§ LORD ST. DAVIDS rose to ask His Majesty's Government whether they can make any statement as to the present position of affairs in the Balkans.
§ The noble Lord said: My Lords, in rising to put this Question I would begin by expressing the regret which we must all feel, no less than the Government themselves, that during the fourteen months that have passed since the war began the Governments of the Allied Powers have not succeeded in re-cementing that union of all the Balkan States which might have done so much to bring the war to a conclusion. I am sure that if the Government vouchsafe any answer on this point to-day, they will tell us two things. They will tell us, first of all, that it was a very difficult thing to do; secondly, that they have tried their hardest to do it. I am quite sure that it was a very difficult thing to do. Had it been easy, I have no doubt it would have been done. The problem is not only a difficult one; it is a very old one. Before placing this Question on the Paper I devoted some time to again looking through Gibbon's "History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." The old Greek Empire in the East fell for one reason only—because they had before them the same problem which the Government have before them to-day, and because, like our Government, they failed to solve it. The problem that brought down the old Greek Empire was this—how were you going to make Greeks and Bulgarians and Serbians all work together instead of against one another. That was the problem then. You have these people 932 living to-day almost in exactly the same places, with precisely the same feelings towards one another that they had on the day the old Greek Empire fell. I venture to say that if you could bring to life the last Greek Emperor of Constantinople, and if an intelligent Foreign Office clerk could spend two hours in telling him the principal facts as to what had happened in Eastern Europe since his death, the last Greek Emperor of Constantinople would be just as capable of dealing with the problem to-day as any Foreign Secretary.
§ But, after all, the problem was solved once. It was solved before the first Balkan War by the present Prime Minister of Greece; and having been solved once, surely it ought not to have been beyond the capacity of the Foreign Offices of Europe to solve it again. I want to put this question to the Government—Have they taken the right course; have they taken the usual businesslike course? I have no doubt they have given a lot of thought to it. I would go so far as to say that some of the Foreign Offices may have thought of very little else. But have they done what they ought to have done all the same? What have they done? Doubtless they have followed the usual course. I have no doubt that somebody in London has written a beautiful Despatch and that at Paris somebody has read it through and said "I don't like Clause 3" and "I suggest something instead of paragraph 17"; then it has gone on to Petrograd, and somebody there has objected to Clause 5 and to paragraph 20, and has suggested some alternative wording; and by the time the Despatch has come back a battle somewhere has been fought and has been lost and won, the whole circumstances have altered, and the thing has had to be begun all over again. If the Government told the truth, I venture to say that this is what the Foreign Offices of the Allied Powers have been engaged in doing. Is that the right course? Ought they not to have done what any one of us would have done if we had had a difficult business problem before us?
§ Supposing any one of us had had a business affair which he had to negotiate not only by getting his two or three partners into agreement but by getting three or four other people of conflicting views to join together. What in those circumstances would be have done? Written a letter? Writing letters is not of 933 much use. I venture to say that there is only one thing he would have done. He would have gone and met the other gentlemen and talked the matter over. I have observed that the three or four people who have been really carrying on this war for the country do adopt that businesslike course. I say the three or four people because, although we have a Cabinet of about two dozen members, I do not assume that everything is managed by a couple of dozen Ministers. As I say, the three or four people who have been obviously carrying on the war for this country with great energy do adopt this course when they have a difficult problem before them. They do not write letters; they go over to the Continent and meet the principal Frenchmen and the principal Russians and discuss the matter, and come to some decision. Why has that not been done in foreign affairs in this great problem of the Balkans? No more important problem than this has been before the Government, and I submit that this is the course that ought to have been adopted.
§ I may be told "Oh, but the Government have representatives, men of ability and men they can trust, in the Balkans, who have been doing the best they can." I do not want for a moment to say anything that would reflect on the abilities of any of the gentlemen who have been looking after His Majesty's affairs as British representatives in the Balkans. But I do say this, that what was wanted in this matter was not only a man of ability but a man of outstanding ability and reputation, a man who was known to carry the people of this country behind him, a man whose word, if he said "Yes" or if he said "No," would be known to bind the Government of this country. This affair in the Balkans should have been negotiated, not in writing, but by word of mouth, and should have been negotiated not by junior representatives but by a man of high Cabinet position, and it would indeed have been a worthy task for a Prime Minister or an ex-Prime Minister of this country. I would press on the Government, if it is not too late—they know better than I do whether anything can now be done—that that is a course which even at this late hour the Government would be wise to adopt.
§ As I am speaking on this subject there are two other suggestions of a different kind in connection with the Balkans which 934 I would like to put before the Government for their consideration. I do so with great diffidence. Although I have been many years in Parliament I have spoken only once on foreign policy. On that occasion—some members of the Government may remember it—I unsuccessfully moved in the House of Commons the rejection of the Anglo-German Agreement. Had I been successful in that Motion General Botha in South West Africa would have been saved a great deal of trouble, and I think Sir John Jellicoe, with the problem of Heligoland before him, will have very much wished that on that day I had succeeded in defeating the Government. This is only the second speech I have ever made in either House of Parliament on foreign affairs. In those circumstances perhaps I may be permitted to throw out two or three other suggestions to the Government for their consideration. One is this. Sir Edward Grey told the House of Commons yesterday how doubtful is the position in the Balkans. He spoke in no uncertain tone. As far as we can gather, there are people in the Balkans who think that they can attack Serbia without attacking either Great Britain or Russia. They have no unkindly feeling towards this country, and many of them have naturally the utmost gratitude towards Russia for the part she took in the liberation of Bulgaria. To many people in Bulgaria it must surely be a bitter pill to think they would be opposing the Russians. But they have their own domestic quarrels with Serbia, and they seem to think, some of them, that they could attack Serbia and do us no harm. I would suggest this to the Government. I do not know, and I am not asking, whether there are any Russian troops in Serbia to-day. There may be. If not, I would suggest that His Majesty's Government should approach the Russian Government at once and ask them to send a force to Serbia, however small, even if only 500 men, but to send that force in Russian uniform. Then let it be known—that is the point—that these men are on the Serbian frontier and that if anybody, for whatever motive, attacks Serbia to-morrow, it will be the uniform of the Tsar of Russia, the uniform of the men who liberated Bulgaria, that would have first of all to be fired against. I venture to think that this is a suggestion which the Government might entertain. It would cost very little, and it might have a great moral effect.
935§ The third point is a different one, but also has to do with the Balkans. Since the beginning of the war the Monarchy of this country has declared the annexation of Cyprus, which before we only occupied and administered. Cyprus now belongs to the Throne of this country. In Cyprus you have a Greek population of about a quarter of a million. It would be no hardship if you assimilated the law in Cyprus as regards the Greeks to the law which the Greeks themselves in the kingdom of Greece have passed of their own volition for their own advantage. What I suggest is this. I would like the Government to-morrow to issue an Ordinance creating in Cyprus compulsory military service just as exists in the kingdom of Greece. I would have exactly the same conscription law passed, with the necessary modifications, as if Cyprus were part of the kingdom of Greece. In proportion to the Army which Greece raises from her population by her system of compulsory service, that would give you in Cyprus a force of about 25,000 men. In these times 25,000 men even are not to be despised. Why not raise that force and start drilling them? But I would go a step further and press this, too, on the Government. Let them raise this force and notify to the Greek Government that if it should happen that during the course of this war Greek troops and our own find themselves fighting side by side we would send this force from Cyprus to Greece, put it under the orders of the Greek Commander-in-Chief, and let it take its place in the Greek ranks. If you did that to-day, you would add to the good feeling that already exists between this country and Greece. I think it would very favourably affect the judgment of the Greek people, and this is a time when this country wants all the friends she can get. I venture to think that the course which I suggest is a practical one, and one which could do no harm. It may in certain circumstances add to our forces; it will undoubtedly add to our friends. That, my Lords, is the other suggestion which I desire to press upon the serious consideration of the Government.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWEMy Lords, I am sure that the House has listened with close attention to the interesting speech of my noble friend, this being, as I think he himself stated, the first occasion on which we have heard him engage in a discussion on foreign affairs in this House. 936 I desire to say at once that I fully appreciate the care that he took, while skirting on delicate topics, to say nothing which could in any sense cause difficulty to His Majesty's Government or the administration of Foreign Affairs. I have no doubt that every one here will have seen the statement made by my right hon. friend in the House of Commons yesterday to which my noble friend alluded; and on the general question I have no desire, even if I had the authority of my colleagues for doing so, to add anything to what Sir Edward Grey then stated. A general discussion at this moment of Balkan affairs is bound to be an exceedingly delicate matter. Beyond that, it is almost certain to be in the end misleading, because a single statement made on a particular day, at a time when events are moving rapidly from day to clay, is almost bound, if looked at two or three days later, to give a wrong impression of the views of His Majesty's Government on the whole situation. It is obviously impossible to carry on day by day a public discussion, or for the Government to give daily information on the various phases of politics in any particular part of the world; and, that being so, a single statement made in any detail is bound to prove misleading.
We are entitled to say, as my right hon. friend implied yesterday, that we are in one sense in an advantageous position in this Balkan question. We are completely disinterested on all the points which stir opinion there—not owing to our superior virtue, but owing to the force of circumstances and of facts. From the point of view of this country it is altogether immaterial by whom a particular district in South-East Europe is occupied as far as our own national interests are concerned. All that we say is that we generally desire to see the boundaries of these States drawn so far as possible on racial and national lines. Even that statement is, of course, bound to be subject to a certain degree of qualification. You cannot draw an absolutely perfect ethnographical map of South-East Europe. In many districts there is an admixture of races which makes the accurate definition of boundaries on racial lines scarcely possible and there are various other qualifying considerations. But subject to them, those are, as is familiar to all the world, the lines on which we desire to see a settlement made, and we believe that that desire of ours is 937 fully recognised by all the Balkan States, and quite as much by Bulgaria as by the other States in that part of the world.
Corning to the particular points on which my noble friend spoke, it is, of course, a sad and familiar fact that the relations between some of the Balkan States have been completely poisoned by the events of 1913. Although, as my noble friend quite truly pointed out, the causes which have culminated in that state of feeling are deep-rooted and go far back through the centuries, while that fact in itself, of course, adds greatly to the difficulty in dealing with them, yet the fact remains that several of these States entertain a profound distrust of each other's motives, and consequently they ascribe to the actions which other States may take in some cases a meaning which may not be warranted but is one which prevents anything like an increase of amity between them. That being the state of things my noble friend believes that, in spite of the great difficulty of bringing about a better feeling between the different States, much might have been done by instituting a plan of oral discussion between statesmen of the first rank among the Allies, I presume with representatives of the different States concerned, rather than by proceeding through the usual methods of diplomacy and correspondence.
§ LORD ST. DAVIDSThe suggestion which I put forward was that they should deal with the States themselves, not with their representatives. My suggestion was that your important person, with a Frenchman and a Russian, should go to the Balkans and negotiate at first hand with the principals concerned, not with subordinates.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWEI quite understand my noble friend's desire, and he has certainly made the actual method which he thinks ought to have been adopted clearer in the explanation which he has just given. There is always, I think, something tempting in the desire to send persons of the first eminence to deal personally with a difficult and complicated situation, and in many cases I am sure there is much to be said for it. But the plan is not always successful, as has been found by Germany quite recently in two instances. The Germans sent two statesmen of the first rank, both men of great experience and ability— 938 Prince Billow to Rome, and Herr Dernburg to New York and Washington. Those missions did not meet in either case with anything approaching success; and certainly in one instance, possibly in both, it may be questioned whether the German Government would not have acted more wisely if they had left those enterprises alone. But I do not quote these instances in order to decry the principle of oral discussion as compared with discussion by correspondence, because I have no doubt that in a great number of cases genuine advantage can be derived from it. But in the first place the individual has to be most carefully selected, and it is not always easy, from among the very small number of those who are qualified both by the necessary ability and by the public estimation in which they stand, to find a person who is able to go and who can be spared from other duties not less important. My noble friend will, of course, see that the analogy which he presented of conferences which have taken place between Ministers or between eminent soldiers in France is not entirely complete, if only from the great difference that exists between the two cases in the time which has to be occupied in the respective missions. Had it been found possible—which it distinctly was not—for the different Foreign Ministers of the Allied Powers to meet and to discuss these questions, I do not say for a moment that we should have succeeded in arriving at a solution of this intensely difficult Balkan problem, but there would have been, I agree, a far better chance of doing so than is possible by the ordinary methods of the telegraph and the post. It would have been equally impossible to find representatives of the various Allied Powers who could have acted on the plan which my noble friend suggested. It would not be desirable to go into the reasons which cause me to make that statement, but I think my noble friend may take it that it would not have been possible to find representatives of the different countries who could have undertaken the commission of which he speaks. Therefore my noble friend will understand that as a matter of principle I am far from disputing the advantages which might have followed from the course which he has suggested, but I am bound to state that in my opinion it was not a possible course to pursue in the circumstances as they actually exist. But I can tell him, assuming it to have been a failure of the best possible course, 939 that the failure was not due to want of consideration on our part or of that of the other Governments of the advantages which might follow from it.
As regards the two other points which my noble friend raised—that of the employment of Russian troops in conjunction with the Serbian Army, and the interesting suggestion which he made for the junction to a Greek force in certain contingencies of a force from Cyprus—he will excuse me, I hope, if I do not attempt to enter into any discussion of them. I can assure him that we have noted with interest not merely the fact that he should have made those two suggestions but also the moderate and careful manner in which he dealt with them. As my noble friend may well suppose, a number of suggestions of possible expedients of a similar general character to these can be counted, not merely by tens, but by hundreds, and in their turn they receive the best consideration that we can give to them. I would say, in passing, that my noble friend will have noticed the fact that the first of his suggestions is one made not to us but to one of our Allies, and therefore stands in a somewhat different category. But I can assure him that we shall consider both of those suggestions again.
On the general matter I will merely say this. The House will have noted the statement which the Foreign Secretary made yesterday—that so long as Bulgaria remains non-aggressive the relations between Bulgaria and ourselves will remain unimpaired. I have nothing to add to that declaration or to the subsequent statement on the same subject of my right hon. friend. We all, of course, expect that the Balkan States will take the course which they conceive to be the soundest in their own interests, and it would be impossible to expect them to take any other course. Their view of what those interests are, taking a long view, is bound to be affected by the logic of events. But I should like once more to lay emphasis on the indisputable facts which my colleague stated yesterday in the House of Commons of the different results to be expected from the policy of the Allied Powers and the policy of the Central Powers, assuming that either is in a position to carry that policy into effect after the war. I sincerely hope that those grave words of my right hon. friend will 940 have been taken to heart, as I believe they will be, by the parties concerned. The statesmen who control the destinies of the Balkan States are competent politicians with great knowledge of affairs and fully alive to all the facts of the political situation, and I decline to believe that the statement of my right hon. friend—so clear, and pointing to inevitable results without any use of menace or any desire to do anything but to call attention to the facts as they are—can be ignored by ally of the States upon whose action so much depends even more for themselves than it ever in any circumstances can for us.
§ LORD ST. DAVIDSAs no one else appears to desire to say anything on this subject, I would like to thank the noble Marquess for the kind words he spoke as to my method of putting this case this afternoon. As to the second and third points which I raised, naturally I will not say any more. But as regards the first point, I should like again to press the noble Marquess. The noble Marquess pointed out that eminent men—he instanced Prince Bülow and Herr Dernburg—had not been always successful. I cannot say myself that I have any blind faith as to the infallibility of eminent men. I have known eminent men do very silly things. But the noble Marquess said that we could not spare a really big man from this country at the beginning of the war. There is something in that. I would, however, like to point this out to the House and to the Government. We know, from the experience of a former war, that the Balkan States together are enormously stronger than Turkey. They were enormously stronger than Turkey at the time of the first Balkan War. Since then they have added to their domains; they have added to their population, and they have had time to reorganise—
THE EARL OF CAMPERDOWNI would point out to the noble Lord that he is making a second speech, which is not in order as there is no Motion before the House.
§ LORD ST. DAVIDSIf I am out of order I will not continue my observations. But I have heard noble Lords over and over again make second and third speeches, and this is the only time that it has been objected to.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWEI was unwilling to interrupt my noble friend Lord St. Davids. At the same time I confess I find myself in full sympathy with my noble friend opposite (Lord Camperdown), because I have noticed, as I think has been also remarked by other noble Lords, that the tendency to make a second series of observations when there is no Motion before the House has greatly increased of late, and it is a practice which clearly ought to be diminished. The rule is a very simple and familiar one. Where a Question is asked a second speech can only be in the form of a Supplementary Question arising out of something which has been said in reply; but if the noble Lord desires to make a formal reply he can only do so by putting down a Motion for Papers or some other Motion.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWEYes, or by leave of the House, which is only given in special circumstances, and, so far back as my recollection goes, rather unwillingly given. I hope my noble friend (Lord St. Davids) mill not think that my observations apply particularly to him. I can say that for some time past some of my noble friends on this Bench and myself have been waiting for an opportunity to make some observations of this kind, because we have noticed with regret that the custom of making second speeches has increased. As we all know, in this House we are not unduly strict or particular on matters of order, but in a House like this—the only Assembly in Europe, I imagine, in which there is no Speaker with powers of calling members to order—it is necessary from time to time to draw attention to contraventions of our exceedingly lax code of rules.
§ LORD ST. DAVIDSI will put myself in order by asking a Supplementary Question. I would ask the noble Marquess whether, assuming the whole facts of his statement to be correct, it is not the case that the policy of effecting a re-union of the Balkan States through negotiations on paper has broken down; and whether, even at this late hour, the Government will consider the possibility of adopting the other policy of sending out some one to negotiate face to face.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWEI think I am entitled to ask for notice of that Question. But in order not to trouble my noble friend to put it again on another day, I will say that we are certainly prepared to take the possibility of such a step as he desires into consideration. I am afraid, however, that at this moment I can say no more.