HL Deb 24 November 1915 vol 20 cc445-7
LORD ST. DAVIDS

My Lords, I would like to say a few words in personal explanation. I made a speech in your Lordships' House the other day [November 16] which has provoked a great deal of comment. There is one passage in particular in it which I should like to read from the Hansard report, which I have not corrected—I never do revise the reports of my speeches—and which is an extremely accurate report. said— A good many months ago, at the beginning of the war, it was stated that there were ladies visiting at the British Headquarters. The names were given in the papers at the time. Since then no names have appeared in the papers, but, if report is true, those visits then were not by any means the only ones. I am not going into that at length. I merely ask this question. Do the Government defend the presence of ladies at the Great Headquarters, the thinking machine, of the British Armies in France? I am not going to ask how many there have been—I only ask Aye or No, do you justify it, do you defend it? There never was a time when the debates in this House were as important or read with the same interest as they are to-day. I am very glad of it. This is the one place in Great Britain where you can put questions and get an answer; this is the one place in Great Britain where you can expose things that ought to be exposed. Therefore to that question I want the Government to say 'Yes' or 'No' When I said that, I had only one thing in my mind— the particular incident to which I alluded of ladies at the beginning of the war. I may say that the names of those ladies were in the newspapers. The whole details of their visit were in the newspapers. It was stated, I think, that they had visited the trenches and things of that sort. They are ladies so absolutely above reproach that it is not necessary to go further into it than this. What I had in my mind was that it was not a proper thing when this great war in France, this great tragedy, was being acted, that it should be used as a kind of peep-show for the interest of ladies that they might observe it. I thought that it was not decent, and I think now that it was not decent. That is what I said, and that is all I meant to say, and that is all I had in my mind.

Why I am saying this to-day is that I observe that a great deal has been read into my speech which I never meant to have read into it, a great deal in the way of club gossip which I had never thought of at all and which I cared nothing about. As far as I am concerned I did not wish or intend that anything of that kind should be read into my remarks, and I greatly regret that it has been read into what I said by the newspapers and by people outside. I may say generally that I think all the criticism that my speech has received has been criticism of my speech as it appeared in the newspapers in summary, not of my speech as made in your Lordships' House. As regards my speech as reported in Hansard—quite correctly reported, and unrevised in any way by me—I stand by every word that I said.

THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (THE MARQUESS OF CREWE)

My Lords, I do not know that the House will expect me to say anything at length on the personal explanation which my noble friend has just made. I am glad that he has taken this opportunity of qualifying a particular statement which he was under- stood to have made on that occasion of a highly damaging nature as regards the character and reputation of an important body of officers at the Front. He now tells us that his criticism was solely directed to an event which took place in the quite early stages of the war, and that he did not understand that those visits which he considered to be of an improper character had since continued, and that, therefore, his animadversion was not levelled at anything which is happening now. The House will, I have no doubt, be glad to have that explanation. The noble Lord will find, I think, that the whole House is in agreement with him on one point—namely, that all visits to the scene of the war, to the Front, whether undertaken by men or by women, unless they are undertaken for some specific purpose of duty, ought not to be undertaken at all. That, in my judgment, applies quite as much to one sex as it does to the other. On the general subject of my noble friend's speech, which, as he states, has been the target of a great amount of criticism, not merely in the Press in the ordinary sense but in personal letters from those well qualified to give an opinion, such as the noble and gallant Field-Marshal who has a seat in this House, I cannot help stating my opinion, since he has raised the subject, that the indiscriminate character of the criticism which he then uttered, although, as he has complained, it may have appeared to be made more indiscriminate by the condensed reports that appeared in the newspapers as distinct from the full report of his speech in Hansard, obliges one to say that he really only has himself to thank if some harsh things have been said of his intervention on that particular occasion.