Lords Sitting of 30 March 1922

Preamble
The House met at a quarter past four of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.

IMPORTATION OF FOREIGN ANIMALS BILL. [H.L.]
EARL GREY: My Lords, I beg to present a Bill entitled an Act to regulate the importation of foreign animals, and to move that it be read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1ª.—(Earl Grey.)
On Question, Bill read 1ª, and to be printed.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
THE MARQUESS CURZON OF KEDLESTON: My Lords, before we begin may I announce to your Lordships that it is in contemplation to ask your Lordships to meet at half-past two tomorrow in order to consider the Commons Amendments to the Irish Bill.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR'S LEAVE OF ABSENCE.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT BIRKENHEAD): My Lords, I have a personal matter which I desire to bring before your Lordships. I am sorry to say that in the last month or two I have had some anxiety in relation to my eyesight, which has made it almost impossible for me with any comfort to read written documents. I am advised by those whom I have consulted that it is essential that I should take a month's complete rest from work of any kind. I am glad to say that I have encouragement to feel that the disability from which I suffer is not so much the result of any grave specific organic weakness as of general overwork, and that I may hope that I shall be restored as the result of the rest for which I ask leave.
For eight years I have had unremitting burdens as a Minister; for four and a quarter years as Solicitor-General and Attorney-General, and for three and a quarter years in my present Office. The burdens of this Office do not diminish as the years go by, and if ever there be a modification of the Office of Lord Chancellor, in my anticipation it will come not as the result of the discussion in which we took part yesterday, but as the result

983
of the increasingly grave burdens which are imposed upon the holder of the Woolsack in relation to the general business of the country. It is now quite common that there should be four Cabinet meetings in one week, and very often three important Cabinet Committee meetings of one or the other of which the Lord Chancellor is a member.
I have deeply considered throughout the whole of the tenure of this Office where my duties lay in relation to these competitive demands, and there were almost two months in which I was never able to attend to the duties of the Cabinet, because I gave exclusive attention during that period to my judicial work. These questions are difficult and I do not discuss them now, but it is indeed the truth, and a moderate statement of the truth, that fourteen or fifteen hours labour in the twenty-four hours are hardly sufficient to discharge the vast judicial, administrative and political duties which at present attach to this Office. I have not felt that the burden of the speeches which it has been my duty to make in this House has been an excessive one, because I have been sustained throughout by the kindness and patience with which your Lordships have supported my intervention in debate.
I have represented these facts to His Majesty who has been pleased, subject of course to the approval and permission of your Lordships' House, to give me his free leave to absent myself for the period for which I ask permission to-day. The Great Seal, if Your Lordships think proper, will be placed in commission. I have satisfied myself that in the few days which will elapse before Parliament adjourns no matter is likely to arise in which my assistance would be specially required by your Lordships. I hope to resume my duties here within a few days of the resumption of our Parliamentary sittings after the recess, and I humbly beg leave, therefore, to absent myself for the period I have indicated.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (THE MARQUESS CURZON OF KEDLESTON): My Lords, I am sure we shall all have listened with the warmest sympathy to the statement which has just been made by the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack. There is not one of us who has not witnessed with admiration, and may I say with surprise, the astonishing range of his activities, judicial, Parliamentary, political, adminis-
984
trative and otherwise. As a member of the Cabinet to which he belongs I can testify to the character and the strain of the work he has been willing to take upon himself, and I would say this—that no man, unless he were endowed not only with extraordinary intellectual activity but with amazing physical strength, could have supported the burden in the way the noble and learned Viscount has done. I am certain your Lordships will gladly accord to him the legitimate and well-deserved holiday for which he has asked and will welcome his reappearance in this House within a few weeks from the present time.
LORD BUCKMASTER: My Lords, I feel sure that all your Lordships must have heard the statement of the Lord Chancellor with feelings of regret not altogether unmingled with surprise. Politics often seem to be a pitiless occupation and we are very apt, in the heat of controversy, to overlook the fact that an adversary may stumble, or may appear to be petulant and perverse, owing to his suffering from the strain of incessant labours which we, in the Opposition, are not called upon to share. I have seen no evidence either of weakening power or of irritation that so often accompanies overwork, in the speeches of the noble and learned Viscount, and I am pleased beyond measure that he has taken the wise course of meeting in time what I trust may be only a slight and transient failing. I have only to add that I hope he will soon be restored to health. I hope also that among his many talents he possesses the supreme accomplishment of being able to take, and enjoy, and profit by a brief and well-earned holiday.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, I trust your Lordships will allow me to join with other noble Lords in expressing to the Lord Chancellor how very sorry we are to hear the announcement he has made. I am sometimes called upon to criticise some things which fall from him, but I most sincerely say that I yield to none in my admiration for his great intellect and the wonderful Parliamentary ability with which he has conducted so much of the business of your Lordships' House. I hope he may soon be restored to health and that his holiday may not only be the means of restoring him, but an enjoyment in itself. We shall welcome him back whenever he comes.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I can only say that I am most deeply touched by what has fallen from the three noble Lords and the evidence your Lordships have given that what they have said expresses your kindly feelings towards myself.

NEAR EAST CONFERENCE.
LORD BUCKMASTER: My Lords, may I ask the noble Marquess who leads the House whether he can give us to-day any information as to recent events that have transpired in Paris?
THE MARQUESS CURZON OF KEDLESTON: My Lords, in answering the Question which the noble and learned Lord put to me yesterday, and which I asked him to postpone until to-day, I am afraid I may have to place a certain strain upon the patience of your Lordships. But I think you will pardon me in view, on the one hand, of the very great interest which the proceedings in which I recently took part in Paris have excited in all parts of Europe, and, in the second place, because of the very wide extent of ground which it will be my duty to attempt to cover.
The stages by which we have arrived at the present situation in the Near Eastern problem—the recent stages—have been as follows. It was in August, 1920, that the Powers signed in Paris the Treaty of Sèvres. That Treaty, though signed by all the Powers including Turkey herself, remained unratified, in the main because of the emergence in Asia Minor of the strong Nationalist movement which is associated with the name of Mustapha Kemal. With a view of terminating the unhappy hostilities still continuing between the Greeks and the Turks we proposed, and held, a Conference in London in March of last year, to which both Greeks and Turks were invited; and to them the Powers there represented made offers with a view to the conclusion of peace. Those offers were, unhappily, not accepted by the two parties concerned, or where they were accepted by one they were rejected by the other.
The next stage occurred in June of last year, when I went to Paris to hold a meeting with representatives of France and Italy, and when we agreed formally to offer mediation to the two belligerent
986
countries. Again, I am sorry to say, our efforts proved futile, the Greek Government at that time being unwilling to place her interests in the hands of the Allies. The conflict in Asia Minor continued. I need not here or now pursue its varying fortunes. Suffice it to say that the Greeks, although successful in their preliminary advance, failed to reach their supposed objective which was Angora itself. On the other hand, the Turks, though they succeeded in repelling this movement, were unable to push back the Greeks behind the strong military position which they had taken up defended by the line of railway in the heart of Asia Minor.
There the situation has remained ever since. I have long felt, and indeed every one of us has felt, that a peaceful settlement of this prolonged conflict was necessary. It was necessary, in the first place, in the interests of Turkey, who, whatever the fortunes of the present state of the war, has been exhausted by seven and a half years of fighting and stands urgently in need of a settlement of her future. It was equally necessary in the interests of Greece, who, though she was invited into Asia Minor by the Powers assembled in Paris in 1919, has undoubtedly, in the prosecution of that campaign, exceeded the limits both of her financial and her physical ability.
It is equally necessary in the interests of the Powers themselves, who have found their authority impaired and their solidarity shaken, or at any rate menaced, by the continuance of this warfare, and, as many here will at once remind me, it is perhaps more especially necessary in the interests of the Mahomedan populations not only of Europe but of Asia as well. We know the strong feelings that have been excited among our own Moslem fellow-subjects in India, excited by suspicions very often exaggerated and illegitimate and by propaganda which has not erred upon the side of moderation or of truth. And this interest has, I think, been shared by the whole of the civilised world which is sick of this continuance of war and longs, in Asia as elsewhere, to settle down to normal conditions of tranquillity and of peace.
For a long time I at any rate have held the conviction that only by the closest unity between the great Allied Powers themselves could this solution be attained. It could not, in my view, be reached by separate Agreements made between Turkey

987
and the Powers individually, still less by allowing the Turks, in pursuit of their familiar tactics, to play off one party against the other, with a view ultimately to coercing the one that was left out and in that way of extracting the terms which they desire. As long ago, therefore, as last autumn, I assumed the responsibility of suggesting that the first stage in the process of pacification would be a meeting between the Foreign Ministers of the three Allied Powers principally concerned—France, Italy and ourselves—at Paris, to arrive at the basis of this common agreement which I have described as so essential.
Meanwhile, in London, in October last, when the Greek Ministers were here, we succeeded in obtaining from them, after a full and frank discussion, a promise to place their own interests in the hands of the Allies. The suggested Conference was to have taken place in Paris immediately following the meeting at Cannes in January. It will be in the remembrance of your Lordships that, firstly owing to the retirement of M. Briand, and afterwards to changes in the Italian Ministry, an interval of unfortunate but inevitable delay occurred, and for these reasons it was not until last week that we were all able to meet at Paris.
We spent five days there in prolonged and certainly laborious, but very friendly, discussion of the problem in all its aspects. The conclusions at which we arrived, which, I believe, are endorsed by the Powers whom we represented, were unanimous in every respect. We ended our proceedings by issuing a Declaration or Memorandum which contained, in the first place, our proposals, or at any rate a general summary of our proposals, and secondly, a justification of the broad grounds on which they were put forward. It was quite a new procedure in these international Conferences, but in making this proposal at Paris, which I am glad that my colleagues accepted, I felt that we had nothing to conceal in anything that we proposed, that the sooner our I proposals reached the combatant parties—and we sent them by telegram—the better it would be, and further, that in making them and in soliciting success for them we needed the support of the public opinion of the world. Our Declaration was accompanied by a formal invitation to the Turks and the Greeks to meet our
988
High Commissioners in some part of Turkish territory within three weeks of the date of our invitation, in order to discuss in greater detail the proposals which we have ventured to submit. Should this invitation be accepted by them, we shall send to both the Turks and the Greeks the full text of the Resolutions which we passed at Paris and which were the basis of the Memorandum to which I have referred.
My remarks this afternoon will be confined to a running commentary on that public Declaration, with such further explanations as may seem to be required to elucidate the text, and if, at the conclusion of my remarks, it be found in order for any noble Lord to ask me a question about anything that I may have said or about the subject as a whole, I will do my best to give him such information as he may desire.
Our first proposal at Paris was that an Armistice should be concluded between the two belligerent parties. I had already had the advantage of conversations here with two representatives of the Turks, the Foreign Minister of the Constantinople Government, Izzet Pasha, who came to London for the purpose, and a representative of the Angora Government, Yussuf Kemal Bey, who occupies the position of Foreign Minister in that organisation, and accordingly, when I went to Paris and renewed this proposal there, I was making a suggestion with which the public was already familiar.
It seemed to me to be necessary that an Armistice should be the first stage because, on the one hand, the Greeks, to whom we proposed to submit an invitation to withdraw from their position in Asia Minor, could not be expected to respond to an invitation of that description if they were to be exposed to attack by the Turkish forces when engaged in retirement, and, on the other hand, the Powers themselves could not be expected to undertake and supervise the responsibilities of the withdrawal, if they were liable to be exposed to a recurrence of hostilities while engaged in that task. The conditions of the proposed Armistice were drawn up in Paris by the military authorities who were assembled for the purpose, sitting under the presidency of Marshal Foch, and they provided, firstly, for the complete cessation of hostilities between the two parties for a period of three months, to be auto-

989
matically renewed until the two belligerents had accepted the preliminary conditions of peace, and, secondly, for the attachment of Allied military commissioners to both parties, in order to see that these conditions were faithfully observed.
In sending this proposal for an Armistice, which we did by telegraph, both to Greece and to Turkey, we asked for an immediate reply. Greece, as your Lordships will have seen in the Press, accepted the Armistice. A reply from Turkey, where the difficulties of communication to distant Angora are no doubt greater, has not yet been received. It will have been observed that this invitation to agree to an Armistice was accompanied by an intimation that the Armistice would be followed by steps for the evacuation of Asia Minor by the Greeks. We felt it only right that, as that was the policy upon which we were united, the Turks should, at least, have an assurance in advance that this was in contemplation, and whether it was right or wrong to have invited the Greeks in the first instance to Smyrna, in 1919—always be it remembered that it was an invitation extended, and a suggestion made, to them rather than an initiative of their own—we believe there to be a general recognition, even in Greece at the present moment, that that occupation can no longer be maintained.
Our next task, supposing the Armistice to be accepted, was to draw up the conditions under which the evacuation of Anatolia by Greece will take place. This, again, was clearly a military and not a political question. It had already been exhaustively considered by the Allied Generals at Constantinople, and they had prepared a plan for the purpose. When we came to Paris this plan was submitted to the Committee of Inter-Allied Generals that sits there under the presidency of Marshal Foch, and it was speedily found that both sides—both the military authorities at Constantinople and those in Paris—were agreed as to the essential conditions under which the withdrawal should take place.
These conditions will be published as soon as the Armistice is accepted. They provide for the progressive retirement of the Greek forces in Asia Minor, under the supervision of Allied officers, from a succession of zones; that is to say, proceeding from the interior, one zone after another is evacuated, while arrangements
990
are made to take back the troops to the coast. While this is going on steps have to be taken to set up again a Turkish civil administration in the successive zones as they are left free. Further, as you will realise, we have to secure the avoidance of direct contact, which might be fraught with great danger, between the two belligerent Armies—the avoidance not only of contact but, what might be much more serious, of collision between the two belligerent Armies. Lastly, when we carry this progressive retirement down to the coast, we have to arrange for the embarkation of the Greek forces from ports either on the Marmora or on the Mediterranean. It was also obviously desirable to provide, as these operations are carried out, for the maintenance of conditions of order and security in the regions evacuated, and to prevent any sudden exodus or flight of the populations in that area, whether such flight be the result of necessity, or of compulsion, or of fear.
The task of closely supervising these arrangements will be undertaken by a mixed Commission of Allied Generals and Admirals at Constantinople. It is obvious that the operation will be a difficult and prolonged one. The Greeks have, at the moment, in Asia Minor a force estimated at about 180,000 men. Then you can easily imagine the large aggregation of stores, depôts, and the like, which attend the operations of such a body of men. It is calculated, accordingly, by the Generals, that the process of evacuation which I have described will, under most favourable conditions, occupy about four and a half months. But if it is successfully carried out with the good will and with the acquiescence of both Greeks and Turks, your Lordships will recognise the truth and the purport of what we said in our Declaration, namely, that if these proposals are accepted by both parties the recovery of Anatolia by the Turks, which is believed to be their principal national aspiration will have been attained without any further sacrifice of treasure or life by them. Correspondingly, the retirement of the Greek troops will be effected with honour.
Should this operation be successfully accomplished, the Turkish sovereignty in Asia will exist unimpaired from the Mediterranean on the South to the Straits and the Black Sea in the North, and from the borders of Transcaucasia, Persia and

991
Mesopotamia on the East to the shores of the Ægean.
Assuming the success of these proposals, assuming the recovery by the Turks of the large areas which I have just geographically described, the question that then came immediately under our notice, and which demanded the most serious and anxious consideration, was the steps to be taken for the protection of the minorities left in the regions concerned. And here we must remember that, when you speak of minorities, you have equally to safeguard the interests of minorities left under Turkish rule in Asia, and of Moslem minorities left under Greek rule in Europe. The same measure of protection, in so far as it is required, must obviously be extended to both.
In Asia the minorities whom we had to consider consist in the main of Greeks, Armenians—of both of whom there are, as you know, very large aggregations indeed—Jews, and, in the more easterly portions, Nestorian or Assyrian Christians. In Europe the minorities consist in the main of Turks—although there are some other minority populations in Greek possessions—in Western Thrace, in Eastern Thrace so far as that is to be conceded to the Greeks, and in Thessaly. Here our desiderata were fourfold. In the first place, we desired to ensure to those minorities the security of all the guarantees that it was found two or three years ago necessary to introduce into the European Treaties with enemy Powers for the protection of minorities there; secondly, to secure, notably for the minorities in Asia Minor, the protection of the additional guarantees, very substantial as they were, that were proposed in the unratified Treaty of Sèvres; thirdly, to procure the retention or, where they had been rescinded, the restoration of the old ecclesiastical and educational privileges accorded to minorities in Asia and in other portions of the Turkish dominions under the law of Islam; and, fourthly, to provide any fresh guarantees that might be required, either by the conditions of the minority, or by the circumstances of the place in which they were found. In fact, what we want to do is, instead of trusting to casual provisions here or there, to formulate a new code of international observance, to be drawn up in the first place by an Inter-Allied Conference for future observance by the parties concerned.
Our next step, advancing a stage further, was to contemplate placing the execution
992
of this new code of International Law under the general and effective supervision of the League of Nations. And here let me observe, in passing, that among the many justifications for the work of that body, difficult and sometimes truncated as it has been, will be found, not only the general recognition that its work and its functions are indispensable in certain international conditions, but also the recognition, whenever we get to close quarters with questions at Paris or wherever it may be, that the League of Nations is in itself the most effective instrument, and, indeed, in some respects the only instrument, for carrying out the kind of policy to which I am now referring.
Your Lordships will recollect that, under the European Treaties the League of Nations has been generally placed in custody of the minority provisions in the Treaties. But since then the League has taken a further step which will render its intervention more effective. It has appointed a High Commissioner at Constantinople, who has just taken up his functions, and who will be able to exercise a general supervision over the work of the League in the Turkish dominions. Accordingly, we proposed, at Paris, to invite the League of Nations, after consultation with Greece and Turkey—always assuming, as we have done, that after peace has been ratified Turkey will apply for admission, and will herself be admitted, to the League of Nations—we proposed to invite the League to appoint Special Commissioners for the supervision of these minority clauses in Europe and in Asia.
We shall draw the special attention of the League to particular areas where these minorities are found to exist, and we shall propose to them that they shall appoint Commissioners to pay periodical visits to the areas concerned, and, in conjunction with the local authorities, to concert measures for the fulfilment of the duties which they will have undertaken. We shall also propose that the reports of these Commissioners shall be laid annually before the Assembly of the League, so that the nations there represented—and your Lordships know what a wide ambit that phrase covers—will be in a position to secure the faithful execution from year to year of the stipulations to which the League of Nations, if it accepts our invitation, will have given its guarantee. In this way we shall hope to give to the protection of minorities in

993
the future an international sanction, and if Turkey herself is represented, as I have indicated that she will probably desire to be, upon the League, she will be able to see, in so far as she is concerned, while the rest of the Powers will exercise a similar responsibility on their own account, that the conditions are scrupulously observed.
Among the minorities to which I have referred, and whose cases we carefully considered, the one which has attracted the widest attention and sympathy is the Armenian community. That minority—am speaking of it in relation to the large populations by whom it is surrounded—has always deserved and received special consideration, perhaps more particularly in this country, on account of the long and chequered and melancholy history of the Armenian people, of the cruel sufferings to which they have been subjected, and not less on account of the pledges and assurances which not we alone but the Allied Powers in general at the beginning of the war, and at various stages during the war, have given as regards the desirability of constituting some form, if that were possible, of independent national existence for the Armenian races as one of the objects, and it has always been hoped one of the consequences, of the war itself. We at any rate in this country have never forgotten those assurances. At every stage, at every meeting that I have attended, the battle of the Armenians has been fought with strenuous and loyal activity by the representatives of Great Britian, and I am divulging no secret, and making for myself no unreasonable claims, when I say that no more active defender of their interests on those occasions has been found than myself.
In the Treaty of Sèvres it was sought to create an independent. Armenian Republic round the nucleus of the small Armenian State, formerly included in the Russian dominions, of Erivan, and to add to that State a number of districts taken from the neighbouring vilayets. At the same time we invited the President of the United States of America, then President Wilson, to give an arbitral decision ascribing to this contemplated State such portions of those Turkish vilayets as he might deem, upon an examination of the case, to be reasonable and fair. He gave his award in December, 1920, but, for reasons with which your Lordships are familiar, it has never been found possible to give effect
994
to it. At the London Conference in March last year we proposed to the Turkish representatives, notably to those who came from Angora, that they should recognise the rights of Armenia to a national home on the eastern frontiers of Turkey, and should accept the decision of a Commission appointed by the League of Nations as to the territory to be transferred from Turkey to Armenia.
At the same time, no one can deny that the situation has visibly changed, even during the last twelve months, and that it has changed in this respect in a manner which is detrimental to the fortunes and the chances of the Armenians. This has been due to the events—I will not call them the accidents—of war, and the position at the present moment is this. In the north-eastern provinces of Turkey in Asia, to which I referred just now, the bulk of the Armenians have fled across the border to the little Armenian State of Erivan. There does exist there at this moment a small semi-independent Armenian State in the territory formerly a part of Russia. That State is now under a form of Soviet administration, and the degree to which it may be regarded as an Armenian national focus or centre is a matter upon which I am not in a position to pronounce.
In Cilicia, on the other hand, where there were large numbers of Armenians—though always in a minority of the population—when the French evacuated Cilicia under the terms of the Agreement concluded by M. Franklin Bouillon, the bulk of the Armenians, not trusting to the tender mercies of the Turks, or to the assurances given to the French by the National Assembly of Angora, poured down in unrestrained numbers from the interior to the sea-coast, taking ship wherever they could at the port of Mersina, and fleeing in a disorganised rabble to Cyprus, Beirut, Alexandretta, and other towns in that part of Syria. There large numbers of these unhappy people are to be found at the present moment in a state of semi-destitution, and only a few thousands, according to our latest information, remain in Cilicia.
I have always felt that, somewhere or other, a place ought to be found where these fugitives could be collected, where perhaps they might be joined by Armenians from other parts of the world now living in exile, and where they could create for themselves a home of political and cultural

995
independence. Whether it will be possible to set up such a home either in the north-eastern areas to which I have referred or in any part of Cilicia, it is impossible for me at this moment to say. Obviously, none of the European Powers is in a position to organise Armies, to move troops, or to provoke a renewal of conflict, even in that cause. That can only be effected by agreement. Accordingly, we decided at Paris to invite the co-operation of the League of Nations, over and above the various minority provisions to which I have referred, and of which they are to be asked to take charge, to place themselves in special supervision of this Armenian problem in order to obtain for the people, if that be possible, the satisfaction of their traditional aspirations for this national home.
There is another and also a very powerful—at any rate, a very numerous—Christian minority in Asia Minor to be found at and in the neighbourhood of Smyrna. In the town of Smyrna, in the Cheshme peninsula to the west of Smyrna projecting into the Mediterranean, and the town of Aivali, a little further to the north, a large majority of the inhabitants are Greek, and other Greek populations are to be found scattered along the coast and in the interior. It is quite likely that large numbers of these Greeks may, when the Greek forces retire, decide to retire with them and to proceed to Europe, but it is obvious that with a population of the size to which I referred this cannot be anything but a very partial solution, and there will be large numbers who desire to remain, either because they are rooted to the soil, or because they are reluctant for other reasons to leave, or because they recognise, with justice, that their commercial or their agricultural interests are bound up in the future destiny of the country.
Undoubtedly, special guarantees will be required, after evacuation has taken place, for the safety of this population, and for their due representation in the future administration of the localities concerned. In the towns to which I have referred means will have to be taken to ensure that they have an adequate voice in the local administration. Here again we propose to invite the co-operation of the League of Nations, which will consider the question in the general treatment of minorities. A certain parallelism will be found to exist between the conditions of
996
Smyrna in Asia and Adrianople in Europe, to which I shall refer a little later. In the one case, the interests of the Greek and, in the other, of the Turkish population have to be provided for, and we shall endeavour to secure that the guarantees that are given to the one community in the one place shall be equally accorded to the other in the other place.
I now pass to the question of the Straits. This is a question which had to be decided, in the main, by military and naval considerations, and in pronouncing upon it we acted upon the unanimous advice of our authorities. The broad considerations which animated us were these. In the first place, the Powers can never again consent to a position in which the mouth of the Straits, which after all is an international channel, should be closed by the attitude or the forces of any individual Power. We recalled the terrible sacrifices that were forced upon us, in particular, the prodigious burdens that were entailed upon our nation far more than any other, by the closure of the Straits; the long protraction of the period of the war which it entailed; and, indeed, broadly speaking, the ruinous and disastrous consequences which it imposed upon the Allies.
There was, therefore, common accord, to which I think general assent will be given here, that Turkey could not, in any rearrangement, be left in command of both shores of the Dardanelles. On the Asiatic side of the Straits the restitution of Turkish sovereignty over Anatolia entails the admission of Turkish civil authority over the area on the southern side of the Channel, but we felt that that admission must not be made the means by which a revived Turkey could, from that position, at any time in the future menace the free entrance to the Dardanelles. Accordingly, while the Turks are left at Chanak, on the Asiatic side of the mouth of the Straits, the demilitarised zone which it is proposed to draw in the interior will be thrown back to the boundaries of the sanjak, a distance of sixty miles or more, so that in that area no Turkish Government will be able at any time to prepare positions which might enable them to command, or even menace, the entrance to the Straits. This demilitarised zone will be visited and inspected from time to time by Allied officers.
I now pass to the European shores of the Straits. Here we have an area in which the Greek population is in a preponderance.

997
Gallipoli is, in the main, a Greek city; but it is a place where the Allied occupying garrison can best be placed, where lie the bones of thousands of our fellow subjects who perished in one of the most heroic ventures of the war, and where their graves are to us in the nature of a most sacred charge. Accordingly, we propose that the European shores of the Straits shall be constituted a zone of Allied military occupation as far as Rodosto on the Marmora. Within that zone the military authority of the Allied Powers, military and aerial, and naval, will be supreme, and to them will be attached Allied officers to inspect the whole of the demilitarised zone. In the opinion of the military authorities, and it was upon their advice that we acted, this will constitute a sufficient guarantee for the safety of the Straits in future against any recurrence of the experience of 1914 to which I have referred.
As regards the navigation of the Straits, the control of the traffic, the organisation of harbour works and other services, the International Straits Commission, as it was proposed under the Treaty of Sèvres, will remain. This will be a body on which all the Great Powers will be represented, as well as America if she cares to join. There will also be represented upon it those States who have local or neighbouring interests, who are concerned, for mercantile or other reasons, in the free passage of the Straits, such as Greece and Rumania; and to this body, when the Treaty has been ratified and they have been admitted to the League of Nations, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Russia, if she satisfies those conditions, will one day be admitted. It is proposed, as it was in London a year ago, that the Chairmanship of that body should be placed in the hands of a representative of the Turkish Government. I have observed in some organs of the Press that because we did not say much about this matter in our Declaration it has been supposed that the International Commission has been dropped or has disappeared. That is not in the least the case. It remains with the full powers and functions as set up in the Treaty of Sèvres.
Let me here add a few words about the demilitarised areas, because they constitute the main guarantee against military danger in the future. The demilitarised area will not be confined to the two sides of the Dardanelles. It will extend to the islands lying outside the mouth of the Dardanelles
998
and commanding its entrance, to the islands inside the Marmora, and to the peninsula of Artaki, the most considerable stretch of land which projects into the Sea of Marmora from the Asiatic shore. When we approach the Bosphorus the demilitarised zone will be extended on the Asiatic side to the area of the peninsula of Ismid, which is now controlled by the Allied forces, and is known as the neutralised zone. On the European side of the Bosphorus and the Marmora the whole of the shore, from Constantinople on the east and the mouth of the Maritza on the west, to the Bulgarian frontier on the north, with a small exception, will be demilitarised and placed under the inspection of Allied officers.
Thus, whether you look at the situation from the Asiatic sick or from the European side, our military authorities have provided for us and guaranteed an area of neutralisation where no force can be allowed, which, in their opinion, constitutes a sufficient security both for the Straits and the Bosphorus, and against the resumption of hostilities by either of the two Powers who are now engaged in war in that part of the world.
These arrangements bring me, in a natural geographical sequence, to the question of Constantinople itself and the question of Thrace. It was long ago decided. I think two or more years ago—that Constantinople should be given back after the war to the Turks, both as the seat of the Caliphate and as the natural and historic capital of the Turkish Empire. The Powers at no time have had the desire—for military, quite apart from political, reasons, but for both—to remain in prolonged, still less in perpetual, occupation of that city. A year ago, in London, we offered as part of our terms to evacuate Constantinople when the Treaty of Peace had been ratified. That promise will be fulfilled at as early a date as is practicable after the ratification of the new peace which we now have in view. The Sultan, who will remain in Constantinople, will be allowed to maintain a force, limited in numbers but sufficient for the purpose, in the city of Iris Government.
On the other hand, in dealing with Thrace—I am now speaking of Eastern Thrace—we were faced with these facts. By the decision of the Powers at Paris the Greeks had been placed in occupation of Eastern Thrace. There their forces are

999
now; they are in effective military occupation and have control of the civil administration of the country. In considerable parts of this area and in several of the towns they have a decided majority of the population. It was felt, therefore, that it would not only be unjust but impracticable to call upon the Greeks to evacuate not merely Anatolia, under the conditions which I have already described, but the whole of Eastern Thrace as well, and apart from the fairness or unfairness of any such attempt, I say that it would be impracticable because were the Greek Armies invited to retire from Thrace at the present moment we should be unquestionably confronted with a direct negative from them, and I am not aware of any force in existence which could successfully turn them out. At the same time, we felt that there was great force in the contention that, if Constantinople were restored to Turkey, it should, as the seat of the future capital of the Turkish dominions, be free from the military menace or the disagreeable situation of a neighbour close at hand with whom it had recently been at war and from whom it is severed at present by many unfortunate antipathies of religion and race.
In the Treaty of Sèvres we had drawn the frontier line on the European side of Constantinople at the military, lines of Chatalja, a situation which, as you know, owing to its topographical features, constitutes a real military, protection of the capital. This line is, at the closest point to Constantinople, 25 miles distant and, at the furthest point, 70 miles distant. Last summer at Paris I suggested, and, again I brought it before the Conference when it recently met in Paris, that this frontier, to meet the objections I have named, should be thrown back to a distance of about 80 miles from Constantinople to a line popularly known as the Midia-Rodosto line.
The problem was, in the main, a military and strategical problem, and accordingly we referred it to the military authorities at Paris last week, our main desideratum being to provide adequate security for the protection of the capital and for the territory left to the Turks in Europe. They unanimously recommended to us a line drawn front a place or the neighbourhood of a place called Ganos on the Marmora to the Bulgarian frontier in the north, on the western side of the mountain massif of Stranja. This is a line, as they assured us,
1000
of definite geographical and strategical value. It will leave to Turkey the eastern parts of Eastern Thrace, including the town of Rodosto, the population of which is pre-dominantly Greek, and the trade of which also is largely Greek, and for which, in our arrangement, we shall have to secure special commercial facilities of access to the interior.
On the other hand, it will leave to Greece the whole of the western part of Thrace, including the towns of Baba Eski and Kirk Kilisse, with the railway that joins them, as well as Adrianople, but a special stipulation will be required, as I have already indicated, for the protection of the population, and for the protection of the religious buildings and institutions of Adrianople, somewhat parallel to the conditions that will be required for the Greek populations in Smyrna.
Observe again, that with the exception of a small band around Adrianople in which the Greeks will be allowed to maintain certain forces as a guard against the Bulgarian frontier, the whole of these two areas of Eastern Thrace, Turkish and Greek, will be demilitarised so that neither part can constitute a military danger to the other. Such is the solution that we offer of the Thracian problem. It is a partition. No partition, whether decreed in Silesia or anywhere else, ever excites much enthusiasm. Neither will this; but it is the best solution that in the circumstances we felt we could offer. It appeared to us to be consistent with justice and to bear in mind the stern and incontrovertible facts of the case. It is certainly a much better solution than, before I went to Paris, I was told from every quarter that I could possibly secure.
There remained—and I apologise for keeping your Lordships so long, but I have to cover, with such compression as I can, a really very vast field of study—there remained three questions which we discussed at some length. The first was the future of the armed forces of Turkey. We started by recognising the principle that we could not admit in any case that Turkey, and Turkey alone of the enemy Powers in the recent war, should be permitted to recruit her forces by conscription in the future. Conscription has been forbidden in the Treaties to Germany, to Austria, to Hungary and to Bulgaria. It could not, of course, be conceded to Turkey without at once entailing a demand which, logically,

1001
it would have been impossible to resist for the revision of all the other Treaties in that respect. There were two other reasons. The retention of conscription in Turkey would have perpetuated an injustice to the non-Moslem populations of Turkey in the future, against whom the law of conscription has been wielded with most oppressive effect in the past. Further, it would be a great injustice to the peasant population of Anatolia, who have been constantly called away from their homes and from their fields to take part, entirely against their will, in the military ventures of Turkey in different parts of the East. At the same time, recognising the difficulty that might be found in constituting straight away a volunteer Army in Turkey, we said that we should be prepared to consider with the Turkish Government in an amicable spirit a determination of the period within which the voluntary system of recruiting must be established in that country.
As regards the armed forces of Turkey, in the future they will consist partly of gendarmerie and partly of certain special elements for the protection of the frontiers and otherwise. I can best state my case in figures. The Treaty of Sèvres provided for a future Turkish force of gendarmerie of 35,000 and special elements 15,000, or a total of 50,000. The London Conference last year increased those figures to: gendarmerie, 45,000; special elements, 30,000; or a total of 75,000. This problem also we referred to the military authorities in Paris last week, and they unanimously recommended a slight increase of these numbers—namely, gendarmerie, 45,000; special elements, 40,000; or a total of 85,000; and they arrived at these figures on a consideration of the forces that had been allowed to other enemy Powers in the Treaties following upon the war, in relation to the populations of those countries. Further, they told us that they considered it would be adequate for the protection of the reconstituted Turkey of the future. In the organisation of the gendarmerie no doubt the Turks will find it desirable, and, indeed, necessary, to apply to the great Powers for the provision of European officers to assist in the organisation and instruction of those forces. Such assistance has already been rendered in the creation of such forces of gendarmerie as now exist in Turkey, and I have no doubt that application will be made with regard to the larger force to which I have referred,
1002
and, if made, it will be willingly granted by the Powers.
There remain only two other subjects. The first is finance. As regards finance I do not propose, at the tail end of so long a statement as this, to trouble your Lordships by any attempt to enter into details on this very complicated subject, but this I may say that the financial provisions which we recommended were drawn up by the European financial experts who were summoned front Constantinople for the purpose, and they represented their unanimous advice. These proposals are in the direction of giving to Turkey very considerable control of her finances, subject to the recognition by her of her pre-war debts and of the payment of charges and indemnities arising directly out of the war. We sum up our provisions in a passage in the public Memorandum which I need not trouble your Lordships by quoting. These provisions will, I think, be found to be generous to the Turks. They will give to Turkey that amount of financial independence which will enable her, while discharging her due obligations, to assume responsibility for the regulation of her own II finances and for the development of her indigenous resources in the future.
As regards the Capitulations, which is the third and last subject to which I will refer, and to which European opinion naturally and rightly attaches the greatest importance, we were anxious to secure to Turkey the largest measure of economic independence consistent with the due protection of the nationals of our respective countries. For this purpose we propose to set up in Constantinople, within three months of the coming into force of the Treaty of Peace, a Commission composed of the representatives of Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan and Turkey, to prepare, with the assistance of technical experts representing the other Capitulary Powers, proposals for the revision of the Capitulary régime in fiscal matters. These proposals provide for fiscal equality between foreign and Turkish subjects while safeguarding the former against excessive taxation and abuses in collection, and for any necessary modifications of the Customs Taxes with the consent of the Powers concerned. As regards the Capitulations in judicial matters we repeat our offer made before to set up a similar Commission to prepare a scheme of judicial reform to replace the Capitulary system,

1003
which will continue provisionally pending the introduction of the proposed scheme. This Commission will be at liberty to recommend either a mixed or a unified judicial system.
I have now, I think, covered the whole ground, and I am most grateful for your kind attention. I have given, or endeavoured to give, a conspectus of the general lines of the proposed settlement. Those proposals represent, I am glad to say, the main object for which I went to Paris, namely, the unanimous conclusion of the three great Powers. They appear, so far as I can see, to have been generally approved by public opinion in this and other countries and to be regarded as on the whole a fair and equitable solution of perhaps the most difficult problem that has confronted any body of men during the last fifty years. I observe that it has been stated somewhere that these proposals are not an ultimatum. That is inherent in the circumstances of the case, but I hope it may not be inferred from the use of that phrase that we are disposed to depart from the broad fundamental outlines of the policy I have sketched or to embark upon a protracted process of haggling in order that, by breaches in the fabric here and there, the whole structure may eventually be brought to the ground. We have not attained unity in order to see that unity destroyed by encroachments or infractions which will impair the general symmetry of the plan or once again place the Near East in the melting pot.
We all desire peace, but a peace which is just to all parties, and which will prevent the renewal of a struggle which is disastrous to both sides. It is in this spirit that in our Declaration we have commended these proposals firstly to the fair consideration of the parties principally involved—namely, Turkey and Greece themselves—and, secondly, to the opinion or what I may call the enlightened conscience of the world which has, I submit, long regarded this dismal and protracted struggle with disquietude and dismay, and which expects all parties, particularly those who have the authority, now to combine to restore to Eastern Europe and the parts of the Near East contiguous to Eastern Europe the necessary conditions of tranquillity and order.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, I do not intend to make a speech. The very important statement to which
1004
we have listened requires very much more consideration than could be given to it as we listened to the noble Marquess, in order to enable us profitably to discuss it. I rise only for the purpose of putting a question arising out of the statement. I gather that a great deal of weight is thrown upon the intervention of the League of Nations in carrying out the arrangements for the protection of various parts of the subject populations in Asiatic Turkey which are contemplated by these proposals. In particular, I understand that the fate of the unfortunate Armenians—about whom I thought the noble Marquess spoke in very proper terms—is to be largely protected by the intervention of the League of Nations. I did not understand that any definite arrangement has been come to by the noble Marquess and those with whom he acted, but that they handed over, as it were, to the League of Nations the protection of the Armenians and their future fate. What I should like to ask is: What procedure is it proposed that the League of Nations should pursue for the purpose of carrying out this obligation or Mandate which has been given to them by the Powers at Paris? The League of Nations have, of course, no armed forces at their disposal. They are not, as I understand, in a position to speak with authority, except in so far as they are supported by the action of the Powers which they represent. Of course, the noble Marquess is far more familiar with the Covenant of the League of Nations and its proceedings than I am, but I do not remember any procedure under that Covenant by which there is an opportunity of bringing force to bear upon any recalcitrant Power, except after agreement by the Powers concerned.
I hope, of course, with the noble Marquess, that the intervention of the League of Nations may be effective in protecting the Armenians and in providing for their future, but I think it would probably be of great assistance to the League of Nations if they could know what force they had to rely upon in the event of their making a proposal which the Turks would not accept. I observe that in the course of his statement the noble Marquess said that the reason why the Powers themselves had not come to an arrangement about Armenia was that they had no troops at their disposal for the purpose of enforcing such an arrangement. If that be true of the Powers themselves, it appears to me

1005
that it would be equally true of the League of Nations, which can act only through these very forces which the Powers themselves say that they do not possess. I say this, not because I do not hope that the League of Nations may be successful, but because it would seem to be better, before hope is indulged in, that the League of Nations, or those who represent it in this country, should have some idea of what they can rely upon before they proceed to act. Of course, it may be that they are expected only to advise the Turks, but I am not quite sure that that will be very effective by itself.
THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY: My Lords, I should like to endorse what the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, has said. The anxiety with which we have all been awaiting the account which the noble Marquess promised us of the outcome of the proceedings at Paris has, I think, in the minds of many thousands of people, concerned itself chiefly with the question of the protection of minorities. There has been a great deal said to-night which, I think, will be encouraging and satisfactory to many people with regard to the Dardanelles—a region which will have sacred associations for so many thousands of English homes for all time; with regard to conscription; with regard to Constantinople itself; with regard to the Capitulations. Some of these results may be disappointing, but some of them, I think, will be satisfactory.
The noble Marquess has given us with fullness, in a speech remarkable throughout for its lucidity, an account of the difficulties concerning either the settlement of the Armenians in a particular region of Asia Minor, whether it be in Erivan or in Cilicia, or the leaving them scattered here and there where they may have no home which can properly be called their own. I yield to none in my appreciation of the efforts which I am quite certain that the noble Marquess has made throughout all this matter to deal, with the utmost possible care and with the greatest effectiveness which is available, with the extraordinarily difficult problem of the protection of these Christian minorities.
But I could not help feeling, as Lord Salisbury has just, said, that we have passed on this matter to the League of Nations without really understanding what that means. The League of Nations is a
1006
very large phrase, and means a very large thing, and I believe that, in many departments of the work which lies before it, the League of Nations is going to be a power, not in Europe only, but throughout the world in years to come. I have advocated it in many places on that ground. But when we are told that this problem, for which we have been seeking a solution, is to be, so far as I can understand, simply referred to the League of Nations to do their best in the matter, I agree with what the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, has just said as to our extreme anxiety to know by what practical means the League is to give effect to any endeavour that it makes.
We are in this matter, in England, pledged up to the hilt that something practical should be done. It would be quite in vain, and it would be useless and unnecessary here, and, indeed, hardly fair after all that the noble Marquess has done, were we to recapitulate simply the terms in which promises have been made, alike by the Prime Minister and the noble Marquess himself as representing the Foreign Office. We have been told, and the Armenians have been told again and again, that we might count upon this: that when the war was over, they should, at all events, not be handed back again to the tender mercies of those who, for hundreds of years, have misused their powers to the extent that they have. I could quote many references, if it were necessary, but it is quite needless to call attention to them to-night. But when we say that this matter is now left to the League of Nations, is it not really a kind of camouflage, a kind of screen to shield those who find it impracticable to fulfil the promises that they have made?—and I do not deny that it may be impracticable.
The League of Nations can, in many respects, act without the need of force of a military or financial sort behind it. But, in this particular matter, if guarantees are to be secured, we want to know how the League of Nations is going to carry them out. What is the kind of guarantees expected? Whatever they are, how is the League of Nations going to secure the fulfilment of these guarantees, any more than the Powers themselves could do so? I suppose it is hardly unfair to say that inadequate help given to a community, settled like the Armenians in Erivan and Cilicia, has the reverse of a good effect, because it serves as an irritant to the Turk, who feels the ineffectiveness of it, and yet

1007
finds the inconvenience, the mischief, and, no doubt, the practical harm of the disaffection, which is encouraged by the idea that European power is behind those who are thus disaffected.
Let no one suppose—I am quite certain that the noble Marquess himself will not suppose—that I underrate his own activity, his own perseverance, his own personal enthusiasm in this matter, or, so far as I know, those of the Prime Minister also. The difficulties are enormous, but do not let us be led away to-night by supposing that we have reached what I think the noble Marquess called an equitable solution of this matter by merely stating that it will be left to the League of Nations. I should be very grateful if the noble Marquess were able, for our comfort, to expand for us a little what is meant by the phrase he used and the capacity which it may have of encouraging our hopes in this very difficult, sad and desolating matter.
THE MARQUESS CURZON OF KEDLESTON: My Lords, the questions put by the noble Marquess and by the most rev. Primate seem to me entirely legitimate questions, and I will endeavour to reply to them so far as I can. I would certainly deprecate as a just interpretation, either of my remarks or of the spirit of our proposals in Paris, the idea that we are simply, so to speak, shuffling this question on to the shoulders of the League of Nations, that we are proposing a mere camouflage to disguise our own incapacity. That is not my reading of the case, nor do I think it is a fair interpretation of the situation. When the Powers concluded the minority Treaties in Europe, and when the supervision of those Treaties was placed in the hands of the League of Nations, I do not remember either that the League of Nations in accepting the responsibility, or that public opinion said: "Oh, but the League of Nations have no forces with which to carry it out." That is true enough, but the devolution of the responsibility upon their shoulders was, with, unanimous consent, accorded at that time and was accepted by them.
I endeavoured in my remarks to point out how widely the situation has developed since those Treaties were concluded. I pointed out that the League of Nations now have a special representative in Constantinople. I pointed out that new arrangements are now proposed. It is suggested that they should have special Com-
1008
missioners in all the areas in question—I need not name them, although they might be inferred from my speech—areas in Asia, six or seven in number. Those Commissioners would sometimes be resident there, would sometimes be visitors there, and would be in contact with the local authorities, both with the minorities and, in the case where the minorities were Christian, with the Turkish authorities. In the East it has been found a hundred times over that the presence of a European officer is the most effective guarantee against anything going on that is wrong.
I further suggested that these officers should report, at such periods as may be determined, to the Council of the League itself and we made the further suggestion at Paris, which is a new one, that these reports, instead of being confined to the attention of the Council of the League, should go before the Assembly of the League, where they could be examined, criticised, and reported upon by the large body of the representatives of the nations there collected. Those, my Lords, are all in the nature of guarantees. They are guarantees, in the first place, for local supervision, and, in the second place, for supervision by the public opinion of the world. They will be far more effective, I think, than anything yet proposed.
Then the most rev. Primate says to me: "That is all very well, but in the last resort what are the forces—what are the armed forces—behind the League?" The absence of armed forces did not prevent the League of Nations from having handed over to them the decision of the exceedingly vexed and difficult question of Silesia, which the Powers were unable, with their armed forces, to come to an agreement about. It did not prevent the League of Nations from undertaking an examination of that question, from arriving at a decision about it, from declaring that decision to the two parties principally concerned, who were separated from each other by local differences quite as acute as any prevailing in Asia Minor, and it did not prevent that decision from being amicably carried out as it is being done at the present moment. Then the League of Nations had assigned to it a little time ago the question of the Aaland Islands in the Scandinavian waters. That was a question upon which we were told Sweden and Finland were prepared to go to war, and that they were on the verge of hostili-

1009
ties. We referred it to the League of Nations. They had no troops to send there. They had no ships to navigate those waters. They had only the sanction of an absolutely impartial investigation, and the moral support of the public opinion of the world to the decision arrived at. After it had been arrived at, what happened? Both parties, who had been at each other's throats, accepted the decision, and are loyally carrying it out.
Do not suppose that because the League of Nations has no armed forces that, therefore, even its physical influence is small. That is not the case. The influence of the League of Nations is, of course, in the first place moral, but the support of the public opinion of the world is in the nature of a physical sanction, very often more effective than that of arms itself. Let me put to the most rev. Primate the alternative. If he says the League of Nations, for the reasons he indicated, is rather an ineffective or powerless instrument to carry out its great purposes, what is his alternative? The only other alternative is the use of the armed forces of Europe. Does any man in this House really think that with the fullest desire to secure for the Armenians everything that we have over and over again pledged ourselves to try to secure, France, or Great Britain, or Italy is going to raise battalions here to send them out to Cilicia? Why the French have just made an agreement in order to get their forces out of Cilicia. Are we to send forces to Erivan? No, everyone knows it is a thing that it is impossible to do. We have to face the conditions of the times. Within those conditions we have to be loyal to our pledges and to do what we can.
The plans that we have devised at Paris, let me remind the most rev. Primate, are not merely to be notified to the League of Nations, but they are to be embodied in the conditions we are sending to the Greeks and the Turks. They are part of the arrangements we are now proposing. Those arrangements will, I think, if successfully carried out, really give a much greater protection than the noble Marquess and time most rev. Primate have thought, and what I would urge public opinion to do, instead of seeking the impracticable and the impossible, is to concentrate on giving every possible support and authority that can be given to the League of Nations in accepting the invitation which we are about to address to them.

RUGBY SCHOOL BILL. [H.L.]
Read 2ª (according to Order), and committed.
CHESTER GAS BILL. [H.L.]
Read 2ª, and committed.
BRISTOL CORPORATION BILL.
Read 2ª, and committed: The Committee to be proposed by the Committee of Selection.
CITY OF LONDON (VARIOUS POWERS) BILL.
Read 2ª, and committed.
CROFTS DIVORCE BILL [H.L.]
Read 3ª (according to Order), and passed, and sent to the Commons.
MORTON'S DIVORCE BILL. [H.L.]
Read 3ª (according to Order), and passed, and sent to the Commons.

PLACES OF WORSHIP (ENFRANCHISEMENT) BILL. [H.L.]
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
VISCOUNT KNUTSFORD: My Lords, the Bill of which I have to move the Second Reading sounds very formidable from its title, but it is a very simple and a very innocent matter, and law so uncontentious that even the noble and learned Lords on this occasion might give it the help of their pent-up eloquence and discuss it without being criticised by either of the gladiators whom we saw fight last night. A Bill was passed in 1920 called the Places of Worship Enfranchisement Act. Its object was to enable trustees of places of worship who had only a leasehold tenancy to enfranchise their leasehold and get the freehold from the landlord by compulsion. It was felt at the time that it was rather hard that humble trustees of religious places of worship should have to spend a large sum of money on their chapels and that at the end of their lease the landlord should come down and take away all the money they had spent on the place. But whatever the reasons were for passing that Act, it is no good discussing them now. The Bill was passed unanimously in this House, with the blessing of

1011
the present occupant of the Woolsack and a Bishop; and in the other House, when introduced by the Attorney-General, it was also passed unanimously.
In that Act there was only one exception. Lands that were owned by a railway company, or by people who had powers to use the land for canals or navigation purposes, were excepted, and could not be enfranchised or taken away from their owners. My Bill is to extend that exception to lands which are owned by a charity, and where the charity needs the use of the land for the extension of its own work. If my Bill passes, land owned by a charity and necessary for its own work will not be taken away. I do not leave it to the caprice, if I may use the expression, of the charity to say whether the land is wanted or not. I propose that they must convince the Charity Commissioners, or the Ministry of Education, and get their certificate before they can claim exemption for their land.
I see Lord Clwyd present this afternoon. I know he feels very much on this matter. The Act of 1920 was promoted, mainly, by his countrymen in the other House, and I am glad to say that he and they are in entire sympathy with the object of my Bill. They never intended to hurt any charity in obtaining these powers for the trustees of religious places of worship.
I realise that your Lordships may think it rather soon to bring in an Amendment to an Act passed so recently as 1920, but if so soon after an Act is passed we find it works detrimentally, then the sooner we remedy the injury the better. If we allow this to go on more charities will be injured. Let me give you an example of how the Act is working. About one hundred years ago a hospital with which I am connected granted a lease of some laud to the Wesleyans. They built a chapel and arranged their burial ground. In a hundred years circumstances have changed very much. The hospital, from being one of one hundred beds, is now one of a thousand beds, and its scientific requirements have multiplied a thousand times. Towards the end of this hundred years the Wesleyans no longer wanted their chapel and burial ground, and they sold it to the members of another faith, who approached the hospital for a longer lease. We said, "No. It is quite impossible. The land is wanted very much by the hospital. It is the only land
1012
we can possibly get, and we cannot give you an extension of the lease." That was accepted by them, but suddenly the Act of 1920 comes in and takes the land away from the hospital; land which it needs not for personal profit, but for carrying on its increasing work for humanity. That is quite contrary to what those who promoted the Act of 1920 desired; and if your Lordships pass this Bill such a result could never happen again. It is a result quite foreign to the spirit of the Act, and quite foreign to the wishes of its promoters. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2ª.—(Viscount Knutsford.)
LORD CLWYD: My Lords, I rise simply to express in a sentence my position in reference to this Bill. I have full sympathy with the noble Viscount in the object he has in view. I happen to be one of those who took a special interest in the promotion of the Bill which became law two years ago, and I feel certain that the noble Viscount has no intention by this Bill to alter or affect in any way the framework of the principal Act. I should like to say that in my opinion certain Amendments are necessary in order to safeguard the present position under that Act. I have no doubt he will be prepared to consider the question of Amendments. I hope that by a conference we shall be able to reach an agreement which will enable us to regard this Bill as an unopposed measure. I will ask Lord Knutsford to consent to a postponement of the Committee stage until the middle of next week, in order that we may have an opportunity, by conference, of considering the necessary Amendments.
On Question, Bill read 2ª, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

RHONDDA (PETITION FOR WRIT OF SUMMONS).
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORE)THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORE) had given Notice to move, That the Report from the Committee for Privileges on the Petition of the Viscountess Rhondda praying for a Writ of Summons to Parliament be agreed to.
The Report was as follows:—
"1. That by Letters Patent, dated the 19th day of June, 1918, the Right Honourable David Alfred Baron

1013
Rhondda was created Viscount Rhondda of Llanwern in the County of Monmouth with special remainder in default of issue male to his only daughter the Petitioner, Margaret Haig Mackworth, wife of Sir Humphrey Mackworth, Baronet, and the heirs male of her body;
"2. That the said Viscount Rhondda died on the 3rd July, 1918, without having had issue male whereupon the said Margaret Haig Mackworth succeeded to the title and dignity of Viscountess Rhondda of Lanwern aforesaid;
"3. That but for the disqualification existing by reason of her sex the said Viscountess Rhondda would upon her succession to the said dignity have been entitled to receive a Writ of Summons to Parliament in right of the said dignity and to take her seat in Parliament accordingly;
"4. That the effect of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act, 1919, was to remove such disqualification, and that upon the passing of the said Act the said Viscountess Rhondda became entitled to receive a Writ of Summons to Parliament;
"5. That it is desirable that this House should humbly beseech His Majesty that a Writ of Summons to Parliament may be sent to the said Viscountess Rhondda."
The noble Earl said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Paper.
Moved, That the Report from the Committee for Privileges on the Petition of the Viscountess Rhondda praying for a Writ of Summons to Parliament be agreed to.—(The Earl of Donoughmore.)
THE LORD CHANCELLOR THE LORD CHANCELLOR rose to move, as an Amendment to the Motion, to leave out "agreed to" and to insert "referred back to the Committee for Privileges for re-consideration." The noble and learned Viscount said: My Lords, the course which I am about to take, in moving that the Report should be referred back to the Committee of Privileges, is an unusual one, but not unprecedented. The advice which I am about to give to the House is, in my opinion, amply justified by the very peculiar
1014
circumstances in which this Peerage claim arises, and the very grave constitutional questions which are involved in the recommendation of the Committee. The Chairman of Committees will accept from me, I am sure, the assurance that no member of this House more warmly appreciates than I do the services rendered by his Committee, or the ability, impartiality, and patience, with which he presides over it.
The course of the observations I am about to make will indicate clearly what are the exceptional circumstances, involving not the slightest reflection upon him, or, indeed, upon his Committee, which lead me to think that this is a case in which your Lordships as a body might desire that there should be further reconsideration. I do not intend at this stage to trouble the House with any legal arguments tending to show whether the decision of the Committee is right or wrong. If I did propose to address any such argument to the House my proper course would have been to do that for which precedent also exists—namely, to meet the Motion "That the Report be adopted" by a direct negative. I do not take that course because there are, in my view, very serious legal points to be considered which have not been adequately considered, and I do not think it either convenient or seemly that an argument on pure points of law should proceed upon the floor of the House itself and in the circumstances of our present debate. My proposal is that the case should be remitted to the Committee, in order that the points may there be re-discussed and that this House may receive from the Committee such advice as to them, after full debate, seems best.
I do not, therefore, commit myself in any way by this Amendment, nor must any observation that I make be interpreted as committing me to any particular view of the law on this subject. If I were committing myself to any particular view of the law, I should not be a suitable person to sit upon this Committee myself, and if this Amendment is adopted by your Lordships I shall most certainly make bold to offer my services to the Chairman of Committees in case he chooses to reinforce the somewhat slender numbers by whom this difficult matter was concluded.
I ought, at the outset, to say this. My noble friend, the Chairman of Committees

1015
and his colleagues were, I think, placed under some slight disadvantage by the circumstance that an ingenious argument—whether substantiated or not need not be discussed here—an ingenious and full argument was placed before the Committee on behalf of those who sought to establish this Peerage, and that my learned friend, or my noble and learned friend as he now is, the Lord Chief Justice, who appeared before that Committee as Attorney-General, did not advance any argument which might have assisted the Committee in order that both sides of the matter should be considered and discussed before them. He announced himself as being in agreement with the submissions and contentions which had been advanced on behalf of those who sought to establish the Peerage.
No one in this House has a higher respect for the legal attainments of the present Lord Chief Justice of England than I have. I have not had an opportunity of discussing this matter with him, and I must therefore merely record my own view, and that is that, whether the view which persuaded the Committee when presented in such singularly unilateral forensic conditions was right or wrong, it is not permissible to say that there is no possible case to be argued for the other side. I would ask your Lordships to take it from me—accepting, as your Lordships are often good enough to do, my opinion on purely technical points—that, whether the view ultimately accepted by the Committee be right or wrong, there is the most powerful case to be argued on the other side, a case which never has been argued, a case as to which those upon the Committee who were entitled to expect that the circumstances should be duly presented before them that they might be weighed by the Committee (which consisted partly of lawyers and partly of laymen), received no assistance at all from the argument as that argument was at the time presented.
In order that your Lordships should have fully before you such facts and arguments as may enable you to reach a conclusion upon the present Motion, it is proper that the facts should be stated with some precision, because no one must underrate the importance of the decision which the Committee of Privileges took. It is a decision which reverses the practice of centuries, which reverses the conception of the existing law, which, as I shall show your Lordships, was entertained at the
1016
moment when that Committee met, by some of the highest legal authorities in this country, and incidentally, and curiously, by some of the very legal authorites who sat upon the Committee and voted in favour of its decision.
On June 28, 1916, there was issued to Mr. D. A. Thomas, as he then was, a Patent conferring upon him the dignity of Baron Rhondda. The Patent differed in no way from the ordinary Patent which is issued upon the creation of a Barony. Two years later, in June, 1918, it became apparent that the very eminent services which Lord Rhondda had rendered to the country reacted very gravely upon his health, and the view was taken that the services were of such a nature that they deserved more complete recognition. Lord Rhondda had no male issue, and it was desired both that he should be advanced in rank and that, so far as was humanly possible, the dignity conferred upon him should remain as a permanent memorial to his family. There was, therefore, inserted in his Viscount's Patent, which was issued on June 19, 1918, a special remainder to the lady who is now known as Viscountess Rhondda and to her heirs male.
This Patent followed the form which is in common use in such a case which is familiar to some of your Lordships. It conferred the state, degree, style, dignity, title and honour of Viscount Rhondda to have and to hold the said name, state, etc., unto him the said Baron Rhondda, as he then was, and the heirs male of his body lawfully begotten and to be begotten, and in default of such issue and after his decease to have and to hold the name, state, etc., of Viscountess Rhondda unto Margaret Haig Mackworth, whom we now know as Lady Rhondda, and after the decease of the said Margaret Haig Mackworth to have and to hold the name, state, etc., unto the heirs male of her body lawfully begotten and to be begotten.
The Patent then proceeds in what are also the usual words in such a case—
"Willing … that the said Baron Rhondda and his heirs male aforesaid and in default of such issue the heirs male of the said Margaret Haig Mackworth and every of them successively and respectively may have hold and possess a seat place and voice in the Parliaments and Public Assemblies and Councils of Us Our heirs and successors within our United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland among other Viscounts as Viscounts of Parliament and Public Assemblies and Councils."

1017
Your Lordships will remember that the Patent in terms there specified the succession, in the first place, as devolving upon the heirs male of Baron Rhondda and, in the second place, the heirs male of Margaret Haig Mackworth, thereafter to be called the Viscountess Rhondda.
I do not trouble the House with further words from the Patent though there are words upon which, as it may probably hereafter appear, legal arguments one way or the other may be put forward and may be sustained. I have read I think enough to show the circumstances in which Margaret Mackworth comes to be Viscountess Rhondda, and the intention, for good or evil, and whether well-expressed or ill-expressed, and whether effectively or ineffectively, of the draftsman of the Patent when he endeavoured to carry out the instructions which he received, is one of the questions which require consideration. I have only to add on this part of the case the unhappy circumstance that within a few days after the granting of the Patent Viscount Rhondda died, his life undoubtedly shortened by the anxiety arising from his devotion to his labours in the public cause.
I pass to the next material set of facts. These, again, I am obliged to set out with some particularity, for though they may not be material as regards the construction to be ultimately put either upon the Patent or upon the Statute which is material to the present point, yet they are very relevant to be considered by your Lordships upon the limited Amendment which I now submit to you.
On March 21, 1919, a Bill called the Women's Emancipation Bill was introduced in the House of Commons by certain private members. This Bill contained the following clause to which I invite your special attention:—
"3.—(1) A woman shall not be disqualified by sex or marriage from sitting and voting and receiving a writ of summons to attend in the House of Lords if a peeress in her own right.
"(2) It shall be lawful for a woman, being a peeress of Scotland or Ireland in her own right, to vote at the elections of representative peers of Scotland or Ireland respectively and to be an elected representative of the peerage of Scotland or Ireland and as such to sit and vote and receive a writ of summons to attend in the House of Lords."
The Second Reading of this Bill was carried without a Division, and on July 4, 1919, it came on for Third Reading in the House of
1018
Commons. It was then opposed on behalf of time Government for reasons which are unconnected with the present question, but the Government Whips were not put on and the Third Reading was carried by 100 to 85. It was introduced in this House upon the Motion of Lord Kimberley.
The precise situation then was that the Government were themselves contemplating the preparation of a Bill to deal generally with the position of women in public affairs, and on July 14 I did, accordingly, introduce into this House the Bill for what has subsequently become the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act. That Bill, on the face of it, proposed to deal with the position of Peeresses and reference to that fact was contained in its long title. Clause 2 of the Bill was as follows:—
"2. His Majesty may include in the letters patent for the creation of a peer of the United Kingdom a provision to the effect that where the holder of the peerage is a woman she shall, if otherwise qualified, be entitled to receive a writ of summons to the House of Lords."
I do not think that it is going beyond the strict limits which I have laid down for myself if I say that it is obvious that in the minds of those who prepared and introduced the Bill there were, at that time, three opinions.
One of them was that it was not enough to deal with the grave constitutional question of the admission of women to this House by mere general words—the definite intentions of the Government should appeal in most unmistakable form upon the face of the Bill itself. The second was that, as a matter of law, mere general words relieving women of the common law disqualification would not be enough to seat those women who were already in possession of Peerages. And the third was that it would be a highly unconstitutional proceeding that women, whose names had appeared in Peerages in remainder—there being at the time when they were so inserted no contemplation that they would ever have a seat in this House—should be seated by a general enactment such as this, without His Majesty being enabled to consider, upon the advice of his responsible Ministers, whether in the case of any of them Writs should issue to them.
I submit that the clause which I have read makes this position sufficiently clear, and I am perhaps entitled to say that at the time I explained the matter to this House with. I think, equal clearness.

1019
I also made it clear that this clause was not put forward as a Government proposal, that Government. Whips would not be put on when and if the clause came to be voted upon, and that every member of the House would then be free to vote according to his personal conviction. There was a certain amount of discussion upon the Second Reading, but it was ultimately carrie without a Division. On July 24 the Commons Bill, which I have already mentioned (the Emancipation of Women Bill) came on for Second Reading upon the Motion of Lord Kimberley. I opposed it, and it was negatived without a Division.
On July 31 the Government Bill came on in Committee, and Lord Finlay then moved an Amendment to omit the clause which I have already read relating to Peeresses. So, on the merits, the issue was most plainly raised by the Amendment moved by Lord Finlay. It is perfectly obvious to any one who reads the report, of the debate which ensued that it was a debate, aye or no, on the merits of the question whether Peeresses should be admitted to the House. It is a very remarkable circumstance that the Amendment was moved by Lord Finlay, who had recently held the high office which I now occupy, and whose opinion on the point of law would then, naturally, as it would now, command a very large measure of respect not only in the House at large but among his legal brethren. If any one had then suggested that Lord Finlay's Amendment was altogether vain and futile, I wonder what would have resulted. It was, of course, entirely vain and futile, upon the view which the Committee has adopted. Lord Finlay might as well have talked to us about the Summer Time Bill or any other subject to which his mind was then directed as of the admission of Peeresses to this House.
If any one had suggested that the acceptance of Lord Finlay's Amendment would have an effect directly contrary to that which he intended, that is to say, that upon the omission of the words it would be open to any one to contend successfully, not only that Peeresses could be seated in this House by Letters Patent, but that the ladies already named in Letters Patent would, upon the passing of the Bill, become automatically entitled to a Writ, no doubt such a suggestion would have received the earnest consideration which, to my astonishment it now appears that it deserves. But such an idea never crossed the mind
1020
of any one—it never crossed my mind. It must, of course, convey the very clear and very obvious meaning which we now know that the Committee has adopted, and the Attorney-General could not discover an argument against it. But, strangely enough, in an Assembly which is very competent in matters of technical advice it never struck anybody's mind that it was clear. Lord Finlay, in moving the Amendment, like the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Haldane, in criticising the clause, as he did upon Second Reading, seemed obviously to suppose that the House could vote one way or the other upon the Amendment, and that the effect of their decision—if the House decided to leave the clause out—would be to settle the question against the Peeresses.
But, clear as we are now told that this issue is in the opposite sense, I will undertake to say that there was not one noble Lord in the House who listened to or took part in that debate, and that there was not one noble Lord who recorded his vote in the Division Lobby, who had the slightest idea that it was not there and then within the competence of the House to decide, and to decide once for all, as far as that Bill was concerned, whether or not Peeresses were to be admitted into this House. There was, as I indicated, some debate, and in the result the clause was negatived without a Division. Thereupon, the words I occurring in the Title with reference to Peeresses were struck out. I remember distinctly moving that Motion. I must have been extremely short-sighted in relation to the whole matter, though I was thorough in my defectiveness, because, having succeeded in persuading your Lordships on merits not to admit Peeresses, as you could have done, of course, on a substantive Motion, I did not fail to observe that, the Title was drafted in language calculated to cover this section, and in the circumstances, in order that the whole House might be seised of the issue and the consequences of the Division—or the decision which had taken place, but which had not been marked by a Division—I thereupon moved that the Title should be amended, and everybody supposed, subject to the possible reservation I will indicate in a moment, that the House had expressed its will and expressed it effectually, and that the result of the Bill was not to seat either time Peeresses already existing or any others on whom His Majesty should hereafter confer that dignity.
The Bill then went to the House of Commons, and the Parliamentary history, as far as a Parliamentary history can be, is of absorbing interest in this point, especially having regard to what happened afterwards. That House did not move to reinsert the offending clause which had been under discussion, but an Amendment was moved to insert the following words (if I may say so to those who drafted them, a much less artistic method):—"including that of sitting and voting in the House of Lords" after the words "public function," where they occur at the beginning of the Bill. Once again the Government Whips were not put on, and the Motion inserting the words was carried upon a Division, and the Bill was returned to this House.
Let me pause there again. The House of Commons, which would naturally have been advised, if he were there, by the then Attorney-General (the present Lord Chief Justice) and the present Attorney-General (the then Solicitor-General), obviously shared the delusion which had captivated all of us in this House, because they all took the view that this Bill would not, and could not, achieve that purpose unless they put in either the clause which your Lordships had rejected, or a substituted but comparable clause. And thereupon they inserted the clause I have just read. No one will suppose that this House of Commons, or any other House of Commons, would pass the time in putting in a clause of this kind unless they thought that they contributed something new and something important. And the debate which took place in the House of Commons was a debate which proceeded upon merits, and the speeches and suggestions made were the speeches and suggestions of men who intended to add something to the Bill in the form in which it had gone to them.
In November, the Commons Amendment to the Bill came on for consideration here, and I moved to disagree with the Commons Amendment, which I have already described. I then expressed the view that the Amendment would not be effective for the purpose for which it appeared to be designed, and stated that, in my opinion, if Peeresses in their own right were to sit, it would be necessary to state clearly in the Bill that Writs should be issued to them. And then I added, as I very clearly recall, though I have not refreshed my memory by looking at the OFFICIAL REPORT, that it was extremely
1022
good-natured of the House of Commons, with all they had to do, to pay so much attention to our business and our representations. And as we were told that this House was about to be reformed, on the whole I would prefer that our improvement should not take place piecemeal but that we should become aware of the sum total of the beneficent changes to be made. And I think that argument carried some slight weight with your Lordships.
Then an incident occurred, which, in the light of after events, appears to me to be extremely puzzling. My noble and learned friend, Lord Haldane, who sat upon the Committee, and played upon it the part which his great experience and knowledge of these technical matters eminently qualify him to play, and naturally exercised over the Committee a degree of influence which his position in this House fully entitles him to, and is really inevitable in such a discussion, spoke in favour of the House of Commons Amendment. The House of Commons Amendment, on the view that the Committee has taken, was entirely otiose. It was, in the classical sense of the word, an impertinence, and all that my noble friend, Lord Haldane, had to do was to get up from his seat and tell us very plainly—"Do not let your Lordships take the slightest trouble about the Amendment or worry about it at all, because that which the Commons have sought to put into this Bill is there already. It is there implicit; it is there in the words 'public function.' So do not let us waste our time in desultory discussion. Let us proceed rather to more grave matters."
The noble and learned Viscount did, in fact, say:—
"If this Amendment is accepted it does not enable women who are Peeresses in their own right to take their seat in this House; they can only do that if the terms of the Letters Patent or of the other document creating the Peerage prescribe it, and also if a Writ of Summons is issued. It may or may not be necessary, if we admit the principle, that some Amendment may be required for the issue of the Writ of Summons."
That expression of opinion to which the noble and learned Viscount lent himself, appears to me to be accurate. It is perspicuously and shortly expressed; but what does it mean? It means this, first of all, that that Amendment had to be carried before anything happened, because otherwise there was no point in saying: "If this Amendment is accepted it does

1023
not enable women who are Peeresses in their own right to take their seats in this House."
It is quite inconceivable that he would ever have spent time in pointing out what additional action would have to be taken, even if the Amendment were carried, if he had then a firm view that it was quite unnecessary to have any Amendment because the Act already carried with it the whole thing. Therefore, I am bound, quite irresistibly, to draw the inference—and I ask your Lordships to draw the inference—that this lacer conclusion was clearly that the Committee had unanimously accepted it. The then Attorney-General, though he did not realise the matter was before the House of Lords, did not even raise his voice in argument to the extent of one sentence on this particular point. It had never occurred to the noble and learned Lord who was principally the contributor to the decision ultimately reached.
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES: No, no.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: The noble Earl says: "No, no." I realise at once that all members of the House are in the same position. Some further discussion followed, and in the result the Commons Amendment was defeated without a Division. The Bill then returned to the Commons and the matter was again debated on the Motion made by Sir Ernest Pollock (now Attorney-General) that the Commons do not insist upon this Amendment. I pause here to say that if your Lordships think proper to take the course which I am venturing to advocate we should at least have one advantage, because Sir Ernest Pollock is now Attorney-General, and it is customary for the Committee of Privileges to rely particularly upon the advice and assistance of the Attorney-General. Now, the present Attorney-General evidently was entirely of the same opinion as the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Haldane—namely, that unless you did put an Amendment into the Bill it could not possibly produce the consequences which most of the Committee of Privileges have decided that it does produce.
This is what the Attorney-General said, speaking of the cases in which the names of women appeared in remainder in Patents:
1024
"The Peerage, as drawn up by Patent, expressly gave no right of plane, seat or voice to the designated female holder in the House of Lords, and therefore it is not a matter which comes within the ambit of a Bill to amend the law with respect to disqualification on account of sex, because the particular disqualification in these eleven eases arises by virtue of a particular Patent, and that general alteration of the law would not affect those cases."
This argument, and others which the Attorney-General addressed to the House—and which I hope the Committee of Privileges may have an opportunity of hearing if your Lordships accept my Amendment—prevailed, and the Commons agreed without a Division not to insist upon their Amendment. The Bill then received the Royal Assent in ordinary course.
It is true that the history of the stages through which a Bill has passed is not strictly admissible in a Court of Law, which has to declare the meaning of a Statute when it has become law. I am not prepared to make any admission here, that your Lordships, sitting in a Committee of Privileges, are bound by any such constructions as we impose upon the Courts of Law in such a matter, but that can be discussed later if necessary. I am not now arguing that because the obvious intention of both Houses of Parliament, as expressed in these debates, was to exclude Peeresses, and in particular the Peeresses claiming under Patents already issued; therefore the Act has carried out this intention. I shall certainly require to hear arguments as to what the true principle of construction to be applied in such cases is, and I should not address myself with any readiness to exclude argument based upon that point.
Such facts as these are very material to be considered by your Lordships when you have to weigh the gravity of the issues with which we are now confronted. And it is very material also in this connection to observe that the then Lord Chancellor—who was myself—together with his; immediate predecessor, my noble and learned friend, Viscount Finlay, and another, not the least distinguished among his other predecessors, my noble and learned friend Viscount Haldane, and the gentleman who now holds the office of His Majesty's Attorney-General, all considered, and necessarily considered, the effect which would be produced by the Statute in the form in which it now stands, and all came to the same conclusion upon it.

1025
I have surely said enough to show that there is at least matter here which cannot be treated by a Committee which, though it would by its constitution command your Lordships' respect, was nevertheless perhaps hardly sufficiently representative of the House, as a whole, and that there is not sufficient to incline your Lordships to accept finally their recommendation in a matter so grave. After all Peeresses have not been admitted to this House, as your Lordships know, for centuries, and the question here is whether an Act of Parliament, not by direct provision but by proper legal implication, has made it necessary for your Lordships to say that Peeresses are hereafter to be admitted.
The point there divides itself into two parts. Are Peeresses, who have already received Patents which in the terms of such Patents do not admit them, inferentially to be admitted to this House, or are only those Peeresses to be admitted whose Patents are made out in terms to cover their individual cases? The issue has been dealt with by a Committee after one day's inquiry, and without having one word of argument addressed to them in the opposite sense, and they have reached a conclusion which never occurred to one noble and learned Lord in this House at the time of the debate in which the Lord Chancellor, and two ex-Lord Chancellors made speeches which they could never have made if this interpretation had even occurred to them. That observation applies equally to the speech made by the Attorney-General in the House of Commons.
I therefore propose—and I am extremely sorry that explanations have had to be made in order to justify this Amendment—that this matter shall be referred back to the Committee of Privileges. I hope, if this Motion be carried, that neither the Committee nor its distinguished Chairman, my noble friend, Lord Donoughmore, will feel that the decision which your Lordships may take is the slightest reflection either upon them or upon him. I do, in fact, feel, in the conditions, about which I shall say nothing more, that my noble friend, Lord Donoughmore, had not all the legal assistance to which he was entitled in dealing with a purely technical matter. Of course, all your Lordships are entitled to sit upon the Committee of Privileges. I very much hope that as the matter is so extremely technical—if this course is agreeable to your Lordships—that when it
1026
is reheard by the Committee of Privileges, it will be agreeable to my noble friend Lord Donoughmore that as many of my legal colleagues as shall find it possible to attend may do so, and as many of your Lordships on the lay side as my noble friend may think proper to invite, unless your Lordships come forward as volunteers. In these circumstances, and dealing with a very grave matter in respect of which I feel some degree of personal responsibility, I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Leave out ("agreed to") and insert ("referred back to the Committee for Privileges for reconsideration.").—(The Lord Chancellor.)
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES: My Lords, it is not an uncommon thing for a decision of a Committee to be discussed afterwards in Your Lordships' House, and for your Lordships to differ from the Committee. You are aware, no doubt, that the Committee for Privileges is not an ordinary Committee of le House. It is a Committee of which all members of the House are members. The familiar words of the Standing Orders are "all the Lords who shall come to any Committee for Privileges shall be of that Committee." The only further regulation is the one under which, by the custom of your Lordships' House in appointing the Committee for the last twenty or thirty years, your Lordships decide every session that the Committee shall "meet when and as often as they think proper," and that three Peers, designated Lords of Appeal, must always be present at the sitting of the Committee. Therefore, three Law Lords are a quorum, though the custom in the Committee, as long as I have known it, has been that six, seven and eight members sit, at least. The Law Lords, as a rule, are in a minority, though I hope that in no way depreciates from the value of our decisions.
I should tell your Lordships that although all members of the House are members of the Committee, in practice the Chairman of Committees invites certain laymen to come and sit, and he keeps in close touch with the Lord Chancellor of the day with a view of seeing that the quorum of Law Lords is present. In this case the normal procedure was followed, and the Committee was properly constituted, in accordance with practice, to hear the case. In fact, I should claim that it was exception

1027
ally well constituted, because, in addition to the three Law Lords, we had Lord Desart and Lord Chelmsford, who are experienced lawyers, Lord Askwith who has great administrative experience, and also Lord Hylton, who has special knowledge of the cases of the kind which come under our consideration. I am glad to note that the Lord Chancellor has no difficulty as regards the constitution of the Committee.
The proceedings have been printed and circulated and I will not, therefore, recall them to your memory. We were concerned with an unusual point. We were largely concerned with the construction of the Act of 1919, and, as the Lord Chancellor has told us, no argument of ally kind was submitted to us contrary to the claim winch was advanced on behalf of Lady Rhondda. I think it right to inform your Lordships that we reached our decision by seven votes to one. Your Lordships are aware that the Attorney-General is always present at our proceedings. He represents the Crown. He is there, I think, as an amicus curiœ, to give all the assistance he can to the Committee. I have sat on the Committee many times and in many cases, and your Lordships will allow me to express my admiration of and gratitude for the meticulous care with which the Crown case is always prepared and submitted to us. The smallest point that ought to be brought to our attention is so brought, and our work has been made very much easier.
The Amendment of the Lord Chancellor, as he has said, is not unprecedented. I believe there are three or four cases where it has been made, but I believe there is no case in which it has been carried. It has generally been defeated on a Division. The Lord Chancellor says there are arguments that have not been submitted to us. In fact, he used the phrase formidable case," and for that reason he desires that we should hear it again. I find it difficult to believe, with my experience of the way the Attorney-General has hitherto argued his case, that the "formidable case" was not present to the minds of the advisers of the Crown, when they made up their minds as to the attitude they intended to take in this case. I do not lay too much stress upon it, but I think that the case must have been present to their minds in its fullness and that they were not greatly impressed with the arguments they did not submit to us.
1028
But we have it on the authority of the Lord Chancellor that there are arguments we have not yet heard. I am bound to say that the great bulk of the arguments he has used this afternoon were based upon the progress of a Bill through Parliament. I am only a humble layman and I have several times asked that things, when they happen during the progress of a Bill, should be considered of value after the Bill has received the Royal Assent and become an Act, and I have been overwhelmed when I have made that claim. I have been told that it was a most outrageous and unconstitutional thing. Even pledges given by Ministers as to how an Act is to be construed have been departed from, and it is with great delight, therefore, that I hear the Lord Chancellor attach such value to proceedings through Parliament of a particular Act. I hope we laymen will not forget this incident.
But, after all, the Lord Chancellor's position is not wholly based on Parliamentary history. If there are new arguments, and your Lordships are satisfied as to this, I do not think we who sit on the Committee for Privileges ought to object to hear them. I do not feel, therefore, that I can vote for the Amendment, but I do not feel that I can vote against it. I hope there will be no Division. If there is, and your Lordships decide that we must hear the case again, I will promise you to do my best to hear it properly. There are two things, however, I should like to do. I should like to reinforce what has been said by the Lord Chancellor—I am grateful to him for saying it—that if a larger Court is to hear this case I hope it will be a stronger Court of laymen as well as a stronger Court of Law Lords. After all the matter is one which concerns the whole of your Lordships' House; you are all equally interested.
Secondly, I should like to appeal to the Lord Chancellor on this point. I realise what has happened earlier this afternoon and deeply sympthise with him in the cause of his absence, and as the senior member of your Lordships' House whose name is in the Patent designate of those who have to sit on the Woolsack, I can promise him I will do anything I can to make his holiday easy. I would appeal to him, however, that the date on which we are to hear this case again may be soon in mercy to all the parties. It is not always easy to fix a date for the sitting of the

1029
Committee for Privileges. Law Lords are precious people and it is very difficult to get hold of them, even to get hold of three of them. There were a couple of cases for the Committee ready last year and it was impossible for us to take them because the Law Lords were too busy. It is obvious that this time it will be still more difficult to get the Law Lords because it will be understood that we are to have more than the usual number.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: If the noble Lord will allow me to interrupt him, I do not think that difficulty will arise, because in a matter of this importance I shall think it proper to take steps to arrange, so far as it is in my power to do so, that neither the Judicial Committee nor your Lordships' House on its judicial side should meet on that day.
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES: I am very much obliged to the noble and learned Viscount. That was the point on which I wished to be informed and it was for that reason I made my concluding remarks.
VISCOUNT HALDANE: My Lords, I agree entirely with what has been said by the noble Earl, the Chairman of Committees. The Lord Chancellor has drawn attention to the fact that this is a question of very great importance and magnitude, and whether it is usual or not to review decisions of the Committee for Privileges, I do not think we should look very closely to precedents in this matter. It is right that your Lordships should be satisfied that the fullest possible consideration has been given. I have risen only because I think your Lordships might have the impression, from something that fell from my noble and learned friend, that the arguments in this matter and the way in which it was presented were somewhat scanty. They did not occupy a great time but they were pretty thorough.
I do not wish, and I should think it very wrong, to express the slightest opinion on the merits of the points which were discussed. I desire only to say that they were not quite the points of which we have heard so much this afternoon. Three questions came before the Committee. The first was whether a Peer who has a full Peerage is entitled as a right to his Writ of Summons, and it was resolved by the Committee that he was so entitled, because otherwise it
1030
would be within the power of the Government of the day to pack this House to create majorities which would pass its measures, and since the days of Charles I, if not earlier, this House has always resisted this view, so that it had become part of the Common Law of the land that a Peer, having obtained a full Peerage, was entitled to his Writ of Summons. That is a right of law and not a matter for discussion by your Lordships, a right of law of which this House is the proper tribunal to judge, and must judge according to the law. That was the first point. I am expressing no opinion upon it, though it may be that my noble friend will rebuke us for yielding unduly to that proposal.
The second point was that an Act had been passed that women might fulfil any public function, and the question was whether it was a public function to sit in this House. We have nothing to do with anything but the Act of Parliament. I entirely agree with my noble friend, the Chairman of Committees, on this point, and I own that. I listened with the smallest degree of misgiving at the moment to the suggestion which seemed to fall from the Lord Chancellor that the Committee for Privileges was not bound to consider Statutes according to the rule by which they are considered in Courts of Law. If my noble and learned friend comes to the Committee, as I hope he will, I think he will be the first to admit, because it is an absolutely settled decision of this House, that you have nothing whatever to do with what takes place in debates but you have to take the Act of Parliament and to say what the words mean according to the rules of construction which have long since been settled by the Courts. It did appear to me, from some citations from my noble friend on the Woolsack—not only to-day but during the discussion on the Bill—that he took a different view.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I had rather my noble and learned friend made admissions on his own behalf and not on mine.
VISCOUNT HALDANE: I was referring to the words used in the debate by my noble and learned friend. We had no argument before us: we had no authorities cited. How could we do more than we did? That, of course, has a very close bearing upon the third proposition, which this Committee proceeded, wrongly or rightly,

1031
to consider, namely, whether, if it was a matter of right for a Peeress to sit in this House, the absence of any mention in the Patent of the statement of her right to do so could make the slightest difference; because otherwise that would be giving power to the Crown to control the members of this House and to determine whether they could sit or not. I have told your Lordships these things, not for the purpose of expressing the smallest opinion upon a matter of high constitutional and legal magnitude, and if I sit on that Committee I intend to keep my mind as completely open as I can, to sit as a Judge interpreting the matter only according to law, and to come to conclusions after that fuller argument which I understand we are to hear.
I wish to say one other thing. It seems to have been assumed that there was a somewhat perfunctory hearing of this case. The ease was opened very fully by Mr. Talbot, one of the most eminent Counsel at the Bar, and the Attorney-General did not address any speech or argument to us. It was obvious, however, to the members of that Committee, and it would have been obvious to my noble and learned friend if he had been there, that the Attorney-General was giving, and had given, very deep consideration to all the aspects of this matter, and when questions arose—not only I but my noble friends Lord Wrenbury and Lord Phillimore put questions to him—it was plain that the Attorney-General had fully considered the matter and was giving a considered decision on the, validity of the argument. He may have been right or he may have been wrong, but Lord Hewart of Bury is not a person who usually scamps his work, and my impression was that he far from stamped it on this occasion. All I wish to tell your Lordships is that it is not to be supposed that the hearing was in any way perfunctory. The question is one of the highest magnitude and importance, and it is only right that there should be a fuller argument before another and fuller Committee, and I am sure that, speaking for myself, I am expressing the opinion of other members who sat on that Committee when I say that we shall endeavour to do our best to approach the matter with unbiased minds and to listen to the arguments that are put before us.
LORD DESBOROUGH: My Lords, I will not occupy your time for more than one moment, but I should not like the
1032
occasion to pass without giving my most hearty support to the Amendment of the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack. This matter affects me somewhat closely because under the Representation of the People Bill, which was discussed in this House on January 17, 1918, I moved a subsection which was afterwards incorporated into the Act and is now on the Statute Book. Tile subsection ran as follows:—
"Any incapacity of a Peer to vote at an election arising from the status of a Peer shall not extend to Peeresses in their own right."
The point of that Amendment was that it seemed to me rather bard that there should be any doubt whether Peeresses in their own right should be able to vote for a candidate for the House of Commons. It was taken for granted that she could not sit. I moved my Amendment to allow Peeresses in their own right to exercise the franchise because they could not sit. It is therefore implicitly stated in the terms of the Act that your Lordships took it for granted that she could not sit in Parliament, and that it was consequently right that she should have a vote. You would not have voted for that Amendment, and I certainly should not have moved it, unless that had been the case.
I see that later on in the debate Lord Plymouth said he would like it to be made quite certain that it did not give Peeresses in their own right any right to a seat in this House. There is a plain question, and my noble friend, Viscount Peel, said: "I can take away that horrible suspicion." Well, I should like to ask this: If this horrible suspicion, so far from being taken away, becomes a reality, and a Writ of Summons is moved and sent to a Peeress, she will be in this doubly-advantageous position, that according to this Act she, unlike all Peers, will not only have the power of sitting in the House of Lords but also the power of voting for a member of the House of Commons, which none of our noble selves can do. I venture to think that this is one of those legal points which have never been discussed before, but which do have a very great constitutional bearing, and I commend it to the attention of the Committee, which I hope will be set up again.
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES: We raised that point and it was discussed at the end of our proceedings, as the noble Lord will see if he will look at the Report.
VISCOUNT FINLAY: I desire to add only a very few words. I am very glad, of course, that this matter has been raised and I wish to say a few words on the point to which Lord Desborough has just referred. The only material words in the Statute are those contained in the first clause—"A person shall not be disqualified by sex or marriage from the exercise of any public function." The question was I hen whether "public function" included a right to sit in the House of Lords—to sit in Parliament. I should myself have been disposed to think that there was ground for the gravest consideration before coming to the conclusion that general words of that kind were intended to have effect upon the right to sit in Parliament. There was every reason for thinking that consideration would have been given to the question Whether having regard to the nature of the function, if function it be, other and wore specific words would not have been adopted for dealing with the right of women to sit in Parliament. That is a matter upon which, I think, very serious and grave consideration was required, but the matter, taking it merely on the Statute in the strictest and most legal way, does not rest there, by reason of the enactment to which Lord Desborough has just called attention.
In the Representation of the People Act, 1918, in subsection (5) of Clause 9, one finds these words—"Any incapacity of a Peer to vote at an election arising from the status of a Peer shall not extend to Peeresses in their own right." That, of course, was passed at a time when Peeresses Undoubtedly could not sit in Parliament, and the real observation on the clause is this: If the framers of the Act of 1919 contemplated giving women the right to sit in Parliament, is it conceivable that that clause would have been left unrepealed? The suggestion, as I understand it, is that it is an inadvertence, but it is impossible that it could have escaped attention. Surely the inference is that the framers of the Act, and Parliament in considering the Act, did not contemplate that it would have any such effect.
The question is whether this matter should be further considered. It is perfectly true, as the Lord Chairman has said, that the matter was touched upon in the proceedings before the Committee for Privileges, but I have referred to the Report of the Proceedings and I find that
1034
this is all that took place on this point. On page 28 of the Proceedings it will be found that the very able Counsel, my learned friend Mr. Talbot, towards the end of his address said this:—

"There is one small point to which it is my duty to call attention, because it is a case in which the enactment in a former Statute is to be explained by the law as it existed then, the enactment appearing to have been overlooked when this Act of 1919 was passed. If you refer to the Representation of the People Act, 1918, 7 and 8 of the King, chapter 64, which is the Act, which, among other things, gives the right to vote at elections of Members of the House of Commons, section 9, subsection (5) is in these words: 'Any incapacity of a peer to vote at an election arising from the status of a peer shall not extend to peeresses in their own right.' Of course, that was a perfectly just and proper enactment at the date at which it was made, because it would be hard if Peeresses were excluded from the House of Lords and not able to vote at elections for the House of Commons."
A little later, the following argument appears:—
"LORD PHILLIMORE: In that Act giving power to women to vote for Members of Parliament, Peeresses, who would otherwise be the one excluded class, were given the same right as other women, because they would not at that moment be able to sit in the House of Lords.
MR. TALBOT: That is so.
LORD PHILLIMORE: Strictly speaking, if they have a right to vote for Members of Parliament, the effect of your argument would be that they would have both.
MR. TALBOT: I assume it is a blot in the legislation. I do not know that I have any right to make admissions to bind anybody, but cannot see how any Peeress by descent could resist the contention that, when your Lordships had established their right to sit in the House of Lords, their right to vote at elections to the House of Commons should be taken away.
VISCOUNT HALDANE: But were not both those Acts of a year earlier than the Act we are dealing with?
MR. TALBOT: Certainly.
VISCOUNT HALDANE: I suppose you say although Parliament was putting forth a foot, and was in a generous mood, still it was not stretching the words of the Act of 1918 to the full width. If the Act of 1919 had been passed originally, these two Acts might not have been necessary.
MR. TALBOT: It is obvious that some ladies interested in the rights of their sex asked that this right of Peeresses should be given, or not excluded, in 1918, and that was perfectly right at the time.
VISCOUNT HALDANE: Those were the days in which to them who asked should be given."
That is all.
LORD PHILLIMORE: It is mentioned again on page 31.
VISCOUNT FINLAY: Oh, yes. At the top of the page, Lord Phillimore puts a question to the Attorney-General—
"What do you say about the proposition with regard to women Peeresses having the right to vote for Members of the House of Commons? In your conception will this lady have a double right of sitting as a Peeress and voting for Members of the House of Commons?
"MR. ATTORNEY-GENERAL: My Lords, I should have thought not."
My noble and learned friend, Lord Phillimore, was obviously struck by this point, the importance of which it is difficult to exaggerate, and it is perfectly plain surely that if those who were promoting the Bill intended that women should sit in Parliament they would have omitted the provision which is left standing, giving them the right to vote in elections to the House of Commons. That is a matter surely which imperatively calls for a great deal more consideration that it has received.
The Lord Chancellor has referred to the history of the Bill in Parliament, and I shall not go into that history again, nor shall I discuss the question how far it is admissible before the Committee for Privileges. But it is most certainly permissible for your Lordships to take it into consideration in deciding whether the case has been adequately considered, and to my mind it seems as clear as daylight that both Houses of Parliament passed this Bill under the impression that it did not affect the status of women as regards sitting in this House. I do not think any other conclusion is possible. What the legal effect of that may be is a matter for further consideration. After the Bill had become law it seems to have occurred to some ingenious mind that the words "public function" in Section 1 were enough, and that all the rest of the proceedings was nonsense. That is a matter which surely requires further consideration.
It is quite possible that by an accident, and contrary to the intention of both Houses, this Writ has been conferred—perfectly possible. And, if that is the law, of course it must be enforced. But I think it was not a matter to be treated at all lightly. I think that it is most unfortunate that the case was not argued for the Crown, and argued with an adequate sense of the difficult questions that arose upon it. The Lord Chancellor has given reasons for thinking that from the present Attorney-General the Committee may receive more assistance than it received
1036
front the very distinguished person who preceded him in that office. I hope that may be so. It is a very grave matter, and certainly not one to be treated as a matter of politics.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Then the original Motion, as amended, agreed to.

FIGHTING VALUE OF CAPITAL SHIPS.
THE MARQUESS OF LINLITHGOW THE MARQUESS OF LINLITHGOW rose to ask the First Lord of the Admiralty whether his attention had been drawn to the statements made in another place on March 21 in the course of which it was alleged that "It is already proved that one bomb can sink the most powerful battleship in a few minutes"; and whether the Admiralty holds the view:—(1) That the post-Jutland capital ship will be defenceless against the under-water explosion of bombs dropped by aircraft; (2) that the recent developments in aircraft and in the methods of attack from the air have substantially reduced the fighting value of the capital ship;—and to move for Papers.
The noble Marquess said: My Lords, I put this Question on the Paper because the issues that it touches have been much before the public of late, both in discussion in another place and in the public Press, and without, so far as I am aware, and so far as I am able to judge, the Admiralty making any very clear or adequate statement as to their views on the matters raised. This much is clear, that there has been a persistent and deliberate campaign of advertisement—for that is what it has been—directed to impressing Parliament and the country with the important part that air power is to play in the next war.
It is within the memory of all your Lordships that the Report of the Geddes Committee, as it is called, did touch upon the question of the existence of the Air Service as a Service separate from the two older Services, and I think it is natural that those who have knowledge of, and interest in, the Air Force, should seize this opportunity to press their case upon Parliament and upon the public. I think that a recital of some of the statements made by at least one very important personage in another place will convince the House that that enthusiast has been at pains to improve the case in favour of aircraft, by making the claim that the modern capital

1037
ship is more or less defenceless against attack from the air.
The Secretary of State for Air used these words in another place on March 21:—
"It is already proved that one bomb can sink the most powerful battleship in a few minutes. A battleship may survive a direct surface hit, but you cannot protect it from the explosion of a bomb underneath its water-line."
That might have been an expression which slipped from the lips of the right hon. gentleman in the warmth of his advocacy, and the full force of which he hardly appreciated. But he went on, a moment later, to draw his conclusions from this premise, and he used these words:—
"In ten years' time I believe that a combat between the forces of the air and the forces of the sea will have become a grotesque and pathetically one-sided affair."
If that conclusion, so clearly stated by the Secretary of State for Air, is accepted by His Majesty's Government—it may be right or it may be wrong: I do not know—it must, of course, radically affect the whole of the naval policy of this country now and for the future. But, in any case, I submit that such a statement, being, as in truth it is, a. statement concerned entirely with a naval question, ought to have been made by the First Lord of the Admiralty as being the political head of the senior Service, and the political head of those whose duty it would have been to take adequate steps to meet these new conditions. I submit further that the public is entitled to a clear and definite statement upon this question from those on whose shoulders the heavy burden of responsibility in this matter does, in fact, lie.
Needless to say, the lead of the Secretary of State for Air was loyally followed by some of his adherents in the House of Commons, and Lieut.-Colonel Moore-Brabazon delivered himself thus:—
"I know it does us immense harm to exaggerate the powers of the Air Force, but I do ask those honourable members who are interested in the subject to read up what happened in America with regard to depth charges. It is not a question of hitting a ship, but only a question of dropping a depth-charge near, or even within 200 yards, of a big vessel—not a very difficult thing to do even from a height of 10,000 feet."
He went on to say:—
"We heard the other day on the Navy Estimates that we had deteriorated, and become less than a one-Power nation on the sea. I heard no protest from anybody. Surely at last people are realising that such a change has happened in the world that the Navy to-day is obsolescent."
1038
Your Lordships will notice that the picture has grown more lurid as the responsibility of the speaker has grown less. A bomb is now to be fatal when dropped within 200 yards, and the senior Service is obsolescent!
Shortly after that, along comes a gallant Admiral, Admiral Sueter, and he, with great economy of words, and with as much clearness, exposed what I venture to think is the real objective of this assault. He said—
"The experiments in America and France show that the battleship now is quite obsolete, and I should like to see some of the money voted for the Navy turned towards the Air Force."
This assault in Parliament, as I call it, has been supported in the Press. There has been a regular and steady bombardment of the Press, and I had provided myself with a few extracts, but at this late hour of the evening I do not propose to read them to your Lordships. All I would say, in measuring the value of such statements, is that it is perhaps reasonable and safe to recollect that orthodoxy never has very much attraction for those whose main purpose is self-advertisement.
Your Lordships will remember that the Government, as the result of the first phase of this agitation in Parliament and in the Press, last year set up a Committee which inquired into this matter, and the result of the deliberations of that Committee was that the capital ship was acclaimed as the substantial basis of sea power. Since then various experiments have been carried out in America and other countries to determine, I suppose, the facts of the case. Most of the data obtained by those experiments are secret, but the outline of the result obtained in the case of one series of experiments on an obsolete or an old German battleship in American waters was made very much of, and was extremely well advertised in the Press. I hope I shall be able to persuade the First Lord of the Admiralty, on this substantial point which is said to have been finally cleared up by these experiments on a battleship in American waters, to give us this evening some definite information as to the view taken by the Admiralty experts of the value of these experiments.
Apart from the question of the protection afforded capital ships against enemy aircraft by the toughness of their own structure, there is of course the point as to how far it is possible for friendly air machines

1039
to protect capital ships against attack by hostile aircraft. I observed with some surprise that the Secretary of State for Air, whose duty and whose pride I should have thought it would have been to have assured the country of the gallant things which our own aircraft would do in the matter of protecting our capital ships in the next war, was completely silent on this point. Are our airmen to stand—or, I suppose I ought to say, fly—idly by while enemy machines hover at a low elevation over our battleships, and drop bombs on them or near them? That is extremely unlikely so far as I have had the opportunity of observing the activities of our airmen in the war.
With the much debated question of the future organisation of the air arm I do not intend to deal, but I think that it would be a thousand pities, and show a most unworthy suspicion of the capacity and sense of responsibility of those on whose shoulders lies the duty of directing the constructional and general naval policy of this country, if it were to be supposed that their minds were likely to be prejudiced in the least against this great and potent innovation—the fighting air-machine—by the fact that it is a new Service, and uncontrolled at this moment by their own Department. I do not believe such prejudice exists, or would weigh with the Admiralty experts for one moment.
I found myself in this view upon the fact that before the war, and indeed almost up to the end of the war, the development in aircraft, and particularly the extremely fruitful development in the co-operation between aircraft and surface ships, both in reconnaissance and in the observation of gunfire, was encouraged and fostered on every side by the Higher Command at sea, from the Admiral Commanding in Chief downwards, and I think that the Secretary of State for the Colonies was perhaps a little too anxious to make his points as regards the future of the Air Service, and a little too careless of the past, when he said, during the course of the same debate on March 21, talking about the difficulties of persuading Generals and Admirals to take the modern view:—
"To give this new arm, this new auxiliary, entirely into the hands of Generals and Admirals would, I am certain, be to crush it in the period after the war, just as those Generals and Admirals did their hest to crush it in the period before the war."
1040
I can only say that my home is very near a sheet of water which sheltered for a long time during the war a very important part of our sea forces and during the many conversations that I had with naval officers on this general question of aircraft and their usefulness to the sea forces, I never heard one word which did not express the greatest admiration for the Air Service, and the most enthusiastic belief and confidence in the value of the fighting air machine as an essential element of the modern Fleet-in-being.
Whatever may be the views of the technical advisers of the Admiralty on these matters, I hope the noble Lord, in his reply, will tell us whether in his opinion, due weight has been given, in the case made out against the capital ship, to the fact that we are a world-power, and that the next naval war, for all we can tell, may be fought not within the narrow limits of the home seas but upon the great oceans that divide continent from continent. It will be difficult, almost impossible, to estimate within thousands of miles the spot where the fleet action will take place. Difficulties of all sorts will mitigate against any aeroplane based on the land taking an effective part in any general action and even as regards those air machines which are to be based on aircraft-carrying vessels there will be difficulties of long distance flying and bad air weather, about as severe as can be conceived. I hope I have persuaded the First Lord of the Admiralty to make a specific reply to the points I have raised, and, in particular, to those I have set down in my Question. I beg to move.
THE FIRST LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY (LORD LEE OF FAREHAM): My Lords, were I to follow the Ministerial custom which prevails in another place I might, perhaps, answer the Question on the Paper very briefly and laconically, but at the same time with complete accuracy, by saying that my attention has been drawn to the statement referred to and that the answer to the first and to the second Question is in the negative. But I feel that it would not be courteous to the noble Marquess to make quite such an uncommunicative reply as that in answer to the very serious Questions he has raised in your Lordships' House. I thought he rather chided the Admiralty for having, so far, made no reply to the series of statements which have been made broadcast both in Parliament and in the Press, and I feel it

1041
would not be fair to the. Admiralty or to the public that I should leave uncorrected some of the extreme statements that have recently been made. At the same time, I must apologise to your Lordships at this late hour for embarking upon what I fear must be a statement of some length, but the matter is so serious from a national point of view that. I think the noble Marquess's Questions ought to be answered here and now.
I am sure he will recognise that I am placed in a position of some difficulty because, whilst I naturally dislike having to enter into anything like a public controversy with those who have advanced these very extreme claims, doubtless wider the stress of enthusiasm, I cannot in my present position permit public confidence in the Navy and the Admiralty to be undermined, perhaps I should say in this ease to be bombed, without making some reply exposing the absurdity of some of the claims which have been advanced. If these claims are well founded, if the statement to which the noble Marquess draws attention is true, then the maintenance and, still more, the building of capital ships would be quite inexcusable, and not only the Naval Staff and Admiralty in this country but the Naval Staffs of all great naval Powers would be culpable in the highest degree, and quite unfit to exercise the responsibilities which now rest upon them.
While I want to be as uncontroversial as possible and to deal in my reply with matters not of theory and imagination but of ascertained fact, I will say at once that the statement to which the noble Marquess refers—namely, that "it is already proved that one bomb can sink the most powerful battleship in a few minutes" is not only untrue but is admittedly based, and solely based, upon the experiments in America last year. With regard to those experiments I will leave out of account the fact that they were conducted under conditions which bear no resemblance whatever to war conditions. They were conducted against a stationary and unresisting target. There was no defence, passive or active on behalf of the ship, and they were also conducted in ideal weather, which is not always prevalent on the ocean, at a time when there was no risk from low-lying clouds, fog, rain, snow, or darkness, or any of the other difficulties with which attacking aircraft would have to deal.
1042
Further, they were conducted from a land base against a ship which was stationary. There, have been no experiments in America, or elsewhere, against a modern capital ship properly defending itself not only by action but by its movements, and to deduce these tremendous conclusions from the experiments with the old German battleship "Ostfriesland," and the subsequent experiments with the still older American battleship "Iowa," is really stretching the case altogether too far.
In the case of the "Ostfriesland" they were conducted on two days during last July. In the course of the first day this stationary target was hit by low-flying aeroplanes in great numbers thirteen times, by bombs varying from 250 to 500 lbs. As a result the ship, being at the time completely out of condition and unseaworthy in many ways, was considerably shaken, and the next day she was down by four feet in the water, no attempt haying been made to sheer up her bulkheads or to protect her in any way. On the second day she received three more hits at close range by bombs of 1,000 lbs., and finally, two 2,000-lb. bombs were dropped close alongside, and she eventually sank. She was a very old type of ship, in bad condition, with strained hull and no special under-water protection of any sort or kind. There was no crew on board who would, naturally, have assisted in sheering up bulkheads; and she would have been an equally easy prey to one torpedo discharged from a destroyer or submarine, or, indeed, to a very moderate amount of gunfire.
The fact is that the same result—her sinking—could have been obtained with much less cost and more certainty by any of the ordinarily accepted naval methods of attack. Therefore, I say that no conclusions of this character can be drawn as applying to existing modern capital ships under Service conditions, not even to ships we have had for some time, such as the "Royal Sovereign" class, and still less to our latest designs. I thought that was made sufficiently clear by the official report of the American experiments. The report was made by a joint board of naval and military men with General Pershing as chairman. They issued their report in August last and said that they had arrived at conclusions with which I will not trouble your Lordships at length, as you are probably familiar with them. They

1043
reached the conclusion, among others, that had the target been moving at high speed on varying courses the probability of hitting would have been greatly reduced, that had the target vessel been protected by effective anti-aircraft armament it would have still further reduced the number of hits, and that it would have been practically negligible had the target been protected by effective pursuit aeroplanes.
They pointed out that. the effect of the direct hits had been purely local and had done no real damage to the fighting portions of the ship, and in their final conclusions they said:—
"The battleship is still the backbone of the fleet and the bulwark of the nation's sea defence. The aeroplane, like the submarine, destroyer and mine, has added to the dangers to which battleships are exposed, but has not made the battleship obsolete. The battleship still remains the greatest unit of naval strength."
There is a great deal more with which I need not trouble your Lordships, who have no doubt seen the report. The main conclusion is that there was nothing whatever in these experiments against the "Ostfriesland" to support the extreme theory which was advanced in another place, because, as I have pointed out, one torpedo would have been equally effective in the circumstances, and our ships, after all, even those which are not of the latest designs, are so constructed as to be able to withstand the impact not merely of one but of several torpedoes, which, being in contact with the sick of the ship, are of far greater effect than any bombs dropped close alongside could possibly be.
I do not know whether your Lordships appreciate the immense significance of the difference between an explosion which takes place in contact with the side of a ship and what has been called in the discussions a "near miss." The difficulty of this latter method of attacking a battleship by a bomb from aircraft may be judged by the fact that the effect of a bomb which is not in contact varies with the cube of the distance away from the side. This leads to the most extraordinary conclusions. For example, a 4,000-lb. bomb, which would carry 2,000 lbs. of high explosives, dropped ten feet distant from the side of the ship and at the right distance under the water, is equivalent only to a bomb carrying 250 lbs. of explosives which is in actual contact with the side—that is, considerably less than that carried by the ordinary service torpedo. It would actually take a
1044
bomb of 8,000 lbs.—larger than any suggested by these enthusiastic gentlemen—bursting at a distance of ten feet from the side of the ship, to equal the effect of one torpedo exploded in contact with the ship. When I see such a distinguished authority as General Groves writing in The Times a series of articles, to which great prominence has been given, stating that a 4,000-lb. bomb, dropped thirty yards from a modern battleship, would be destructive, I would only remind your Lordships that the effect of that bomb would be no more than that of the explosion of 3 lbs. of explosives in actual contact with the ship itself.
I have been referring so far to ships which are actually in existence, but, of course, as your attack develops, so do the methods of naval construction to meet it, and, while it would not be in accordance with the public interest to give any details of new designs, I can only assure your Lordships that the large experiments which have taken place and are still in progress have made it quite clear that the new designs which we are proposing to construct will certainly be immune not only from direct hits from bombs of the size suggested but even from this very potent "near miss" to which reference has been made. In fact, it is technically and practically possible to protect the bottom of battleships against any size of bomb which can be dropped from aircraft. The noble Marquess referred to some remarkably enthusiastic speaker in the recent debate in the House of Commons, who said that it was only necessary to drop a bomb of 4,000 lbs. within 100 yds. of the doomed ship. The actual effect of a 4,000-lb. bomb dropped at 100 yds. would be equivalent to the explosion of between 2 oz. and 4 oz. of high explosive against the ship itself, which would not have the slightest effect even upon a torpedo boat. My imagination boggles at the calculation with regard to 200 yds., which was suggested by another speaker, but I think I have said enough to show that this kind of claim can only be described as fantastic rubbish, and it is really trifling with Parliament and with the public to make such statements, which are only calculated, without any excuse or justification, to undermine confidence in the Navy.
At the same time, I do not want it to be supposed that the Admiralty are in any way indifferent, or are not alive, to the possible developments of air attack

1045
upon ships at sea. They are devoting a great deal of time, thought and experiment to the elucidation of these matters, but at the present stage the battleship holds its own, not only for the reasons that I have given, but also because of the necessary inaccuracy under existing conditions of any attack from the air.
I spoke of the "Ostfriesland" experiment. There were later experiments on another ship, the "Iowa," which was electrically controlled, and therefore under way, but only at a speed of 8 knots. Again, it had no defence, but although attack was made upon it at comparatively low altitudes, only 15 per tent. of hits were made, and the official report states that in the Boards opinion there would not have been more than 5 per cent. of hits under Service conditions. That, refers to direct hits upon the ship itself, but if, as has now appeared, a direct hit on the ship is not going to do any fatal damage, and what is wanted is to drop a bomb within a few feet of the side, then the size of the target is reduced to about one-fifth of the area of the ship, and the number of hits will probably be reduced from five per cent. to one per cent. We must remember that each attacking aeroplane has only one of these huge bombs, and in order to get another it has to travel several hundred miles.
It might be said that accuracy will improve, and we hope it will, for many reasons unconnected with this problem. All the best minds in connection with the development of the air were engaged on this problem for four years of war, endeavouring to perfect the accuracy of bomb dropping, and so far no solution of that vital problem has been reached; but in any case, as the noble Marquess pointed out, this form of attack upon warships by heavy bombs dropped from aircraft is only possible from a shore base, and therefore is really only applicable to coast defence. The extreme range of these great bombing craft is within, say, 300 miles from their base, and as each plane can only carry one bomb, and if it drops it and misses has to go back all these miles, and as the inaccuracy of bombing is so great, even for the purpose of coast defence this cannot be regarded as a menace which would prevent a modern fleet from attacking a shore objective. In any case operations close to the shore are very minor functions of a modern fleet, at any rate
1046
of a British fleet, whose principal function is to protect far-flung trade routes over wide oceans.
The noble Marquess asked whether our naval policy still recognises that we are a world power. Most assuredly it does, and it would indeed be a sad day for the British Navy if it was to be confined to home waters, within range of bombing craft operating from shore bases. That, of course, does not cover the question of attack from aircraft carriers. but no aircraft carriers, either actual or projected, or permitted by the Naval Treaty concluded at Washington, can carry these huge bombing machines at all, and even if they could, and these machines could be launched from them, the machines could not return and land on their mother ship. Therefore, this weapon of attack in its present stage of development, is effective only against battleships operating from a shore base as coast defence. In that connection no doubt it may play a useful function, and be encouraged to the utmost degree both by the Admiralty and I assume by the War Office.
In all this controversy so far nothing has been said from the naval side with regard to defence against attack—defence which is both active and passive—or to the counter-attacks that would be made upon attacking aircraft both by the warship itself and its attendant fighting aircraft. General Groves, in very interesting articles, asked his readers to imagine the picture of an attack by aircraft, which first of all make a great smoke-screen, out of which would emerge a flight of aeroplanes, each carrying a torpedo, which they would launch against the battleship and then disappear again in the smoke-screen. Apart from the fact that at present low-flying aeroplanes are very vulnerable to attack by modern gun-fire, the task which the writer sets them might equally be performed by destroyers, which carry six torpedoes each and can stand a considerable amount of punishment and fire before being disabled, whereas a small shell of any description would wreck an aeroplane. That shows that the picture contains nothing new and something less effective than the existing methods of attack, and unless it be assumed that the Navy would be doing nothing in such circumstances, and would not reply by gun-fire or its fighting planes, the picture which is drawn does not cause us any acute apprehension.

1047
As a matter of fact, although there again it is not in the public interest to give details, we are hopeful that by gun fire alone, and the development of gunfire, it may be possible to make warships in the near future practically immune against air attack of any description. But, simultaneously, we are developing, and are hoping to develop much further, the defence in the air of a very far-reaching and aggressive character, carried out front aeroplane carriers, which are going to play a most vital part in the fleet of the future. So far from it being true that the Navy or the Admiralty are seeking either to stifle or to discourage the development of the Air Service in connection with the Navy, the fact is that they are convinced, and have long been convinced, of its vital importance, and are continually pressing for more progress in this direction.
It cannot be denied that the British Navy at this time is far ahead of any other Navy in connection with the development of the Air Service, and while, as I said just now, I am not at all satisfied with the progress which has been made and for other reasons upon which I do not wish to dwell on this occasion, it is well known, I think, that a special Committee has just been appointed by the Cabinet to inquire into the relations between the Admiralty and the Air Ministry. As that matter is now, so to speak, sub judice I do not intend to do more than say that the statement which the noble Marquess read, accusing the Admiralty and the Admirals of seeking to crush and discourage the Air Service, was entirely unjustified and in direct conflict with the facts. On the contrary, we feel nothing but good will and indeed deep anxiety for the development of the Air Service, and are giving it every assistance in our power.
I only want to add this, that I greatly regret and deprecate that there should be
1048
any controversy between the two great Services, but it has been forced upon me, and I felt, it was essential to explode some of the more extravagant and fantastic claims which have been advanced. As I have said, the capital ship remains practically unchallenged as the ultimate basis of sea power. That, very point was the subject of a most exhaustive inquiry conducted by the Government as recently as last year, and it is a curious thing that similar inquiries, conducted in almost every great naval country independently, have resulted in the arrival unanimously at the same conclusion—a conclusion which was confirmed at the Conference at Washington and which certainly stands.
So far as my knowledge goes, and that of the Admiralty and the Naval Staff, nothing whatever has occurred in connection with recent developments in aircraft or methods of attack from the air substantially to reduce the fighting value of the capital ship. The attacks to which it may be exposed from the air are being provided against, and more than provided against, by improvements in its passive and active defence, and it is to-day the considered opinion both of the Naval Staff and of the Board of Admiralty that defence against aircraft, so far as capital ships are concerned, is, and will keep, fully abreast of attack, whether by aircraft or by submarines. I hope that I have fully answered the Questions which the noble Marquess addressed to me. If there is any point which I have omitted I shall be very pleased to reply to him.
THE MARQUESS OF LINLITHGOW: I merely wish to thank the noble Lord for the very full statement which he has given, and to ask the leave of the House to withdrawn my Motion.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
House adjourned at ten minutes past eight o'clock.