§ THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON)My Lords, a few days ago I read at this Table the terms of the Motion which I now have the honour to move, and I do not think that I need repeat them upon this occasion, both because your Lordships will already be familiar with them from their appearance on the Notice Paper, and also because, in dealing with the achievements of the Army and Navy in a war that has lasted over three and a-quarter years, I have a rather long road to travel this afternoon.
In one respect this Motion has an excellent precedent. This country has never been slow to acknowledge the valour and the heroism of its soldiers and sailors in the operations of war, and Parliament has been the natural and inevitable vehicle by which the grateful tribute of the nation has always been conveyed. Motions in themselves not dissimilar from this have been moved after every great war in our history; I may instance the Napoleonic War, the Crimean War, and the South African Campaign. But, my Lords, in one respect this Motion is without precedent, for it is not moved in both Houses of Parliament to-day at the close of the war, nor as a sequel to the successful conclusion of peace. It is moved in the course of the war, while the war itself is approaching its culminating point, before the end is at all clearly in sight.
The justification for this novel procedure might, I think, be found in the scale and character of this war, itself without precedent, if not in duration, at any rate in the range and diversity of its theatres, in the strength of the Armies and Navies who are engaged, in the magnitude of the resources that are involved and the operations that have been undertaken; above all, in the nature of the issues which are at stake. Other countries have fought, and other wars have been waged, to resist aggression, to defend national honour, to save the existence of a people, or religion, or race, but there has been no war before in which the whole world has arisen to ward off a felon blow directed at human freedom. Such a war, my Lords, surely does not require us to await its termination 802 before the nation which sits in comfort and ease at home expresses its gratitude to those who have been, and still are, its saviours.
But there is another and a better reason, I think, for moving at this moment. We want our soldiers and sailors, the men and women who are upholding our arms in this great struggle, to know, as they enter the fourth winter of the war and as fresh sacrifices lie before them, that we do not forget what they have suffered and endured up to this moment. We want to tell them, here and now, that our hearts are filled with pride and admiration and sympathy for their incomparable service, for their magnificent devotion, for the losses, the incredible losses, which they have sustained. And I think that there is something peculiarly appropriate in making this Motion in this week—the week which three years ago witnessed the supreme achievement of the first battle of Ypres, one of the great battles of history, where the gallantry and heroism of our small Army foiled the enemy and helped to save Europe and civilisation.
One other preliminary observation I ask leave to make. If I do not descant this afternoon on the bravery and heroism of our Allies, on their prodigious exertions, on their sufferings, in many cases so much greater than ours—and here, in passing, may I say one word of sympathy to our gallant Ally across the Alps in the blow that has fallen upon her?—it is not because those considerations are absent from our minds, but rather because it is a domestic occasion on which we meet in Parliament to-day, as if we were present at some great family gathering, to celebrate the deeds and to condole with the sufferings of our own people, subjects of our King, citizens of our Empire, who have fought and died, and are fighting and dying at this moment, for all that we and they hold most dear. Other opportunities will occur of offering testimony to the nations and peoples and Armies of Allied nations who are fighting with us for the freedom of the world.
The first paragraph of this Motion, according to precedent, gives the place of honour to the senior Service, the Navy; but there is another paragraph a little further down which is without precedent, and which includes the officers and men of the Mercantile Marine, whose services are so closely interwoven with those of the Navy that I ask your permission not to 803 separate them in my remarks. I am not sure that the Navy has had full justice done to it in the three years of war. Because the conflict on the seas has not been marked by any great and crowning achievement like Trafalgar or the Nile, because the spectacular incidents in connection with the naval warfare have been few, because it has not been found possible to defeat in open battle an enemy who shrinks from battle, except with a palpably inferior foe, who denies the challenge that is ever open to him, and who, when he is caught and engaged, flees from the crisis to the protection of his mine fields and fixed defences, it has sometimes been unjustly assumed that the Navy has been untrue to the old traditions which have made it the glory of this country and have given us the mastery of the seas. Such an imputation would, as I say, in my opinion be most unjust. Throughout this war the Navy has done something much more important than sitting still and waiting for dramatic victories over an enemy who since August, 1916, has never left his harbours to enter into open conflict on the Northern Seas. It is the Navy that has made the continuation of the war possible from month to month and from day to day.
We hear a great deal of the phrase "the freedom of the seas" on the lips of our enemy. But in the German conception of this phrase it means that the seas are to be freed for his advantage from the superb predominance, the ubiquitous and disinterested vigilance, of the British Fleet. My Lords, there has been freedom of the seas. With the exception of the waters to which the German submarines penetrate and where special precautions have to be taken, these seas have been free for three years to the commerce, not only of our Allies, but of every neutral country. They have only been denied to the common enemy of mankind. This has been the incomparable service of the British Navy. Were it not for the, Grand Fleet, shrouded in the misty recesses of the North Sea, and for the other squadrons of the Navy operating on every sea and every ocean, could the war last one hour, could we feed our people, could we transport our troops to all the theatres of war and supply them with arms and munitions, could we carry coal and wheat to the Allies, could we even protect our own shores? No; the Navy is the great instrument whose dynamic force, hidden but never absent, enables all this to be done.
804 When the war broke out the first duty of His Majesty's Navy was to clear the seas of the surface, craft of the enemy. I need not recall the stages by which the battleships, the armed cruisers, and the merchant fleet of the Germans disappeared. At the present moment there only remains one small German merchant boat, converted into an armed raider, which is not accounted for, and for three months it has not been heard of. It is a solitary speck on the boundless ocean, and for all we know, and hope, it is probably at this moment at the bottom of the sea. Whether we contemplate an ocean swept free from enemy craft, or the enemy contained in his own waters, or our own shores secure from invasion and exposed only to an occasional surprise raid which is only remarkable for its impotence, or whether we look at the wide ocean on which the ships of the world move to and fro, in spite of the submarine menace, like the shuttles of some gigantic loom, carrying the resources of war to all the theatres of war, you equally trace the omnipresence and you find the protecting hand of the British Navy. When I tell you that the Navy has, since the beginning of the war, transported 13,000,000 of human beings, out of whom only 3,500 have been lost—2,700 by the action of the enemy, 550 in hospital ships—and in addition 2,000,000 horses and mules, 500,000 vehicles, 25,000,000 tons of explosives and supplies, 51,000,000 tons of oil and fuel for the Fleets and Armies of ourselves and our Allies, you get some idea of the magnitude of the operations which the Fleet has undertaken.
And, my Lords, if we narrow somewhat our field of vision, when I tell you that 30,000 tons of stores and supplies and 7,000 personnel are carried daily to France, that 570 steamers of 1,750,000 tons are continually employed in the service of carrying troops and stores to the Armies in France and to the Forces in the various theatres of war, again you will realise the magnitude of the task and the immensity of the strain. There are some occasions on which figures are more eloquent than words, and this is, I think, one of them.
This great task has not been achieved without an expansion of the Navy without parallel in the history of our country, or, indeed, of any country. In 1914 the Navy Estimates provided for a personnel in the Royal Navy of 145,000 officers and men. The strength is now 430,000. And it has 805 been built up not by drawing on the original reserves, but by recruitment from the seafaring population and volunteers from all parts of the Empire. The total tonnage of the Fleet employed in naval services after mobilisation in September, 1914, was 4,000,000 tons; now it is 6,000,000 tons. This work has been accomplished in circumstances that call, I think, for special notice. In the case of the Navy the task of preparation is not followed by the excitement of certain conflict. The sailor does not, like the soldier, leap over the parapet to charge at a visible foe. For months at a time he never sees the foe at all. When the crisis comes, it comes in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, and the issues of life and death, of victory and defeat, are decided in a few minutes. For the rest of the time the task of the Navy is monotonous, arduous, sometimes obscure. It is a work of waiting, waiting, waiting. It is impossible to exaggerate the strain which such experiences must impose upon every faculty both of mind and body.
There is, perhaps, one respect in which the fighting ships of the Navy cannot complain of lack of excitement or adventure. We hear a great deal of the German submarines and of their campaign of organised and brutal destruction. People seem to forget that we have submarines also. I am not going to give their numbers; still less am I going to say where they are or what they are doing. But, my Lords, in the pursuit of legitimate warfare our submarines have made 40 successful attacks on enemy warships, and 270 successful attacks on other vessels. And if I may turn to one particular incident or group of incidents, who can forget the superb courage of those submarine commanders in the Dardanelles, who crept through the stormy currents and the hidden dangers of the Narrows, made their way into the Sea of Marmora, and for weeks at a time preyed upon a helpless and bewildered enemy?
Equally wonderful is the record of the auxiliary naval services, which have been expanded to an extraordinary degree to meet the changes that have occurred in maritime warfare by the development of the mine and the submarine. I allude more especially to the mine-sweepers and the patrol vessels. Over 3,300 vessels are now engaged on these duties. At the beginning of the war there were 12. They are out in all weathers, day and night, searching and sweeping for mines, patrolling the 806 coastal routes, escorting merchant traffic, hunting the enemy submarines. It is impossible to imagine a more arduous or a more dangerous duty. Never a day but they may be in contact with a mine or torpedo; never a week but some of them are sent to the bottom; yet in all this time of stress not a single man has asked to be relieved, and if one man is lost scores leap forward to take his place.
I could detain your Lordships this afternoon for hours with tales of personal gallantry; but we are here to-day to place the, crown of glory on the heads, not of individuals, but of the Navy as a whole. The spirit which animates all our officers and men, whether on the sea or under the sea, is to be found in the words of the skipper of a trawler attacked by the gunfire, of a German submarine. Though armed only with a 3-pounder gun and outranged by her opponent, she refused to haul down her flag even when the skipper had both his legs shot off and most of the crew were killed or wounded. "Throw the confidential books overboard and throw me after them," the skipper said; and, refusing to leave his ship when the few survivors took to the boats, he went down with her.
There is another aspect of the work of the Navy upon which I must speak for one moment, and that is the story of the Blockade. We hear the Blockade a good deal criticised and even attacked in the newspapers. I invite your Lordships to think for a moment of what a Blockade means to those who take part in it. Patrolling the ocean gateway 600 miles in width from Scotland to Iceland and Greenland, these vessels are exposed to incessant gales and to the perils of submarines. Day and night it is their duty to stop and to board the ships that may be taking supplies to the enemy. The efficiency of the service may be gathered from the fact that, early in 1915, 256 out of 1,400 ships managed to slip through the patrol; at the end of 1916 only 60 out of 3,000 passed without being intercepted. The large majority of the men who are engaged in this work were before the war in the Mercantile Marine.
I said just now that I would ask your Lordships' leave to say a word or two about the Mercantile Marine and the amazing service that it is has rendered in every theatre of war. What has this 807 service been? In the first place these men have provided a large part of those auxiliary services to which I have been referring—the mine-sweepers, the patrol boats, the Meet colliers, and the blockade vessels. Then steadily, in spite of constant danger, they have kept up the flow of British imports to this country, conveying to these shores the food on which we live, the wool and cotton by which we are clothed, the raw material of every industry. Equally the Mercantile Marine has been the carrier and purveyor and feeder of our Allies But I am not sure that its most wonderful achievement has not been the continuous service which it maintains across the Channel and to the various theatres of war. Week in and week out, in all weathers, proceeding at full speed in the fog and the darkness, navigating without lights, swept, by heavy seas, they have carried the soldiers to their destinations and brought back the wounded to these shores. Think of the responsibility that lies upon the captain of such a vessel. Always on the bridge, sleepless for nights at a time, he knows that on his vigilance depend the lives of thousands of the soldiers of his Sovereign. Remember that both for him and for his men there may spring at any moment from the ocean the menace of sudden death—the rush of a torpedo, the firing of a gun, and the vessel sinks down into the great deeps and is lost. Then follows the tumult of evacuation, the agony of the boat drifting on the stormy seas for days and nights at a time with the most precarious chance of rescue. Many vessels in this way have been torpedoed several times over. The lives of the men of the Mercantile Marine that have been lost number 8,000. But never a man has been found who refused to sail. This is a record, my Lords, that brings a lump to the throat and tears to the eyes, and it has invested with an everlasting renown the name and service of the British Mercantile Marine.
I pass now to the paragraphs of this Motion which relate to the Army and the service which has been rendered by it in so many parts of the world. It is notorious that we are not a military nation. It is a truism that at the outbreak of war we were unprepared. We had only an exiguous Army of 160,000 ready for the field, though this was an Army of superlative quality. But now, after three years of war, we have slowly forged the most powerful military-weapon that is to be found in the armoury of any of the Allies. We have produced an 808 Army of 3,000,000—in spirit, in fighting quality, and in endurance second to none, if it does not surpass any that has ever been known in the history of our race.
Observe the steps by which this has been accomplished. In August, 1914, there was, as I said, the Expeditionary Force of six Infantry Divisions and one Cavalry Division, with a total of 160,000 men. Four of these Divisions and the Cavalry Division were rushed across the Channel in the opening days of the war and met on landing with an experience that has rarely befallen any force in the opening days of a campaign. Marching, as they had to do, 150 miles in eleven days, sustaining heavy losses, confronted by an enemy of superior numbers and equipment, they fought the immortal Battle of Mons—a retreat more glorious than a victory. This was the first occasion on which the British Forces saved France and Europe, and, I think we may say, civilisation itself. Then, when two more Divisions had gone across, this Army, shattered but unbroken, decimated but undismayed, turned on the enemy and, assisted by our brave Allies the French, drove him back over the Marne and the Aisne.
Then we come to the first Battle of Ypres, from the middle of October to the latter part of November, 1914, one of the greatest feats of endurance in British military history. One more Infantry Division had been added, and the two Indian Divisions came up in the nick of time. In that battle the pressure was so great, extending along a front of 40 miles, that cooks and transport drivers had to be put in the line. The enemy had a great superiority in heavy guns and armament, but we were saved by the magnificent fighting power and desperate courage of our officers, non-commissioned officers, and men, and for the second time the danger was rolled back. My Lords, the hero of that battle, who takes his name from the scene of his glory, sits in your Lordships' House. We honour him, and the nation honours him, and his men, for what they did in these days of destiny, when for the second time Europe was saved. When this battle was over the original Expeditionary Force had practically ceased to exist. Three months of heavy fighting, between August and November, had left very few of the original Force in the ranks, and the units had been almost entirely filled with fresh drafts. No sacrifice ever recorded in history has obtained better results than theirs. Great as 809 the subsequent achievements of the troops have been, it is generally recognised that, both in the magnitude of the results they obtained and the trial of endurance they faced, these seven Regular Divisions will hold a unique place in the annals of their country and the memory of their countrymen. The traditions of duty and discipline which inspired them have been handed down to those who come after them, and are a living force in our Armies to-day.
In 1915 new forces began to enter the field. Already a few picked Territorial battalions and a few Yeomanry regiments had shared with the old Regulars the glory of the first Battle of Ypres. But with the beginning of 1915 the value of the Territorial Forces began to be felt. My Lords, this country owes a deep and lasting debt of gratitude to the Territorial Army. Raised for home defence, often disparaged, many times the victims of sneers, its members were ready to assume any other duty placed upon them. They undertook, and are carrying out now, the defence of outlying portions of the Empire, thereby relieving Regular troops for the Front. The first time the Territorial Army engaged in heavy fighting was in the second Ypres Battle in 1915, and at Festubert in May. Though comparatively untried, their conduct was beyond all praise, and their stubborn resistance gave us time to organise measures of defence, bring up reinforcements, and finally close the road to Calais. Since then the Territorial Army, now one-fourth of the entire Expeditionary Force, has shared in almost every important engagement in France and Flanders. It has also fought gallantly in Gallipoli, Salonika, Egypt, and Mesopotamia.
Now we come to the time—in May, 1915—when the first Division of the New Army was despatched to France. The organisation of this New Army, by which a large number of Divisions were raised, trained, equipped, and placed in the field in the course of about nine months, is an achievement which only the late Lord Kitchener's great prestige, energy, and determination could have rendered possible; nor could it ever have been carried out had it not been for the patriotism and zeal of the people of this country. No greater self-sacrifice has been displayed in this war than by those who compose the New Army, and who were the first to answer their country's call. Thus, my Lords, we see that we have passed through three periods of military organisation in the 810 time to which I have been referring—first, the days of the old Expeditionary Force that went out at the beginning of August, 1914; secondly, the new and enlarged Expeditionary Force, with the addition of the Indian Regiments and the Colonial and Territorial Forces, which fought through 1915; thirdly, the appearance of the New Army upon the scene in the middle and latter parts of that year. But all these differences were presently obliterated when, with the introduction of compulsory military service in this country at the end of 1915, the distinction between Regulars and New Army and Territorials disappeared, and the Army became for the first time a National Army. During the two years that have since elapsed every Division of that Army has been engaged in the great happenings across the Channel of the Somme, of Arras, and Ypres, and it would be impossible to select any portion for special praise.
But, my Lords, I must not forget that there have been other theatres of war in which these troops have fought. Of Gallipoli I shall speak presently when I come to the services of the Australians and New Zealanders. But our Overseas troops were not alone in braving the perils of those inhospitable beaches and those cruel cliffs. Side by side with them fought the troops of the New Army, the Territorials and the Irish and Welsh Divisions. Whether the Dardanelles Expedition was or was not a sound and legitimate venture, whether its abandonment was or was not a prudent and necessary proceeding, it can never be denied that in no theatre of war was greater gallantry and a more heroic spirit displayed. There were many chapters in that heroic but ill-fated epic—the landing on the beaches in the face of a determined enemy, the clinging for months to those desperate slopes, the repeated though futile attempts to advance to the heights, and perhaps not least of all the re-embarkation, almost without loss, under the very eyes of the enemy. My Lords, when in later years people visit that melancholy spot they will see the tombstones which record one of the greatest achievements of the British Army.
At Salonika the Allied troops, arriving too late to save gallant little Serbia from disaster, have had less hard fighting and fewer opportunities for winning glory than have fallen to the lot of their comrades elsewhere. Nevertheless their work, in which the British contingent under 811 General Milne has played a conspicuous part has enabled the Serbian Army once again to take its place in the field, and has preserved Greece from the enemy and brought her to our side. A climate malarious in summer and bitterly cold in winter, and, what the soldier hates still more, long periods of comparative inactivity—these trials our men at Salonika have borne with a spirit fully equal to that of their comrades in more glorious fields.
Egypt has been another field of war where the operations have been important and have played a considerable part in the fortunes of the war. It is such ancient history now that we have almost forgotten that after the evacuation of Gallipoli Egypt was supposed to be in danger, and the Turks launched at least two desperate efforts to dislodge us from the Sinai Peninsula and the Canal. Those attacks were repelled, and the British Army, after rendering the position in Egypt secure, were able to carry out the long-meditated advance, clear Sinai and the Canal, and move forward to the borders of Palestine. There they are at the present moment engaged, and doubtless we shall hear of them again, and that very soon. The Egyptian Campaign has not been without its episodes of hard fighting and personal heroism, but it is as a triumph of scientific organisation that I would specially mention it this afternoon. In the operations that are going on in Palestine every pound of stores, every gallon of water that is drunk by the troops, has to be carried all the way from Egypt across 150 miles of desert. This is a feat, my Lords, that rivals what has been so successfully accomplished in France.
I turn for a moment to Mesopotamia. The Army in Mesopotamia has suffered vicissitudes greater than any which have been experienced in any of the other theatres of war. Starting with the brilliant success of the handful of British and Indian troops in the autumn of 1914, the advance, in the face of great physical and climatic difficulties, almost to the threshold of Baghdad, was presently arrested by misfortune and even by disaster. But, even after this set-back, the discipline and valour of the troops never wavered, and no finer exhibition of those qualities has ever been given than that which was made by the Force which fought its way back from the field of Ctesiphon to Kut, and then made that heroic defence which will be one of the memorable sieges of history. Then ensued an interval while mistakes 812 were being repaired and recuperation was undertaken, and it was reserved for General Maude and his brave men to retrieve the laurels which had been temporarily lost, and, by the capture of the Turkish positions and by their subsequent advance to Baghdad and the occupation of that city, to accomplish one of the greatest feats of the war. Since then General Maude has driven the enemy back to the east and west and north. He has won another notable victory, and his fine generalship and the splendid efficiency of his troops have enabled us to acquire a position which enables the British Force to await the threatened attack of the enemy without any alarm.
My Lords, as we survey these different scenes of fighting which I have briefly enumerated to your Lordships, there are, I think, certain reflections that come to our mind. The first of these is the high level of competence of our commanders in the field. War is a very different thing now from what it was ten years ago. It requires scientific training, a high order of ability, an immense amount of care, forethought, and knowledge such as was undreamed of a few decades ago. I might mention many of our commanders who have excelled in this respect, but I shall, perhaps, not err if I take as a type and model of them all the gallant Field-Marshal who is at present commanding our troops in France. During more than two years Sir Douglas Haig has never wavered, never murmured, never complained, never been despondent. He has gone steadily on with attack after attack and has shown himself a great commander and leader of men.
The second point that I would mention is the extraordinary valour of our officers, non-commissioned officers, and men. My Lords, let me give you what I procured from the Departments concerned this morning—the figures of the awards for valour that have been given both to the Army and the Navy. I take first the Army. There have been awarded—
813 Next I give the figures of the Navy—
Victoria Crosses 301 Bars to the Victoria Cross 2 D.S.O's. 4,558 First Bars 104 Second Bars 4 Military Crosses 14,255 Distinguished Conduct Medals 10,748 First Bars 127 Second Bar 1 Military Medals 39,409 I do not envy the man who can read without emotion the records which we see, even when they are couched in official language, of the feats which have won these awards. In the newspapers you read the words" Awarded the Victoria Cross for most conspicuous bravery." Then there comes, in eight or ten lines of print, a narrative of doings which almost surpass belief, which as time goes on will be enshrined in legend and will become one of the lessons that are taught, and taught with advantage, to future generations of our race.
Victoria Crosses 28 D.S.O's. 399 Bars to the D.S.O. 23 Distinguished Service Crosses 766 Bars to that Cross 39 Conspicuous Gallantry Medals 67 Distinguished Service Medals 2,211 But, my Lords, is not the great revelation of the war the, British soldier himself? In all previous wars the Army has been a class of the nation. Now it is the nation itself. The Army has become in a wonderful degree a microcosm of all classes of our people, reflecting not merely, as it always did, the valour and endurance of our people, but their ideas and ideals, their aspirations, even the culture and the spiritual side of the nation. We see the British soldier, as he has shown himself in this war, a model of cheerful endurance and uncomplaining devotion to duty, seldom in low spirits, possessed of a quaint and irrepressible humour, contemptuous of danger, greedy for self-sacrifice, a tiger in fighting, but chivalrous and humane to the enemy; able to think as well as to act; pondering deeply on the problems and issues of the war; resolved, as his generation has been called upon to pay the price, that he will pay it himself without a murmur, to save posterity from a similar peril. We may well be proud to belong to a race that has produced such men, and to have lived in an age that has been called upon to meet and to surmount such a danger.
But, my Lords, there are one or two other debts of honour which your Lordships would wish to pay this afternoon. May I say one word about the chaplains of 814 every Church and denomination, 2,200 of whom are serving with the Armies in the field, giving the consolations of religion to the living and performing the last rites of the Church over the dead? How gallant and perilous their service has been may be shown by the fact that over 70 have been killed, many wounded, and many others have died from disease, 2 have won the Victoria Cross, 130 have been decorated, and many more have been mentioned in Despatches.
I desire to allude also to the medical officers who have devoted their skill with unwearying assiduity, not merely to the care of the wounded, which is the part of their duty that I dare say most immediately occurs to us, but also to the health and comfort of the troops. How tremendous has been the call upon this service can be seen from the expansion of the number. At the beginning of the war the Royal Army Medical Corps contained 3,168 officers; there are now nearly 14,000. Other ranks, 16,330; there are now 125,000. Nor must I omit the civil medical practitioners, including many surgeons and physicians of great practice and renown in this city, who have voluntarily sacrificed large incomes and connections in order to serve their country. There has never been an Army that has been in such a state of health as the British. Army in France. In other wars disease has often proved more fatal than the guns of the enemy. We remember it in the Crimea. There were even some sad stories in South Africa. But in this war the health of the Army in the field has actually been better than that of the civil population at home. It has been better than the health of the Army in times of peace, and, paradoxical though it may seem, the British Army in France has really been a sanatorium for the British citizen.
In our Motion we have not forgotten, but have included for the first time, the service of nurses. Nobly have they deserved this compliment. They have not only been ministering angels in the hospitals behind the lines, but they have been pushed forward to the Casualty Clearing Stations just behind the front line, where they have literally stood between the living and the dead. Their names figure not only as the heroines, but also as the martyrs, of this war. Several of them have been torpedoed and drowned at sea. Several others have been killed by bombs thrown on the hospitals 815 where they were serving. In one case the name of an English nurse has been rendered immortal by her martyrdom. This organisation also has expanded in proportion to the calls upon it. On August 1, 1914, Queen Alexandra's Imperial Nursing Service contained 463 nurses; there are now 7,711. The Territorial Army Nursing Service has expanded from 3,000 to 5,000.
There is another Service about which your Lordships will expect me to say a word. I might have dealt with it under the Army or the Navy because it belongs to both, but I have reserved a special category for it, because of the quite exceptional nature of its service—I allude to the "Knights of the Air," whether belonging to the Royal Flying Corps or to the Royal Naval Air Service. I deliberately call them "Knights of the Air," because nowhere in this war more than in these aerial excursions and combats does it seem to me that the spirit of knight errantry has reappeared. The solitary ride on the machine through the heavens, the call for constant presence of mind and courage, the fierce combat, the swift victory or the sudden death—all of these seem like a survival of the romance of a bygone age. When, in August, 1914, 100 officers and 66 machines—for that was all we had—made their way either by sea or the air to France, who could have foreseen that this would develop into a great fleet of thousands of machines and ten thousands of men?
Let me give you an idea of their work on the Western front. In the first nine months of 1917 the men of the Royal Flying Corps brought down 876 machines of the enemy, drove down 759 out of action, and 52 were brought down by antiaircraft gunfire. They dropped thousands of tons of explosives on aerodromes, military buildings, railways, bridges, communications, even on moving regiments of the enemy, swooping down to within a few feet of the ground and scattering and killing the enemy as he marched. And this is not all. Apart from the offensive operations and activities of the Air Service, you must remember that they are in a true sense the "eyes" of the Army fighting in the field. They are always engaged in spotting the enemy batteries, taking photographs—and marvellous these photographs are; I have no doubt your Lordships have seen many of them—while by wireless telegraphy they enable our Artillery to control 816 gunfire with deadly precision. Let us not forget also the airmen at home who have shattered the menace of the Zeppelin, and by their skill and bravery, on many occasions now, brought these great gas bags in flames to the ground. I sometimes think, when the Gothas are shrieking over London at night, and the civil population retreats to its cellars, that we might turn a thought to those brave men who are riding the darkness and the whirlwind, high up in the air, and who in those lofty altitudes are risking their lives to save us from destruction. My Lords, the war abounds in stories of the heroism of the airmen in every field; and I do not know whether to admire most the actual gallantry of the men, or the extraordinary and marvellous development of scientific resources and ingenuity which has provided them with the means of carrying out their task.
I need hardly say that I include in the same tribute, in full and equal measure, the officers and the men of the Royal Naval Air Service. There is no distinction between the two except the branch of the Service with which they are connected. At the beginning of the war the personnel of the R.N.A.S. was 800; it is now 42,000. Its fleet at the beginning of the war consisted of 7 airships, 30 aeroplanes, 34 seaplanes; the number is now many thousands. Perhaps the most effective branch of that Service has been the Naval Squadron at Dunkirk. It has really been one of the most efficient agencies of the war. Almost daily in our newspapers we read of their energy in bombing the enemy aerodromes—valuable, not merely for the destruction that is thus wrought, but also because every time they go forth and attack the aerodromes of the enemy they are diminishing, and indeed at times they absolutely frustrate, the invasion which may be contemplated by the enemy here. The aircraft of the R.N.A.S. have been similarly in evidence in every theatre of the war. They have flown over Damascus; they have dropped bombs on Beirut; they have destroyed buildings at Constantinople; and I dare say you will remember in the early operations of the war that splendid effort by which the Zeppelin shed was destroyed on Lake Constance.
There remain but two paragraphs, and two only, with which I must ask your leave to deal before I sit down. The first is an acknowledgment of the services which have been rendered by the gallant troops from 817 the Dominions and from India, and from our Crown Colonies and Protectorates. The Germans have made many miscalculations in this war, but I think that which must have caused them the most acute disappointment was the spectacle which was seen when, at the beginning of the war, there rallied round this country the armed contingents, both European and native, from our Dominions all over the world. These people realised with unerring instinct the nature of the issues which were involved. They saw that the British Empire was in danger, and that if it perished there would go with it the guarantees for their own free and contented existence. They never minded that the war was thousands of miles away, and that their country was not invaded, and, indeed, that no portion of the British Empire was invaded. They never thought of the dangers that were to be encountered or the lives that might be laid down. From all parts of the world the great greyhounds came coursing across the sea carrying to the battlefield the men of many races, religions, and climes.
Let me glance in a sentence or two at the principal scenes of their operations, either on the battlefields of Europe or in more remote parts of the world. In German South-West Africa the South African troops under General Botha, in a short campaign which lasted only eleven months, conquered 320,000 square miles of territory, and turned the Germans out of that country, as we hope, for ever. The operations were distinguished for the mobility and endurance of the troops and for the military skill and efficiency of the commander. In East Africa we were confronted at the beginning of the war with a situation in which our Forces were greatly outnumbered, and in which we could not protect our own territory; but the tide was turned when General Smuts appeared on the scene in 1916 with a large South African Force and with a contingent from Rhodesia. Since then these troops have been replaced, for the most part, by native forces and by Indian troops and by men from the Gold Coast and Gambia. There have been great obstacles to be overcome—fighting over marshes, across mountains, amid deserts, in dense bush—but gradually the enemy have been driven back to the south-east corner of the Colony, where they are thrown back upon guerilla warfare and where the end cannot long be postponed. Togoland and the Cameroons—German colonies—have been taken by British 818 forces, almost entirely natives of West Africa, who have distinguished themselves bravely in the fighting there. It was a land of rivers, of mountains, and of dense forest. The French fought side by side with ourselves, and in eighteen months the Colony was cleared—a result due equally to the bravery of the troops and the skill of the commander. Meanwhile, Colonial contingents have shown their faces and have earned renown on other fronts. There has been a South African Brigade in France ever since 1916. The Rhodesians fought both in South-West Africa and in East Africa. The Newfoundland Battalion has taken part in all the principal fighting in France. All the available white, men in our Colonies, and in our Protectorates in East Africa, Hong Kong, Ceylon, Mauritius, West Indies, Seychelles, Fiji, Malay, Bermuda, volunteered, and were cither sent abroad or released garrisons which were maintained in those countries. Nor must we forget the Labour battalions, the carriers, of whom there have been many tens of thousands sent from our Colonies to the Front.
I have reserved to the end the immortal service of the Canadians, the Australians, and New Zealanders, and the men of the Indian Army. Our kinsmen have more than once before rallied to our assistance. We saw them in Egypt; they fought with us in South Africa; but never has that service been so lavishly rendered, never has it been on such a scale, and never has it been attended with such important and decisive results as in this war. My Lords, if I told you that Canada has sent 350,000 men for service overseas, and Australia 300,000, and New Zealand 120,000, I should be but little over the mark. If I added that South Africa has sent 50,000, and Newfoundland 4,000, I should be slightly under it. But the most remarkable feature of this contribution, next to the scale of the effort, has, I think, been the marvellously short time which has been taken to put these men into the line, and the success with which, almost from the start, they have been able to hold their own against seasoned professional troops. It may induce us to revise some of our own ideas about Army instruction in the future. Gallipoli was the first test of the quality of the Anzacs. Their bravery has invested that barren and forbidding spot with a glory which will never fade, and has added a name to the nomenclature of the British Empire. I have heard the commander 819 on that Peninsula bear testimony to the joyous elation with which, as he described it, these overseas men faced danger and death. From there, after a rest, the Anzacs were taken to Egypt. Their Cavalry has since been serving in Egypt and in Sinai, and is now in Palestine, but their Infantry was transferred to France, and in France they have fought in every battle in the last one and a-half years—the Somme, Arras, Messines, and Ypres.
The Canadian record is not less glorious. There is still fresh in our memory the second Battle of Ypres—the first time gas was used—when the French line broke, and it was reserved for the Canadians to save the situation. It was largely due to their stubborn resistance at that time that the road to Calais was barred. Since then the Canadians have participated in every great battle; they have never wavered, and they have earned a place that will never be lost in the gratitude of the Empire.
The contribution of India has been in some respects the most remarkable of all, for in the first place they have provided troops for a much larger number of theatres of war than any other Overseas contingent. They have served in East Africa, Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Cameroons, Tsingtau, Aden, Gallipoli, Salonika, Flanders, France. What a record to be inscribed upon the banners of the Indian Army! What a terrible blow to German prognostications! In some of these theatres of war the Indian troops have been better qualified than others because of climatic conditions, and their record in Mesopotamia has been one of exceptional valour and endurance. But remember that, elsewhere, they have been exposed to surroundings entirely novel in character, to a species of warfare of which they had no knowledge, to conditions which at times must have been shattering to the nerve, and might have broken the morale, even of trained European forces. The fortitude with which they have conducted themselves in France, in a climate which must seem to them very often to be one of cruel severity, is one of the outstanding features of the war. It is a record of which they and we may be proud. And the fact that two Victoria Crosses have been pinned to the breasts of Indian soldiers is a direct testimony to the valour and endurance which they have displayed.
I have now completed my survey of the various theatres of war, and I have endeavoured, however imperfectly, to 820 enumerate the services that have been rendered. I have deliberately said nothing about the administration and organisation at home, about the work of the Generals and administrative Staffs of the War Office, and the Home Command. No one who has not been in close touch with their work can picture the incessant labour that has been involved in the creation and training of our new Armies, the change in war time from a voluntary to a compulsory system, and the control, organisation, and maintenance of the vast Armies which we now have in the field. But their time for praise and congratulation will come later on. To-day we have been dealing with the services of our men and women in the field.
I, perhaps, could not give you a better idea of the full measure of the achievement of the Armies whose work I have been narrating than by communicating to you a statement of the captures of prisoners and guns which have been effected by them, and the extent of enemy territory which they have taken in the last three years. We have captured, in all the theatres of war, over 159,000 prisoners and 683 guns. We have taken 1,244,000 square miles of enemy territory in East and West Africa and the Pacific; in Egypt we have recovered over 20,000 square miles of territory which the enemy had overrun; and in the Western theatre we have, in conjunction with our Allies, since the trench lines were established from the North Sea to Switzerland, recovered 1,410 square miles of French and Belgian territory.
It remains for me only, before I resume my seat, to offer on your behalf a tribute of our admiring gratitude to the brave men who have returned and will return, maimed or broken, from the awful ordeal of the Front, and whose cheerfulness and fortitude in the face of blindness, of mutilation, and of many forms of suffering and torture, makes us proud to be their countrymen.
One word also I must devote to the poor prisoners of war, many of them languishing in captivity for the best part of three years. The victims of ill-fortune, they have suffered from no conduct of their own. Many of them have experienced cruel treatment at the hands of their merciless gaolers. But I suspect that if we could get to the bottom of their minds we should find that the worst torture which they have suffered is that of being unable to stand by their countrymen in this great struggle for the future of their common race.
821 My Lords, the Motion to which I ask your Lordships' assent concludes with an expression of the respectful sympathy of this House to the relations and friends of those who have fallen. There is an old saying that in peace men bury their fathers, and in war fathers bury their sons. Many of those fathers sit upon these benches. If I east my eyes around I can see them in many quarters of this House. Nothing that I can say, nothing that we can do, can mitigate the severity of the blow that has fallen upon them or console them for the irreparable loss that they have sustained. But it is possible that the unanimous thanks and vote of Parliament may add something to the pride that is mingled with their grief, and may assure them that we are conscious of the superlative value of the sacrifice that they have made. We know, as they know, that their dear ones have fought, not because they loved war, but because they loved peace more than war. They died that the nation might live, and that peace and justice might reign once more on the earth. In some Eastern countries that I have visited the foundations of palaces and city walls used to be cemented with the blood of human victims, slaughtered in the pit where the foundation stones were laid. The blood of our heroes has been shed as a voluntary sacrifice to lay the foundation of a structure fairer, stronger, more enduring than any palace or city built by men's hands—namely, the fabric of a new society, free from the flaws and weakness of the times that are passing away, and reared on the solid bases of humanity and freedom. Thus may those who have died become in their death the architects of a new world in which the generations that live after them may breathe a purer air and pursue a higher aim. My Lords, let us see to it that this is no idle dream, and that when our soldiers come back to England they will return to a country for which those who died have not died in vain, and which those who survive will find to be a land worth living for and living in. My Lords, I beg to make the Motion which stands in my name.
Moved to resolve—
That the thanks of this House be given to the officers, petty officers, and men of the Navy for their faithful watch upon the seas during more than three years of ceaseless danger and stress while guarding our shores and protecting from the 822 attacks of a barbarous foe the commerce upon which the victory of the Allied cause depends.
That the thanks of this House be given to the officers, non-commissioned officers, and men of the British Armies in the field, and also to the women in the medical and other services auxiliary thereto, for their unfailing courage and endurance in defending the right, amid sufferings and hardships unparalleled in the history of war, and for their loyal readiness to continue the work to which they have set their hands until the liberty of the world is secure.
That the thanks of this House be accorded to the gallant troops from the Dominions Overseas, from India, and from the Crown Colonies who have travelled many thousands of miles to share with their comrades from the British Isles in the sacrifices and triumphs of the battlefield, and to take their full part in the struggle for human freedom.
That the thanks of this House be accorded to the officers and men of the Mercantile Marine for the devotion to duty with which they have continued to carry the vital supplies to the Allies through seas infested with deadly peril.
That this House doth acknowledge with grateful admiration the valour and devotion of those who have offered their lives in the service of their country, and tenders its sympathy to their relatives and friends in the sorrows they have sustained.—(Earl Curzon of Kedleston.)
THE MARQUESS OF CREWEMy Lords, in this House, where a Motion needs no seconder, we might well have been content to leave the expression of our gratitude to the two Services to the eloquent voice of the noble Earl who leads us, and to the masterly review and analysis of the whole field of war during these years to which we have just listened. But perhaps it is as well that this expression should be in some degree enforced by one who does not sit on Government Benches as an evidence of our complete union of mind in this matter, for it is impossible to conceive the slightest dissent from anything which has fallen from the noble Earl. It is true that in the past 823 the conclusion of hostilities might have been waited for before such a Motion as this was made; but, as the noble. Earl pointed out, this occasion has been one of unprecedented service and unprecedented sacrifice. It is no question of conveying the thanks of the nation to a small professional band of heroes forming the Army and Navy; it is actually the case that something like three-fourths of the, whole adult population of these islands desires to express its gratitude to the remaining one-fourth. That one-fourth has, as the noble Earl stated, gone through a series of unheard-of hardships, and has endured more than any Army or Navy has had to endure before in every part of the world.
The noble Earl spoke first, as in duty bound, of the senior Service. In 1914 these islands were watched over by the three great units of the Home Fleet, and it is to that Fleet that we still owe the security of which, unless we specially think of it, we are barely conscious—the kind of security which is felt by no other of our European Allies, and of which we cannot be too mindful. And with what reinforcement of our seafaring race does that Navy now continue to guard us! The patrol vessels, the mine-sweepers, the trawlers, the drifters—those have all received their meed of praise from the noble Earl. Leading a life very often of absolute monotony but accompanied by a monotony of danger from which there is no respite whatever, the Royal Navy, speaking generally, has had but comparatively few chances of dramatic distinction during the present war. We certainly must not forget Admiral Sturdee's dash to the Falkland Islands in December, 1914, which reflected equal credit on those who planned it and on those, who carried it out. The Jutland Battle of last year was, as we know, robbed of such a victory as was won by Rodney or Nelson; but nobody can ever forget the determination with which the battle-cruiser squadrons clung to their superior foe, or the rush of the Battle Fleet summoned to the scene of action, and, not least, the perpetual devotion of the light cruisers and flotillas all through the course of that battle.
That was a year and five months ago; and since then, as we have been told, the German High Sea Fleet has been, in practice, dormant. It is true that the menace of the submarines has since then greatly increased, and it would no doubt be false to speak of it as overcome. But that it is not altogether overcome is certainly not the fault of the Navy. And I do not 824 think that it is unreasonable to conclude that, in this particular matter, experience and scientific experiment should tend rather to the advantage of the defence than of the attack. After all, do not let us forget that, between 1794 and 1815 something more than 10,000 British ships of one kind and another were destroyed by the enemy. During the whole of that time we held, generally speaking, the command of the sea. In the ten years from 1805 we held it as absolutely as it has ever been held; yet during those twenty years that great figure; of loss was incurred. I am sure that we all desire not merely to express our deep sense of gratitude to Sir John Jellicoe, to Sir David Beatty, and to all the officers and men of the Navy, but also to express our absolute confidence in them in their respective positions in the Naval Service.
The noble Earl told us how our military affairs stood at the beginning of August, 1914. As a matter of fact, the entire British Force—Regulars, with their Reserve, the Special Reserve, and the Territorial Army, including the British Forces all over the world—amounted to some 750,000 men; and in the first week of the war another half million, as your Lordships will remember, were voted. How urgent the need of addition to that Force, greatly scattered at that time, was, may be shown by the fact that in the first year of the war our British casualties were 330,000, or, say, 45 per cent. of the entire force of British soldiers, including Territorials, all over the world when the struggle began. We know that great additions continued to be made on the voluntary basis during the first year of the war; and it is, I think, important to remember that during the year 1915 the more difficult problem was to supply the necessary equipment for the men that we had, than to find, for the moment, more men. In the meantime, from the very first days of the war, as the noble Earl has pointed out, the, Dominions vied with each other in prompt and free-handed contributions of men; and in India, as we know, every Native State that possessed an Army offered it freely at once to their Emperor and the British Government. Thus, my Lords, first on the voluntary basis and afterwards by a compulsory system freely accepted by the country, arose, in the words of an acute and generous French critic—
That unprecedented force which has absorbed all military precedent and tradition, an emanation 825 from the very depths of English life, combining every essential British characteristic, intellectual and religious; with all the national conventions, prejudices, catch-words, ideals, and virtues.That writer, M. André Chevrillon, goes on to say in words which I believe to be profoundly true, that—The Germans believed that they had foreseen every material contingency; but the New Armies of Britain had their origin in spiritual realities, to which our methodical foe has been uniformly blind.Yes, my Lords, educated Englishmen, outside the regular Services, altogether lacked that training in the elements of military science which men of the same sort on the Continent of Europe have all acquired at some time or other of their lives. Our educated classes, both professional and artisan, first had to overtake that industrial organisation for war which for many years past in Germany had been fostered by State endowments. That was conceivable. But how would it be, it was asked, when it came for those men to the actual practice and conduct of the art of war? I venture to say that the result was equally amazing both to military and civilian observers. It shows, indeed, that education does not consist only in the acquiring of a series of facts, but in the broadening of the mind of those who learn, and in the development of character, both to dare and to endure. The fact, my Lords, is that the conversion of the British people into an Army, as reckless in courage as any Army, as patient in unparalleled hardship, and undoubtedly the most humane and crimeless Army that has ever taken the field in war, is one of the most tremendous phenomena that can be found in the pages of all history.It is, indeed, to a whole nation, so far as numbers are concerned, that our thanks have to be rendered; but it is impossible that some individual names should not rise to the mind as they did to the mind of the noble Earl. We think, first of all, of Lord Kitchener, who rests in his vast and wandering grave. Then of the noble Viscount, who is not now in the House, but whom we are also proud to have as a member of this House, Lord French, whose title, as the noble Earl happily pointed out, will preserve, as I hope, for many generations to come the recollection of the stand of the British Army, in what I suppose was the most critical moment of the whole war, at Ypres in the end of October, 1914. Now we think of the Field-Marshal Commanding-in-Chief, and also of Sir William 826 Robertson, who played so great a part in France before he came to take charge here. Both those merit and possess the absolute confidence of the country, and we feel that the decisive end of the war, which alone will content us, will come to pass under their guidance and auspices. Then the noble Earl mentioned, not by name, for they are too many, all the capable lieutenants of the Commander-in-Chief and of the Army Council in the various theatres of the war, worthy chiefs of the glorious troops that they command, and the non-commissioned officers and the men.
I was glad that the noble Earl placed in the very first rank the Medical Service, both that part of it which was originally military and that part of it which was originally civil, and also the chaplains, and the goodly company, both of men and women, who have given their devotion, and not seldom their lives, in the different branches of hospital and of ambulance work. It was barely possible, even for the noble Earl, to enumerate all the various branches of the services to which we wish to render our tribute. There was no part of his speech which seemed to me more eloquent and more charged with emotion than his reference to the two branches of the Air Service, which indeed deserve as large a share of our thanks as any. But most of all, of course, as the noble Earl concluded, we desire to render our thanks to those who are no longer here to receive them, but have passed beyond this turbulent world. We can only, by passing this Resolution, lay our laurel wreath upon their graves, and offer to those who mourn them the tribute of our undying sympathy and our pride.
THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURYMy Lords, on an occasion which is unique in its character and the use made of it, we have had speeches worthy of the occasion and also of the speakers themselves. Perhaps it may not be out of place that a few words should be spoken by one who approaches the subject from a standpoint a little different from that of either Cabinet Minister or political leader or warrior by land, or sea, or air, and whose duty it is to try to be in daily touch with the underlying principles on which all that is best in English life is based.
The Resolution covers much ground, and, as is right, puts in the forefront the 827 deeds by sea and land and air of the men whose prowess has given them an imperishable place ill English history. It is hard to find terms adequate to express what we all feel about these sailors and soldiers, whether it be the dauntless men who have a Hotspur enthusiasm for the fray, or the more thoughtful and quiet-spirited men who, with perhaps no martial ardour to start with, have yet of deliberate choice given themselves to the task of upholding what they believe to be right, and in doing it have shown a courage as dauntless and a perseverance as thorough as that which could be shown by the bravest and most hardened soldier or sailor in the land, or the immense multitude of those splendid, dogged Englishmen and Scotsmen who have been facing throughout all the privations and difficulties of these terrible campaigns with a courage, a cheeriness, and a good humour which have made an imperishable mark upon the mind of their countrymen.
I noted, too, with satisfaction, the reference made to those who minister to the bodies and the spirits of those who are serving. To every one of your Lordships, I suppose, the testimony deepens day by day as to the services that are felt to have been rendered by those medical men to whom reference has been made to-day, who have at immense sacrifice given themselves—to do better than it has ever been done before—a task immense beyond all calculation; and as to the services of the chaplains who have striven, again in the face of great difficulties, to fulfil the grandest task that could be given to men.
I should like for just a moment or two to emphasise what was touched on by the noble Earl who opened the discussion and by the noble Marquess. I refer to their reference to the subsidiary work, the complementary work, which is being done by those—both by men and by women—whose names do not appear in the forefront at least of the records of service rendered, but whose deeds, both at home and abroad, are making a new mark in the life of the English people, a mark that is not going to be very readily or ever effaced. If ever a record of what is being done in this war could, as it certainly can never, be made complete, those who are working in what I have called the subsidiary and incidental support of our great cause and our great war would have a place in the foremost line of honour, all the more because no public 828 plaudit in their favour now ordinarily meets the ear.
Your Lordships go, as I do, from place to place in our land, and we are day by day startled by finding—and it fills us with wondering admiration—how people from whom work could hardly be expected (the delicate, the reserved, the very old) are contributing at this time to the needs of their country, cither by direct or indirect service. I have been struck again and again by seeing what is possible to be done—what is now being done by men and women alike who feel that they must be bearing their part in an enterprise so vast as this, which calls for the output of all the energy of all the people if the work is to be worthily done. The value of that work seems to me to rest, not merely in what the worker is actually doing, but as expressing a larger and deeper patriotism which is going to be born anew out of this great conflict. Many people who had, perhaps, little opportunity and certainly took small occasion to think of these things in ordinary life, are now feeling the splendour of their responsibility and their trust as members of the Empire to which they have the privilege to belong. If the rope, of human brotherhood, that link which binds nations together, is to be made strong hereafter on behalf of justice and truth and liberty, it will be by the knitting together of many strands; and the patriotism which we are evoking will make one strand which is imperishable in its strength for the furtherance of that for which that bond is ultimately to endure. Of course, the thought is not a new one. The fact is that in hundreds of thousands of homes the idea of patriotism is now becoming the ordinary thought, and the principle which underlies it is becoming current coin. That is something which is worth while at this time, and for which we ought to be, and the country will be, expressing thankfulness.
Then, my Lords—it is not in the Resolution; it could hardly be—I should like to say how the country thanks those who are doing what is, perhaps, the hardest task of all, men who would give simply anything to go out, but are obliged to work at home because their services here are wanted, who feel, it may be, that they are liable, not merely to the disappointment which is inevitable to themselves, but to some degree of misapprehension on the part of their friends and others. These 829 men are deserving every whit of as much gratitude and honour as those who are fighting at the Front. They are, perhaps, doing harder things in the response they are making to the home call than they would do in fighting in the forefront of the field. We think, my Lords, of these inconspicuous but unforgettable workers, men and women, not only of what they do and suffer, but also of the abiding asset they are to English life in implanting so firmly amongst us the idea that it is not upon armaments or military prowess alone but on the spirit that lies behind them that must ultimately depend the cause of right in Europe and beyond it. The fact that they are making this clear for all time is something for which we have good cause to offer to them, on behalf of the country, our thanks just now.
We are striving together for a just and enduring peace. A noted American thinker has pointed out—it is the thought which brought America to our side—that peace is not in itself the ultimate ideal. Our ideal is the establishment of human liberty, human justice, and the honourable conduct of our civilised and humane society. Secure that, and a durable peace follows naturally. Without that, and it seems to me to be no true or abiding peace, but only the rule of force until liberty and justice should revolt against it again in search of peace. The new Europe, nay, the new world, of which we are in search, is going to insist upon justice, liberty, and righteousness as its foundation, and it will welcome a durable peace as the companion and friend of these new conditions. It is, my Lords, for the courage, the perseverance, the patience, and the resource of the men and women of our country in their work for the furtherance of this end that we are desirous to express our country's thanks.
§ THE EARL OF SELBORNEMy Lords, as I had the great honour of presiding over the Board of Admiralty for five years, I should not like to pass in silence this historic occasion. I need not say how entirely I associate myself with all that my noble friend the Leader of the House said about the Army—the Home Army, the Indian Army, and the Army of the Dominions. I was very glad to hear what he said concerning the retreat from Mons and the first Battle of Ypres, for I veritably believe that in the calm light of knowledge the historian, when he comes to write the history of this, the greatest war of the world's story, will fix 830 upon that retreat and upon that first battle, and say that the safety of civilisation hung then in the balance, and that the world, not only England, was saved by Lord French and the little old Army.
When I was at the Admiralty it was not possible to feel a more implicit and unlimited confidence than I felt in the courage, the devotion, the endurance, and the professional capacity of the officers, warrant officers, petty officers, seamen, stokers, and marines of the Fleet. It was not possible to have had a more implicit belief that when the day of trial came there would be no failure, and therefore nothing that has happened has surprised me. But the country does want reminding again and again, as my noble friend so eloquently reminded us to-day, how tremendous have been the services of the Fleet, partly unrecognised because they are comparatively obscure. I should lay stress particularly on the supreme seamanship, the wonderful efficiency which has enabled this service to be carried on for three and a-half years, without cessation, in all weathers, with the minimum of mishap or misfortune. And then there is the Fleet Reserve, of seamen, stokers, and marines who had served in the Fleet and taken their discharge. Behind them are the Royal Naval Reserve, the men of the Mercantile Marine, fishermen, and the men of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, many of whom were landsmen, clerks, mechanics, and artisans. The whole of that wonderful auxiliary service which my noble friend the Leader of the House-so beautifully described, especially that of the mine-sweepers, has been done mainly by men of the Royal Naval Reserve—by fishermen turned King's sailors. The youngest Service of all, the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, has taken its place and worked on hoard ship with the men of the profession, and has fulfilled all our aspirations.
But there was nothing that my noble friend said which I felt to be more profoundly true than what he said about the Mercantile Marine. What the Mercantile Marine has done cannot be expressed; there are some thoughts too deep for utterance. The, men of the Mercantile Marine have no tradition behind them like the Navy, no discipline to support them; and did not join the profession, which would carry them in its train, support them, and bear them up. They are free men at the end of each voyage. 831 But has one man left? Has one crew refused, or even hesitated, to sail? Have not men, marooned in a boat in mid-Atlantic, the moment they have been restored to health, signed on again for another voyage, and mostly in unarmed ships, always in ships only armed as a means of defence? There were croakers before this war who told us that our race had deteriorated. Our forefathers never had to face an ordeal in the least degree equal to that which our seamen and soldiers have faced in this war; but I believe the most sublime example of the unconquerable soul has been shown by the men of the Mercantile Marine.
§ LORD BERESFORDMy Lords, the Leader of the House, in the most excellent and masterly language, has proposed a vote of thanks to our great Services for their actions during this war, and we have had other interesting speeches. As an old naval officer I should like to support what Lord Selborne said about the Mercantile Marine. The country does not know yet what it owes to the Mercantile Marine, and even my noble friend with his eloquent language did not, I think, really grasp what the Mercantile Marine has done for us.
§ EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTONOh, yes.
§ LORD BERESFORDI may be wrong but I do not think he does, for this reason. When war was declared our trade routes were unprotected and our ships were unarmed. The noble Earl has not mentioned that men went out to face certain death, and that there are 9,000 of them at the bottom of the sea, and 4,000 of them prisoners. No atrocities that have ever been committed by any nation in the world are equal to those to which our mercantile seamen have been subjected.
§ THE EARL OF SELBORNEHear, hear.
§ LORD BERESFORDSubmarines have blown up unarmed ships, and the men of those submarines have slaughtered our men who were unarmed. The enemy have told our men that they would tow them to places of safety, but twenty minutes afterwards they have towed them straight to the bottom, perhaps two only being left to tell the tale. The noble Earl referred to those who have been blown up. I have myself seen a man who has been seven times 832 torpedoed. He was as fine a specimen of a British seaman as you would see. He was not very well, and I asked him what he was going to do. He replied, "I shall be all right in about a week, and then I will go to sea again." I have also seen a boy whose feet were off. He was the only survivor of a boat's crew, all the other members of the crew having been slaughtered by machine guns. If the heroes of our Mercantile Service were falling in in a party with the Army and Navy, the officers and men of the Army and Navy would say, "Let the men of the Mercantile Marine take the right of the line." Why? Because they know that these men enable the Army and the Navy to fight. Your Lordships are sitting here at this moment because these men die that you should live. As I say, I cannot, as an old naval officer, emphasise sufficiently what the Mercantile. Marine have done for us; they have absolutely saved us. These men have come to our help in every way. There are thousands of them in the Navy, and we are proud of it. I hope that after this war the associations and the co-operation between the two Services will be far better and far higher than ever before.
The noble Earl below me spoke of the fishermen on the trawlers and the drifters, and the noble Earl opposite said, quite properly, that these men go out to almost certain death every time. What do they go out for? They go out to clear the fairways of the mines so that the vessels which their comrades are coming in, bringing food and raw material from over the waters, should have a clear way into the harbour. They run the risk of being destroyed by submarines outside, and then they run another risk of being destroyed by mines when they get into the fairway; and other men go out every day and every night sweeping for the mines. At one estuary in the North when certain ships were going out, the officer in command thought: "Well, I have had it swept at 8 o'clock to-night. I am going to take some ships out to-morrow. There is just a chance that a submarine may come. I will have it swept once more at 4 o'clock in the morning." Two sweepers were blown up doing that. These men are a part of the Mercantile Marine as it was known before the war. I believe that the country does not really know what the Mercantile Marine does. But the Royal Navy and the Army know; both Services are well aware of the extraordinary 833 gallantry of these seamen—a gallantry that is traditional to the British Mercantile Marine and has never been surpassed in all our history.
My noble friend seemed amazed when I said that our trade routes were unprotected. The trade routes were not protected. Had the trade routes been properly protected we should hardly ever have heard of the submarine. For years there were warnings that our trade routes were unprotected and that our food supplies were not secure. It remained for the beginning of the war to prove this to be correct. If we had had the requisite number of ships—small craft, cruisers, and destroyers—to protect the trade routes we would not have heard so much of the submarine. But when we went to war we had not enough of those vessels for the Fleet alone. If at this moment we had a thousand more destroyers we could employ them on our trade routes, which would then be made safer than they are now.
One word about the convoy which was lost the other day. There has been all sorts of nonsense talked about it. If we published the fact every time we brought a convoy home you would see what a small loss this one was. It is the first that has been put down since the war began. It was the best protected convoy we have ever had so far as an escort goes, because it had destroyers with it, whereas previously we have generally brought home convoys by armed tugs and armed merchant ships. So this was a very well-protected convoy if it had to be defended against attacks by submarines. But it was attacked by cruisers, and it is the first convoy that has 834 been so attacked. Surely in these circumstances it is bad taste for the Press and other people to abuse the Admiralty and the Navy when a convoy is attacked for the first time by two raiders. Let me emphasise this, that our patrols have done splendid work. The Navy has done splendid work. If they had not we should have had, not two, but forty raiders out by this time. I mention this only because it is right that at the present moment some one who knows about these things should speak of them. The last thing I want to see is the Army, or the Navy, or any other Service ruled by the Press. We can manage our own forces very well if the politicians and the Press leave us alone.
§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR then put the Motion.
§ On Question, the said Resolutions severally agreed to nemine dissentiente.
§ Ordered, That the LORD CHANCELLOR do communicate the said Resolutions to the Admiralty, the Army Council, the Secretary of State for India, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, and the Board of Trade, with a request that they will communicate the same to the officers and others referred to therein.