Lords Sitting of 19 March 1919

Preamble
Several Lords—Took the Oath.

REPATRIATION OF TROOPS.
THE CIVIL LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY (THE EARL OF LYTTON): My Lords, I desire, with your Lordships' permission, to make a personal explanation with regard to an answer which I gave to the noble Viscount, Lord Midleton, on Wednesday of last week. Owing to the fact that I was unable to consult with the Ministry of Shipping before I came down to the House, one statement in my answer gives, I think, a misleading impression, which I desire to correct. The noble Viscount asked me what tonnage of British shipping is employed in the repatriation of American troops, and I stated, in reply, that at the present time only one ship is being used by the Americans for the repatriation of their troops. The noble Viscount probably gathered the impression from that statement that only one ship had been allocated to this particular service, and that only one ship would be so employed. That was my own impression when I made the statement, and this is the point which I desire to correct.
I find that in fact ships are allocated for repatriation of American troops from time to time after all other Imperial needs have been considered, and therefore the number of ships used in the repatriation of troops to America varies according to circumstances from time to time. When I made this statement last week it was verbally correct to say that only one ship had been so allocated, because at that moment only one ship had been definitely allocated to the American service. I find, however, that since then three more ships—the "Aquitania," with a gross tonnage of 15,000 tons; the "Ulua," of 7,452 tons; and the "Pannonia," of 9,858 tons—have been allocated to the Americans for the month of March. This correction, my Lords, does not affect the general purport of the answer I gave last week. It is true, as I then stated, that the ships on the North Atlantic work which are suitable for other military transport have been withdrawn. It is also true that all the military requirements for the purposes of the transport of troops have been met by the
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Ministry of Shipping. It is only in respect of that one sentence that I feel my answer was misleading, and I desire, therefore, to correct the impression. It is not the case that only one ship is permanently allocated to the American service. Any ships which are not required for other Imperial needs and which are not suitable for service in other parts of the world are from time to time allocated to the American service. In addition to the two which I mentioned last week there are three which will be so used in the month of March, and in subsequent months this number may be either increased or diminished according to the needs and the circumstances of the work. I hope I have made the point clear to the noble Viscount.
VISCOUNT MIDLETON: My Lords, I am sure the House will be much obliged to the noble Earl for correcting a statement which might otherwise have seemed to be misleading. May I ask, Is it quite clear that only ships are lent to the American service at this moment if the War Office really do not require them for the convoy of our own troops?
THE EARL OF LYTTON: Yes, my Lords. It is perfectly true that the American claim comes last, and it is not met until all Imperial needs, including business needs, of our people have been met, and only such vessels as are not suitable in other parts of the world and are not required for Imperial needs are allocated at any time for the transport of American troops.

CAVENDISH CLARKE'S DIVORCE BILL. [H.L.]
Amendments reported (according to Order).

THE MINISTR OF FOOD.
VISCOUNT CHAPLIN VISCOUNT CHAPLIN rose to ask for a Return of the cost of the Ministry of Food since its inception, showing the payments made upon the one hand, and all receipts arising from margins on the sale of commodities or otherwise up to the end of February, or as late a date as can be given, on the other; and to move for Papers.
The noble Viscount said: My Lords, I rise not so much for the purpose of initiat

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ing a long debate upon the questions which I am about to raise, but rather in order to elicit information which I have tried to obtain before in respect of the conduct of the Ministry of Food and the gigantic cost at which it is being conducted. When I last obtained information on this subject it was very little short of the rate of £100,000,000 a year; and this, it may be well to bear in mind, is only one. of the numerous Departments that have been created since the present Government came into office. I have made this statement before—on July 10 and July 16, 1918, in the debate, on the Parliament and Local Elections Bill, and during the present year, on February 20, in a debate initiated by Lord Devonport—but so far I have failed altogether in the object which I have had in view for a very long period, and with regard to which I should have moved long-ago but for illness which prevented me from doing so.
To make quite clear the case which I desire to submit to the House, I must ask your Lordships to allow me to go back to February 19, 1918. Then you will find this statement from the Controller of Food—
"I have no close estimate of what the food consumption would amount to in value for the whole country, but it probably exceeds £700,000,000, or at the rate of over £60,000,000 a month.… It is hoped—and I trust this is not merely the expression of a pious wish—that all direct and indirect administrative costs will be covered by margins received in connection with the sale of commodities."
you will observe that £60,000,000 a month is exactly £720,000,000 per year, and that is the estimate which at the time I mentioned was presented by the Controller of Food, although he stated at the same time that he had no close estimate to offer of what was to be the cost of the Department.
I must ask you next to come to July 10, 1918, when I asked two Questions, which, but for the reason I gave just now, I should have asked long before. The first was as follows—
"What has been the amount expended during the months of January, February, March, April, May, and June respectively? What has been approximately the total cost of that Department since the end of December, 1917?"
The reply to this was explicit. It was £185,184,268 for the six months, while the estimate given on February 19, 1918, for the twelve months was £700,000,000. I think that is a very remarkable statement. It. is on record in the volumes of
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Hansard. That is the information which I have elicited up to the present time.
Over and over again—certainly more than once I have asked to be informed how far the pious wish expressed by the Controller of Food when the first estimate was given has been fulfilled, and what there is on the other side in the nature of receipts—and I have put this explicitly in the Questions standing in my name upon the Paper—to show against this amazing expenditure on the part of the Ministry of Food. I began by saying that I have no desire on this occasion to raise a prolonged debate on the subject. What I want is to obtain information; and I may say that, unless the facts which I have put before your Lordships this afternoon can be effectively contradicted, both Parliament and the public generally have a right to know how we stand in this respect, and why it is that we have never been favoured up to the present with information regarding the receipts on the part of the Ministry of Food as against the enormous expenditure upon the other side, which has so greatly exceeded the estimates that were put before us. I do not think it is necessary for me to say anything further at the moment, and I shall be glad to have the information so far as the noble Earl who represents the Ministry of Food in this House is willing and able to give it.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD BIRKENHEAD): I do not understand whether the noble Viscount moved or not.
VISCOUNT CHAPLIN: Yes, I move for Papers.
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE DUCHY OF LANCASTER (THE EARL OF CRAWFORD): My Lords, the accounts of the Ministry of Food are closed on March 31 in order to coincide with the Government financial year. The trading account and balance sheet of the Ministry of Food which have been prepared for the year ended March 31, 1918, show a surplus on the trading account—after debiting all expenses of administration, including rationing, rents, rates, taxes, expenses to the Commission in America and financial agents in America—of £133,363. That surplus has been carried forward as a reserve against losses in the liquidation of stocks. The total sales of the Ministry of Food for the period up to March 31, 1918, amounted to £45,564,611, and the stocks held at that date stood in

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the books at £20,974,116. The administration expenses amounted to £1,249,375, or approximately 2 per cent. on the total transactions, including stocks purchased. The foregoing figures exclude the operations of the Wheat Commission and Sugar Commission, to which I will refer in a moment, but they include a debit of £549,883, rationing expenses, a proportion of which has been incurred in rationing sugar. If, as I think may reasonably be claimed, this outlay upon rationing were deducted as being in the nature of extraordinary expenditure, the percentage as above would be reduced from 2 per cent. to a fraction over I per cent.
With reference to the noble Viscount's request for the position at the end of February, even in the case of the biggest commercial undertaking it would be quite impossible at short notice to submit any exact statement of the undertaking's financial position at an arbitrary date. It would be hopeless to expect them to submit accounts at odd periods. If the Ministry of Food were purely an administrative Department it would be quite possible to submit a fairly accurate statement of the financial position at short notice, but the House must remember that the Ministry of Food is perhaps the largest commercial undertaking in the United Kingdom, and as in the case of every other trading concern the stocks vary constantly from day to day. Account sales are not and cannot be received from its agents immediately, especially considering the fact that accounts are open in every exporting country in the world. The House must also remember that the position of commitments of purchases oversea, and heavy liabilities for outstanding charges, such as freight, storage, rebates to distributors, have to be obtained in order to show an accurate financial position. The same course, therefore, has been adopted as in every other commercial undertaking—namely, accounts are not completely closed and prepared except on a definite date, which in this case is March 31 in order to coincide with the Government financial year. The only result, therefore, which could be given now would be in the nature of estimates and even these estimates, to be fairly accurate, would involve a very great deal of work which, in view of the shortage of staff due to continual resignations following upon changed conditions since the Armistice, it is impossible to undertake except at a serious detriment to current
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work. The accounts of the Ministry will be prepared as on March 31 next, and I think I can promise a provisional summary of them after the Whitsuntide recess. As regards the sugar—operations, to date they show a margin of profit sufficient to enable the Royal Commission to maintain the present prices, which are substantially below the price that would have to be charged if the sugar now coming in, and to come in during the rest obf this year, were to be sold without loss.
With reference to wheat supplies, I regret that the question as to profit and loss cannot be accurately stated at the present time. There is considerable delay in drawing up these accounts. The cause lies mainly in the impossibility under which the Commission lay of obtaining the necessary clerical and technical assistance to enable them to keep their accounts up to date. This difficulty existed in an increasing degree up to the signing of the Armistice, and to a large extent still continues. During the whole of that time it will be found that the actual staff of the Wheat Commission has been considerably below the establishment authorised by the Treasury. This is one special cause of delay. But even if the Commission had been fully equipped with the necessary staff it would still have proved impossible at the present time to produce accurate accounts even for the first cereal year, and in the case of the Wheat Commission the financial year is the same as the cereal year ending on August 31.
I should like, if I might, to explain to your Lordships the intricacy and complication involved in the work of the Wheat Commission. It is not, as people are apt to believe, a purely domestic matter, but it has allied and international obligations of a very extended nature. The Wheat Commission is the executive body of what is called the Wheat Executive, which purchases grain and breadstuffs and feeding-stuffs for the Allies—for ourselves, for France, and for Italy. It also does the provisioning of our smaller Allies such as Greece, Belgium, and Portugal. It is responsible for victualling various parts of the Empire—Malta. Gibraltar, West Africa, Egypt, Mauritius—and has very largo transactions with India, and I dare say other places also. It is responsible, too, for victualling, within the agreed rations, of a number of neutral countries with whom the Allies have commercial

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agreements -Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Holland, Switzerland. Occasionally also it is necessary to victual other countries—small countries—who have no official connection with the Allies. Finally it has considerable responsibility with regard to the relief of Rumania, Serbia, and Esthonia, and that particular obligation is increasing and in the future will continue to increase. The scope of its operations is, therefore, very large. It has to buy in every exporting market in the world—twenty or more; it has to deal in eight or ten different currencies, quite apart from domestic matters exclusively concerning ourselves, such as tins Flour Mills Control Committee which manages upwards of 1,300 flour mills in this country for each of which an excess profits standard has to be assessed, and in many cases where the business is mixed the standards in turn have to be split. There is consequently an immensely heavy strain upon the finances of the Accounting Departments of the Royal Commission on Wheat Supplies. I have only referred to a fraction of the commercial procedure and intricacies which are involved. The result is that the accounts are not up to date by any means.
One further reason. I may state that the actual cost to each Ally on cereals winch are within the scope of the Wheat Executive agreement can only be calculated when a definite account has been made between the group of Allies concerned. These accounts will take a considerable time to draw up, even when an agreement: on the accounting method has been arrived at. Unfortunately this agreement is still in futuro, as the method has not yet been agreed between the respective Treasuries, and until the year 1916–17 is out of the way it is clearly impossible that final accounts for the following cereal year can be dealt with. I need not refer to a variety of other outstanding questions—freight, accounts, insurance, arbitration, and so on—which make it impossible to render any exact account at the present stage. Generally speaking, considerable losses will have to be faced on various commodities, such as meat and potatoes. But it is estimated that these and other losses, apart from the wheat subsidy which will be covered by the balance standing to the credit of the existing insurance fund and reserve credit in respect of other commodities, will be covered. In conclusion, I will point out that the operations of the Ministry are
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already subject to criticism by the Treasury, by the Public Accounts Committee, and by the Controller and Auditor-General.
VISCOUNT CHAPLIN: My Lords, I am sorry to say that I hear so badly that it is impossible to follow everything that fell from the noble Lord. He has told us that the accounts are by no means complete, and what the excuse or the reason is I did not altogether gather. I do not know whether I am to understand that by March 31 he will undertake to give to the public a complete statement of the accounts of the Department. If he is willing or able to do that I should not move for the Return, but at present I am so much in the dark upon the subject that I really do not know how long we are to wait to obtain the Returns that have been received by this Department which has undertaken this enormous expenditure. I cannot pretend to say that I am satisfied with the reply of the noble Earl, and unless I learn a great deal more than I have learned from his reply to-day I shall certainly hold myself entitled to raise this question again upon another occasion.
I should like to know whether we can count upon ever having anything in the nature of a complete Return of the financial situation of the Department, showing the expenditure upon one side and what they have received on the other. We were told distinctly that they would receive margins arising from the sale of commodities, and that these were to pay the whole of the administrative costs of the Department, direct and indirect. Upon that point I am as completely in the dark at present as I was before I asked the Questions which I have put to the noble Earl. Is there anything that he can tell us further? Can be give us more reasons for this total absence of accounts of receipts? I understand that they have sold an enormous quantity of food, and I suppose there must be receipts. I do not quite understand in these circumstances why the accounts should be so very greatly in arrear.
There is one impression that the reply of the noble Earl has certainly made upon me. He has frankly admitted that the Ministry of Food is a trading Department. He said something of that nature in a debate not more than three weeks or a month ago, and I took the opportunity of taking exception to the view that it was to become the custom for British

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Governments to enter into commercial and trading occupations. I contend that it is something entirely new. There might possibly be some excuse arising from the fact of the, great war, but it is earnestly to be hoped that this is not to be contemplated in the future as a permanent right or duty on the part of the British Government. I can conceive nothing more injurious than that it should come into competition with private enterprise all over the country—upon which, after all, you must depend for the gradually increased production which is absolutely vital to us. I shall be very glad to hear if the noble Earl can hold out any hope that by March 31 we shall be in a position to judge fairly what the expenditure has been and what the Government have received in return.
THE EARL OF CRAWFORD: I have stated, I think pretty clearly, that there is no chance whatever of the accounts of the Wheat Commission up to March 31 of this year being in the hands of the public for many months to come.
VISCOUNT CHAPLIN: But apart from the Wheat Commission?
THE EARL OF CRAWFORD: As regards the accounts of the Ministry of Food, they will be prepared as at March 31, and I think I can promise a provisional summary of those accounts after the Whitsuntide recess.
VISCOUNT CHAPLIN: After that reply, I will not press the Motion. I understand that we are to have the information referred to—I think it was after the Whitsuntide recess?
THE EARL OF CRAWFORD: I do not wish to leave the noble Viscount under any misunderstanding. The statement I made was that I think I can promise a provisional summary of the Ministry of Food's figures after the Whitsuntide recess. I am not in a position to give any more concrete pledge than those guarded words contain.
VISCOUNT CHAPLIN: Quite so. But "after the Whitsuntide recess" might mean anything. Are we to understand they mean shortly after?
THE EARL OF CRAWFORD: Yes, shortly after.
VISCOUNT CHAPLIN: Then I ask leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

INCREASE IN CRIME.
THE EARL OF MALMESBURY THE EARL OF MALMESBURY rose to call attention to the serious increase in the number of daring burglaries, thefts of motor cars, and robberies with violence reported in the Press; and to ask for information.
The noble Earl said: My Lords, possibly there may be some members of your Lordship's House who will question the wisdom and expediency of raising a question which may seem unimportant at a moment when the time of Parliament is fully occupied in discussing important problems, and the time of your Lordship's House is so severely restricted. But I can assure your Lordships that nothing but the very gravest necessity and a real sense of seriousness would persuade me to occupy even a few minutes were I not convinced that possibly some good may be done by doing so. Having myself been to a regrettable extent a victim of burglary, not only has it given me a very great fellow-feeling for others, some of whom own well-known houses in this country, but, moreover, it has compelled me to take a closer interest in these matters, and—may I say?—to spend a more considerable time in the society of the Police.
It is a well-known fact that after nil great wars there is a period of lawlessness, which varies in degree according to the magnitude of the war. After the Thirty Years War we know that a period of lawlessness continued for a very long time; after the Napoleonic Wars the same thing went on for three or four years; and, within our own recollection, after the South African War there was a considerable period of lawlessness also. This war, which I believe will probably be called the greatest war the world has ever seen, has left in its train a wake of lawlessness which is not fully understood. In my Question you will notice that I have alluded merely to the reports which have appeared in the Press. Those of us—and I am afraid there are a great many of us—who have had occasion to go more deeply into the subject, know that the Press has not reported one-thousandth part of the crimes which have been committed.
Now, what are the causes of these crimes? The noble Lord who will reply

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to this Question will probably find himself in agreement with me in this. First of all, men have undoubtedly become careless. They have risked their lives, and, provided they can see their way to having a good time, they are prepared to get what represents to them money and gain, even at the expense of breaking into houses or stealing that which does not belong to them. In spite of the writings of distinguished German soldiers and philosophers, it is generally admitted that war has a most demoralising effect on the community at large. Then there is the depletion of the Police Force: I propose to deal with that in a moment. There is the dislocation of employment, and, as a consequence, the temporary employment of men and women whose character is probably not above suspicion from the point of view of honesty. There are also the deserters; I mention that particularly because I shall recur to it.
There is another cause which, probably more than any other, is responsible for this increase of crime, and that is the invasion of aliens and undesirable characters from other countries as the result of the war. This is somewhat delicate ground, but, after all, it is true that we have had criminals from America and from distant parts of the Empire dumped into these islands in addition to those criminals who already inhabited it—we have had a considerable reinforcement of criminals, to use a military expression. And moreover, there have returned to us very large numbers of criminals who, because they were too well known in this country, had gone further afield, and the war has brought them back to us. Then there is the increased cost of living, which has given a very great temptation to people whose ideas of living were perhaps considerably above their means, and they were determined to improve it at all costs.
With regard to demobilisation, I think it is generally admitted that during the war the figures for crime dropped very considerably. I have noticed it stated frequently that civilian crime had enormously decreased during the war. But all of a sudden some months ago one began to notice an increase in crime with the signing of the Armistice. What struck me at once was—and I think I am correct—that the burglars and other professional gentlemen had demobilised themselves, or had been returned to civil life as pivotal
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men. I believe the burglar's trade is a very skilled one, and perhaps the burglar got out of the Army as a skilled man, or was applied for by the Honourable Society of Burglars, or some kindred society. At any rate, the fact remains that the burglars and thieves were certainly very much at large in this country while policemen were still retained in the Army. What made it more serious was that a good deal of the time of the Police Force, already depleted, was taken up by making inquiries on behalf of the military authorities. One knows oneself, having served during the whole of the war, that when questions arose about men, excuses for leave, and so on, one always had to apply to the civil Police at home; therefore this depleted Police Force was taken up almost entirely by making inquiries on behalf of the military authorities instead of being able to attend to its civil duties.
There is another cause, of course—namely, that the Intelligence Branch of the Police Force in London and elsewhere was very largely transferred to overseas, France, and other parts; and these gangs—I am speaking more particularly of the skilled gangs—of burglars could move all over the country without being traced or watched, and without, any fear of discovery once they got out of the county where they had committed a robbery. In connection with, these robberies have been thefts of motor-cars,. and I believe the number of motor-cars stolen in the streets of London and elsewhere has been very considerable, and these cars have been used in connection with the burglaries to which I have already alluded. Then finally there is the kind of theft which has taken place from poor people—which I hope will commend the subject to your Lordships—attention; thefts in the way of robbing small shops, stealing the bicycles of working-men, and soon, which means that dishonesty generally has been enormously on the increase. I might say that this matter is one which is of interest not only to the so-called well-to-do, but it is also of vital importance to the poorer classes, because the thieves have not confined their activities to miniatures and plate, or to the rich collector; they have extended their activities (as in one case recently) to the lonely house of a lady who was not only robbed but murdered.
There is another aspect of this case which I might mention. I allude to the addi-

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tional difficulty in finding houses under the conditions that have been already mentioned so often as being serious at the present time. Only the other day I heard from a friend of mine, in a neighbourhood not far from home, that although there were empty houses in that place it was impossible to get people to live there because they were too lonely. In one part of Wiltshire I believe there are a number of houses to let because people have vacated them owing to their becoming alarmed by the undesirable characters wandering about Salisbury Plain. Another cause has been that most of the reliable and able-bodied men were called up, and whole districts were denuded of their strong and intelligent manhood, practically the only males left being either very old men or boys.
It has been said that in the old days no well-conducted district was without its gibbet. I am not going to suggest to the noble Earl who will reply that these men should be strung up on a gibbet, because it might start a very unpleasant campaign. But I am going to suggest that very severe measures should be taken against these people on the information which no doubt the noble Earl possesses. I am not sure that I may not say that the trouble in Ireland is somewhat responsible for this lawlessness in England. I was told the other day that a man who was accused of stealing a bicycle had replied—and very suitably too: "I have to go to prison for stealing a bicycle, although I have been fighting for my country in France; whereas men in Ireland, who have not fought at all, are allowed to go free."
I think this practically covers the whole question of these burglaries, except the suggestions I shall respectfully submit. First of all, I should like to say that these various headings I have raised concern the whole of the Police Force and do not apply merely to the London Police or to the Provincial Police. I think I explained that to the noble Earl yesterday, or the day before, when I had a chance of a conversation with him; and I hope the point is quite clear. There is one thing, however, that I wish to say emphatically, and I should be sorry to conclude without saying it—namely, that until the war broke out and our Police Force was so sadly depleted, I do not suppose there was a finer Police Force in the world than ours. The Police Force of this country has
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always been the admiration of the whole world, not only because of its intelligence but because of its good temper and efficiency. Consequently I do not wish to suggest that the Police Force is in any way responsible for the crimes I have mentioned. I think the state of affairs to which I have drawn attention is almost entirely due to the absence of the police.
Besides organising a special campaign against these people who so seriously disturb the whole country, I would suggest that the Police at Scotland Yard should have greater control over the Provincial Police so far as criminal investigation is concerned. I will tell your Lordships why I suggest this course. A friend of mine told me that he thought there was delay—he had suffered the same as myself, if not more so—owing to the fact that the Provincial Police were somewhat inclined to resent what they thought was undue interference with their duties, although it is really quite impossible for them to carry out their duties completely. For instance, if a gang of burglars steal a motor-car and use that motor-car for the purposes of committing a burglary in, say, Hampshire, Kent, Berkshire, or wherever it may be, they are out of the county in which they have committed the, burglary long before their crime is discovered; and the consequence is, as the criminals are merely passing through the county, the assistance which the local Constabulary are able to give is extremely small, and by the time you have got in touch with the detective department of that Constabulary you find that they can do nothing more than go to Scotland Yard. Therefore I respectfully suggest that Scotland Yard should be given some greater control over provincial Constabulary, and also that there should be some closer co-ordination generally between all the Police in this country. There is another thing which is a rather difficult subject to raise, because of course it is well known that the Provincial Police have different authorities over them. I refer to the provision of motor bicycles for the Police. In my own neighbourhood the Superintendent of Police asked me if I would interest myself in the matter, because he had only a rather ancient horse and a rather ancient cart, and therefore it took him a good deal of time to move about.
There is another matter on which, perhaps, the noble Earl will be able to give

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me an assurance, and that is that policemen in the Array shall be demobilized as soon as possible. I was told the other day by a police official, that while he was trying to do all his work—and he did a good deal of work on behalf of the Army—with one or two constables, his police, were playing football. They were awaiting demobilization, and playing foot ball; and he said that, even if the demobilization papers had not got through, the authorities might let him have the men at once. No doubt that question will be dealt with, but I should like to see the police demobilized as soon as possible. After all, what is there to prevent the military authorities from training a special force of military police from among the men in the Army, and allowing the police to get away to their civil duties at home.
Only two more points, and I have done. The first is that no doubt a large number of these valuables are being taken abroad. They are being taken, I am told on the best authority, over to the Continent and to America. Therefore I respectfully suggest to the noble Earl who will reply to my Question that the ports of embarkation should be closely watched, and that thereby it should be made impossible for the thieves to get things out of this country. There again comes in a difficulty. I heard only the other day from a policeman, that he had to get into touch with the police at a particular port. That is a matter over which Scotland Yard should have control.
Finally there is a question of the receivers in London. I do not suppose there is any city in the world that has at this moment a larger number of undesirable people than London. They have been accustomed for so long to regard London as an asylum and pleasant place for hatching plots that they have increased in number, and a I great deal of the trouble which is going on to-day in this country is due to the evil influence of these people. Therefore I suggest, in conclusion., that all these receivers, who are probably well-known to the Police, should be carefully watched, and that nothing should be left undone whereby they may be detained. I do not suggest that anything has been left undone. As I said before, our Police Force has always been the finest in the world, but all the same the war has brought a great many undesirable people over here, of all nationalities. Therefore I am convinced that it would be a very good thing, and probably
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bring something to light in regard to these burglaries and robberies of all sorts that have taken place, if these people were closely watched.
THE EARL OF JERSEY: My Lords, I observe that the noble Earl, in calling attention to this question, concludes the Notice on the Paper by asking for information. I think you will agree with me that this is a somewhat comprehensive request, and I may say that the noble Earl very courteously told me in advance of certain specific matters to which he proposed to refer. I am very much obliged to him for doing so, because it enables me to answer some of the points. I hope I may be able to do so to his satisfaction, but I think he will agree that it is quite impossible for me to deal in detail with every topic on which he has touched, in a reply of reasonable length. As regards the first point, in which he detailed what he considered to be the causes of the increase in the burglaries and thefts and robberies to which he refers, I agree with him that if you seek a remedy it is as well to consider the cause. But he will, I am sure, forgive me if I do not discuss those causes in detail.
I hope I may be able to reassure him on certain points. I will not suggest that he overlooks it, but I should like to emphasise one distinction which it is necessary to bear in mind in considering this question, and that is the fact that whereas certain of these matters, so far as they affect the metropolitan area, are under the direct control of the Home Office, in the counties these matters are under the control of the Standing Joint Committees and the Chief Constables of the counties. That must be borne in mind in considering a great many of the observations which the noble Earl has addressed to your Lordships. I understand that he himself has had the misfortune to be the victim of a burglary, and I am sure that all your Lordships sympathise most cordially with him in this misadventure, and that we appreciate the public spirit which prompts him to bring this matter forward, in the hope of saving others from meeting with a similar mishap.
I understand that the noble Earl refers to the metropolitan area as well as to the Police Force generally throughout the country. He apparently relies on the Press for his statement that there has been a serious increase in the dumber of burglaries. No doubt the Press has mentioned a great

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many such cases recently; but may I suggest that it is not safe to rely upon this evidence, for this reason—that the prominence given in the Press to these matters varies from time to time. The Home Office have statistics for the metropolitan area only, but perhaps these may be taken roughly as an indication of the state of affairs in the rest of the country. These figures show that there has been an increase in the number of burglaries and thefts of motor-cars, but not of robberies with violence. This fact, perhaps, is not remarkable when we consider the conditions produced by the war and especially the depletion of the Police Force to which the noble Earl has referred. The increase, however, is not a serious one. The actual number of cases of house-breaking from September 1 to December 29, 1918, is greater than in the earlier years of the war, but it is less than in the pre-war year, and, though the figure has not reached its pro-war rate, the number of apprehensions has been greater both proportionately: and in the aggregate, which I think say much for the credit of the Metropolitan Police Force. The noble Earl, no doubt, has mainly in mind the Police Force in his own county, at any rate in country districts. Therefore, may I point out to him again that the Police Force in the counties is not under the control of the Home Secretary but is under that of the Standing Joint Committees, and any representation as to the inefficiency of the Force should be addressed to the Standing Joint Committee concerned.
I should like now to deal with some of the special points which the noble Earl raised. He rather suggested—I think he actually stated—that most of the Intelligence Police officers have been sent over to France, and that they have not yet been released. Possibly he has in mind the members of the Criminal Investigation Department who are specially concerned with the detection of crime in London. A very small proportion of these latter officers were sent over to France, and most of these have already returned to duty. I am very glad to note that the noble Earl pays a testimony, and a very well-deserved testimony, to the Police Force generally, and that he does not in any way think that the Police are lax in their attempt to trace criminals or that they do not care whether or not they succeed in doing so. This certainly is not true as regards London, and the facts which
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I have mentioned show that the number of arrests for house-breaking has risen since the war. I am sure your Lordships will agree that the London Police Force possesses a body of officers highly skilled in the detection of crime and under very able officers, and that there is really no reason to think that they have shown any falling off in keenness or in energy. If the noble Earl has in his mind a provincial Force, the matter should be taken up with the Standing Joint Committee of the county concerned. The noble Earl, I think, complained somewhat of a want of co-operation between the various Police Forces, and he also suggested that Scotland Yard does little or nothing to promote co-operation between the various provincial Police Forces.
THE EARL OF MALMESBURY: May I interrupt the noble Earl? I did not suggest that Scotland Yard did nothing to bring about co-operation. What I meant to convey, and what I thought I had conveyed, was that the power which Scotland Yard had over the provincial Constabulary was comparatively small, that time was lost, and that the power of Scotland Yard should be increased.
THE EARL OF JERSEY: I am sorry I misunderstood the noble Earl. I should like to say that it is believed that under the present administration, that of Mr. Basil Thomson, there is much greater co-operation between the London and provincial Police Forces than there used to be. New Scotland Yard is inconstant communication with the provincial Police. Forces by telegraph, by telephone, by letter, and by the circulation of the Police Gazette, and the provincial Forces have shown great willingness to help in every way. The provincial Forces now issue any undetected cases on forms provided for the purpose and the Metropolitan Police are often able to make suggestions as to the identity of a criminal from the information given as to his manner of operating or his appearance.
The noble Earl went on to make a few suggestions which he thought would promote efficiency and assist in the detection of criminals and the diminution of the various crimes to which he refers. I think that the first point he raised was that of demobilisation. I am informed that representations to the effect that it is desirable that this should be expedited have been made and are constantly being

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made, and that every possible measure is being taken to secure that the police should be returned to the Force at the earliest possible date. He also suggested that it would be desirable that they should be provided with motor bicycles, especially in the country districts. I entirely agree with the noble Earl. But there, again, it is a matter which can only be dealt with by the Standing Joint Committees of the counties concerned. He further added that he thought it very desirable that the ports should be watched so as to detect any attempt to remove stolen goods out of the country. The ports are, as a matter of fact, most carefully watched at the present time by the aliens officers, and I am sure that there is no lack of zeal or of effort on the part of those officers to detect any criminals who are attempting to leave this country. The noble Earl also dealt with the question of receivers. As we can well imagine receivers are very difficult to trace, but every effort is made to identify them, and, when they are detected and apprehended, to take suitable action in dealing with them.
I think I have touched on almost every point which the noble Earl raised, but I do not know if I have been able to do so entirely to his satisfaction. There is one other suggestion which he made, and that was that much more drastic measures should be taken when the criminals are detected. That, I think, is a very large question, which would no doubt require special legislation, and I venture to submit that it is a little bit outside the Question which appears on the Paper. The noble Earl will forgive me if I do not discuss that matter now. In conclusion, I will say that it is, of course, very easy to make statements I do not suggest that the noble Earl made such statements—that the Police are not doing all they should, that they are lax, and that these burglaries ought not to be allowed to continue; but it is very difficult to refute them unless one knows specifically on what evidence they are based. If there are any particular cases which the noble Earl has in his mind, or which he has had brought to his notice, I shall be very pleased to transmit them to the proper authorities if he cares to inform me of them.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, the value of these debates is, I think, this—that a noble Earl, like my noble friend Lord Malmesbury, who has
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made himself acquainted with matters which pertain to a difficult question of this kind, is able to make suggestions which lead to an answer from the Government and to the ventilation of the subject in all parts of the country. The suggestions as to the treatment of receivers and the better equipment of provincial Police Forces are of the kind that I have mentioned. There is one particular suggestion made by my noble friend which I should have ventured to urge more particularly on the noble Earl who represents the Home Office. It is the suggestion that the demobilisation of policemen should be expedited. The noble Earl opposite representing the Home Office said, in reply, that he was informed that the matter had been urged upon the necessary authorities on several occasions. I am afraid this did not give me much comfort, and I do not suppose that it pave my noble friend very much comfort. It is a reply, my noble friend opposite will allow me to say, which is one that I have heard very often, and which I am afraid means next to nothing. No doubt it has been urged upon the authorities, but the authorities in the matter of demobilisation are very hard to move; and the reason is obvious. The business of demobilisation is an extremely difficult and complicated one, and it is very hard upon those who are responsible for it that they should be called upon to make special arrangements in special cases. Therefore they always give, a civil answer and pay no attention to the matter whatever. There, I am afraid, the matter must rest unless the cases are very special.
What I suggest to the noble Earl and to the Government is that this is not only a special case but a very special case. These policemen,. who were enlisted for the purposes of the war, are absolutely useless in their present position and immensely required in their civil capacity. The Police Forces throughout the country have been depleted. These trained men who are in khaki have nothing to do. They have no Germans to fight; they are not even occupying foreign countries. What they are doing, according to my noble friend, is kicking about a football. I do think when we are dealing, especially in these times, with the peace and good order of our country, that a very special effort should be made to get back the police. I am glad the Under-Secretary of State for War has just entered the House, because it is to him that my remarks ought

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to be addressed. We are anxious to help my noble friend who represents the Home Office in pressing upon the War Office that policemen in khaki should be demobilised as quickly as possible, and I venture to represent that my noble friend Lord Malmesbury is well advised in urging this upon the Government. The policemen in the Army are doing no particular good there, and they are greatly wanted in the counties. What I would urge on my noble friend Lord Peel, who is very influential in a matter of this kind, is that he should do his very best to get these policemen returned to the Force. I do not suppose there ever has been a time when policemen were more required, or, I should say, may be more required, and I think no time should be lost in carrying out the request of my noble friend.

FOREIGN HOPS.
VISCOUNT HARDINGE VISCOUNT HARDINGE rose to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture—

1. If there has been lately a considerable speculation in foreign hops on English accounts, and if there has been a large appreciation in the values of hops which have been the subject of speculation.

2. If the Government or Hop Controller have been approached with a view to any of these hops being admitted into this country by licence or otherwise, although the importation of foreign hops is prohibited; if so, whether the Government will refuse to grant or permit the granting of any licences to import foreign hops before the complete reconstruction of the English hop acreage is accomplished, unless it is first conclusively proved that the total quantity of hops held in the country by all holders is insufficient to produce the total quantity of beer allowed to be brewed.

3. If any foreign hops have recently been shipped to any British port or ports, although the importation of such hops is prohibited; if so, have they been landed, and what has become of them.

The noble Viscount said: My Lords, the reason I put these Questions to the noble Lord who represents the Board of Agricul-
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ture is that I have been credibly informed that thousands of bales of Pacific Coast I hops have been sold to brewers over here, and they have done this with the hope that ultimately they will be imported into this country. May I read an extract from the Market Report of New York to emphasise this point. The Report says—
"Three-year contracts for Oregons destined for England were reported, and a number of—dealers have resold their contracts. Ocean transportation continues difficult to obtain, and several thousand bales are waiting shipment to English exporters, who are holding the bulk of stock on this side of the water."
The date of that is February 28, 1919. If this is to be permitted and the present prohibition on imports rescinded, it appears to me that it can have but one result—that it will spell disaster on what has always been regarded as the greatest of all industries in agriculture—namely, the hop industry.
I hope, therefore, that the noble Lord will be able to assure us that my information is not correct. If it is correct I greatly fear—in fact, I feel convinced—that the hop-growers in Kent and other hop counties will have a great grievance against the Government. Your Lordships are aware that during the war they were ordered under the Defence of the Realm Act to scrap and "grub up" half the hop acreage in order to produce food for the people of this country in its time of stress, more especially during the submarine menace. This order, as your Lordships also know, was loyally carried out by the hop-growers, although they incurred very serious losses to their capital. In my opinion, therefore, in common justice to the hop-growers, their loyalty in those bad times should not be easily forgotten by those responsible for the agricultural policy of the country at the present time.
I am well aware that some of your Lordships who do not live in hop-growing counties do not know that the hop acreage of this country in 1914 was 36,661 acres. This total was reduced in 1918 to 15,666 acres, more than a one-half reduction. I quote these figures in order the better to illustrate how much acreage was "grubbed" during the war, and how great were the losses it entailed on the hop-growers. Now that the war is virtually over and we suffer no danger from submarines, the Hop Controller has given permission to the hop-growers to plant up to within 25 per cent. of the 1914 acreage. I fail to understand

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why only 25 per cent. Why should it not be 50 per cent.? Perhaps the noble Lord will be able to inform us why that figure was fixed. Whether it is 25 per cent. or 50 per cent., unless some encouragement and better security are accorded to the hop-growers I am very doubtful whether they will, take advantage of this permission. And for this good reason. They have a keen recollection of their treatment in the past, when the Government some years ago allowed foreign hops from Germany and other countries to be imported into this country free of duty and without being compelled to carry out the marking regulations which the home growers had to comply with.
In 1878 the hop acreage in this country was 71,789 acres, and it is now reduced to 36,666. What was the reason of this vast drop during that period? No doubt the hop-growers gathered that they could not make hop-growing pay as long as foreign hops were dumped on to the English markets. Therefore I fail to see why this order of prohibition should be rescinded after the war. At the same time I am well aware that it may be said by the Board of Agriculture that next year, or before the next plucking of hops, some growers will be short. Even if here and there some brewers are short, others, I believe, will have a very large surplus and could easily supply their less fortunate fellow brewers. In any case no one can say that at the present time there is any likelihood of a shortage or famine in hops, and if only hop-growers will make a strenuous effort this spring to plant all the hops that may be required for the present estimate of brewing, it seems to me (if they can only have good weather during this planting) they will have every opportunity of producing a bumper crop; but with this proviso—that they must have some assurance from the Board of Agriculture that the Hop Controller will not allow any licence to be granted for imported hops until the whole of the hop district is thoroughly reconstructed. In conclusion I would like to say, speaking of the people in my part of the country, Kent, that they thoroughly believe in the noble Lord who represents the Board of Agriculture, they know that the best interests of agriculture are well in his hands, and they were, therefore, very pleased that he was retained in his position of President of the Board of Agriculture.
THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES (LORD ERNLE): My Lords, I am very much obliged to the noble Viscount for the way in which he has brought this question forward, and, if I may say so, for the personal reference to myself. The question is one which cannot be answered without some reference to what has happened in the last two years. The noble Viscount gave the figures of the hop acreage in 1914; roughly speaking, I think it was 34,000 acres. The point of departure is, however, the 31,550 acres which were planted in 1916. The ordinary produce of hop is, I think. 10 cwt. to the acre, I and when in February, 1917, the Government cut down the barrelage of beer from 35,000,000 to 10,000,000 barrels it was quite evident that the acreage crop for hops in 1916 would have produced nearly double the quantity of beer which the Government allowed. That would have resulted in such an accumulation of stocks in this country that there would have been no price at all to the growers of hops, and there would have been a great waste of their commodity.
It was therefore, not entirely in the interests of food production, but rather in the interests of the growers themselves, that we decided to reduce the acreage under hops. First of all we appealed to the hop-growers, in view of the situation, to cut down their acreage, pointing out that if they grew their normal amount they would not be able to sell more than half of it. At first it was entirely a voluntary appeal, and they responded to it with great patriotism and at a great sacrifice of their own capital. Ultimately, however, in order to secure real equality of sacrifice, we made the Order compulsory. There were a few men who stood out, hoping to obtain some profit by not doing what their neighbours did. By 1918, as the noble Viscount has accurately stated, the area under hops was reduced to something like 15,500 acres, which is half the amount that was in cultivation in 1916. There is no doubt that we also felt that this rich highly-manured land would be of the utmost value for food production at a very critical period in the national history, and we recommended the hop-growers to plant on the area which they "grubbed"—and even between the rows of the area which they retained—potatoes, vegetables, beans, and roots; and they did so. And although

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their sacrifice of capital in "grubbing" their hops was very considerable, it is some satisfaction to know that they did obtain a crop which may not have been as remunerative but which certainly proved far more remunerative than their surplus hop production would have proved.
We had also to help them out of a very difficult situation, and what we did was to create a Committee composed of growers, merchants, factors, and brewers, together with representatives of the Board of Agriculture, and with the consent of the Government, backed by a Treasury guarantee, we bought up the whole stock of the 1916 crop and the whole crop for 1917, and paid remunerative prices to the growers for those crops. We sold the produce to the brewers at prices which necessitated no drawing upon the Treasury guarantee. We did the same in 1918, so that we had secured the growers in this country a market for their crops and a price which has been a remunerative one. The crop in 1918 was a very short one, and we had to adopt a system of rationing the brewers in accordance with the amount of beer allocated to them.
I think that great credit, if I may venture to say so, is due to the Hop Controller, who is the Chairman of that Committee, for the way in which a very difficult situation has been handled, and a great loss to the hop-growers has been prevented. We have now allowed the hop-growers to return to their former acreage. In the first instance they are allowed to return to 75 per cent, of their 1914 acreage. The reason for that is that we do not know at the present moment what the policy of the Government is likely to be with regard to brewing. If we encourage the hop-growers to return at once to their former acreage the same position will be again reproduced, and the hop-growers will not be able to find a market for their produce. We have, however, also said that they may afterwards revert to their 1914 acreage. Of course, no great amount of planting can be done this year. The noble Viscount rather held out hopes that we might re-create the hop acreage in a year's time, but, as he knows, the usual practice is to take cuttings of the hops, plant them out in nurseries, and bed them out the following year, and I am very much afraid that there are very few bedding setts available for the coming year's planting. Therefore it will be a slow pro
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cess. During the whole of the time when we were dealing with the hops there was an absolute embargo on the importation of foreign hops. No hops were allowed into this country unless they had already been bought forward and consigned before the Proclamation was in force, and that embargo exists at the present moment.
It I may now turn to the specific questions that the noble Viscount has asked me, I may say that, though I have no doubt that what he has quoted from the paper is accurate—namely, that some brewers have bought hops in America on the off-chance of a licence being obtained for their importation—and it is likely also that some traders have done the same, there is at present no licence for the importation of any hops at all. As between the brewer and the grower the question of the import of hops has been very much discussed. The brewer says he wants to be allowed to import a sufficient quantity of hops to brew the beer allocated to him after exhausting the whole of the home-grown crop. The grower's answer is this: you have already got stocks in reserve, some of you; you ought to be compelled to disclose what stocks you have, and, until those stocks have been distributed among all the rest of the brewers, so that they can be utilised, you ought not to be allowed to introduce any foreign hops. Now, the big brewers have always been accustomed—and it is a practice in the trade—to carry large reserves. Those who have them strongly object to having those reserves taken from them and distributed to their competitors who have not shown the same foresight, or have not provided against this particular crisis.
What we propose to do is to effect what I believe would be, on the whole, a satisfactory compromise. We have asked the Hop Controller, and. in fact, we have agreed with the Hop Controller, to act in this way: to permit importation to such brewers as could prove a shortage of hops for their requirements up to November, taking into account the hops they had been allowed to buy this year, and their quota of beer. Let me comment on that fact by saying that every hundredweight of home-grown hops has already been disposed of by ration. What we want to get at is—Have they got any stocks in hand? If they have a stock in hand then they cannot get importation. The second point in the agreement is this, that we

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refuse all speculative imports, or imports that will have the effect of adding to the stock already held by brewers. If the Government decide to increase the barrelage from the existing figure to anything approaching the figure of previous years then it is quite obvious that, to meet that extra demand after using up every scrap of home-grown hops, some importation will be wanted. But no importations are to be allowed of a speculative character, or such as will increase the stocks held in reserve in this country.
The third question which the noble Viscount has asked me is whether any foreign hops have recently been shipped to any British port or ports, although the importation of such Lops is prohibited; if so, have they been landed and what has become of them? The practice is this. The prohibition is against the importation of any hops at all, and that stands. If any hops come into the country without a licence they are liable to seizure, but I believe the practice is not to resort to that extreme unless the contravention of the Proclamation can be proved to have been contumacious and wilful. What we do is this. We put stocks which have been consigned to any consignee in bond, and the consignee cannot get them out and use them without the consent of the Hop Controller; therefore if they do come into the country we still retain absolute control over them.
What the future policy of the Government in, say 1921, may be as to hops I am afraid I cannot give any indication, but there is no doubt that licence for importation will be maintained so far as the 1919–1920 crops are concerned. If I could give the noble Viscount the guarantee that no importation of hops would be allowed for a still further period I should be glad to do so, not only because of the industry itself, but of the influence of the industry upon agriculture. There is no industry which is conducted by more skilled and intelligent men, or men who will spend more money upon their land. And they do their land extremely well; they raise from it very large crops, they carry a large head of cattle and live-stock in addition to their hops, and they give to the British farmer one of the best examples of what intensive farming can do in this country. On all these grounds I should have been glad to give the noble Viscount a guarantee, but I am afraid it is impossible to go so far ahead.
LORD HARRIS: My Lords, I should be glad if my noble friend would make it quite clear as regards the brewers who will be permitted to import. He told us that there are some brewers who have always held excessively large stocks. Do I understand that they will not be permitted in any circumstances to import, but that only the brewers who have no stocks at all or insufficient stocks for the amount they are allowed to brew will be allowed to import?
LORD ERNLE: Only those brewers who are short will be allowed to import; and those brewers who have stocks will be allowed to import provided they do not add to their quantity in reserve or in stock—that is to say, if they want hops for use, or if they want; their existing stock for use, then they will be allowed to fill up their reserves to that extent.

INSTRUCTION IN THE ARMY.
EARL STANHOPE EARL STANHOPE rose to ask the Undersecretary of State for War—

1. How many officers and men are at present patients in hospitals and convalescent homes in the United Kingdom.

2. How many of these patients are receiving technical and other instruction likely to prove of value to them on their return to civil life.

3. What is the nature of the instruction being given.

4. Whether this instruction is linked up with the instruction provided for officers and men after they have been discharged from the Army; and to move for Papers.

The noble Earl said: My Lords, several debates on the subject of the training of disabled soldiers have taken place in your Lordships' House. I think on every occasion they have dealt almost entirely with the training which is given after men are discharged from the Services. Your Lordships will observe that in the Question which I have put down on the Paper I deal entirely with the training which is given before men are discharged from the Army, and I ask what is being done in military hospitals.
Your Lordships will often have read in the Press of late accounts of the education scheme which has been launched in the Army. It is dealing with vast numbers, and it is doing a great work. The articles which appear in the Press are almost unanimously favourable, but the effect of them is a little bit discounted because I think many of them are from the same pen, and I regret to say that my information is perhaps not quite so favourable. In many places the scheme is going on extremely well; in others it is not going on quite so satisfactorily. That, of course, is due to the education officer on the spot, to his being perhaps less keen or less able, and has nothing to do with the scheme in general. But I am afraid that as a whole I rather find with both officers and men that they say they think the men are not getting quite, so much good out of it as they might; that the scheme is, perhaps, too pedagogic (if I may use the expression), and not sufficiently practical. We do not all of us want to become Oxford Dons, but in these days we have all of us to earn our living. If that criticism is true of the scheme in general, it is abundantly true of the scheme when it is applied to hospitals.
I must tell your Lordships that when I came home from France in May of last year I began to take up this scheme purely in regard to the training in hospitals for a military reason. I felt—as I think every soldier in France felt—that men who had been wounded several times, or men who had been at the Front throughout the whole war, should be allowed to come home and to earn the high wages which were being given in the turning out of munitions, and aeroplanes, and other things required for the war; and that the "Cuthberts," who had taken refuge from military service by scrambling into protected occupations at the beginning of the war, should be dragged out and made to go and serve in France and elsewhere. I believe that something like 70,000 men have been wounded twice in this war, and over 10,000 wounded three times and more. It is obvious that the feeling both in the Army and in the nation was strong that these men should be allowed to work at home, and that those who had not been out at all should take their places in the front line. That scheme became impracticable because the demand for men was so severe that it was impossible to spare either the men from the Army long enough after they had recovered from; their wounds to become sufficiently trained
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to do munitions, or to take away men from munitions to train them to become soldiers. In neither case, of course, were the men available for changing places until they had been fully trained in the other man's job.
It may be asked, Why was not this scheme of substitution started a long time ago and not merely last year? It was due to the opposition of the then Secretary of State for War, Lord Derby, and to Sir Alfred Keogh, who was head of the Medical Services. They held the view very strongly that if you began to give training in hospital men would be retained in hospital in order to complete their training, and not discharged as soon as they were cured of their wounds. The objection to this was, of course, that we had a great shortage of beds, and it was not possible to keep men in hospital one day longer than was really necessary. They also felt, I think—in fact, they said, so—that if you trained a man for a civil occupation the man would desire to become a civilian. I can prove that both those views were absolutely wrong, and, as a matter of fact, did a great deal of harm. As regards the time being lengthened that men were kept in hospital by their undertaking training, the scheme has been in operation for a considerable time in New Zealand hospitals and there it is the unanimous opinion of doctors and nurses that men recovered very much quicker from their injuries if their minds were occupied in hospital in any form of education, particularly some form of technical education.
If any further proof of that were required, I may say that, even though our Forces in Egypt in 1917 were extremely small, it was estimated that we increased our strength in the field that year by not less than one Division by the adoption of this scheme. It is a remarkable fact, but it is given on the authority of an officer who is very much in a position to know. Now, of course, it was absurd to think that if you train a man as a civilian he should only then wish to become a civilian and to cease to be a soldier. It appeared to be forgotten that practically nine-tenths of the Army were civilians before the war began. Perhaps your Lordships may question that this opposition to training in hospital was as definite as I have stated; but when I tell you that the Director of Education, when he began his scheme for training in hospitals, found it necessary to cancel an Army Council Instruction before he could begin,

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I think the proof of my assertion is maintained.
It may be said that there is no great need for men now, and therefore why should you press for the training of men in hospital in order to get them discharged quicker? Apart from the moral point of view of trying to get a man cured as speedily and as effectively as possible, there is a new consideration which has arisen. On every side we see the question of production put forward. We are told that everybody has to produce more than lie produced before the war. Well, keeping men doing nothing day after day, week after week, month after month, in hospital is not a good way of teaching them to become better producers than they were before. If you train a man to loaf he becomes a loafer whatever he was previously; and you train a man not to become a greater producer but to cease to be a producer at all. Many and many a man has left hospital and drifted into a "blind alley" occupation because he has not been prepared, after many months in hospital, to take up work. The noble Earl the Chancellor of the Duchy will agree with me that the difficulty with regard to training under the Ministry of Pensions scheme has been that when the men are discharged from hospital they are unable to take advantage of the training offered to them by the Ministry of Pensions. We are told—and I think the noble Earl himself, and anyone in the Ministry of Pensions will agree—that by the time they manage to get hold of the men it is almost too late; and even if it is not, there is a great deal of leeway to make up before the men really begin to make progress. That is why it has been found better in the New Zealand Forces—as I am sure it would be elsewhere—to take up this training as soon as a man gets out of bed and becomes what is known as a walking patient.
It may be asked, Do the men want it? Yes, unquestionably they do. I have seen a considerable number of letters—some of them more forcible than polite—demanding that this training should be given. I have seen others that are extraordinarily pathetic in their appeals, saying that owing to injuries received in action the writers will be unable to return to their pre-war occupations; that they are anxious to take up such and such a trade, but they feel that it will take a long time to learn;
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they wonder how they will get the necessary training, and whether they will be able to support themselves and their families until they get satisfactorily started in a new line of business. Under the Ministry of Pensions scheme they can. But after being many months in hospital the desire to take up anything new evaporates. The term—which I think probably the noble Viscount himself knows very well, and certainly every doctor and every nurse knows it—is that a man becomes "hospitalised;" which means that he gets a sort of hospital standpoint and loses interest in life and in things generally.
Then I come to the question of what is being done now. I imagine—I do not know—that the noble Viscount will tell me that we have something like 150,000 men still in hospital. I do not know what figure he will give as the number of men actually taking up trades of a definite character, but I hope he will be able to differentiate between the men who merely have put down to get this training, and the men who are actually receiving it. Even since I put this Motion on the Paper there has been quite an awakening in some of the hospitals in London, because I find that men have been asked what they desire to do only within the last few days.
Under the scheme one education officer was appointed to each central hospital. I put it to your Lordships what that must mean. The central hospitals have anything up to 2,000 beds, and twenty or thirty hospitals affiliated to them, scattered all over the country. One single officer appointed to give training on every conceivable thing which men in each of these central hospitals, and other hospitals, may require! Obviously, if he was to find out only what the men wished to learn, he would be as fully occupied as anybody could possibly desire, and would certainly earn every penny of his pay. There are, of course, difficulties. The fact that these hospitals are scattered all over the country, and vary from six or perhaps twelve beds up to quite a large number, makes the provision of technical training more difficult. We now have an opportunity of making the scheme much better, because many of the smaller hospitals are being closed, and it is possible to concentrate the men in the larger hospitals. I believe an offer has been made by the New Zealand Force that we should take over three of

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their hospitals each having accommodation for 2,000 beds.
It will be obvious to your Lordships that technical education is much more easily arranged where you have a large number of beds concentrated in a comparatively small number of hospitals, but I am bound to add that I think a great deal more might have been done. After all, in London you have innumerable technical classes. You have trade schools and you have workshops; yet if you go round the hospitals in London you will find that very few if any of the men are really getting training in the military hospitals. I exclude, of course, such special institutions as Roe-hampton and St. Dunstan's. If necessary, the men should be taken from the hospitals to these schools and workshops and given training which would enable them to compete in the labour market as soon as they leave the Army. Can nothing really be done in the areas outside London?
I hold here in my hand the scheme of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. I shall have something more to say about that later. I have seen that scheme in operation in several of their hospitals, and I can hardly describe to your Lordships the difference between the demeanour and the outlook of the men in those hospitals as compared with the demeanour and the outlook of men in our hospitals. The men are walking about in those hospitals with an object. They have not lost interest in life. They are learning things which interest them. In the New Zealand Hospitals the men are given an opportunity of learning things which they have wanted to learn all their lives. I am bound to add that a large amount of the success of the New Zealand scheme is due to the extraordinary personality of General Richardson, who commanded the Forces in England, and who has an extraordinary gift for interesting men, and who is filled with great enthusiasm. If you go to our hospitals, if you find the men at all—as a rule they are out in the streets from 10 o'clock in the morning till 7 o'clock at night—you will find a sort of lack-a-daisical walk, because the men have no object in getting from one side of the hospital to the other till some time in the afternoon. They have nothing to occupy their day, and therefore with the best will in the world it is a thing that necessarily grows when men are kept compulsorily in idleness.
It may be said, If you take this view why did not you do it when you were at the War Office? That is a perfectly fair argument to make. In the first place the scheme was younger then than it is now, and therefore it was less easy to put into operation. Secondly, I had not the advantage of being a member of the Army Council, and therefore it was rather more difficult for me to get things put through. I have now had more opportunity of seeing, the business end—of seeing the men who ought to be getting this instruction, and of finding out what they think of it, instead of reading the reports from the other end. I bring forward these suggestions which I am going to make in the hope that the noble Viscount will be more successful than I was. It may be asked. What is your plan? I am glad that my noble friend the Director of Education is here, because I can say what I should not have said had he not been present, although I dislike saying it. He has been of enormous value to the scheme. His knowledge of educational matters and acquaintance with people who have long taken an interest in education has been invaluable, and the Army and still more the country owe him a great debt of gratitude. In my humble opinion, however, he has now done all he can for the scheme, and I think others will be better fitted to carry it on.
What I would propose is that the scheme should be maintained under General Staff as it is now, but I do not see why a proper directorship should not be now established as it existed in pre-war days. I propose that a Director of Military Training should be appointed, and the scheme should be divorced from the Staff duties directorship, with which it had nothing whatever to do until some time after the war began. Thirdly, I would adopt the New Zealand scheme, which teaches men what they want to know rather than following a system which does not appeal. It is more practical than our scheme, and I think on the whole it is better. Fourthly, I should appoint General Richardson as my Director of Training. He is a man who has made a great success of the New Zealand scheme, and I do not see why he should not be able to attain the same success in a wider sphere. Of course it entirely depends, supposing that suggestion met with approval, whether the New Zealand Government would be prepared to give him up.
Fifthly, I would ensure that the lip service of the Army Medical Service should be translated into a genuine effort to give the technical instruction in hospitals which is necessary. The scheme is approved, and we are no longer tied down merely to giving bedside occupation. Nevertheless, nothing is really being done and bedside occupation is still going on. Only last week I saw three men, who, thank God! are going to be perfectly well shortly, doing embroidery. They were doing it extremely well and seemed to think they were going to make a living out of it when they were discharged from hospital. Ladies will give a good many shillings, perhaps, for embroideries when they buy them from men still in hospital, but they would not give pennies if they were sold to them by a civilian later on. I think your Lordships would agree that a man who is well and fit should not be trained, or encouraged to become an old woman, because that is what this embroidery really means.
Sixthly, I should group men into larger hospitals, and endeavour as far as possible to group them according to their disabilities. Where lung cases, such as gas cases, and so on, have to be dealt with, obviously more open air pursuits and open air training have to be given. If it is possible to group men by their disabilities it simplifies the training which can be given. Lastly, I should ensure that the training given prior to discharge is on lines which can be continued by the Ministry of Labour. As your Lordships know, the, training which used to be given by the Ministry of Pensions has been, or is about to be, taken over by the Ministry of Labour. Therefore, it is necessary to co-ordinate that, and to ensure that the man, when he leaves the Army partially trained, should be able to get that training continued and completed under the Ministry of Labour. Your Lordships have often heard of the Rothband scheme. It is a scheme by which employers are asked to engage soldiers because they have been soldiers. I am bound to say that that scheme does not appeal to me in the very smallest degree.
As a soldier I object to men being employed purely and simply from a charity standpoint, because that is what it means. What I want to see is that men who have been in the service are trained so as to become, experts in various trades and are taken on by employers not from a charity
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Standpoint, but because they are the best men who can be found. Then they will be able to command a proper scale of wages; they will be able to choose their employers and get the conditions which they deserve. I have not the smallest doubt that a man who has been in the Army is a better man mentally than either a Cuthbert or a conscientious objector. What I want him also to be is a better man physically and by his training. That can be, achieved if this training is given in hospitals and in the Army. I have one final reason for this scheme. Ask any doctor or any sister or any visitor to a hospital what is thought of the men. All will unanimously tell you that the men are splendid, and particularly so when they first arrive; but they will also tell you that the men do gradually become "hospitalised," and that then it is much more difficult to do anything with them. They lose their keenness and their energy, as I have already stated.
Eventually, these men, after discharge from the Army, become a curse to themselves and to the country. They are unwilling to work because they have become unaccustomed to work. They are unhappy because they cannot find work, and yet they do not look for it or require it. They drift into some blind-alley occupation and become totally unfitted to hold their own in civil life. They merely develop into objects of charity instead of being men who ought to be able to command the best wages in the labour market. It is obvious that they then become very suitable ground for ideas which are those of anarchists and Bolshevists, and therefore they become a danger to the State instead of the support; which they ought to be. From that point of view, as well as from the point of view of justice, from the point of view that it is a benefit to the State as well as to the individual, this training should be given. I hope that the noble Viscount will be able to give—I do not say a very satisfactory answer at the moment—but that at any rate he will give this matter his attention, and I wish him greater success than was given to me when I held the office lie now holds.
THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (VISCOUNT PEEL): My Lords, this is a subject in which my noble friend has taken very great interest, both when he was at the War Office and subsequently when he has examined it from what he

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calls "the business end." I am rather sorry that he should indicate by inference that the business end was not at the War Office. But with the general propositions that he has put forward I think every one will agree. We all admit that it is very important that the men who have served their country and have been wounded, who are leaving these hospitals, should, be possible, go out into the world well equipped in some particular trade, so that they may not, as he said, drift into any blind-alley occupation, but should be able to get some well-paid and well-skilled occupation and carry it into civil life. No one, I think, who has any acquaintance with hospitals will doubt for a moment the curative value of occupying the minds of men, especially when they are in the convalescent state, or of occupying, perhaps, their hands as well in some technical training. No one who has observed the influence of this training upon men doubts for a moment that it very much assists to re-establish their health.
I do not think my noble friend took a very cheerful view of the methods that are now being carried on at the War Office under the Director of Education. I must take some exception to the term? that my noble friend used about the present Director, who is a member of this House. I think he paid him the compliment of saying that he discharged the work well, but that somebody else would do it very much better. I confess that if I wished to pay him a compliment I would express it in some more complimentary terms. I wish to make some observations upon that point. Let us remember, first of all, what the work of my noble friend is. It is quite true that the noble Earl opposite did make some more general reference to the education of the Army itself, but the greater portion of his speech, and in fact the questions he placed upon the Paper, are entirely directed to education in hospitals and convalescent homes. But the work which my noble friend the Director of Education has to control is very wide. It embraces both subjects, and, important as is the work in hospitals, it really is a small portion of the work over which my noble friend has control. I should like to say, considering this criticism which has been passed upon him, that so far as my observation goes he discharges his duty with great energy and ability, and lie has attained a great measure of success in the work he has done.
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My noble friend made some reference to the work of General Richardson at the New Zealand hospitals. I am not familiar myself with the precise nature of that work, but I understand that it has been very well done. Again, I must point out that the work of the New Zealand hospitals is not comparable with, and it is not one-fiftieth part of, the work which my noble friend has been doing for Army education, and our own hospitals. Admirable as it may be, the question whether that system could be transferred bodily to our own hospitals and our own system of education is another matter, on which one might have a good deal to say. My noble friend asks some specific questions, and before I deal with one or two more general propositions, perhaps I ought to answer them. His first question was—
"How many officers and men are at present patients in hospitals and convalescent homes in the United Kingdom?"
The figures are rather larger than he suggested. They are 9,921 officers and 173,527 other ranks in hospitals, including of course convalescent hospitals.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: There would be some more abroad?
VISCOUNT PEEL: Yes. That is in the United Kingdom. The question is confined to the United Kingdom. My noble friend's second Question is—
"How many of these patients are receiving technical and other instruction likely to prove of value to them on their return to civil life?"
We must remember that this educational scheme is comparatively young. It was only extended to embrace patients in military hospitals in November, 1918. The training facilities provided by the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of Pensions were not available for the soldier until after his discharge and demobilisation, and the object of the extension of the Army educational scheme was to give the utmost assistance possible to the schemes of these Ministries by extending to the patients while in hospital facilities for general education and for vocational instruction. Educational facilities for officer patients were already provided by the Appointments Department of the Ministry of Labour, and they were therefore not dealt with under the Army scheme.
My noble friend referred to the fact that in these sixty large hospitals one officer

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had been appointed for each, and he asked how could one officer in one great hospital with a number of auxiliary hospitals deal with the large range of subjects which must be dealt; with if these men are to get vocational and educational training. He entirely omitted to state that, in addition to this one officer for each of these large hospitals, there are no fewer than four other officers and twelve non-commissioned officers appointed for every 1,000 mm in the hospitals. It makes a considerable difference to the staff engaged on this system of education. I point out the difficulty, and my noble friend must make allowance for it, that these sixty large hospitals have a number of auxiliary hospitals, and the patients in them number from something like ten to twenty. In these scattered hospitals it is, of course, far more difficult to make arrangements for definite educational training that it would be if they were assembled in these large central hospitals. It is obvious, and I only mention it as bearing on the difficulties of the question, that the instruction must come to the patients in the hospital; the patients cannot, of course, go to the instruction. The question, therefore, of dealing with local education authorities and giving them facilities is a. very difficult one, because the patients cannot go to the regular schools and colleges which are so well arranged for the healthy population.
EARL STANHOPE: Does the noble Viscount apply that statement to London as well?
VISCOUNT PEEL: I certainly apply it to London because the education must be brought to the hospitals.
EARL STANHOPE: The men themselves are out in the streets every day.
VISCOUNT PEEL: I am not talking of the men who are convalescent. I am talking of those men who are in hospitals. The convalescent patients, who are out in the streets, are a shifting population and rapidly move away from the hospitals. I will give my noble friend the actual figures. He speaks as if these men were kept in hospital for months. The stay of the average patient in one hospital is, as a matter of fact, seldom more than a few weeks. It is not at all an average of months, and it is therefore far more difficult
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to give a standardised syllabus and a regular course of education.
Another difficulty is that a large number of those who were to be kept to give education, or to occupy pasts as educational instructors, are withdrawn owing to the early demobilisation of Group 43, which consisted of educationists. Every endeavour is being male to secure the assistance of voluntary instructors both locally and through the medium of the National and other societies, and I am told that a great deal has been done to secure these voluntary instructors. I have detailed some of the difficulties in the way of giving instruction to these men in hospital, but in spite of that the Army educational scheme has brought facilities for education within the reach of between 80,000 and 100,000 men. It is not all these men that can be taught. A number of them are not well enough, and they do not want to be disturbed. There is also this difficulty, which we have tried to exorcise out of the mind of the soldier but which still exists. They appear to think they are going to fit themselves for some vocation in life with high technical qualifications, and that this might have some adverse effect on their pension. It has been explained again and again that it is not so, but it is a belief which dies hard, and to some extent is an obstacle in front of those who are desiring to train them for some technical work. My noble friend rather suggested that, a great improvement had been male in the education given in these hospital's in the last few days, and rather indicated that the placing of his Question on the Paper had had a vigorous and stimulating effect. I must tell him that great changes aid much greater activity have been developed during the last two months. It is the natural evolution of the system, and substantial increases will be shown when the next figures are produced.
The next question lie asks is as to the nature of the training that is given. Up to the middle of Februay—I have not later figures—there was something like 6,000 men who were taking vocational work, but of course that number is very largely increased if you take into consideration those who are studying commercial matters. The education given can be classified under general heads, such as vocational training, general and commercial, and occupational, which of course is work mainly done in the

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bed and the cot. My noble friend rather sneered at those who were studying work of embroidery. I think he was a little unjust, because men can obtain great skill with the needle, and I see nothing prejudicial to the character of a man who has been severely wounded if he is able to learn some of this move decorative work. Other instruction resolves itself into lectures on history and economy, very largely done by the Victoria League. Here again my noble friend was rather inclined to sneer, and rather suggested that this education only turned people into Oxford Dons, and was not of a very practical kind. I do not know how much experience my noble friend has of these lectures. I am informed that without turning people into Oxford Dons—and Oxford Dons are highly educated persions—they do give them a very good simple and clear elementary education both on historical and economic questions. That, I think, is a general description of the kind of education that is being given.
My noble friend asks later on, How far is the instruction or training given in these hospitals linked up with the subsequent training to be given by the Ministry of Pensions, or, as he suggests, the Ministry of Labour? That is done by Committees at headquarters on which there are representatives both of the medical officers of the Army and of the Ministries, and these Central Committees are strengthened, by Committees in all the Commands who are similarly composed. They are trying to continue as far as possible the education given in the hospitals into the subsequent training to be given by the Ministry of Labour. I think that something may be set down to the credit of the Army education that in some cases the Ministry of Pensions has actually invited the Army Education authorities to undertake education for pensioners who are not really within their province because they are so well satisfied with the way in which the work is being done. Not only that, but the education officers in the hospitals are invited to give every sort of assistance, by advice and encouragement, to men leaving the hospitals, and in the way of instructions as to the lines of work that may be open to them in civil life. It is no exaggeration to say that shoals of letters come showing how very valuable this advice and suggestion has been to the men who are passing out into civil life. I have only been able to give in this short time a very brief account of what is being done. But there
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are two points which I should like to dwell upon. I think that my noble friend rather treated the subject as if it were much more permanent than it is, as if the life of the soldier in the hospital is longer than it really is, and he seemed inclined to undervalue or under-estimate some of the difficulties in the way of giving a regular standardised syllabus of education. Experience is always showing new ways in which education can be given, and I shall be glad to bear in mind many of the useful and interesting suggestions made by my noble friend.
LORD BURNHAM: My Lords, I think that the noble Earl has done a great service in calling attention to this subject here. There is no doubt that, in spite of the speech which has just been made by the Under-Secretary for War, the State has fallen very far short of its duties in regard to disabled officers and men. It started too late, and it has done very little to coordinate the methods of their instruction and treatment. The present facts are that among the registrations at the employment exchanges throughout the country disabled men are there in far too great numbers and out of all proportion. That means that the scheme for training them both while they have been in the Service and after they have been discharged has largely failed. I am persuaded that a great mistake was made, as my noble friend pointed out, in not commencing to refit these men for resettlement in civil life while they were in the hospitals and convalescent homes.
There was a reason, however, which he did not give, and which I have been able to find out, sitting as a member on the Resettlement Committee. The reason put forward by the military authorities for not allowing the training to commence while the men were in hospital was that they said it was impossible, while the war was going on, to divide hospital patients into two classes—those who were put down for reentry into civil life, and those who were to be got right as soon as possible to go back to their units at the Front. It was said that by so doing a distinction would have been created which would have been prejudicial to discipline, and would have done a good deal to diminish the number of effectives from the military point of view. I cannot say whether that was a good reason, but I think a great deal more was made out of it than was necessary.

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I believe that a great deal of difficulty in persuading discharged men to accept special training was because, as my noble friend says, the foundations of it were not laid whilst the men were under hospital treatment. It is not as if this was a matter that only related to the past. The figures given by the Under-Secretary show the vast number of men at present in hospital, and I do not think that the number who are under any sort of training is at all satisfactory.
It seems to me that it is technical and professional training which is the master key for solving the terrible problem of dealing with disabled officers and men. Training is the main influence for their satisfactory readjustment to the conditions of industrial life, and I very much doubt whether it will be successful if it is not pursued on a more co-ordinated plan than the present. There is not sufficient linking up of the education given in the hospitals with the training given subsequently to the men discharged. The noble Earl has not dealt with the training of men after their discharge from the Army, and it is an alarming thing to think that recently only 2 per cent of the disabled men were given special training. I believe that this figure has been raised to 4 or 5 per cent. One reason was that by some extraordinary perversion of official ideas no man was allowed to take special training unless he was unable to follow his own trade, and no grant was made and no facilities given. That I believe is now done away with, yet very little has been achieved to link up the two parts of tin system, and until that is done the results will remain unsatisfactory.
But there is a greater difficulty than that. The Government has done hardly anything to make arrangements with the trade unions concerned. Unless that be satisfactorily arranged it must be evident to the House that men are not likely to apply for training either in hospital or outside unless they have some prospect of getting cards or tickets of membership to trade unions afterwards. I am not underrating the difficulties that the Ministry of Labour has had in dealing with this matter, but I know that up to the present hardly in any trade has a satisfactory settlement been arrived at, while in some trades there has been an actual refusal to admit men so trained. I hope that my noble friend the Under-Secretary of State for War will see that every effort
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is made to come to an understanding with the various trade societies. It is little use providing educational training unless this difficulty is overcome, and it would be foolish to assume that in all trades they are prepared to meet the Ministry of Labour to any great extent. It is mainly because the theory upon which the trade unions act is that there is only a certain amount of work to go round and that if you increase the number of skilled journeymen in any one trade you also increase the amount of normal unemployment; but all these things have been dealt with as if they were in separate compartments. The last thing that has been applied has been the scientific method of dealing with a great economic question.
The result is that the position of the disabled man in the country at the present time, both from the moral and industrial point of view, is very far from what anybody would wish it to be. The committees of re-settlement have tried to find a solution of the problem, but they cannot do it at all satisfactorily unless the military authorities would co-operate more fully than they have yet been able to do with the civil side. You cannot treat as separate subjects the treatment of men in hospital and the treatment of men after they have been discharged. When the change which is impending is carried out the whole of the training of disabled men will, except in some few cases, be under the Ministry of Labour. That makes it the more necessary that they should also have a greater say than they have as to the preliminary work that is done before the men leave the Army.
I am quite aware that things are improving, but at the same time, unless there is a greater amount of special training given, and unless there is a full agreement made with the various industries concerned, this country will have to deal with a problem which will make, a satisfactory return to normal conditions almost impossible. And therefore I urge the noble Viscount to do all he can to secure—what has been so often thought of in this war as between the various Departments of Government—a thorough co-ordination both of aim and of method in the work that is now being done.
LORD GORELL: My Lords, I feel that you will expect me to say a few words upon this subject, and I have the permission of

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the noble Viscount, which, of course, is necessary for me as an officer. I think the noble Earl who raised the question devoted the greater portion of his speech to dealing with the reasons which led us to adopt educational training in hospitals. They are absolutely undoubted, and I think are conceded, not only by your Lordships, but by everybody in the Army, and most certainly by the Royal Army Medical Corps. On their behalf I object most strongly to the expression which fell from the noble Earl—the "lip-service" of the Royal Army Medical Corps. With the earlier history I have nothing to do, but from the moment that General Goodwin became Director-General of Army Medical Services we have had absolutely nothing but the fullest support from the medical authorities. Without them it would be quite impossible to carry out any form of educational training in hospitals. The education officer and his assistant instructors must naturally be under the command of the commandant of a hospital. They work to his order, and I would remind your Lordships that, though now educational training is no longer a secondary consideration in the Armies which are being retained, it must always remain a secondary consideration in hospitals. The medical treatment, must be first, and the educational training must come second. But we have it from all sources, from the report of the Commands, endorsed by the reports from General Headquarters, Great Britain, that the moral benefit and the recuperative effect of educational training cannot be too strongly emphasised.
I rather gathered from the noble Earl that he advocated the system for the whole of the hospitals of Great Britain, not to speak of the Armies in the field, which has been adopted by the New Zealand Expeditionary Force—that is to say, I take it, that he would advocate in the hospitals, to which one might confine oneself in this debate, compulsory educational training. I think that is a matter which deserves great consideration. We have it on evidence from all the Commands that the greatest difficulty which our education officers Lave to combat is the apathy of the men, and to force education upon them is very doubtful wisdom. In one report recently received from a Command, it is stated that the great majority of patients know that they will remain in hospital for a short period only, and feel that the little knowledge that they could acquire in
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the time at their disposal would be of insignificant value to them. Education officers are endeavouring to combat this belief by pointing out the facilities which exist for the continuation of any training commenced in hospital, after men have been demobilised.
The greater part of the educational work of our officers in hospital is to bring the men into that frame of mind by which they may best profit by the training provided by the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of Pensions. I entirely endorse for myself everything which the noble Lord, Lord Burnham, said about the necessity for linking up whatever training we can give with the work of those Ministries. It is a very important side, and we have, as I think the noble Viscount mentioned, committees in each Command on which are represented the military authorities, the medical authorities, the Ministry of Labour, the Ministry of Pensions, and the various local authorities and societies which are assisting in this work. It is the same at the War Office in a Headquarters' Committee, of which I have the honour to be chairman, with the view especially of linking up the whole work.
But whatever can be done in hospitals must be regarded as preliminary to the later training which with much greater facility can be given by the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of Pensions. The noble Earl spoke of the academic side of the work. I venture to remind him that the lines upon which this training should go were very fully discussed with him whilst he was still at the War Office, agreed with him, and have not since been altered. In one report recently received from another Command they lay special emphasis upon the technical side of the work. In the Army at large there are no fewer than 163 different vocational subjects being taught. In one Command alone in the hospitals there are no fewer than forty-four, and they range from carpentry and salesmanship to science and many other strictly vocational sides. We have succeeded in obtaining from the Treasury a grant, for allocation to the various Commands by which they may engage the assistance of the local educational authorities, and great assistance has been received from them in the way of laving places open at the technical institutes for the men in hospital.
It is not always the case that facilities

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must be brought to the men. We have been able, especially for that class of patient to whom the noble Earl referred, who are able to walk about, to arrange with the transport authorities for the transport of the men to the work. But I think the noble Earl did not lay sufficient emphasis on what we may call the fluctuating nature of the population. I am informed that 80 per cent, of the patients are changed each month, which makes it excessively hard, indeed almost impossible, to get either a long, systematised course, or anything that would take an undue length of time. It is obvious that we must not for educational purposes retain men who wish to be demobilised, and who are entitled to be demobilised.
There is one other means by which we are able, I hope, to bring more assistance to the men—that is, by means of informing them of all the facilities that exist, both local and national, in the way of Ministries of Labour and of Pensions; and the various Commands report that the greatest help can be given by setting up information bureaux. We ourselves from the War Office issue what I call education circulars, which contain all the Ministerial information on education and on resettlement questions, and also bring to the hospitals all the separate, individual publications of the Ministries of Labour, Reconstruction, and so on, which may be of most help to the men. We do not claim that it is a perfect educational system, or that it can be so in hospitals; but we claim that we sire able to rescue a great many men from that "hospitalized" frame of mind into which they would otherwise have fallen, and so facilitate the work of the Government Departments upon whom their ultimate responsibility must rest.
EARL STANHOPE: My Lords, I imagine there, are no Papers to be produced; therefore I shall, of course, withdraw my Motion. I must, however, make a few remarks. I am glad to hear that the staffs in the hospitals have been increased; but I must remind the noble Viscount that the results of these increased staffs are still small, because, if I understood him correctly, out of the 173,000 in the hospitals 6,000 are doing vocational work.
VISCOUNT PEEL: That is if you do not include some kind of commercial training. If you include commercial training, it is much larger.
EARL STANHOPE: If the noble Viscount could give us those figures I should like to move for Papers in order that they may be produced. I am very anxious not to give extra work at the War Office, because I know that the noble Lord's section is having a great deal of work, and I do not want to press for figures which are hard to get; but if they are not hard to get they would be valuable.
It is all very well to say that the men are only a few weeks in hospital. I grant that the hospital population is a movable one, but if the scheme is well organised—as it is in the New Zealand hospitals, and that is why I have put forward New Zealand ad nauseam—the training follows the man from one hospital to another hospital, then to the convalescent depôt, and eventually back to his unit. Therefore to say that the moveability of the population makes the giving of education impossible is not true, and it can be proved to be not true by reference to what has been done with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. I grant this is a very small Force, and provided only one Division against the many Divisions we have; but if a thing works well with a small Force it can be made to do equally well with a large one, unless the scheme is on faulty lines, and I think it has been running long enough to be able to say that it is not on faulty lines. I approve of the scheme as drawn up. The scheme was meant to be both a general and a vocational scheme; and I cordially agree that they must be complementary But the vocational scheme has disappeared in the background, and it is the general educational scheme which is now holding sway—at least, that appears to be the general impression.
When I mentioned consulting the business end, that meant that I consulted the men for whom, after all, this education scheme has been produced; it is not, of course, for the benefit of the noble Lord himself and his Department. I hope that the noble Viscount and the noble Lord will insist that the scheme shall be developed still further. If the medical authorities are as keen about the scheme as the noble Lord suggests, obviously there is ample room for considerable development in the near future. I would point out that we are now four months after the signing of the Armistice, at which moment men ceased to become wounded, although, of course,

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the flow from abroad continued for many weeks; therefore it ought to be simpler, and should be simpler, to develop this scheme. This incidentally also shows that to talk of the sojourn in hospital being short, as the noble Viscount implied, is not the case.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

HOUSING.
EARL GREY: My Lords, I beg to ask His Majesty's Government, with reference to the Local Government Board Circular of February 6 to local authorities on the subject of housing of the working classes, whether for the purposes of the final adjustment local authorities will be allowed to include provision for a sinking fund in their future annual changes, and, if so, over what period should the sinking fund be spread; and further, how soon will the Memorandum embodying the terms to be offered to public utility societies hi laid upon the Table.
VISCOUNT SANDHURST: My Lords, I should like to say how grateful I am to the noble Earl for having postponed his Questions to suit my convenience, which enabled me to attend to some other rather important public business. The Questions of my noble friend are three. In answer to the first, I have to say that for the purposes of the adjustment of the subsidy the future annual loan charges, both for interest and for repayment of capital, will be included whether the capital is to be repaid by equal annual instalments or by the creation of a sinking fund. They will, in fact, form the chief item of the expenditure, and will be the annual amount necessary to provide for the redemption of the loans in the period prescribed by the Local Government Board for repayment.
In reply to the second Question, in regard to lands the period will be eighty years, and in regard to buildings sixty year? In answering the third Question I have to say that I very much regret that this Circular has been delayed. It has be in prepared by the Local Government Board in conjunction with the Treasury, and I hope to be able to lay it on the Table very shortly. The real reason why the delay has occurred—which reason I regret very much—is that the President of the Local Government Board has been a serious victim of the prevailing epidemic; other-
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wise there is no doubt that it would have been before your Lordships earlier. I trust that I have answered the Questions, of the noble Earl.
EARL GREY: I thank the noble Viscount for his answers.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My noble friend opposite is of course, aware that the Housing Bill is before Parliament. I see that this measure was introduced into another place yesterday, so that the time is getting a little late for having some of the main conditions under which housing is to be carried out presented to Parliament.
VISCOUNT SANDHURST: I will do my utmost to hurry the Circular up.

OCCUPATION OF MUSEUMS.
VISCOUNT HARCOURT VISCOUNT HARCOURT rose to ask His Majesty's Government at what approximate date they hope for or contemplate the evacuation of—

1 The British Museum by the Registrar of Friendly Societies, Statistical Branch of the Medical Research Committee, and the effects of Prisoners of War from German Colonies.

2 The National Gallery by the Finance Branch of the Ministry of Munitions.

3 The National Portrait Gallery by Separation Allowances Department of the War Office.

4 The Wallace Collection by the Special Investigation of Accounts Department of the Ministry of Munitions.

5 The Victoria and Albert Museum by the Education Department.

6 The London Museum by the Allied Maritime Council, the Shipping Intelligence Section; the Allied Maritime Transport Council; the American Shipping Mission and Italian Shipping Mission.

7 The Imperial Institute by the Army Pay Section of the Machine Gun Corps; the Ministry of Labour; and the Effects Branch of the War Office.

8 The Tale Gallery by the Ministry of Pensions (Widows and Dependents).

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The noble Viscount said: My Lords, I beg to put the Questions which stand in my name upon the Paper, and to add that in paragraph 7 I am happy to say that the words "the Ministry of Labour" can now be deleted.
LORD STANMORE: My Lords, I am afraid that I shall not be able to give the noble Viscount very hopeful answers to his Questions. With regard to the first four institutions he mentions—the British Museum, the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Wallace Collection—I regret to say that there is no immediate prospect of the vacation of the space occupied in those buildings being carried out; but it is hoped that the position will be very much improved after the declaration of Peace, when a considerable diminution of staffs is confidently anticipated.
As regards the space in the Victoria and Albert Museum now occupied by the Board of Education, the situation is a little more hopeful. A scheme for the return of that Department to Whitehall is now under consideration. In fact, at the end of this week twenty rooms in the Education Office are to be restored. That is a little beginning. As the noble Viscount is aware, a large part of the museum is, of course, still open to the public.
The next one on the list is the London Museum. This is the one bright spot in my answer, because the First Commissioner of Works is now engaged in negotiations for having this building restored to its original use. Apart from the desirability of re-opening the museum to the public, the accommodation used for Government hospitality functions will doubtless be urgently needed in connection with the peace celebrations. I hope that the museum may be restored within the next few weeks. I trust that this will be gratifying to the noble Viscount, as the creator of this museum.
As regards the Imperial Institute and the Tate Gallery, schemes have been approved by the War Cabinet Committee on Accommodation for the erection of temporary buildings in the suburbs for these staffs, but the new accommodation cannot be available for at least six months. The work, however, will be pushed on with the utmost possible speed. A portion of the space in the Imperial Institute has
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already been released are being reinstated.
I should like to emphasis very strongly the fact that the Office of Works has done and is doing everything in its power to hasten the return of these museums to the public, but the fact on which the return depends is demobilization, which is, of course, beyond its control. At present no fewer than 8,000 members of the staffs of the various Departments are lodged in the buildings mentioned in the Question. In some cases there has been a considerable diminution in the total number employed, such as in the Ministry of Munitions and the Food Departments; but, on the other hand, there has been a corresponding increase in the Departments dealing with demobilization> and pensions, and the new Ministries

WAR CHARITIES (SCOTLAND) BILL. [H.L.]
Read 3a and passed, and sent to the Commons.
INTESTATE HUSBAND'S ESTATE (SCOTLAND) BILL. [H.L.]
Read 3a and passed, and sent to the Commons.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
THE EARL OF CRAWFORD: Your Lordships are aware that the Increase of Rent and Mortgage Interest (Restrictions) Bill is down for its Committee stage tomorrow. I want to suggest—I make no final proposal to the House at the present stage—that the Report and Third Reading, be taken on Friday next. It depends, of course, somewhat upon the nature of the Amendments made, if any; and if they are substantial Amendments it may be necessary to revise that proposal. But should we finish the Committee stage tomorrow and the remaining stages on the following day, the House of Lords will have occupied exactly the same time as the House of Commons found it necessary to devote to this Bill. I hope, however, that all stages-will, if possible, be concluded during the present week In that case, if any Amendments were made here the House of Commons would take them on Monday afternoon, and either return the Bill to us or accept the Lords Amendments, in which; case the Royal Assent could be given on Tuesday. Tuesday is Lady Day, and on, the general ground I understand it is de

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sirable that the Bill should receive the Royal Assent by then. I would also remind your Lordships that on Tuesday there is the debate, which I expect will be of very marked interest and importance, about finance, on which a number of noble Lords have given notice that they desire to speak. That makes a further reason for our finishing this Bill before that date, if possible.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, I only have to say, in reference to what has fallen from the noble Earl, that it is, of course, quite impossible to foresee what the course of events will be tomorrow. That must depend upon the wishes of your Lordships, and the result of the discussion. But I would most earnestly deprecate the idea that legislation of this kind ought to be hurried through. The noble Earl has said that the House of Commons took only four days about it. It is not our practice to criticise the conduct of members of another place, and I know of none of the circumstances in which that course of action was adopted. All I know is the intricacy of the Bill upon your Lordships' Table, and I know that it cannot be dealt with hurriedly. It raises very intricate points which involve the livelihood of hundreds of people. Is it really to be said, because the Government have as usual run things much too fine, that certain people are not to enjoy the occupation of their houses which they would have enjoyed but for this unfortunate occurrence. It really is an incredible way of managing business. Your Lordships' House is here in order to see that good Bills are passed, and we must give proper time to them.
The noble Earl has said that it is very important that the Bill should be got through by Lady Day. I do not myself believe there is any very great importance in that. No doubt it is the end of the quarter, when certain notices of termination of tenancy mature. But in the event of legislation actually impending no magistrate would enforce ejectment notices. Therefore the difficulty is largely technical; and on the other side stands the convenience of numbers of poor persons. I am certain that if it turns out that we cannot pass legislation properly except by a reasonable delay between Committee and the Report stage, the noble Earl would be the first to advise your Lordships to postpone the Report stage for a brief period.
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It may be, of course, that when we come to discuss it to-morrow, it will be possible to finish the Bill on Friday. If it is, so much the better. If it is not, I venture to hope that the noble Earl and the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack will use their great influence with their colleagues, in order to see that legislation passed in this House in time of peace is proper legislation properly considered.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I will not enter into a discussion as to whether we can with propriety describe ourselves as enjoying a time of peace, but I am in complete agreement with the noble Marquees when he says that the proper time for decision is not to-night but tomorrow. I believe he underrates the difficulties of postponing the decision of this House in regard to this Bill; and I think he gives inadequate weight to the fact that a new House of Commons, fresh from contact with the constituencies and knowing intimately their wishes—and if not knowing them, reminded of them by every post—is not likely to have shown any undue acceleration in handling this measure or any excessive inattentiveness to their wishes. It is, of course, true that we must give the utmost time that is reasonably available, laving regard to the difficulties of the case. Let us to-morrow by all means approach these subjects and see what. demands they make on your Lordships' time, and, when we have appreciated their seriousness and difficulty, how far a longer postponement is really necessary.

PRIVATE BILLS.
[From Minutes of March 18.]
BLYTH HARBOUR BILL.
BRISTOL CORPORATION BILL.
DUBLIN PORT AND DOCKS BILL.
MANCHESTER SHIP CANAL BILL.
MERSEY DOCKS AND HARBOUR BILL.
NEWPORT HARBOUR COMMISSIONERS BILL.
SWANSEA HARBOUR BILL.
TEES CONSERVANCY BILL.
TYNE IMPROVEMENT BILL.
WEAR NAVIGATION AND SUNDERLAND DOCK BILL.
BELFAST HARBOUR BILL.
CORK HARBOUR BILL.
DOVER HARBOUR BILL.
Message from the Commons that they have ordered that the Committee appointed by them to join with the Committee of this House, to consider the said Bills, do meet the Lords' Committee in the Royal Gallery on Thursday, the 27th
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instant, at eleven o'clock, as proposed by their Lordships.

CLOWES SETTLED ESTATES BILL. [H.L.]
Judges' Report received: Bill presented, and read 1a.
House adjourned at half-past seven o'clock.