in regard to the munitions scandal and who were really to blame. But I suppose friends intervened, and all was covered up. But, my Lords, it had cost thousands of lives. These are not the ordinary inevitable mishaps of war. They mean some real incapacity somewhere—where and in whom we are not permitted to learn. We ought, it is true, to allow liberally for the stress and strain and the great and obvious difficulties of the situation. But men of the highest patriotism may be injudicious or may be exhausted by the long strain. Are we not to know the facts so as to form an estimate for ourselves, and, if we can, prevent a recurrence of these dangers, when what we have at stake is all that we most value?

When the Dardanelles began to look dangerous and the munitions scandal began to leak out, the situation was relieved by forming a Coalition Government. But it was the Parliamentary situation that was relieved. A Parliamentary danger is not the same as a national danger, any more than a great speech is the same thing as a great victory. No doubt all this was well meant, but in my opinion it has been a misfortune to the country that the Coalition was formed. In the first place it deprived us of an obvious alternative Government, if that was necessary; and an alternative Government has often proved in the history of this country a very valuable thing. It has in the second place deprived the country of that steady and restrained criticism proceeding from responsible men habituated to act in consort which is one of our greatest safeguards, and it has substituted for that an irregular, irresponsible and often mischievous criticism founded not upon any knowledge of the facts.

If we ought to forget the past, we ought to be reassured as to the future. We are again on the brink of serious difficulties in the Balkans. A new change has taken place in Lord Kitchener's temporary absence, which I believe is intended to be really a temporary absence, and I can only hope it will be short. I asked a week ago whether the lauding at Salonika was effected with the approval of the best military and naval authorities, and whether they were satisfied with the supplies of men and munitions and that the communications were properly safeguarded. There was no real answer given, notwithstanding the courteous speech of the noble Marquess, Lord Lansdowne. I do not know whether we may have that question answered in this debate. I should like to ask also some other questions. Has provision been made for our forces in Mesopotamia and in East Africa and in Egypt? I say quite frankly that I ask these questions because it is due to our men to fix the responsibility for these things. There is an uneasy feeling that there has not been sufficient expert supervision. I think the Government should resolve not to hold out expectations to nations who are confronted with extreme peril unless they are sure that they are in a position to make them good by timely and sufficient support. I think they ought to feel that they have no right to embark on naval and military enterprise unless they can satisfy their naval and military advisers that it is a fair risk to undertake, and does not go beyond what they can support by sufficient men and sufficient supplies; and they have no right to commit this country beyond our resources.

I say this because for the first time in our history we have to draw on our resources for three purposes. The first is the Navy, the second subsidies, and the third the maintenance of an enormous Army outside the shores of this country— a thing which has never been done in the whole history of this kingdom. The cost of the war for the first three months was under £1,000,000 a day and is now £5,000,000 a day, and only one-ninth or one-tenth of that expenditure is for the Navy. The remainder is for subsidies and supplies, and outlay for our Army; and each man, we were told the other day, costs as from £250 to £300 in the year. This expenditure is rising daily and the exact figures apparently are not known to the Government because there were variations and uncertainties in the statements made in the debate in the House of Commons. I should like to ask whether the Government have taken the advice of the great financiers in the City; whether they have received advice and warning from the Chancellor of the Exchequer; and whether they have acted upon that advice. Is it wise to place so much of our expenditure upon debt and so little upon income and taxes? We are asking, and rightly asking men to make the highest sacrifice they can make—the sacrifice, if need be, of their lives. We have no right to refrain from asking men also to make the sacrifice of their incomes.

The situation has no parallel in the whole records of history. Every great nation in the war has been led to believe that the war was forced upon it—I am speaking of the people of the nations, not of the rulers who have beguiled them. All of them believe that they are in the right and that they have only to hold on in order to win. We may wonder that the Germans believe that the war was forced upon them, but that is the fact, and this great falsehood is only equalled by the brutality with which they have conducted the war. Nearly all the youth of Europe are under arms. I was told two months ago by an exceptionally well-informed friend whose judgment is extremely reliable that 15,000,000 had been either killed or disabled for life. It may be that this was putting the number too high, but it cannot be very much short of that, as multitudes have been added to the list since then. The cost defies estimate. Many thousands of millions of War Debt will after the whole face of civilisation, and will cast a burden not only upon the industry but also upon file lives of our children and our children's children, and we must add to that the destruction over vast areas of industrial capital.

It is no exaggeration to say that if this conflict goes on indefinitely, revolution and anarchy may well follow; and unless the collective common sense of mankind prevents it before the worst comes, great portions of the Continent of Europe will be little better than wilderness peopled by old men and women and children. I say that any man must be strangely constructed who does not grasp at any honourable opportunity to prevent what would be the most frightful calamity that has ever befallen the human race. This is what is meant by a war of attrition. These are thoughts from which there is no escape, whatever may be your nationality. But while this war continues we must do our best to prevent irreparable mistakes. The plans and operations of war ought to be devised and carried into execution by naval and military experts, not by civilians who necessarily know nothing of strategy; and no scheme should be attempted without the approval of the highest naval and military authorities. In my opinion, the idea of a small Cabinet reporting to a full Cabinet on such matters is most unsatisfactory. It will secure the maximum of delay and the minimum of efficiency. I do not concern myself at all as to who are inside the Ministry and who are outside, provided that, they do not overrule experts in matters of which no civilian is a proper judge, for we are dealing with the future of the British Empire and with the lives of men.

VISCOUNT MILNER

My Lords, in the course of this discussion a good deal has been said about the Censorship. I know that your Lordships are intolerant of long speeches and rightly so, especially at the present time, and I do not wish to dwell long on that point became there are other and more urgent matters to which I should like to refer. But I would just say this. The noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack made a very eloquent speech at the close of the discussion last Wednesday, with a great deal of which I heartily agree and I think we all agree; but his speech I was in the main a refutation, not of the case which the noble Viscount (Lord Morley) or any of the other speakers had made, but of a case which he set up himself in order to destroy it. We are all absolutely agreed that there must be a Censorship to prevent information getting to the enemy which might be useful to him, and if there is the slightest doubt on any point I quite agree with the noble and learned Lord that the matter should be cut out. We are not going to imperil the life of a single one of our gallant men for the sake of mere news; but I cannot for the life of me see how this applies to information and statements which are not only known to the enemy but actually emanate from the enemy. We cannot be giving him information by publishing here what he himself says.

It may be said—it is said—"These statements are sometimes false; why help to disseminate falsehood?" Even if they are false I should have thought it better to let them be published with a denial, just as from time to time the French Government issue communiqués formally contradicting German statements which the French Government allege to be untrue. There may, I admit, conceivably be a case for censoring German lies when by censoring them we are able to suppress them; but it absolutely beats me to know what can be the object of censoring wireless messages, or any part of them, when they go all over the world in spite of us. If they contain lies, those lies will be known to neutrals whatever we do. By suppressing those messages we do not prevent neutrals being affected by those lies; all we do is to prevent our people here from knowing that those lies have been told. I cannot conceive what good that is to us. I can conceive that it may possibly be a very great injury, because if those lies are not published here, are not known here, they cannot be contradicted here, and the public in foreign countries who read those lies and see that they are not contradicted here may very naturally come to the conclusion that they are true.

This is not merely a hypothetical argument. I could give several illustrations of what I mean, but I will quote only a single case. Quite recently, in order, I believe, to counter the indignation generally felt over the death of Miss Cavell, the Germans have been spreading by wireless messages throughout the world a story of how the crew of a German submarine which a British vessel had sunk were murdered, after the sinking of the vessel, by British sailors. That, as I say, was spread by wireless throughout the world; the news was suppressed here. The consequence surely is that many people reading it throughout the world take our silence about it, our suppression of the report here, as an admission of guilt. I go further and say I know that even people in this country are sometimes confused and disturbed in their minds by similar cases. I have seen a letter with reference to this very incident from a man in this country who happened to have read the story in the German newspapers. He was seriously and not unnaturally disturbed that no such thing had ever been mentioned here, and no opportunity had been given for the contradiction of this horrible calumny.

But, my Lords, the suppression of wireless messages is only part of the general policy of distorting news. It would be idle and invidious to try to bring home the responsibility for this to any particular official. I readily admit that the Press Bureau is very often blamed for faults which are committed by other people, but the fact remains that the war news published in this country from first to last has been most seriously misleading. It has been constantly "doctored" in an optimistic sense. It is not only what has been suppressed, but what has been published, which has helped to produce this general result. I will ask any candid man with a memory to compare the first impression which he derived from official telegrams of the Battle of Neuve Chapelle or of the terrible battles of the 25th and 26th of September, with the impression which he subsequently gathered and the knowledge which he afterwards acquired from the furtive admissions or the laboured explanations of the official world or from the reports of individuals who were present at those terrific fights. I do not know whether my experience is peculiarly unfortunate in this respect, or whether the same has happened to other members of your Lordships' House. Not once or twice, but many times I have been pained to hear officers who have returned from the Front say that on the whole the German official reports of engagements between us and them were more trustworthy than the British reports. I do not say that the Government is exclusively to blame—perhaps I ought not to say that it was mainly to blame—for the false impression which is given in this manner as to the general course of the war. The mischief, very often, does not lie so much in the news as in the way in which the news is set out in those absolutely misleading posters and headlines with which we are all familiar. A very distinguished Australian statesman said to me the other day, "What is the good of censoring anything if you do not censor posters?" There was no passage in the speech of the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack the other night with which I more completely sympathised than his reference to the appeal which he made to the Press asking them—I will use his own words— "not to distort all sense of proportion by magnifying comparatively unimportant actions into great victories."

With whomsoever the fault lies, the result is that the public remains deluded as to the general course of the war and as to the position in which the country finds itself to-day. Yet it is vital that the nation should know where it stands. That is why I could not support the proposal of the noble Viscount on my right (Lord Midleton) for a secret session of this House, or the proposal of Lord St. Davids for a secret session of the Privy Council, however much I may have agreed with a great deal that Lord St. Davids said. The nation needs enlightenment. One of the main objects of this debate is to enlighten the nation and to stir it out of the delusive optimism in which a great portion of it is still swathed. I know that there are difficulties in public discussion of the war. I frankly admit it. They may be minimised by prudence on our part. No man in his senses, for instance, would wish to discuss here or anywhere in public the details of naval and military operations. But whatever you do, however great care you take, there will be—I fully admit it—disadvantages; but to my mind those disadvantages are more than outweighed by the advantage of the country being thoroughly aroused to the gravity of its situation. It is only by that means that you can get the maximum of effort out of the body of the people; it is only by that means that they an be got to insist upon greater alacrity, greater vigour, greater forethought, and greater resolution on the part of their rulers. We need those qualities.

Patience, which the Prime Minister so greatly admires, is all very well, and so is a courageous and confident air in the face of disasters of your own creation. But those virtues alone are not sufficient. Take the case of Serbia. That is the most heartrending tragedy of all the incidents of this awful war. Even at this hour, while we are sitting here, horrors are being committed in Serbia, and more widespread desolation is being created there even than what we have been familiar with in the Case of Belgium. You may say, "Why harrow people with such descriptions when, after all, it is no fault of ours? "My Lords, I am not so sure. I am reminded of the old saying that more harm is wrought by want of thought—especially forethought—than even by want of heart. Certainly this country is guiltless, perfectly guiltless, of the baseness of a deliberate betrayal of Serbia. But that alone does not excuse us with regard to her.

There is no time adequately to discuss this question to-night; there will be other opportunities. When the proper moment comes, I am prepared to maintain two propositions. One is that if we had prepared betimes against a contingency which for months past was, to say the very least of it, a likelihood, it would have been possible for us six weeks ago to give Serbia such an amount of material assistance as would have enabled her to have resisted the combined attacks of the Central Powers and of Bulgaria with reasonable prospects of complete success, and at the same time we should have carried Greece with us. My second proposition is that those preparations not having been made, even so when the Greek crisis came and Greece left Serbia foul the Allies in the lurch, it would have been possible, even then, for us, if we had acted with the greatest alacrity and determination, to put such a force into Serbia, in conjunction with our Allies, as would not, indeed, have saved the country from invasion and from being partially overrun, but would have enabled at least a great portion of the Serbian Army to fall back upon its Allies and to maintain itself for an indefinite time in the south and south-west of that country, and to save a portion of it from destruction. Instead of that, when the Greek crisis came we seemed to be absolutely paralysed. I do not know why that crisis took us so completely by surprise. The very same thing had happened once before in almost similar circumstances. Not only did it take us by surprise, it put us absolutely on our backs; and until General Joffre came over here a week ago to help us make up our minds we seem to have remained so.

Until last Tuesday I should have said that our inactivity between October 5 and the end of the month in this matter was not only weakness, but something like a breach of faith. For until last Tuesday I always read the words of Sir Edward Grey that "we were prepared to give our friends in the Balkans all the support in our power in the manner that would be most welcome to them "—I wonder what is the manner of help which would be most welcome to Serbia at the present day; is it reassuring speeches?— in the manner that would be most Welcome to them, in consort with our Allies, without reservation and without qualification"—until last Tuesday I always read those words in their plain and literal sense. But apparently we were all under a delusion. It appears now that those words meant something, totally different and something which, I venture to say, no unsophisticated reader could possibly have read into them. I think that is a very unfortunate incident. I believe that foreign nations will in future examine very minutely our declarations, and especially our promises and pledges of help. They will not take them at their face value, but will look well round about and under them to see where the catch comes in.

I am led by this incident to look very closely at the assurances which were given by the Prime Minister to Serbia in his last great speech. He said— We cannot allow Serbia to be the prey of this sinister and nefarious combination, — that is, the combination of the Central Powers with Bulgaria. But, My Lords, she is the prey of it to-day. When will some people learn that the sonorous announcement of what You intend to do is not equivalent to doing it? The Prime Minister also said— Serbia may be assured—and I give her this assurance on the part of the British Government—that her independence is regarded by us as one of the essential objects of the Allies. Some people have interpreted that as meaning that we were, even now, going to make a superhuman effort to save Serbia. But it seems to me that that declaration is something much less definite and precise than what had already been said by Sir Edward Grey. "We give Serbia," said the Prime Minister, "the assurance that her independence is regarded by us as one of the essential objects of the Allies." But suppose that a few weeks hence the independence of Serbia is a thing of the past. I can imagine that the speaker of those words would not be at all disturbed by this untoward development. As far as the interpretation of his words were concerned, it would be perfectly possible for him to argue that all he meant was that when we win the war we shall insist on the independence of Serbia being restored. In fact, she passes for us into the same category as Belgium. Perhaps some speaker on the Government Bench will presently tell us how much or how little those words actually mean.

One word with regard to the Dardanelles. About a fortnight ago the Government sent a distinguished General to report to then what they ought to do in this matter. I will not ask—it would be most unreasonable to ask—what his report was or even whether he has reported. I will only repeat the warning which I gave here the other day, and which I have had the best reason since to know is not unnecessary. What I say is, let that matter be determined by military considerations alone. To bring politics into it is to court disaster. If there are good military reasons for hanging on in the Dardanelles, there is nothing more to be said. But if military considerations are against it, then do not let us persist in that enterprise from any delusion that persistence in it will help us with Rumania or Greece, or that the abandonment of it will hurt us in India or Egypt. I have as great a belief as any one can possibly have in the value of prestige, but prestige is the child of definite solid success. The prestige by means of which, as I very well remember, the noble Earl whom I do not see in his place, Lord Cromer, governed Egypt for years with very little material force behind him was due to solid achievements. You cannot ensure prestige by any kind of make-believe. If our prestige has suffered in the Dardanelles, then the way to recover it is to do better somewhere else. It will never be recovered or maintained by persistence in failure.

Above all, I pray the Government not to lose any more time in making up their minds. Delay and indecision have been their besetting sins all along. With the reorganisation which we have been promised and which apparently is now in progress, it is to be hoped that there will be improvement in this respect. No doubt a small War Council, if it had a free hand—not if it was checked and overruled by a much larger Cabinet—a small War Council with full powers would make for promptitude of action, but, of course, everything depends upon the composition, the personnel, of that body. What alarms me about the Government is its tendency to shed its elements of strength instead of shedding its elements of weakness. It has lost Sir Edward Carson, a very great loss; and it has lost, at least temporarily, Lord Kitchener. I was glad to hear from the noble and learned Earl opposite that his temporary absence is to be brief. Personally, I venture to predict there are many accidents in life—that it may be considerably prolonged, but at any rate it is a satisfaction to know, as we do know, that Lord Kitchen is services will be retained by the country. If that is so, if his transference to another sphere of activity is part of the general reorganisation of our engine for the supreme direction of the war, I am not disposed to criticise it. Indeed, I am glad to think that I am at the end of my critical remarks. I know that I have been on very unsafe ground. Those who call a spade a spade in these days are doing so, metaphorically speaking, with a rope round their necks.

I will not comment on a recent incident in the newspaper world—the case is sub judice, and there may have been justification for what the Government did in that matter. I am not here to argue that in no circumstances would it be right to suppress a newspaper, and in any case I do not suppose that the Government has any intention of suppressing free speech in this or the other House of Parliament. But for all that my Lords, the position of independent, speakers and writers in the immediate future is likely to be a difficult one. Whatever happens they will be exposed to a storm of obloquy. In my case that has commenced already, but being used to it of old days I will bear it with such fortitude as I can. But with almost all the regular Opposition now merged in the Government, with the bulk of both political Parties, with both the political machines, and with the Press of both political Parties, with very few exceptions, lined up behind them, the critics are not going to have a very pleasant time of it. They will no doubt have the satisfaction of finding in the future as in the past that the criticisms and suggestions which they are so roundly denounced for making are constantly being adopted by the Government with very great advantage to the public interest. The truth is that critics, though they are denounced as malicious and mischief makers and as encouraging the enemy, are very often the best friends of the Government, just as it is that the docile portion of the Press, with its eminent want of candour in its effort to defend the indefensible, is very often their worst enemy. At any rate, I trust that in this House we shall always stand up without rancour and without fear for the recognition of the truth and for free comments on things that are obviously amiss. In that case we shall do whatever we can, though it may be little enough, for the Government and for the country.

LORD COURTNEY OF PENWITH

My Lords, the noble Viscount who preceded me has spoken of persons who, if they do certain things in these days, do so with a rope round their necks. He said he was not unaccustomed to that position himself, and therefore cared little about it. I, too, have not been unaccustomed to be more or less alone, and I am indifferent to the species of attack for which the noble Viscount expressed his disdain. Yet I feel very strongly, especially rising in this unaccustomed position to-night (the noble Lord spoke at the Table from the Opposition side) that I was never so much alone as now, for I believe what I have to say has not been expressed by anyone here before, and I am not sure that it will obtain the open approbation of anybody. I trust, however, that it will be free from anything that can be called an attack upon or even a disparagement of the Government, and it will be my endeavour not to put any question, not to submit any criticism, not to invite any declaration which might be to them embarrassing.

I want, if possible, to put before the House a simple recital of the facts as I understand them. I will begin by calling attention to a statement made by the Prime Minister last week, to which you have already been directed by the noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke. The Prime Minister said, taking a review of the military situation on the Western front, that after seven months, to the best of his knowledge, the Germans, on the balance, had not advanced one foot. The significance of that statement, appears to me to be even yet not sufficiently understood. The Germans have not advanced one foot! But, my Lords, can we say that we have advanced? Can we say that they have receded? On the balance, as the Prime Minister said, we remain as we were seven months ago. There have been attempts—vigorous, energetic, strategical attempts—to alter that line of demarcation, and, as the noble Viscount has said, the history of those attempts, when first put before us, led us to suppose that great success had been achieved in breaking the line of the enemy, but next day it was observed that something which had been supposed to have been taken had been left and something else had been recovered. Day by day the outline of the picture of advance became dissolved, and we were brought back to much the same position as existed before that great expenditure of life and the means of life was experienced. After seven months we are as we were.

The course of the debate hitherto has been to a large extent one of criticism of the Government for want of forethought, for possible action in derogation in military advice or against the suggestions of the experts, and what not. I lay but little stress upon those observations. The facts as they appear to me would not have been materially altered even if the errors supposed to have been committed had not been committed. The position in the West, if we frankly recognise it—and it is a position which has to be recognised and is apparently being recognised by our enemies and by some of ourselves— is that we have not conquered and have not been conquered. Two great lines of military array have been drawn up against one another, of each of which it may probably be said that it is unconquered and unconquerable. As well as I can weigh the situation, that is the position in the West; and it leads one to go on and inquire into other matters.

It is possible that an appreciation of the unchanging character of the situation in the West was the real origin of the expedition to the Dardanelles. It may have been thought that a diversion could be made which perhaps would have done away with the importance of the struggle on the Western side of Europe. But there again, what have we? To judge from the testimony of the Prime Minister, the first attempt in the Dardanelles was a great disappointment; the second attempt was still graver and still greater as a disappointment. In fact in the Dardanelles, as in the West, you are meeting with insuperable difficulties to your advance. There may well have been—we know there was—action taken in spite of hesitations and doubts on the part of the First Naval Adviser of the Government, but that only illustrates still more the truth which I am endeavouring to impress upon your Lordships. As I view it, the situation in the Dardanelles, like the situation in the West, is that of an impossible adventure, which you must face and realise. My own fear is that, clouded behind those statements to which the noble Viscount has called attention, there may be yet another contribution to the military situation leading to much the same conclusion. If this were all, if this were the only experience of the war, it might well make us pause. The naval situation is different, but it presents the same fact in the end—namely, that for some time past there has been no change and apparently no suggestion of a probability of change in the situation. We have the command of the open seas, but we can do nothing—further. We cannot get the German Fleet into action. There is there the same pause, the same impassibility, as there is in the military situation.

It is not merely the military and meal review which I suggest to your Lordships demands your attention now. When Sir Edward Grey some years since was too sadly forecasting the possibility of the future he spoke of the battle of Armageddon that might prove something which would destroy the civilisation of Europe. That prophecy has almost been realised. Whether we look at home or abroad, our old civilisation, which we built up through long generations with much effort, is not merely in danger but is undermined and almost destroyed. Where are your boasted guarantees of personal liberty? Freedom of speech, freedom of writing, almost freedom of thought have been struck at. Instead of the ancient trial by jury which we boasted was the privilege of every man, the gravest charges are examined and the weightiest punishments inflicted by single magistrates sitting in secret, without the advantage of publicity and without its being known what is the character of the offence charged. Our municipal private law has suffered these terrible inroads; and in the domain of public law, international law, so slowly built up in days gone by, we have witnessed retrogression. The Declaration of London had not been ratified, and we were free to put it aside. At the same time in doing so we are departing from the line on which we had been prepared to advance. We are putting back the law within limits narrower than those we had agreed upon. Nor is the Declaration of London the only thing that has been set aside. The Declaration of Paris has been "scrapped." Public international law, like our private municipal law has been put in the greatest jeopardy, if not fatally damaged, during the progress of this war.

There is another matter to which I crave your Lordships' attention. During the last fifty years especially effort after effort has been made, and successfully made, to raise the condition of the people and the standard of existence. We have been able to get rid of boy labour at an immature age; we have been able to withdraw women labour from the mines and in a large measure from the field; we have been able to limit the hours of men's labour; we have secured better education, larger leisure, higher culture. All these things have already suffered sad inroads. Women have been brought back to work from winch they had been well withdrawn; education has been maimed and limited; and the demand for boy labour has overcome our restrictions. Our men, quite outside the mere work of munitions, are strained to the utmost, and their freedom of action and of choice has been put into fetters which in the ordinary process are left unobserved, but are nevertheless most real and most perilous.

I do not speak of what the war has involved in the way of sacrifice of our young men. I say nothing of the demands it has made on our finances. Your Lordships will have opportunities, of which I hope you will not fail to make use, of calling the attention of the nation to our financial situation. My noble and learned friend the noble Earl who opened the debate this evening made some remarks upon that. I hope we shall hear more. There is much more to hear, but I will not say anything about it now. I only wish to draw you to this conclusion, that the war has resulted in something like a deadlock of force and has operated to diminish the standard of our civilisation, to take away the guarantees of liberty, to diminish the trustworthiness of law, and to endanger the situation amongst nations neutrals as well as combatants. If that is so, surely it is not surprising that one should begin to ask, Is any escape possible from this rake's progress upon which we have entered? Must we go on to witness a continually extending panorama of war? I there no alternative? Some say there is none, and I realise the force and power of the statement, that there may be no arrest of this fatal movement. Can we, it may be said, dare to slacken a single effort as long as the peril is upon us of being brought under the authority of another Power? if that were really the only alternative I should not dare to speak tins evening. I should bow in silence. I should acknowledge that nothing could be done. We must be free or die. I believe that as much as any member of your Lordships' House. To me the notion of the organisation of this country being under the authority of any other Power is unthinkable and intolerable to contemplate. Therefore if there were no alternative I would say, "Let us go on." It may be that we must wear ourselves out: it may be that there is nothing before us but the sweeping away from Europe of its manhood and its strength.

The question is whether there is not an alternative to this unceasing strife. I believe there is. The passion of national independence is glorious and well worthy of any sacrifice. I recognise all its claims. But the passion of national independence oust in some way be reconciled, if civilisation is to continue, with the possibility of international friendship; and unless you can see out of this war something which will lead to international friendship coming into alliance with and being supported by national independence you have nothing before you but a continued series of wars, hate after hate, extermination after extermination, from which indeed you may well recoil. Is it not possible that this reconciliation should be effected; that there should be, so to speak, dovetailed into one another the fact of national independence and the fact of international friendship? The consummation of the tragedy is that precisely what we believe and say is believed and said in Germany, with the same sincerity and the same conviction as here; inexcusably you will say, and I admit that to us it is very difficult to see sufficient reason on their part for that conviction and that belief. Some Germans find it extraordinarily difficult to realise that we believe in the possibility of the terror against which we are fighting. Well if that is a collation error on both sides, I am led again to the conclusion that there surely must be sonic way—I do not ask the Government now to point out the way—some way out of the impasse in which we are landed, and we ought at least to show ourselves ready to accept any suggestion that can be offered of relieving us from such an anxiety. I am only saying what the Prime Minister himself said not many months ago in the Mansion House at Dublin as to the necessity of international friendship. He did not use that phrase; but he talked of a family of nations taking the part of the hostile alliances which now confront one another. The Prime Minister was then himself expressing the same idea that I have been expressing to you, and I only hope he will be able to say as much again to-morrow night at the Guildhall.

It would be madness in me to lay down terms of reconciliation. I put no question. I ask for no declaration on the part of any one. I will, however, throw out two or three suggestions which appear to me to be rather vital to the possibility of an ultimate settlement. It may very well be that I shall he stigmatised— it does not matter much—as a pro-German in more than one newspaper to-morrow. But the one thing I would say with force and be justified in saying is this, that an indispensable element of the settlement, whenever it is arrived at, is the liberation of Belgium and of Northern France. Apart from that, we must fight and fight on. That is an indispensable condition, and it is well that it should be uttered especially to those who are striving to make it possible that there should be sonic consideration by way of escape front the present dilemma. There is another thing which I think I might be permitted to say without danger. There is in Germany a widespread and deep-seated notion that the cost of the war to the German Empire is to be recovered by an indemnity levied on this country. It is well that it should be stated that there is not, as I should say, a single Englishman who dreams of, or would ever consent to, an indemnity of any kind being levied upon this country. Those are two points which may well be cleared up.

There is another thing which I think may well be suggested to your Lordships. We have heard a good deal from the beginning of this war about the "freedom of the seas"— a phrase often used but not always perfectly understood. Sir Edward Grey said not long ago, in a written document of great seriousness and well-considered purpose, that this was a subject which might well be discussed when peace was re-established. I venture to push this a little further and to say that this is a subject which probably will be considered when peace is being discussed. Consider What the position of Germany is with respect to the seas. German commerce is progressive, German commerce has extended, German commerce has been a great and not a bad rival to our own, but the result of the present war has shown what the Germans have said over and over again. German commerce exists upon sufferance, and sufferance is a thing to which a great and high-minded nation would not easily be led to submit. That there should be guarantees for the commerce of Germany as for all commerce, safeguarding as far as they can be safeguarded the rights of belligerents, also the rights of neutrals, is another subject which I think this nation had better take under its consideration.

I have been leading you up, my Lords, so far as I could command your attention, to the realisation that great and glorious as national independence is, there is something more which has to be reconciled with it. I vouch, in support of that appeal, a witness to whom you will listen with respect. We have been much moved of late by the history of a woman who has added another to the great roll of Englishwomen—I mean Edith Cavell, whose life was occupied in service and sacrifice. A law-breaker, she came under the penalty of the law, and a barbarous and besotted German Governor insisted upon exacting the full penalty. Let me say, in passing, that I have observed that this functionary has been quietly relieved of his duties, and, so far, the observation made by the noble Earl who brought the case of Edith Cavell before us a week ago has, I think, been justified—that there must be in Germany many who share our horror at her execution, many who condemn it. The quiet relief of this Governor of his functions seems to me to be an eloquent, though mute, condemnation of his action on the part of the official world in Germany itself. But I return from that digression. This man insisted upon the full penalty of the law. And what was Miss Cavell's attitude when she met that penalty? She had been sonic time in prison. In her solitude and silence is it remarkable that great thoughts should take shape in her mind? What wonder if the truth became apparent under such conditions apart from the makebeliefs to which we are so much accustomed? However that may be, the time came; the hours, the minutes, were reckoned; they were known to her with all exactness which we know them looking back upon them now. Her minutes were numbered, and they were few. And how did she speak? These were her words— Standing before God and Eternity, I realise his—patriotism is not enough. I must be free from hate and bitterness. Those words are the true testament of Edith Cavell. I, for my part, would like to accept them and make them my own. I beseech your Lordships to entertain them with all the feeling, with all the fulness and simplicity, of her own mind. "Standing before God and Eternity I realise that patriotism is not enough; I must have no bitterness, no hate."

THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON)

My Lords, the noble Marquess beside me (Lord Lansdowne) will, if he makes any observations before the close of the debate, reply to the questions affecting general policy which have been raised in the speeches to which your Lordships have listened. I propose, with your Lordships' permission, to devote my remarks more particularly to that portion of the debate which has related to the question of the publication of news and to charges of lack of promptitude and frankness in communicating to the country news connected with the war. It was out of that question that the debate arose. It formed the subject of the impressive speech of the noble Viscount (Lord Morley) the other evening, with much of which I was in personal agreement, and it has figured largely in the speeches both of the noble and learned Earl (Lord Loreburn) and of the noble Viscount (Lord Milner), to which we listened with attention. When I came into the House this afternoon I found the noble and learned Earl reciting a list of, I think, five cases in which he complained that inadequate information—I am not certain that he did not go further and say no information at all—had been furnished to the country. I need not recapitulate them. The whole of those cases occurred before the present Coalition Government was formed, and therefore I should not be the right person to meet the charge, if charge it were. But having read the papers connected with all the cases to which the noble and learned Earl referred, I may say that if he or any one thinks that the object of concealment in any of them was to shield or spare the political reputation of any man, that is a most unjust impression. The noble and learned Earl was much too generous to suggest anything of the kind, but it has been suggested. I can say truthfully, from studying the papers, that the more you look at them the more clearly does it transpire that in some case individual political reputations have been most unfairly assailed, and that from publicity those who have been most directly attacked have nothing to fear. The second point I would make is this. Cases sometimes arise—they have arisen in some of the instances referred to— in which publication is withheld because in the telling of a story blame might unfairly be cast upon subordinate officers who do not wholly deserve it or who could not make explanations in their own defence. I offer these remarks in passing, merely as comments upon the particular cases to which the noble and learned Earl referred.

Before I pass to the question with which I propose particularly to deal, might I allude to one observation of the noble and learned Earl. He asked us to accept the proposition that no scheme of military operations in the war should be attempted without the consent of the highest naval and military authorities. The noble Earl is asking too much. If he had said "without consultation with the military and naval authorities" we should all be willing to agree with him; but when he says without their consent he is postulating a condition of affairs that does not always arise. What if the military and naval authorities disagree with each other? The noble Earl seems to imagine that experts always speak with a single voice. That has not been my experience in the last five or six months. Although I freely accept the general argument that it would be most unwise to embark upon any military or naval operations without attaching the fullest weight to military and naval opinion, I think the noble Earl pushed the matter rather too far. Again I think the noble Viscount (Lord Milner) pushed the matter too far when, in connection with this or that military or naval operation, he said that on no account ought we to allow political considerations of any sort to influence our minds or action, and yet almost in the same breath he was appealing to us to go to the rescue of Serbia on political and sentimental considerations entirely. What would the noble Viscount have said if our experts had stated that on no account should we entangle ourselves in the Balkans? Where would have been the pathetic and moving appeal that he addressed to us this afternoon? The same with regard to the Dardanelles or any one of these great issues. Surely, my Lords, it is impossible to argue that the opinions of our Allies, very likely the urgent appeals of our Allies, or the safety of the Empire itself, are considerations not to be weighed in the balance for one moment, and that we ought solely to look at the thing from the point of view of the Generals or the Admirals concerned. Even from the latter point of view the noble Viscount may be reassured, because we have sent out to the Eastern theatre of war a man who at any rate will give advice there not so much in the capacity of a politician—a function which he has always disavowed—as in that of the greatest soldier we possess.

With the general principles laid down by Lord Milner regarding the Censorship, I quite agree, with one exception, and I think the whole House agrees. He said that no one of us wishes information to be published that is likely to give any help to the enemy or to injure our own cause. It is unnecessary to discuss that. Again he frankly admitted that a Censorship was required in time of war, and that for the Censorship military and naval officers must be your advisers. But there is another condition I should like to add which, if it does not affect the attitude of the Press Bureau, must affect the attitude of Governments, and that was suggested to me by something that fell from the noble Viscount himself. I think we ought also to agree that it may be unwise to he unduly frank about a diplomatic situation which is in course of development and may assume new forms from day to day. I take as an illustration on the speech of my right hon, friend the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, to which he alluded. Two or three weeks ago in the House of Commons Sir Edward Grey made a statement about the policy of the Government in the Balkans. That statement was made after careful consideration of language and after full consultation wish the Cabinet, and it represented the views which he wished to place before our own countrymen and before Europe. Yet it appears that the meaning of those words, which we all understood, was missapprehended by the noble Viscount himself and by a great many other people, while it provided one of the bases upon which one of our colleagues left the Government. I take another illustration of the difficulty of speaking while a war is going on about diplomatic situations. I take the speech of my noble friend Lord Lansdowne in this House ten or twelve days ago. The noble Marquess explained with extreme candour the delicate situation in the Balkans, and yet within, I think, twenty-four hours a good deal of what he said was rendered out of date by the swift passage of events. Therefore I would like to add to the two conditions which the noble Viscount laid down a third—namely, that you cannot expect, or require Governments to deal openly in debate with acute political and diplomatic situations while they are in course of development.

I pass to the more general case that is brought against His Majesty's Government. There seems to be a general idea that the Government, as a whole, are in favour of some degree of mystery as regards the publication of news. I can only say that during the five months in which I have been a member of the Government I have never known an occasion on which the whole of the Ministry were not absolutely unanimous ill desiring to give as much information to the country as the naval and military authorities would allow; and when noble Lords and the public outside seem to argue as though our wish was to give the minimum of information compatible with decency, I assert on behalf of my colleagues that it is our desire—I will proceed presently to discuss the extent to which we carry it out—to give the maximum consistent with discretion.

We heard a good deal the other night about the operations of the Press Bureau, and there are one or two aspects of its work about which I would ask your Lordships' permission to say a word or two, because I think they are not fully understood in the country at large. The Press Bureau has two functions, positive and negative. The positive function is to convey to the Press such information as is authorised by the naval and military authorities—the very experts of whom the noble Viscount spoke. The negative function is to prevent the publication of news which may be of value to the enemy or may risk the lives of our own men. I think the public hardly distinguish between that part of the work in which some form of compulsion is exercised upon the Press, and that part in which there is no compulsion at all but in which we rely exclusively en the goodwill, loyalty, and patriotism of the newspapers. The only part of the work of the Press Bureau in which any compulsion is applied is in connection with cable news. All cablegrams connected with the war that come into or go out of this country have to pass through the Press Bureau, and they are censored there on instructions laid down by the War Office, the Admiralty, or the Foreign Office according to which Department may be concerned.

As regards other information, such items, for instance, as leading articles in the Press or articles from military correspondents, no such compulsion exists. In those cases we trust entirely to the loyalty and good feeling of the Press. Of course, if they offend they are liable to the penalties provided for breach of the Regulations under the various Defence of the Realist Acts which have been passed into law. Such an instance has occurred in the case of the Globe newspaper, to which the noble Viscount referred and about which I shall have a word to sax later on. It would be quite possible to proceed on the ether method and to say to the newspapers, "You shall publish nothing at all until it has been seen and passed by the Censor," and then to punish every act of disobedience as it occurred. That is the Continental system, under which we have all seen newspapers with large slices blackened out by the pen of the Censor. We have not adopted that method in this country for two or three reasons which are easily explained. In the first place, it is entirely contrary to the spirit of our institutions and the traditions of our Press. Secondly, it would inflict an enormous amount of labour upon a very large staff which you would find difficulty in providing. Thirdly, it would throw away all the advantages arising from the appeal to the fine sense of discipline and the traditions of our British Press itself. Therefore we say to the Press, "The law does not compel you to submit anything to the Press Bureau. We invite you to be the judges in your own case." We really invite the Press to be the censors of the Press, and looking back upon the history of the past fifteen months and the conduct of the Press during that time I would say for my own part that this is an appeal which we have not addressed in vain. I think on the whole—there are notable exceptions—one cannot speak too highly of the general sense of discretion and loyalty of the Press in not taking advantage of the liberty that has been accorded to them. On the whole I think the system works very well. The question, of course, is often raised whether the way in which the Censorship is exercised is stupid or intelligent. It may be that sometimes the fact that the Censorship is so much in the hands of the naval and military men leads to their taking an unduly narrow view of the points submitted to them. I would like to say, in passing, that if the newspapers at any time have occasion to complain of the manner in which they think the Censorship has been exercised in the Press Bureau I wish they would appeal more frequently than they appear to do now to the directors of the Bureau itself.

There is another aspect of the question which I think appeals most to men in public life, and that is the issue of information to the Press about naval and military operations, casualty lists, and so on. Here you must not blame the Press Bureau. The Press Bureau is not responsible. It is merely the medium through which the Departments concerned communicate information to the public. If you blame anyone blame the Admiralty, the War Office, or the particular Department with whom the responsibility lies. I said just now that I think this is the aspect of the case that appeals most to noble Lords. They have an idea, which underlies an these speeches, that there might be greater celerity of publication and a greater frankness when the information comes out. Here let me distinguish for a moment, because it is very important, between this charge in so far as it relates to the Censorship as it exists at the Front, the theatre of war, and to the Censorship as it is worked at home. In the field of war the practice which is adopted is this. In France and Flanders and at the Dardanelles there are a small number of highly competent journalists who have been selected as accredited representatives of the Press, and who have been passed by the War Office. These men have done admirable work, but their articles are subject to a close military censorship out there, and sometimes no doubt an article—there are classic instances which have been quoted—emerges in a form which is not merely the despair of the writer but a great disappointment to the general public. Now can we do anything to improve this state of affairs? To a certain extent I think your Lordships will see that the difficulty is inherent in the conditions of the case. The soldier on the spot who exercises the censorship must be the sole judge as to details of military information. You cannot appeal against that. If the soldier at the Front says that a particular piece of information is part of a larger whole, the publication of which as a whole is likely to give help to the enemy or cause injury to our people, I do not think you can blame him for insisting upon its excision.

But I think there is something to be said on the other side. It is open to argument that the military aspect of the case is not the sole aspect that ought to be considered, and that it may even tend to obscure other aspects, such as the effect, of information upon public opinion at home, its value in consoling those who may have lost their sons or relatives at the Front, and its influence in inducing men to come forward as recruits to the Colours at home. I think it is fair to argue that these are as much military considerations as the mere examination of the matter from a narrow and technical point of view by a military officer at the Front. May I assure your Lordships that these considerations are patent to His Majesty's Government, and we are now in communication with our leading military advisers at the Front to see whether we cannot procure sonic better co-ordination in this matter. Personally, I should like to see an arrangement made—I do not, know whether it will turn out possible—by which, immediately or soon after an engagement has taken place, it may be possible to publish an account of it without giving the names or going into details that might be helpful to the enemy, and then after an interval of, say, two or three weeks to supplement it by fuller account with names and details which are so valuable to the relatives and families concerned.

I have been speaking about the information that is censored in France—or at the Dardanelles, because the same conditions apply. As to the Censorship at home, the Press Bureau issues from time to time, upon the authority of the Departments concerned, instructions and warnings to the Press. For instance it says to the Press, "Please do not publish anything about the routes that may be taken by Zeppelins when they visit the country." "Please do not say anything about the circumstances or surroundings in which a German submarine is sent to the bottom of the sea." But here, again, I think it is open to argument that perhaps too much stress is laid upon the prohibitory aspect of the duties of the Press Bureau, and that we might go rather further to help the Press Bureau to provide the Press with right news at the same time that we prevent it from providing the Press with wrong news. The Government are considering this matter too, and they are seeing whether arrangements cannot be made for creating a closer contact between the Press and our fighting forces, so that news of naval and military interest may be rendered available at an earlier date

In connection with this branch of the subject, may I allude to one point made by the noble Viscount on which he laid great stress. He could not understand why there should be any reluctance to publish in full the German official wireless communiqués. He said, "These communiqués are sent to neutral States; they go over the sea to America, whence eventually they come back here. What is the good of touching or tinkering them at all? Why not publish them in their nakedness? "The case is arguable. There is a good deal to be said on both sides, but I will give the noble Viscount an illustration which led me to think that his view cannot be sustained without qualification. Early in the war these German official wireless communiqués consisted in the main of reports on military operations, bombardments, advances, trench fights, and so on, from the German Army Headquarters. They may have been exaggerated and even false, but they related to military movements. Later on they began to tack on to these official statements appendices of a most poisonous and malignant, description, intended not to convey military information but, to confuse and injure our cause, not only in neutral States, but in our own country, and to befog and becloud our operations in an atmosphere of lies. I saw one of these German wireless communiqués which at the tail end of military information, right, or wrong, contained allegations about our Indian soldiers. wholly false, but malevolent and dangerous to a degree. I ask the noble Viscount, who knows the East very well, what he thinks would have happened if we had published that even with a denial in this country. It would have been telegraphed to India and might have done infinite damage to our cause throughout our Indian Dominions. I see no reason whatever why, in the interests of Press freedom, we should become the advertising agents and circulators of German calumnies, scandals, and lies. There are cases on the other side; but there are such cases as those to which I have alluded, to which I think the noble Viscount will attach some weight.

Now may I say a word upon an aspect of Press freedom which has not been alluded to to-night, but which was touched upon by the Lord Chancellor in his speech the other evening? He commented upon the attacks that are and have been made shun individual Ministers and upon the injury that is capable of being done, not to the man himself but to the public cause, by these attacks. I do not suppose any individual Minister minds being attacked. We are all used to that. It is part of the business of public life. But I do draw a distinction—and I ask your Lordships to follow me in accepting it—between attacks made upon Ministers as ordinary incidents of political warfare and attacks made upon ministers in war time with the object not so much of injuring them as of weakening the spirit and injuring the cause of the country. I might take, as an illustration, the attacks which have been made in many quarters upon the Prime Minister— as I think, cruel and slanderous and untrue attacks. But I will take an illustration upon which I am better qualified to speak, and that is the case of the Foreign Secretary. I say I am particularly qualified to speak upon that case because during the whole course of my public life I have been in opposition to Sir Edward Grey. For years in the House of Commons I had to conduct constant controversies with him, and from the Front Bench opposite I have often severely criticised his policy. With that experience behind me I say that the recent attacks on Sir Edward Grey fill me with indignation and shame. For ten years Sir Edward Grey has been the Foreign Minister of this country at a cost to his health which any one who sees him will at once recognise. He is the senior Foreign Minister of Europe. He has won the confidence of all the Ambassadors and representatives of foreign Powers by his absolute integrity, his disinterestedness of action, and his invariable courtesy of temper and tone. Only fifteen months ago every one was welcoming Sir Edward Grey as the spokesman of the nation at the supreme crisis of its existence. Since then he has had to conduct a most difficult and delicate diplomatic campaign. I suppose such a difficult cause no Foreign Minister has ever had to conduct before. lie has had to drive a team of four horses—I refer to the Allies—who had never been in harness before, along a road full of pitfalls on either side and abounding with sharp corners which required the most dexterous skill to negotiate. And then because after fifteen months of sear two Kings in the Balkans have disappointed our expectations and been faithless to their pledges, the public turn round and bespatter with mud the idol which until a few months ago they adored. I think these attacks are not only Unfair to Sir Edward Grey but are injurious to our cause, and tend to weaken our authority amongst the other nations of the world. They are intended for that. They injure our position With our Allies, and give confidence to oar enemies. When we are anxious, as we are, to treat the Press with full confidence and to remove every obstacle that lies in their path, may we not ask that they not play into the hands of our enemies and blunt the weapon with which it is our duty to strike?

I have only one more set of observations to make in conclusion, and I think it is desirable to make them at this moment, because they arise out of the case of which we have all read in the newspapers and to which the noble Viscount alluded. I am not quite sure whether he read into the incident of the Globe any desire on our part to interfere in any way with the liberties of the Press. He spoke with some reserve on the matter. But I am sure your Lordships will allow me to put before you the grounds on which the Government have acted. They are these. On Friday last the Globe issued a poster, which was circulated in the streets Of the metropolis, containing the announcement in large characters, "Lord Kitchener Resigns. The Reason." This poster was followed up by an article in the paper itself which made a rather different statement. It said— Lord Kitchener tenders his resignation. Interview with the King." "The Globe makes this announcement with a full sense of responsibility in the public interest. No one who is honestly out for King and country could be expected to tolerate indefinitely the intrigues of politicians. Lord Kitchener, acting with a single eye to the interests of his King and country, has tolerated the manœuvres and machinations of politicians, which none but the patriotic soldier would have endured for a day. In other words, the paper makes an untrue statement and assigns to that statement a false and malicious reason. As soon as this was made known the Press Bureau, upon the instructions of the Government, issued a denial and stated that there was no truth—as there was none—in the allegation at all.

Observe the moment at which this announcement is made. It is made just at the crisis of international affairs, when the Greek Government has resigned, when it is doubtful whether M. Venezelos is likely to resume office or not. It is made at the moment when Serbia in her agony is appealing to us for help and when we are doing our best to respond to that appeal, and while the whole East is watching what would be the action of England. At a juncture like this, at such a moment, the Globe invents and publishes broadcast this unfounded account of an interview between His Majesty the King and Lord Kitchener, and the allegation of the Minister's resignation. Nor did the matter stop there. The denial having been made on behalf of the Government, the paper next day—I have here the issue of Saturday—returned to the charge, repeated the statement, and declared that the denial of the Government was untrue. In these circumstances the Government authorised action to be taken under Regulation 51 of the Defence of the Realm Regulations, which provides for the entry into premises and the seizure of the type and plant which may be used to circulate false reports. We took this action because of the persistence of the Globe newspaper, after due warning, in publishing false statements. The House will not expect me to say anything as to what may arise in the future: but I bought that your Lordships would at least be glad to have this plain narrative of the facts of the case. I will not detain you longer. I have spoken with the sole object of inducing your Lordships to believe that in the matter of publicity and Press information we are anxious, as far as possible, to meet our critics and to add to the full amount of news which is capable of being given to the public.

LORD PABMOOR

My Lords, the noble Earl has confined his speech almost entirely to the question of the publication of news, and so far as the question of the Globe is concerned I agree with him that it would be out of place now to go into that question in any detail. We will have to wait until some later occasion, the case being sub judice at the present moment. There is another matter in regard to which I desire to express my cordial approval of what was said by the noble Earl. It is most unfortunate that what I may call impertinent criticisms of a personal character should be levelled at this stage against any of our leading statesmen, and I think all your Lordships will concur in the eloquent testimony which was paid by the noble Earl to the present Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.

A very difficult question arises upon this point as regards free discussion and publicity in the Press. My own general view is that the risks of unrestricted newspaper publication are much less than the evils of distrust and suspicion which inevitably attend any attempt at undue secrecy and undue suppression of news. The noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack referred to the same point the other night. He said— But if newspaper attacks are to be conducted on the principle of concentrating all their fire at one moment upon any particular Minister they do not, like in order to get rid of him, and then upon another Minister, it may well be a matter for future consideration whether the liberty hitherto enjoyed may not be even further curtailed. I think the difficulty there is in the application of any further curtailment in the direction which the Lord Chancellor indicated, and if there were to be further curtailment in that direction we should I think, come perilously near to the great danger— one of the greatest of all dangers —of suppressing news because it happened to be of disadvantage either to a particular Party or to the Government of the day. Therefore I entirely agree with the tone of Lord Morley's remarks when he asked his Question the other night. I agree that the limitation ought in all circumstances to be that which he indicated—namely, that only news should be suppressed which might interfere with our naval and military operations. Subject to that, I believe that in the long run the safe road is the old constitutional road of free speech and free discussion.

The other night tare noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack, in his forcible speech, which was of great interest owing to his intimate knowledge of the working of the Censorship, spoke of the alternative between free discussion on the one side and the lengthening of our casualty lists on the other. If that were the issue car verdict would he unanimous against allowing free discussion. Nothing could be more terrible than that our casualty lists, long as they are at the present time, should be still further lengthened by discussion in the newspapers or in any other sphere. But I doubt whether the antithesis is correct. If news which might be of disadvantage to our military or naval operations were not dealt with under proper censorship in the sense of information which might be given to the enemy, I quite agree with the noble and learned Lord that you might hive an antithesis between free discussion on the one side and the lengthening of our casualty lists on the other. But if we take the limitation which the noble Viscount (Lord Morley) put upon his Question, the limitation upon which all of us are agreed—namely, that news should not be made public which might interfere in any way with our naval or military operations— then I am unable to see why the old principle of free discussion and free speech should be in any way connected with the unfortunate lengthening of our casualty lists. I would go further in the other direction. The best way to diminish our casualty lists is to bring out all that is best and most worthy in our national life and character, and that is best done by enabling the people to form a true view of our, perils and dangers on one side and our victories and triumphs on the other.

I want to know whether anybody in this House really believes that the truth and the whole truth has been disclosed to this country during the course of this war subject only to the limitation which the noble Viscount embedded in his Question? That appears to me to be the real issue. Apart from the particular limitations which have been referred to at one time or another in this debate, the question is, Have we had information fairly and truthfully given which enables us to form a true view for ourselves as regards our perils and dangers on one side and our victories and triumphs out, he other? I was fortified in the view I am expressing by what was said by Lord Curzon just now. I did not know that it was ore of the prime uses of the Press Bureau to convey news. I thought that the prime purpose of the Press Bureau was to prevent the publication under censorship of news which in its opinion might be harmful to the interests of this country. But if it is part of the duty of the Press Bureau to convey news, and if the news distributed from time to time is due to the action of the Press Bureau, I doubt whether anybody can say that We have been treated in other than a very niggardly fashion, both as regards information and as regards the truth of the information which has been brought before us as members of the public.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD BUCKMASTER)

The Press Bureau is no reservoir of information; it is nothing but a conduit pipe, and it merely conveys what it is told to convey. It does not hold news back.

LORD PARMOOR

I understand that the information is conveyed to the public through the Press Bureau. The noble and learned Lord has said that the evil is not in the Press Bureau but in those who send information to the Press Bureau to be passed on for the benefit of the public. It is exactly to that point that I direct my criticism. what we want—when I say "we" I mean we members of public— to have is sufficient information of what is really going on as regards this great national crisis, so long as the giving of it does not interfere with the efficiency of our naval and military operations. The Press Bureau, I agree, cannot convey news which it does not get; but that only puts the criticism that I am passing on the present conditions one step backwards. Who prevents the Press Bureau from receiving sufficient information in order to meet the great anxieties and strong feelings of the public, or who prevents the Press Bureau from giving, as regards events that have arisen what I may call the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? That is really the question. I think it was put as forcibly as it could be by the noble and learned Earl (Lord Loreburn) and by the noble Viscount.

Now the answer of the noble Earl the Lord Privy Seal and of the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack has been this. In effect they both say, "We agree with the demand you are making; we agree that, subject to the limitations that the noble Viscount mentioned in the course of his speech, the information which you are asking for ought to be given; we agree with the criticism of the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, that only stupidity can account for the conditions as they exist at the present moment." But what I want to press upon noble Lords on the Front Bench is this. It is of no use for them to say that they agree with us in the criticisms we are making unless we have some guarantee that in the future the information supplied will be of a different character and more trustworthy than it has often been in the past. The obtaining of that result is not a matter of regulation; it is a matter of the spirit and intent in which this question of publicity is approached at the present time. I could quite understand approaching it from the point, of view that the risk of publicity is greater than the probable pant effects of free discussion and free disclosure. I think there is an initial error in that attitude, and that we ought to approach it from the other standpoint— namely, that any risk arising from publicity is far outweighed by the necessity for free speech and free discussion. You cannot expect the full force of the resources of this country to be brought to the front unless we know what the conditions are and what our national necessities require.

One noble Lord to-day used the words "optimist" and "pessimist." I do not, know which I dislike most, a sickly optimist or a carping pessimist; but I think we ought as far as possible to be neither the one nor the other. We want to have the true facts on which as men of courage we can make up our own minds. We ought to know what the truth is in order that we may each in our own position and within out power do what is best for our country at the present great crisis. It is not as though by the suppression of information you could suppress the newspapers in this or in any other country. The question is therefore one between information which is true and trustworthy and information which is not true and not trustworthy. The noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack used an expression the other day in which I cordially concur. He spoke of the world as now a whispering gallery. The world will be a whispering gallery whatever may be the dictation of a Prime Minister or whatever may be the pen of a particular Censor. But what is the antidote? It is the whispering tongue that poisons truth. Therefore the right course to adopt is to tell the truth, the whole truth, subject only to the limitation which has been so often emphasised during this debate—namely, the requirements of our naval and military operations.

The noble Earl the Lord Privy Seal gave as an illustration in the course of his speech what he called the difficulty of free discussion in the case of diplomatic developments. It was in answer to what was said by the noble Viscount, Lord Milner. That is a difficulty which we all appreciate. But the difficulty in that case did not arise from any discussion originated in the Press; it did not arise from any attitude taken either by the Press Bureau or by the Censors for the time being. If there was an error, it arose from what Ministers themselves said. It arose from what was said by the Foreign Secretary as regards Serbia, and what was said by the noble Marquess, Lord Lansdowne, as regards the conditions in Serbia when he last, spoke in this House. I am not complaining of either of those speeches, but what I want to point out is that if a difficulty has arisen under that head it has not arisen from the attitude or action of the Press but from statements made by Ministers themselves. That is a matter we have to bear in mind, and for this reason. If errors of this kind may be made in statements by Ministers, surely we ought to have the ordinary opportunities of free speech and free discussion in order to correct, if necessary, errors of that character. Surely it is a matter of most vital interest, whether Sir Edward Grey's words went the whole length, or were conditioned on the operation of political developments. That is one of the matters on which the country ought to have immediately full and truthful information. It is not right that the Executive should have control over all statements during a national crisis such as we have at the present time. By all means let them have the Censorship power; that is an entirely different question, assuming that the Censorship power is properly exercised in order to prevent only the publication of news which may be to the disadvantage of our naval and military operations. Outside that, of all times in our history this is one when we should know the truth and when every man should have the right of free speech and free discussion.

I want to say a word with reference to the speech of the noble and learned Earl, Lord Loreburn. Lord Curzon referred to what he said as regards expert opinions. I did not understand the noble and learned Earl to put his views in the way in which they were criticised by Lord Curzon. I suppose nobody knows better than the noble and learned Earl that there is often difference of expert opinion. Probably no one knows better than he does that in many cases it, is a great difficulty to conciliate expert opinion given either on one side or on the other. I understood Lord Loreburn to make this criticism, and I think it is quite justified—that what we want at the present moment is the best possible expert opinion from the point of view of military and naval strategists; in other words, that what we want above everything else is the best possible Headquarters Staff. I do not sty that all experts will agree—we know that they do not— but that does not prevent the Government from taking the opinion of the best experts they can get upon any great crucial question in cases where expert opinion differed of course the ultimate decision would rest with the Government.

I do not agree with some of the criticisms which have been directed against the present Ministry. I am one of those who do not believe that we could get a better Body to carry on the business of the country than we have at the present moment. I do not mean to say you may not have changes, but on the whole I believe we have the best body to deal with this national crisis. I differ from the noble and learned Earl in that I am not opposed to a Coalition Government. Ultimately according to our Constitution the Cabinet must be responsible, but what we want to ensure is that the Cabinet, in exercising that responsibility, is advised, and advised directly, by the best expert opinion in this country. We have had criticisms as to the size of the Cabinet and as to whether we should have a War Council. That does not seem to me to meet, the real difficulty. Ultimately, as I say the Cabinet must be responsible. I think the difficulty is not in the action of the Cabinet, whether its membership is eleven or twenty-two; the difficulty arises if you have not a sufficiently trained and sufficiently developed Headquarters Staff in order that the Cabinet may be satisfied that they have the best possible opinion on every question that comes before them for decision.

I do not like, I admit, this constant criticism as regards the constitution and methods of Our Cabinet. It is best during a time of great national crisis to avoid it if you possibly can. But this is undeniable, that it is utterly impossible for civilians properly to deal with and settle great questions of naval nod military strategy. Take the present moment, when we have before us the question of what can be done as regards the assistance of Serbia, what is to be done as regards the Dardanelles, what is to be done as regards our naval and military forces in eight, nine, or ten different places. I must say I agree with what the noble Earl said that if criticism is directed against the management of these great national matters at the present time it ought to be directed against the true point, and that every effort should be made to get the best possible Staff in order that our Government and our country may have at every step the advantage of the best expert opinion to guide them.

VISCOUNT PEEL

My Lords, there are two or three points on which I should like to say a word, one of which was raised by the noble Earl, Lord Curzon. We are all a ware that the Press Bureau has two functions, one of winch is merely to convey information from the Government Offices to the Press, and the other is the duty of censorship. I think nobody would wish to attack the Press Bureau in any way. it would be ridiculous to attack it so far at least as it is engaged in merely handing out information to the Press. This information is supplied by the Admiralty, the War Office, and the Foreign Office. Therefore, as Lord Curzon very justly pointed out, the responsibility is on the Government and not on the Press Bureau, which has been rather unfairly attacked; and I am quite certain that the statement that the Government will try to give far more information than has been given up to the present through the Press Bureau will be hailed with the greatest satisfaction in the country.

As has been stated, it is only the cable side of the Press Bureau that is compulsory. The other side is quite voluntary, and it works, I think, in rather a curious way. On the whole the duty and responsibility of publishing news is left to the editors of the newspapers. There are something like 2,000 newspapers in Great Britain. A very small percentage of the news to be published in the London newspapers is brought before the Press Bureau. The London newspapers need not, as has been stated, submit any of that news to the Press Bureau unless they like, but they can do, so to put the responsibility off their own shoulders. The Press Bureau proceeds to exercise its function and blue-pencils information so presented to it. In some cases, of course, it has made mistakes—there was the famous one about captains and kings departing— but my point is this. This voluntary censorship is not exercised at all, so I am informed over the country Press; it is only exercised in the case of the London Press, and, of course, in connection only with a very small percentage of the news which the London Press gives. Surely it is not suggested that the editors of the great London dailies are less responsible or less capable than the editors of country newspapers of distinguishing between news that ought to be published and news that ought not. Therefore I ask, What is the use of this function of the Press Bureau? The Bureau may be useful as the means of distributing information that comes from the Public Offices, but I should have thought that it had better give up this very small duty of criticising and blue-pencilling what is presented to it by some of the London dailies and restrict that side of its activities to giving general advice, and so on. But I do not want to criticise the Press Bureau. It is so tied and bound by regulations not made by itself but made by the Public Offices that very little responsibility can be attributed to it.

Another point I should like to mention arises out of a misconception which I think was caused by some observations made by the noble mid learned Lord on the Woolsack in the last debate. The noble and learned Lord was speaking not so much of the Press Bureau as of the Military Bureau and Censorship under the War Office, which, of course, discharges very large and important functions with which we are not at the moment concerned. But in defending that Bureau the noble and learned Lord used some expressions which have caused misapprehension and are, I think, a little hard on these in whose favour they were said. He told us he had often felt bitter resentment at the insinuations made in London newspapers against these men "whose fingers, it may well be, held tile pen more clumsily than they used to hold the sword." I think that some of these men were under the impression that in this case they had held the pen with almost as much success as, in the opinion of the Lord Chancellor, they had wielded the sword. The case was this, and the criticism really only refers to certain difficulties that arose at the beginning of the war. At that time the whole of the censorship was under the military authorities, and it is quite true that under this military censorship, which dealt with Press cablegrams and also with private cablegrams, many difficulties arose; but my point is this, and my defence of these gentlemen is this, that that was due, not to their inability to wield the pen, but to the system which necessarily had to be established at that time. There was no censorship before the war began, and officers were sent to the headquarters of the different cable companies, but they were not under general control, because it was impossible at that time to establish general co-ordination. Mistakes were made, and it is admitted that difficulties arose. But it ought to be said in defence of these gentlemen that they put their own House in order and co-ordinated the system, and that before this matter was taken over by the existing Press Bureau they had established a system which had avoided the criticism that had at first arisen. So think it may be said that, even if they made these early mistakes, they fully atoned for them by the system of co-ordination which they set up.

I do not think it is generally recognised by the public that there have been almost since the beginning of the war these two great systems of censorship going on. The Press censorship which we have heard of is a comparatively small business only employing about fifty men, whereas the great post and cable censorship over private and business correspondence and telegrams has been going on under the control of military men for all this time with the greatest success. It is a very large business. In the postal censorship something like 1,700 persons are employed, and for dealing with commercial cables and so on there are something like 120 outside the country and about 400 inside the country. They have done a great deal to paralyse German information about trade, to injure German trade, and to assist British trade. Therefore if they are accused in one small respect, as regards the commencement of the war, of not having wielded their pens with great success, I think you may fairly set against that the fact that they have since conducted this large business with great success and to the entire satisfaction of British trade. In fact, the only criticism that they have received is inspired by enemy traders.

The noble Earl, Lord Curzon, has spoken of a larger amount of information to be given to the Press Bureau, I think it is admitted by all that we are extremely well able in this country to stand shocks, that the difficulty is rather to depress us than the reverse, and that bad news has only the effect of stimulating the Britisher rather than slackening his energies. But I do not see why we should have more shocks than are necessary. Too many shocks are bad for the constitution. What happens is this. The first news disseminated represents matters in a glowing light, and then gradually we are reduced from that high state of exultation till in about ten days we are plunged into the depths of temporary despair. That might be avoided if a more general average, if I may say so, was struck in the first case between good and bad news. We should not be lifted up to the heights only later to be plunged down to the depths. I do not think our constitutions are adapted to travelling from the heights of great satisfaction to the gloomy depths of despair, or—shall I say?—dicontent.

THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE

>: My Lords, I will venture to trouble your Lordships with one or two brief observations before this debate closes, but I am certainly not going to attempt to travel over the whole of the ground occupied, for I think your Lordships will agree with me when I say that there probably has never been a more discursive debate than that to which we have listened during these two evenings. I cannot help thinking that Lord St. Davids—who is no longer in the House—must have felt that he was scarcely justified when he told us at the outset of this discussion that it would be necessary for him to ask for a special meeting of the Privy Council in order to get an adequate opportunity of making known his views. I have always believed that this House is really, if I may say so without disrespect, the happy hunting ground of the free-lance, because there is no evening in the session during which any Peer who desires to bring any conceivable subject before your Lordships is not at full liberty to do so.

I shall not trouble your Lordships with many observations upon the subject of the Censorship. That matter was dealt with very full by my noble friend who sits behind me, and although I do not for a moment suggest that there is unanimity in all parts of the House I venture to think that there is a considerable amount of agreement, at any rate in the matter of principle. I take the principle laid down by the noble Viscount on the Cross Benches (Lord Morley). He told us that in his view nothing should be withheld unless it was calculated to prejudice military or naval operations. Then I noted what was said by the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack. He pleads for a vigilant Censorship for the proper protection and safety of our forces on land and sea. Surely those are the broad principles upon which we are all in agreement; and I would add that subject to the observance of those principles I believe it is the desire of all of us that free discussion should be facilitated rather than obstructed. There again, if I may say so, I express concurrence with what was said by Lord Parmoor a few moments ago. He asked for free speech and free discussion, and I hold with him that those are the objects at which we should all aim and that the onus is upon those who desire to restrict that freedom to which both he and I attach so much importance.

Some complaint was made of the statement made by the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack when he addressed the House in very strong terms, but I venture to think not a whit too strong, in reference to personal attacks that have been made upon particular Ministers. I listened attentively to what was said by the noble and learned Lord, and I am sure I did not misunderstand him when I took him to suggest, not that Ministers should be in any way safeguarded from criticism either in respect of individual acts or of their policy, but that what he wanted to discourage was attack concentrated upon a particular Minister with the obvious and avowed object of driving that Minister front his place in public life, which is a widely different thing.

One word more only with regard to the Censorship. We all admit that mistakes have been made. There are many gentlemen who have been engaged in this very difficult and delicate work who probably would be much happier with a sword in their hands rather than a blue pencil. But I do hope that in our resentment at these mistakes we shall not lose sight of the great amount of very hard and monotonous and disagreeable work which has been discharged by many of these gentlemen out of sheer desire to do something to help the common cause at this moment.

We have had a good many comments upon the difficult question of the machinery of government. I think we shall none of us dispute that a body of twenty-two public men is not a body well constituted for the purpose of directing the course of a great war. With regard to the dimensions of the Cabinet, I venture to suggest to your Lordships that when You have to deal with the formation of a Coalition Government it is not very easy to keep the numbers of the Ministry within narrow limits, and for this reason. A Coalition is always looked upon askance in many quarters, and probably one of the most natural ways of disarming opposition to the formation of such a Government is to be found in the choice of a personnel which shall be as far as possible representative of the different interests and opinions concerned. You are in effect telescoping two Cabinets into one, and the task is not a very simple or easy one. The noble and learned Earl below the Gangway (Lord Loreburn) advanced the argument—it is often advanced, and it is a perfectly good one—that one of the objections to a Coalition Government is that it deprives the country of an alternative Government. He said that it also deprived the country of criticism from responsible men, and he added, unless I misheard him, that we had instead to be content with what I think he called mischievous and irresponsible criticism. I am not quite sure that the complaint that the criticism is irresponsible is quite well-founded. I take the quarters from which that criticism has proceeded in your Lordships' House. Will any one tell me that the criticism from public men like my noble friend Lord Milner, like the three noble Lords who sit on the Cross-Benches (Lord Morley, Lord Parmoor, and Lord Courtney) and the noble and learned Earl below the Gangway (Lord Loreburn) can be described as irresponsible criticism? I think not. I think I see very clearly the gradual formation of a group, not an inconsiderable one, whom I would describe as the Elder Statesmen of the country, whose criticism—I say nothing about whether it occasionally becomes mischievous or not—certainly is not criticism that could be described as irresponsible. We at any rate do not take this criticism amiss, and we are quite ready to welcome it if it is kept within reasonable bounds. My noble friend Lord Milner expatiated upon the hard lot of the critic. I think his description was that the critic who called a spade a spade did so with a rope round his neck. I am not at all sure that the rôle of the critic in these days is by any means the rôle of the martyr. I think, on the contrary, that the rôle of the critic tends to be a much less thankless one than the rôle of the people who are called upon to plead for the defence.

Let me come back for a moment to the machinery of government. It has always been recognised that the plenum of the Cabinet was too large to enable it to direct the war in a satisfactory and efficient manner, and it is an open secret that that work has been for some time past performed by a Committee of the Cabinet. I do not think I am wrong when I say that the members of the Committee were themselves ready to admit that that Committee, which consisted of a considerable number of members, was unduly large for the work it had to do. We are now to have the small Committee which public opinion seems to call for. As to the personnel, a statement is to be made almost immediately. The noble and learned Earl, Lord Loreburn, said that in his view a small Committee reporting to the Cabinet was a very dangerous innovation. He said that it tended to produce the maximum of delay. That criticism is founded upon the assumption that the small Committee is not to have any power of action without previous consultation with the Cabinet. Now the arrangement which we have in view proceeds upon a different hypothesis. It proceeds upon the assumption that the small Committee can take action by itself, but that if it does so it has to make the Cabinet aware of its decision, and that it is only in cases where an entirely new departure, a great change of policy, has to be resorted to that the concurrence of the whole Cabinet is required. I may be told that all these attempts to describe the functions of this Committee are wanting in precision. In my view it is impossible to lay down bylaws for the guidance either of the Cabinet or of a Committee of the Cabinet. You must trust to the common sense of the persons concerned, and if that common sense is exercised I have no doubt that the new arrangement is likely to work in a satisfactory manner.

Then may I say a word with regard to the vexed question of expert advice, which has already been to some extent dealt with by my noble friend. The idea of the noble and learned Earl (Lord Loreburn) is that the experts are to have the direction of military operations, and he would entirely exclude civilians, who, he says, know nothing about strategy; he consequently will not contemplate the idea of their over-ruling the advice of the experts. All these arguments seem to me to proceed upon the wholly erroneous supposition that what the Government has to decide upon is a perfectly clean-cut and definite problem. That is not the case. As I ventured to say the other evening, all these questions involve not only naval and military but political considerations; and even when you come to the purely naval and military problems, as my noble friend pointed out, it by no means follows that your experts are all of one mind. So that the question that comes before the Cabinet is, as often as not, a very complicated and confused question, and one in which it is often impossible to say that your experts are either for or against the particular proposal.

I own that I listened with a good deal of sympathy to what was said by Lord Parmoor on the subject of the General Staff. I think our experience in that matter has perhaps been a little unfortunate. It was one of the lessons which we were supposed to have learned from the South African War that an efficient Headquarters Staff should always be within reach of the Government of the day for their advice and guidance. What I am afraid unfortunately happened at the very outset of this war was that the members of the General Staff, or most of them, were spirited away to take up important positions at the Front. I notice at any rate that, I think, not one of the names which appeared in the Army List under the heading of General Staff before the war broke out is now to be found in that position. But whoever your experts may be, you are always liable to find yourself face to face with a conflict of opinion, and with a question which, because it is not a purely naval or purely military question, cannot, be decided upon naval or military grounds alone. But at any rate we are prepared to maintain that our experts have at all events always had a fair chance of getting a hearing; while on the other hand we maintain not less strongly that the responsibility for the decision must rest, not with them, but, with the members of the Government of the day.

I would like to say half-a-dozen words with regard to the complaint of our performances in the matter of the Balkans. It has been suggested, more than once I think, that all these developments and liabilities in the Balkans came upon us as an entire surprise. The time will come when we shall all of us have to peruse, or reperuse, the documentary history of this war; but this at any rate I can say with absolute confidence—that the question of our Balkan policy has been constantly and continuously before the mind of the Foreign Office, and that it has not been from any want of careful study of all these questions that we find ourselves at the last disappointed of our expectations. The Foreign Secretary has explained the broad outlines of our Balkan policy. That policy has not succeeded for the very simple reason that it was founded upon the hope that, the Balkan States would be found ready to enter into what I suppose may be called a give-and-take arrangement as between themselves. They were most of them perfectly willing to take what they could get; but when it came to giving, it was a very different matter. And so it came to pass that the old jealousies and old animosities, fomented by external pressure and intrigue which I need not further describe, prevailed and prevented the success of what I believe was in principle the only reasonable policy to be ursued in regard to the Balkan States. My noble friend, in a few generous words which the House I think appreciated, spoke of the immense difficulties which the Foreign Office has had to confront in dealing with this question. I share his view, and I believe that when the history of these transactions has to be recorded and reviewed there will be only one conclusion, and that is that no Foreign Minister ever had a more thankless—perhaps I might add a more hopeless—task entrusted to him, or addressed himself to that task with greater patience and greater sincerity.

I cannot pass by without a word of comment what was said by my noble friend Lord Milner with regard to our treatment of Serbia. He went out of his way, it is true, to tell us that he was far from imputing to us anything like a deliberate betrayal of Serbia; but he did charge us, not only with great absence of prevision, but with failure to bring timely aid to Serbia, and I think he went as far as to say, with regard to Sir Edward Grey's explanation of the terms in which he had pledged himself to support our friends in the Balkans, that, after that explanation, he doubted whether—in effect, I think, this is what he said—he doubted whether the word of a British Minister would be taken at its face value in that part of the world. When we are told that we might have given timely aid to Serbia what is suggested? I understand that one suggestion is that we might have thrown troops into that country earlier in the autumn. At that moment the relations between Bulgaria and Serbia were extremely strained, and it seems to me at least conceivable that our intervention at that time might have had the effect of precipitating troubles which we all desired to avoid.

But there is another aspect of the case. Where were we to find the troops that might have been landed in Serbia at that time? Surely the House has not forgotten that it was in those days that the great forward movement in which we co-operated with our French Allies was being prepared on the Western front. At that moment it would have been impossible for us to withdraw any large number of troops from the Western front. As soon as those operations were concluded we took advantage of the resources which were available. But we are told that even then we hesitated; indeed, it is suggested that we are hesitating still. What I want to say about that is this. Our hesitation was not due to the fact that we were in any doubt as to whether we should take part in opposing the forward movement of Germany across Bulgaria and Serbia, but because it was impossible at that moment to say with confidence what was the most effectual way of arresting that advance and thereby coming to the assistance of our Allies, including Serbia, in that part of the world. A false step at that moment would have been fatal, and surely we are not open to criticism because, in those circumstances, we desired to postpone our decision until we were able to judge what were the most appropriate means of giving effect to our policy in that part of the world. What I desire particularly to impress upon my noble friend is that our action—or, if he likes to call it, our inaction —at that moment really did not involve any waste of time whatever. We sent to Salonika such troops as were immediately available. With regard to the remainder of our force, we did not lose a moment in placing it under orders and in providing the necessary transport, and even if we had decided, as apparently my noble friend would have liked us to decide, at the moment to send those troops to another destination, we could not have sent them more expeditiously or in a shorter compass of time than we actually did. And that surely was a case when we were within our rights in deferring our decision until we were able to ascertain what view was taken of the whole situation, not only by our own military and naval advisers, but by those of our Allies.

Lord Loreburn—who has now, I think, left the House—mentioned one or two matters on which I will only say one word. He asked us, in a very eloquent and earnest passage, whether we had really counted the cost of this war—whether we realised what it meant, not only in the loss of life, but in the great burden which we were piling up on this country, the dislocation of her industry, and so forth. Does the noble and learned Earl or any member of your Lordships' House suppose that we are so utterly impervious to the vast issues which are arising at this moment that we pay no heed to these things, or that we do not take into consideration the vast cost in money and other things of this war as it progresses? The noble and learned Earl asked whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer had ever called our attention to the financial consequences of continued hostilities. Does he suppose that the Chancellor of the Exchequer sits as mute as a fish and never says a word to his colleagues about the very matters which are most especially entrusted to him? That is a criticism which to my mind is scarcely reasonable, and I say again that while we do not in the least resent, while we appreciate the value of much of the criticism to which we have been exposed in this House, we do think that occasionally it goes a little further and is perhaps a little more severe and unkind than the circumstances entirely justify.

LORD STRACHIE

My Lords, I beg to ask the Questions standing in my name on the Paper—viz.:

To ask the Secretary of State for War—

1. 1. How many officers or other persons are employed carrying Despatches to and from the Headquarters of our Armies abroad.
2. 2. How many are members of the House of Lords, how many are members of the House of Commons, and what is their pay and allowances for such service.
3. 3. Whether he will grant a Return giving the names of all such persons serving and their pay.

To ask the Civil Lord of the Admiralty—

1. 1. How many officers or other persons are employed carrying Despatches to and from the Fleet.
2. 2. How many are members of the House of Lords, how many are members of the House of Commons, and what is their pay and allowances for such service.
3. 3. Whether he will grant a Return giving the names of all such persons serving and their pay.

I understand that it is not convenient for the Paymaster-General, who represents the War Office, to be here this evening, and that my noble friend the Duke of Devonshire will answer both Questions.

THE CIVIL LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY (THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE)

My Lords, I regret that my noble friend Lord Newton is not able to be here this evening. At the same time I must point out to the noble Lord opposite that there has been a certain amount of inconvenience as his Questions were only received by the officials of the House late on Saturday afternoon. As a matter of fact, I only saw them in a special Parliamentary Paper which I received very late on Saturday evening. My noble friend Lord Newton was away in the country, but he would have been able to come up had he known in time.

With regard to the War Office Question, I am able to inform the noble Lord that there are fourteen officers employed on this duty. Of these, eight are on duty on any given day. Three are members of the House of Lords; two are members of the House of Commons. They are paid at the rate of £400 per annum as Staff captains, and they draw the normal travelling allowances. The special appointments which these officers hold come under the category of Staff appointments. The names of the officers on the Staff and the posts they fill are not published.

The reply to the Admiralty Question is that there are twelve officers of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve who are employed in carrying Despatches to and from the Fleet. Occasional use is also made of the services of other officers who may be temporarily unemployed. None of these gentlemen are members of the House of Lords; five are members of the House of Commons. They receive no remuneration but merely allowances to cover the cost of travelling. I should have no objection to giving the names of these gentlemen, but I think the noble Lord will agree that for military reasons it is undesirable that the names of officers carrying important Despatches should be made public.

LORD STRACHIE

I should like to say that I was not complaining for one moment, as the noble Duke seemed to think, of the absence of my noble friend Lord Newton. I should have thought that the noble Duke, having been a member of the other House so long, would be aware that the notice given was not so very short. As a matter of fact, the Paper reached me in the country yesterday.

With regard to his replies, if the noble Duke says that it is against public policy to give the names, of course I have nothing further to say. But it seems to me that when an inconvenient question is asked the Government always shelter themselves under the cry that it is against the public interest to give the information. To my mind it is very desirable to know the gentlemen who are receiving £400 a year for this work and who at the same time receive £400 a year as members of the House of Commons. We are always being lectured by the Government that we ought to save in every possible respect. Yet here are gentlemen who are being paid two salaries. It is too late an hour to comment on the noble Duke's answer now, but I shall raise the matter on the Motion of my noble friend Lord Peel which is down for Wednesday.

House adjourned at ten minutes before Eight o'clock, till Wednesday, except for Judicial business.