AIR POLICY.

HL Deb 11 July 1923 vol 54 cc929-88

VISCOUNT WIMBORNE had given notice to move to resolve, That in view of the growing importance of Air power the contemplated expenditure in the Naval and Air Estimates respectively is disproportionate. The noble Viscount said: My Lords, since tabling the Motion which stands in my name on the Paper a very important pronouncement has been made in another place by the Prime Minister on Air policy. That declaration is, I claim, in principle an admission of the gravamen of the case which I submit to your Lordships, but it must be admitted that it is a very belated step to take to remedy the situation of which I am complaining.

What is the present position with regard to our Air power? I would remind the House that the noble Duke, the Duke of Sutherland, told us in March that if we contrasted the relative strength of our own Air Service with that of the nearest Power to us, and the greatest Air Force in Europe—I mean the French Air Force—our position was this. There were thirty-four British aeroplane squadrons as against 140 French ones, and there were 395 machines as against 1,260 machines. But there is a more interesting comparison even than that. He went on to say that if you took the Home Air Services of England and France you would find that the British Air Force had only ten squadrons, although there were four squadrons at the Dardanelles which might be expected to be only temporarily absent—you could call it fourteen squadrons in England—as against 111 in France.

The Prime Minister, in his statement in another place, on June 26, used these words: In addition to meeting the essential Air power requirements of the Navy, Army, Indian and Overseas commitment", British Air power must include a Home Defence Air Force of sufficient strength adequately to protect us against Air attack by the strongest Air Force within striking distance of this country. He went on to say that an addition of thirty-four squadrons to the Home Defence Air Service of this country was contemplated, bringing that Service up to fifty-two squadrons as against the 140 squadrons which the French possessed. I think that since that time the French have also increased their Home Air Force. He also said, and I am sure we are glad to know it is in his mind, that he would welcome very much something in the nature of the Washington understanding with regard to Air power. If limitation could be effected by common consent he would welcome that very much. I hope your Lordships will not let that be a mere pious wish, but that the Government will endeavour so far as they can to promote something which may lead to a limitation of air competition as well as naval competition.

That statement of the Prime Minister contemplates a great aerial expansion of our forces. The defencelessness of London, to which some of us have drawn attention, is now to be remedied. The paradox of the far-flung battle line of Empire resting upon a vulnerable home base is to be repudiated and remedied. I am sure that the statement of the Prime Minister has been received with very great satisfaction and relief in the country. We are glad to know that the policy of "Safety first" is to guide us in our Defence and Imperial policy. I think I may claim that your Lordships' House is to be very much congratulated for the step which the Prime Minister has taken, because I believe it is largely due to the debates in this House, and notably to the contributions to those debates by my noble friends Viscount Grey of Fallodon and Lord Birkenhead, that the Government have at least become alive to the fact that the situation as it is to-day is extremely unsatisfactory and that we are in a most unpleasant and precarious position with regard to the safety of the Capital of the Empire.

But the disproportionate expenditure upon the Navy and the Air Force, to which I draw attention, has been modified not by a redistribution of the £80,000,000 at present spent upon the two Services, but by adding another £5,500,000 to the Estimates. That fact is only partially concealed by the circumstance that of the £5,500,000, only £500,000 will appear upon the Supplementary Estimates this year. Therein, I think, lies the main defect and weakness of the Prime Minister's proposal. The satisfaction of present needs by a system of deferred payments is a very common device, whether in national or in domestic economy. These payments have a way of maturing, and then it is that the shoe pinches. I remember that the noble Marquess the Deputy Leader of the House, in reply to some observations I made on this subject not long ago, indicated in rather an airy way that we had plenty of money. How he can say that in view of the excessive taxation——

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

I never said that.

VISCOUNT WIMBORNE

The noble Marquess will excuse me. He said that we had plenty of money for both Air defence and naval expansion.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

What I said was that we were not so badly off but that we could afford expenditure which was absolutely essential.

VISCOUNT WIMBORNE

He indicated that money was not going to stop us; that plenty of money would be forthcoming, not for wasteful or extravagant objects but for objects which were considered necessary for the defence of the Empire. How he can say that in face of the taxation to which we are subjected, in face of stagnant trade at the present moment—last month has been the worst since the war—the amount of unemployment, the unsettled condition of Europe and falling revenue, I fail to understand. If the situation were much more favourable than I have indicated, if the noble Marquess is right that money will never stop us from such a policy as is deemed necessary for the defence of the Empire, I still assert that when you come to budget all Estimates are always competitive. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is approached by all the various Services clamouring for money for their needs, and in that process there is always a competitive element. I assert that so long as the old Blue Water school enjoys an undisputed and unrelated supremacy so long the growing needs of the infant Air Service are likely to be inadequately provided for. The existing situation proves this; and the situation will recur.

The defence of London is, after all, a tardy afterthought to the grandiose conception of the naval base at Singapore. I should like to know, in regard to that naval base, whether it does not, in fact, violate the spirit of the Washington Pact. It is just five degrees over the line drawn by that Treaty, and perhaps the noble Marquess will tell me whether the Washington Pact precludes Japan or America from establishing fresh naval bases within the prescribed area, and whether we are able, by just going over to border, to do what Japan and America will be unable to do within the Pacific itself? The Singapore enterprise is typical of what I call the undisputed supremacy of the naval school. What is the Singapore base mainly designed to achieve? It is to accommodate the new battleships, the new super-Dreadnoughts, which we are building. A controversy now rages round the question as to whether battleships are, and to what extent they can remain, an effective unit of sea-power, and on a highly technical subject such as that noble Lords will no doubt have strong opinions.

Opinions differ, but it may be interesting to give you the opinion of some of the experts on this question. Sir Percy Scott, and he is not alone, puts it rather tersely and expresses the anti-battleship school. He draws attention to the fact that in the old days the battleship dominated the ocean, guaranteed British sea-borne trade, blockaded enemy ports, and so forth; but to-day he says— A battleship cannot go to sea in the daytime unless surrounded with destroyers to protect her from submarines. A battleship cannot go to sea in the daytime unless accompanied by an aeroplane ship to guard her from aeroplane attack. At night she runs the double risk of being sunk by submarines and torpedo boats. A battleship cannot blockade the enemy's ports; she must keep a long way from them. A battleship cannot be hidden from the enemy airman's eye. Battleships in harbour cannot protect themselves from aircraft. Battleships must be locked up in safe harbours during war time to protect them from submarines. If there is any truth in this it shows that the question of the value of the battleship is in dispute, and whether it is right or wrong, at any rate we may confidently assert that the battleship is a very costly and a very vulnerable unit of Imperial power.

I observe that the aeroplane carrier to which Sir Percy Scott alludes costs between £4,000,000 and £5,000,000, to say nothing of the fleet of torpedo destroyers and smaller craft by which a battleship is always accompanied. I also notice that as the missiles to which a battleship is subjected increase in penetration so the armour plate grows thicker and thicker. It almost suggests the comparison of the mediœval knight in armour confronted with the development of fire, or our Cavalry confronted with the system of trench warfare. It is an arguable point as to whether the battleship before long may not become out of date, whether this costly engine of war may not prove to be too vulnerable for the task allotted to it.

The question which arises is whether in our scheme of Imperial defence we have not lacked some imagination and prescience. Before we embarked on this big scheme at Singapore, a scheme which is to cost £10,000,000 in the course of the next few years, to accommodate the big battleships, the value of which is somewhat hypothetical, I claim that more regard should have been paid to the already partial conquest of the air and the prospective complete mastery of that element, and to the part that that element is certain to play in future warfare. It is because the Government have shown too little recognition of the new factor which has arisen during and since the war and too great a tendency to tread old beaten tracks that I venture to submit this case to your Lordships' consideration.

Moved to resolve, That in view of the growing importance of Air power, the contemplated expenditure in the Naval and Air Estimates respectively is disproportionate.—(Viscount Wimborne.)

THE CIVIL LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY (THE MARQUESS OF LINLITHGOW)

My Lords, it may be convenient that at this stage, and on behalf of the Department I represent in your Lordships' House, I should make some reply to the points put forward by the noble Viscount. He seemed to claim that the announcement made by the Prime Minister in another place, and by my noble friend the Leader of the House in your Lord ships' House, as to an increased strength for the Air Force was some admission, I think he said, of the gravamen of the case contained in his Resolution. I was a little astonished to hear the noble Viscount put forward that thesis. As I read the terms of his Resolution they suggest this and nothing else—that too much money has been spent, or is to be spent, upon the Navy and too little upon the Air, and because the Government decide to spend more money on the Air in order to make the Air Force adequate to carry out its proper functions, we are told by the noble Viscount that this is an admission by the Government that too much money has been spent on the Navy. I observe that the noble Viscount did not move—I do not know whether he proposes to move at a later stage—but if he is prepared to ask your Lordships to affirm a Resolution of this sort on a matter which, whatever view one may take of it, is at least a most serious one, I hardly think the House will be prepared to support him.

From the naval angle, the noble Viscount's questioning—for he is not very certain himself, and I do not call it an attack but a questioning—divides itself under two heads. In the first place, he doubt" the wisdom of the proposed naval base at Singapore; and in the second place, he questions the future usefulness of the battleship. Before I proceed in detail to attempt to meet the noble Lord's points, let me say that I do not quite agree with him that, even if one admitted—as I certainly do not—that the battleship is to be of no effective value in the next war, then the case for a base at Singapore goes by the board. After all, what my noble friend seeks to do is to establish in this House the principle that aircraft are able, or will in the near future be able, to do what battleships can do to-day, or did yesterday. But aeroplanes will have to have a base, and the noble Viscount may not be aware that——

VISCOUNT WIMBORNE

Not a naval base.

THE MARQUESS OF LINLITHGOW

I will come to that in a moment. It is proposed to provide a flying ground at Singapore. The noble Viscount has spoken of the large aircraft carriers in which he envisages the battleship of the future. Will not these carriers have to be docked? Will they not have to be repaired after action? Could there be a better place than Singapore? I do not wish to delay the House with any detailed recommendation of Singapore as a site, because the noble Marquess the Deputy-Leader of the House went into this case only a few days ago, but I may perhaps run very briefly over the points which he then made. The noble Viscount, Lord Haldane, also expressed this view when he spoke on this subject the other day. If there is to be a base in the Far East, Singapore is by general admission the best site available. It is obviously the gateway from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean; it is the focal point of all commerce in the East, and flanks the great systems of sea communication in the Indian and Pacific Oceans; it is easy of defence; and—no mean consideration— there are in reasonably close propinquity oil fields in Burma, and also, as the House knows, in North Borneo.

The noble Viscount asked whether in effect, in spirit if not in letter, the decision to establish this naval base does not violate the Washington Treaty. That is an amazing doctrine to hold. The naval experts who worked these matters out at Washington had a map with them. I hope the noble Viscount has a map with him when he considers this question. It was well known to all the experts who considered this matter that Singapore was regarded by the British Admiralty as an ideal place for the establishment of a naval station, and yet we are told that the decision to establish this station is a veiled threat or insult to some other Power. I wonder, when the noble Viscount goes out in his motor car along the road and when he observes a policeman whether he reduces his speed from nineteen to sixteen miles an hour lest he should be accused of hurting the constable's feelings.

May I briefly recapitulate the strategic value of the proposed naval base at Singapore? In the first place, the presence of such a base will render mobile and effective the British fleet in Far Eastern waters. I do not know whether the noble Viscount realises that it would, in fact, be quite impossible, or at any rate impracticable, to engage in hostilities on an important scale without the provision either of this base or of some other base in that part of the world. At the present moment there is no dock nearer to Singapore than the home docks which will accommodate the most modern type of capital ship. It is proposed a few years hence to provide such a floating dock at Malta, but when you work out the problem in terms of time and space, you find that to do a two days' job on a ship with the fleet in the neighbourhood of Singapore, you have to send that ship back through the Canal, let us say—to make the strongest case we can for the noble Viscount—to Malta, do the two days' job and send the ship back to the fleet. At 16 knots that would take about 40 days. Warships are complicated structures, and if they are to keep their efficiency they have to be docked and cleaned from time to time, or they lose speed and in consequence their steaming radius is curtailed.

But apart from that, conceive a general action having been fought in Eastern waters. The necessity for sending ships damaged in action, and with their speeds reduced by such damage, long voyages, unescorted by lighter craft, would subject such damaged ships to very grave risk of total loss by attack from enemy submarines. If no base is provided at Singapore, those who are responsible for the safety of the Empire would have to detach from the Home Fleet a larger proportion of capital ships and a larger proportion of lighter craft in order to make due allowances for the weakening of the fleet owing to the time required for all repairs and overhauls. I say detached from the Home Fleet because I am assuming that the central idea of the Washington Treaty may hold good—I hope it may—until the end of the term set out in the Treaty, but when unchecked construction returns, if ever it does, then, of course, the problem before those who will have to decide upon the Naval Estimates of the time will be, unless there is some base, to make a very important addition to the Fleet of those days in order to allow for the weakening of the Fleet in the circumstances I have described.

But, the whole notion of making allowance in that way is quite amateurish and wrong, because it can be shown that, if regard is had to the relative values involved—namely, £10,500,000 in several years for the base against some £7,000,000, with all accessories, for the battleship—the establishment of a naval base at Singapore is by far the cheapest way of making British sea power effective in the Far East that can be conceived. It is sometimes said that we got along well enough in the war without such a naval establishment in the East. I do not deny—no one denies—that the naval concentration in the North Sea, against the German menace, was necessary and inevitable, but let there be no mistake, that concentration, necessary as it was, was paid for in blood and treasure. What about the " Emden " and the " Moewe," gallivanting over those seas: The " Emden " destroyed 68,581 gross tons, and the " Moewe " 154,637 gross tons, of world shipping. Is it to be supposed that if there had been, at the time of the great war what I may call the normal dispersion of the British Fleet, those German raiders would have been allowed to steam up and down the seas sinking unarmed craft at will?

There is another interesting illustration of the price paid for this concentration. It will be within the memory of your Lordships that at the Dominion Conference of 1911 there was an agreement come to for the establishment of what was then called the Empire Pacific Fleet, consisting of three battle cruisers, the "Australia," "New Zealand " and one other, but, of course, that scheme could not be carried out owing to the necessity of concentrating our naval forces in the North Sea. But that that conception was sound events proved up to the hilt. The " Gneisenau " and " Scharnhorst," under von Spee, did as they liked with Admiral Cradock's squadron. If three battle, cruisers had been in the Pacific the battle that was fought at the Falkland Islands might have been fought earlier in the Pacific, and Admiral Cradock and his gallant men might not have gone to the bottom. I do not, however, want to enter into the controversy which rages about the subject at the moment. It may be that concentration was neces sary. Often in war it is necessary to face minor losses in order to achieve more important successes; but, nevertheless, the fact remains that it was necessary for us to detach two battle cruisers to go out to the Falkland Islands to meet von Spee, in command of the German squadron. What might have happened if we had not been fortunate and skilful enough to hit off the Germans at the Falkland Islands, or what might have happened if von Spee had turned to the south and raided the ships off the African coast, may well be imagined.

Then, it is right, in a discussion of this sort, to point out that public opinion in the Dominions and the Colonies is favourable to this scheme. Your Lordships will have observed that the New Zealand Government in its wisdom has asked the New Zealand Parliament to vote £100,000, to be spent either towards the cost of Singapore, or, on the advice of the Imperial naval authorities, on some internal defence work in New Zealand; and Parliament and the country will learn with a lively sense of gratitude and pride that the Government of the Straits Settlements has decided to make a free gift of the land required for the naval base, namely, 2,250 acres, and of the land required for the aerodrome, namely 597 acres. It is also to be hoped—1 think there is a considerable chance—that there may be further contributions forthcoming from other Dominions. But it is not merely the populations of the distant Dominions who are concerned and whose interests are bound up with this question of the command of the sea.

The noble Viscount in this connection asked whether it is the view of the Government that the capital ship remains an important and overwhelming element in the maintenance of the command in sea power. The answer is that the battleship is still considered as the supreme unit of naval power. I want to take the noble Viscount, in considering this point, on to ground with which he is far more familiar than I am, because I think I can convince him that sooner or later, from whatever angle you examine this question, you come back to the capital ship. In all periods of naval history there emerges some one type of ship which is supreme in her time, and it is in the nature of things that this should be so. The capital ship, after all, is an attempt by designers and constructors to embody in one unit the maximum of offensive and defensive qualities. Your specialised ship (if I may use that adjective) is, of course, more effective than the battleship in any one direction. Your destroyer goes faster, but you can put a service bullet through her skin: your cruiser is lightly armed, she is very fast, she has a wide cruising radius, but those advantages are gained at the expense not only of lighter armour but also of lighter guns, a smaller crew, and so on. Supposing I go to the length of visualising the future from the noble Viscount's point of view, and try to make the great aircraft-carrying vessel the capital ship. The noble Viscount shakes his head. The capital ship does not, after all, mean a battleship. It means only the supreme unit at any moment.

VISCOUNT WIMBOBNE

What I said was that the capital ship needed an aeroplano carrier to protect it against aerial attack.

THE MARQUESS OF LINLITHGOW

Yes, and we propose to build aeroplanes and aeroplane carriers to protect them from that point of view. And I wish we heard a little more from the noble Viscount about the defence by aeroplanes of battleships attacked from the air. If the noble Viscount is with me—and he admite that sooner or later you come back to the capital ship—then I do not desire to press the argument any further, because that is my whole case. And, on a day so hot as this, one is obliged to any one who makes a part of one's case for one.

There is one matter in regard to which I would venture to warn the House, and that is that in discussing this question of the battleship, which touches the offensive value of the bomb and the torpedo, it should not be lost sight of that the gun remains the supreme weapon. There is a very telling passage in Mr. Winston Churchill's book. " the World Crisis," which brings out this point. He is describing how von Spee's squadron approached the Falkland Islands without, of course, the slightest idea that our ships were there, and he says The 'Gneisenau' had continued to approach until she saw the fatal tripods, whereupon she immediately turned round and made off at full speed. Those are Mr. Winston Churchill's words. The tripod masts are the hallmark of the capital ship, and the big gun spoke the doom of von Spee. Before the sun went down Cradock and his men were fully avenged.

The noble Viscount also made great play with the containing capacity of the submarine in relation to the battleship. He almost suggested, though he did not say so in terms, that the Grand Fleet was bottled up in its defended bases during the whole war. That really is an illusion. It is true that at one stage, and as regards the attack on unarmed craft, the German submarine was extremely effective, although it is just as well to point out here and now that no modern battleship engaged on any side in the war was sunk by a torpedo fired from a submarine But the sequence of development in a weapon is always the same. First, it comes as a surprise and has all its own way: then the technical and tactical minds at work on the problem react, and the defensive is developed; and it is only when the defensive is fully developed that the weapon may be seen in its true position in the series of armaments.

No one knows more about either the use of submarines or the means of countering submarines than the British Admiralty. The technical advisers of my right hon. friend are absolutely confident that the submarine menace was completely held and cheeked at the end of the war. Has the noble Viscount forgotten the vast fleets which brought the American Army across the Atlantic without one single loss from submarines? Furthermore, it is the view of the Naval Staff that the submarine defence has developed since the war, and is now developing, at a rate very much faster than the effectiveness of the submarine as an offensive weapon.

It may interest the House to know that in order to make plain to the public that the Battle Fleet did occasionally go to sea in the great war it is proposed to issue for publication a track chart showing the movements of the Grand Fleet and important capital ships during the period of hostilities, and anyone who happens to have known anything or to have read anything, about the activities of the Grand Fleet will believe me when I say that you can hardly see the North Sea for those tracks. Then the noble Viscount said the battleship reminded him of the days when men dressed up in armour and when, owing to the improvement in weapons, "hey had to give up protection in order to take advantage of greater mobility: they took off their heavy armour, the greater activity which was the result paying them better than the protection. Has the noble Viscount forgotten the tank in the last war?

VISCOUNT WIMBORNE

The tank was not a naval weapon.

THE MARQUESS OF NLITHGOW

Nor was the gentleman in armour: you do not see gentlemen in armour walking about on quarter decks. Then the noble Viscount says a battleship is no good because it cannot do without light craft. Whoever heard of an Infantry division going into action without an advance guard? I do not pretend to have studied these things with the profound attention which has been given to them by the noble Viscount, but I at least know that. The noble Viscount was a little shy on this occasion of bringing before your Lordships the experiments carried out by the United States Government on the " Ost Friesland" and the "Iowa." He produced them on the last occasion, but probably in the interval he has made himself familiar with the Report signed by General Pershing, who was the chairman of that Committee.

I take leave to read a few extracts from that Report which is, of course, the considered opinion of the American experts in this matter. The Report says: Inasmuch as these experiments were not conducted under battle conditions it is difficult to draw conclusions "— They are talking, of course, about the experiments of dropping bombs on to the decks of battleships, which, after the experiments had been carried out for some time, did result in the sinking of those battleships—— as to the probability of hitting a target with bombs from aircraft while in action. Under the favourable conditions existing during the experiments—namely, stationary, or practically stationary, target, immunity from enemy interference and excellent visibility and flying conditions, the percentage of hits was greatly in excess of that to be expected under battle conditions. The probability of hitting will be reduced in the case of a target moving at high speed on varying courses; further reduced if the target vessel is protected by effective anti-aircraft armament; and practically negligible if the target is protected by effective pursuit planes. On the other hand the probability of hitting will be increased by more efficient sighting and bomb-dropping control apparatus, by further training and further development of aerial tactics. The battleship is still the backbone of the fleet and the bulwark of the nation's sea defence, and will so remain so long as the safe navigation of the sea for purposes of trade or transportation is vital to success in war. The air-plane 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 factor of naval strength. I read that first because it does appear from his utterances in your Lordships' House and outside that the noble Viscount is not very much impressed by the professional acumen of the naval advisers of my right hon. friend the First Lord of the Admiralty. I think ho is wrong in that. I think the present Naval Staff, of proved and tested judgment and skill, as the result of their leadership in the great-war, is probably the most competent body that has ever advised the Minister responsible for the conduct of the British Navy. For my part, and without the least incivility, I desire to say that I prefer their advice and opinion to those of the noble Viscount.

Sea power and the advantages which it gives may be very briefly stated. Sea power gives to the nation that enjoys it the power to move and sustain forces overseas, to carry munitions across the seas and to carry foodstuffs and commercial cargoes. It gives also the power to deny all these essential advantages to an enemy. If it is not asking too much on an evening of this sort, I would ask your Lordships to stretch your imaginations a little and visualise a moment when the noble Viscount has, for some longer or shorter period, had an opportunity of giving executive effect to his views on these questions. Let us assume that a dangerous moment is at hand in the East. Public opinion makes it plain, as public opinion always does on those occasions, that it desires that British naval power should be exerted towards the maintenance of peace in the East. I am going to give the noble Viscount something like omnipotence in this matter. I am going to make him Defence Minister with control over the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force. It would be an awkward moment for him. He would have to say: " I am very sorry, I cannot send the Fleets to the East. There is no base at which they can be repaired, and no defended ports where they can refill their oil tanks." But he would say: " Mind you, London is safe: it will not be bombed.'' After all, troubles nearer home are often the most important to people in difficulty, and that might satisfy public opinion or part of it for a few days. Then disconcerting and uncomfortable news would come in about the loss of shipping on the trade routes; not merely on the trade routes of the Atlantic, but on those across the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, and the public would come to the noble Viscount and would say to him: "Stop this." And he would have to say: " I am very sorry, I cannot. We have lost command of the sea. But, mark you, London will not be bombed."

Then, I suppose, that would happen in the future which has always happened in the past—the young men of this land would want to take up arms and go to meet the enemy abroad. But the noble Viscount would have to say: "I am extremely sorry; it is very awkward, but I cannot send you because we have lost command of the sea and we cannot send our transports. But there are two or three vacant places in the Air Service, and we can send a couple of men and boys over to-morrow afternoon if it is a fine day," or something of that sort. That would be extremely awkward for the noble Viscount. " But," he would add, "London will not be bombed." Nor would it. Within three or four weeks the public in this country would be getting hungry and angry, and they would go to the noble Viscount and, with terrible voices, would ask him for food, and he would say: " I am sorry, I cannot give it to you: I have lost command of the sea." Then, if he were unwise—because it is always unwise to talk lightly to hungry and angry people—he would add: "It may be that a couple of boxes of biscuits and a gruyere cheese will comes across in an aeroplane to-morrow, if it is a reasonably fine day, and—London will not be bombed." Why should it be bombed? Why worry with bombs which kill tens, hundreds or thousands, when starvation kills all? Without the bombing of London the Imperial power of this country would pass from her hands and Britain would be on her knees.

I do not really quarrel with the noble Viscount for the efforts that he and others have made to persuade the British public to take an interest in the Air. I do not know whether he will consider me a worthy recruit, but I am not ashamed here and now to say that I am with him. I think it most necessary that the public should understand how completely conditions have changed in many respects owing to developments in the air. I am not altogether unfamiliar with the exigencies of propaganda. Your Lordships may have heard a delightful expression which is often used on the other side of the Atlantic. They say over there: " It is the wheel that squeaks the loudest that gets the grease." The noble Lord has made some very eloquent speeches in favour of more expenditure on the Air Force.

Now, in all seriousness, I think that the noble Viscount and his friends are perfectly right in driving home to the public the necessity for greater expenditure on the Air, and His Majesty's Government have shown in no uncertain fashion that they do appreciate the menace of the Air. But what I venture to challenge and what I hope we shall have no more of in the future is this attempt to suggest to the public mind that Air power is alternative to naval power. It is not. It is complementary. I, for one, hope that the noble Lord in his splendid work of bringing home to the British public the true state of affairs as regard" Air power, will not think it necessary to descend to suggestions which are both mischievous and unfounded.

VISCOUNT HALDANE

My Lords, I rise to ask your Lordships' attention to a grave omission from the speech of the noble Marquess who has presented to us the prospect of Estimates so large that nothing but necessity can justify them, and the question is what ease has Le made out for the necessity? Of a great deal of the case I will make him a present. I am the last person to question any decision come to after sufficient examination by a competent Naval Staff. If they say that the battleship is to be in the future, as it has been in the past, the dominant element in the Fleet, very well, I pay great attention to that deliverance. If they say Singapore is a very desirable place in which to have a naval base, then I am ready to accept that completely. But the question which I put to them is: Why do they want it? It is a very convenient thing, and a very excellent thing, to be able to dominate the Pacific, but we who sit here ask: What is the justification for incurring an expenditure of a character to which I will call attention in a moment, and which will cripple us for everything else, merely for this purpose? Against which country are you preparing to defend yourself; Is it the United States, or is it Japan, or is it some other Power?

As for command of the sea, I am entirely with the noble Marquess. I have always believed in sea power as being the basis of military power, and of every other power in this country, but Germany, which was the country that seriously menaced our command of the seas, is now obliterated, and is likely to remain obliterated for a very long time. Therefore I fail to see that our general command of the sea is at this moment in any peril. By all means see to it, and watch it. There are many things which a competent staff can do. No doubt there were lacunae in what was done in the way of preparation for the late war. I do not think sufficient study was given to the question of the protection of trade routes. We had a debate in this House on that subject about a year and a half ago, and we got a Paper about the organisation of the Naval War Staff from the First Lord of the Admiralty which did not satisfy me as it did not satisfy a good many other people. I remember that it was only late in 1911 that the Navy got a General Staff or a Naval Staff at all, and therefore you cannot expect them to have developed that instrument to the perfection we require from it in so short a time. It may be that there is much to be done. We ought not to have such incidents as the escape, and the absence of means of pursuit, of the " Moewe " and the " Emden," and of the presence of so large a squadron as that of Admiral von Spee without proper means of protecting ourselves against it. Those were possibilities which should have been thought out and worked out by the Naval Staff between the end of 1911 and the beginning of the war. But the time was obviously very short in which to do it and the organisation of the Navy was somewhat old-fashioned. Any of your Lordships who want proof of that have only to turn to Lord Jellicoe's book on the subject, in which he sums up various things which he thinks were not thought out.

But I am not here to ask your Lordships' attention to that. I make the noble Marquess a present, as I have said, of the desirability of Singapore as a base in the abstract, granting that it will give complete command and domination of the Pacific, if that be a desirable thing, and I also make a present of the battleship principle. But what I am concerned about is the question why that is a necessity. I use the word deliberately. We have no money at this time. We have little enough left, as I shall show presently, and the demand of the Air Force is a much more urgent demand than any naval demand which is in existence just now. There are other demands besides. There is the demand for money for housing, there is the demand for money for education, and there is the demand for money for public health.

The noble Marquess casually mentioned, in an easy-going way, a sum of £10,500,000 to be expended upon the Singapore base. I will assume—it is a rather sanguine assumption—that £10,500,000 will be the limit of the expenditure. For my own part, looking back to the experience of the past, I do not believe that it will be. But I will assume that £10,500,000 is to be the expenditure. It is said, in the comfortable and easy-going way that Admirals have when they meet a group of friendly Members of Parliament in the Committee rooms of the other House, as they did the other day: " Oh, it will be very small at first, only a couple of hundred thousand to begin with." And perhaps that will be diminished by the generous gift from the Malay Straits, to which the noble Marquess alluded. Then the next year it is not to be very much. But I am thinking of the year after that. By that time, for the construction of this naval base, it will not be a question of hundreds of thousands of pounds, but it will be a question of millions of pounds. Then we shall be told: "You have no discretion. We have committed ourselves;. We have promised the Admiralty to find the money, and we have entered into contracts which involve us. We cannot, without moral, and probably also legal, delinquency, fail to find the funds."

Where are those funds to come from? Where are we going to get sums of two and three million pounds, and the succeeding million" that will in future have to be found? I do not know whether the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, if he takes part in this debate, will inform us that the Government is going to revert to the policy of borrowing for naval purposes. We used, in the good old days, when we wanted money for the Navy, to borrow it and add the amount to the National Debt, Then came the time at which the conscience of the nation revolted against that, and said: " No, we will put the expenditure down in the Estimates, and the money shall be found and discussed each year." God help the Government, if they have to discuss these sums in years when we are still in the lean condition that we are in to-day, and in which we are called upon to provide money for social improvement.

I remember very well, when the housing policy of the Government only a few months ago was not in the vigorous and flourishing condition that it is now said to be in, what was the position of this great strong Government which had then just taken office. Not only could the Government not gain a seat, but its Ministers were not even re-elected when they tried to get back seats which their appointment to office had rendered vacant. Even this great strong Government showed signs of being hurled out by the breath of democracy. If a short time after this, the Government finds itself in a situation in which it has to say: " We are sorry to tell you that we require £2,000,000 this year for Singapore, and that there can be no money for housing, for education, or for social development beyond the most exiguous amount," what will the country say to that? We have a vast democracy. I think a rather conservative democracy, but a democracy that can be roused to passion. If the democracy is roused to the gusts of passion to which it was last autumn, then God help the Government and God help the Admiralty.

The first thing the Government ought to do is to make out on behalf of the Admiralty that this demand which is being made for the expenditure of £10.500,000 is an imperative demand required by conditions of national safety which cannot be resisted. I am with the noble Marquess now leading the House when he says that for purposes of necessity we must get money somehow. We may have to borrow it, we may have to forego other things, but we have to get it when the case is one of absolute necessity. But is this a case of absolute necessity? I want to analyse this a little more deeply than it appears to have been analysed in the considerations which have been put before us up to now. Why is it that we want this base at Singapore? As I have said already, it would be a nice thing to have if we had an abundance of money, though I am not sure that Singapore is just the best place for the base, but from the strategical point of view I will assume that it was selected on the advice of the Naval War Staff.

What do we need it for? What Power is it that the Admiralty have in view? And is it a Power which we shall be likely to have to fight alone? Any war in the future will be a war in which we shall be more likely to come in alongside other nations than a war in which we shall be alone, but for my part, in the present condition of things, I am very reluctant to consider any war as a kind of possibility which is so practical that it is necessary to put every other necessity of the nation aside in order to provide for it. Do you think that Australia would not be ready to help you to the extent of assisting you to make enlargements of harbours which would take in the great battleships? I am taking the situation in which not what is most convenient and most comfortable is to be considered but what is vitally necessary, because that alone can justify anything approaching the expenditure which is contemplated.

There is a second consideration. You cannot do this, you cannot make a base which is to dominate the Pacific, without moving other nations. I agree with the noble Marquess that the Admiralty have worked this out and find a very slight but sufficient margin of safety from the Washington line. They are within their legal rights, but it is not your legal rights which count most in questions of this kind. What counts most is bringing a new menace into the world: and if you do something for the purpose of dominating the Pacific then you raise a new menace in the world which will receive attention. I am not suggesting that it will mean war, but that it will lead to movements on the part of other Powers is almost inevitable. In that condition of things I want to know on whose advice this proposition, so grave and fraught with such momentous consequences for the rest of their programme in the country, was taken.

I am not without some experience as to how these things happen. The Admiralty is an enterprising Department, which commands public confidence. It may have been said: "We had better have a base at Singapore in order to give confidence to the public." Then it gets a little further, and perhaps the Government is attending to other things and thinking of other things. You may have, and will have, the matter considered in the Defence Committee, but questions are considered in the Defence Committee when they have got a little way on. My experience of the Admiralty is that there is no body more ruthless in holding tight to any promise they can make out to have been given. But the Admiralty is a Department of State, controlled by the Government, and the Government cannot be bound by any promise they have given to the Admiralty. They must reconsider the whole situation de novo, and perhaps the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, will tell us how the Department primarily concerned with great questions of foreign policy, came to think that the chances of war in the Pacific are such as to justify the expenditure which will sweep and mop up everything else. That is my first point.

The second point is this. The case of the Air is one that is much more urgent than this demand for security in the East. People do not realise that we are now a Continental nation. We have no sea frontage. It is a little stretch of sea which can be crossed with the utmost ease, and that will be the case more so as time goes on. Therefore, we are in a new situation. It is not command of the sea that is sufficient, although I do not underestimate it; it is command of the air which is necessary, so far as home defence is concerned. It is all very well for the Prime Minister to say that we are going to increase the number of squadrons and provide a Home Defence Air Force which will be able to take care of us. I entirely approve of that, but when I ask myself what this means, I find that it is a much larger proposition than when it is put merely in a few sentences. What I am insisting on is that it is a pretty big business.

By a great misfortune we have simply destroyed our organisation so far as the Air was concerned since the war. We put an end to it. I do not know why or how, but I suspect that it was because people did not stop to think. Anyhow, the organisation of the Air Force has gone and it has to be developed de novo. I believe it is being developed with the utmost thought and concentration, and that the Government have the advantage of earnest and able men who are giving them assistance in this matter. But my point is that it is not a quick business or a cheap business. To have a proper Air Force you have not only to have your first line but some sort of second line. I do not care for the name territorial in this connection. Yon will have to have skilled people who will develop and expand the first line when it is suffering the fearful depredations which a first line always suffers in case of attack. This will have to be built up, and it is going to cost money. It is a good thing because it will help the national industry of aerial transit and carriage, but still a burden will fall on the Government for a long time, and it will want a good deal of money. I am in favour of that money being spent. My point is that it is the first necessity, and what I want to hear in the course of this discussion is something in the way of figures to show how the Government propose to provide this money and yet raise these millions for Singapore, which is a progressive increase in Estimates year to year.

I hope I have satisfied your Lordships that the Air Force is the urgent, and Singapore the second, consideration. I say nothing of the other factors which come in. We have a very large programme on hand. The Government cannot stand still. I will not call it a Socialist Government as was done the other day, but it is a Government with a large programme of social reform. Pledges have been given which have to be carried out. They all mean money—I hope well spent when it is spent, but they mean money—and how is that money going to be provided? If you go back to borrowing you will have the economists down upon you. If you provide it from Estimates, then when you come to the Income Tax payer he will not be quite so kind to your proposition at Singapore as when you addressed flaming meetings throughout the country and got millions passed by people who had not considered the cost to their own pockets.

To me the situation is a very serious one. I am a detached person; I am not much concerned in the interests of any Party. Causes interest me more than Parties, and I have no desire to injure the position of the Government, or to turn them out. I have risen tonight for the purpose of making; an earnest appeal to them to consider whither they are going. They are going, as it seems to me, into a situation of great peril, and I am afraid they are going rather blindly. The remedy is in their own hands. They must say to the Admiralty: " You must prove your case of the imminent danger of such a conflict as alone could justify the preparations that are now proposed in Singapore; you must prove it before us, you must prove it before the Foreign Office, before the Colonial Office, before the India Office, and before the other Departments concerned; and then the Cabinet as a whole must say that it is satisfied and that the case is made out." It is not enough merely to make a formal statement, because you will have to justify your decision to the constituencies. I foresee a time when, if money is absorbed in the fashion which seems to me to suggest itself strongly, the Government will become very unpopular indeed, and when that time comes there will, I think, be justification for those of us who belong to the Opposiion to raise once more the objections which we now making, and to put them before great popular meetings. In that state of things I think the Government would do well to pause before they commit themselves on this matter and to betake themselves once more to conference with the Admirals with a view to extracting from them what this war is the peril of which justifies this great and momentous step.

VISCOUNT LONG OF WRAXALL

My Lords, I venture to say a word or two on this subject, especially after what has fallen from the noble and learned Viscount who has just sat down. He referred to the Naval Staff as being a somewhat new creation, and thus, I think, suggested that their advice ought to be taken with considerable caution. Otherwise I do not quite see the force of his reference to their creation. I do not quite know what the noble and learned Viscount regards as a new creation, but I may remind your Lordships that the Naval Staff as it now exists at the Admiralty has been in existence for some years.

VISCOUNT HALDANE

Since 1911.

VISCOUNT LONG OF WRAXALL

It was in existence when I went to the Admiralty, which, I am sorry to say, is now something like five or more years ago, and I know from my own experience at that time that this question of Singapore had not only been before the Admiralty for some time but was under the most anxious consideration of the Board of Admiralty and the Naval Staff of my day. I would add something more. Not only were the Admirals, of whom the noble and learned Viscount spoke a" if they were prepared to throw money away with both hands, the distinguished Admirals who formed our Naval Staff, unanimous as to the necessity for Singapore and as to its pressing importance, but their views were held in what I may call an almost passionate manner by those who represented the two great Dominions of Australia and New Zealand. This particular question of the base at Singapore has not only been before the Naval Staff of the Admiralty for a very long time, and before successive Naval Staffs, but in addition it has to my knowledge been the subject of discussion between the representatives of both those great Dominions and the Government here at home, so that whatever may be said for or against, it cannot be urged, as it seemed to me that the noble and learned Viscount was inclined to urge, that the decision is one which has been hastily arrived at and one which is not supported by the very best opinion not only of sailors but of statesmen on this side and on the other side of the British Empire.

It is not for me to say what answer will be given to the question very properly put. If I may venture to say so, by the noble Viscount. I am an old hand, as is the noble and learned Viscount, at Parliamentary warfare and Party warfare, and I listened to his assurance that he is animated by no Party feeling with considerable interest, considering that the last time I had the honour of listening to the noble and learned Viscount he was speaking as the representative in this House of the Labour Party and was giving a very full explanation of their policy. I assume, therefore, that he speaks in the same capacity to-day. So far as the question of the expediency of this expenditure is concerned, this is a question which obviously can be dealt with only by a member of His Majesty's Government. It is clear that the pros and cons have to be weighed, and I agree with the noble and learned Viscount that it is not to-day or to-morrow, but it will probably be in two years' time or more, that the question of expenditure must arise in much larger dimensions, and that it will be a very important question, affecting the position, the popularity and the strength of the Government. I would express a very confident hope that all these points have been considered and that this momentous decision has not been arrived at without taking into account—I will not call them the possibilities but, the certainties to which the noble and learned Viscount referred.

I really rose more to deal with general questions than with the particular question of Singapore. Like the noble and learned Viscount, and like the noble Marquess, who seemed to me to make a most complete and admirable defence of the Board of Admiralty, I agree with those noble Lords and others who are advocating increased expenditure on the Air Force, or at all events the preparation of a larger and, I hope, not less efficient Air Force than we have now. But I am one of those who deprecate more than I can describe to your Lordships this repetition of an attempt to draw comparisons between the provision of an Air Force and the provision of capital ships. I can understand the argument of those who, like some of the determined Peace Party, hold that there should be no-armaments or that the reduction in armaments should be carried to the utmost extreme. That is a position which I understand, though I have no sympathy with it whatever, and I believe that if it were adopted by this country it would be the first and a very long step towards our ultimate ruin. At all events that is a comprehensible policy. But I do not understand the policy of those who, in order to secure, that more money shall be spent upon the Air Force, proceed to throw doubts upon the present decision of the Government and especially upon "hat is known as the capital ship.

I must say that I was amused when I listened to the speech of the noble Viscount who introduced this Motion. He is not in his place now, but I hope he will forgive me for saying what I am going to say in his absence. There are scores of arguments to be found in favour of the policy of abandoning or largely reducing the number of capital ships. But what was the evidence that the noble Viscount sought in support of his argument? He made a series of quotations from a very distinguished Admiral, Sir Percy Scott. At a particular branch of naval work Sir Percy Scott is probably one of the ablest sailors who has ever worn His Majesty's uniform. But good gracious, my Lords, if Sir Percy Scott is to be quoted as an authority in favour of decreasing the importance of the capital ship because he is a sailor, because he is an Admiral, you can produce twenty or thirty of the most distinguished sailors that have ever served or are serving the King to-day who will give precisely the opposite opinion ! Therefore I do not think your Lordships are likely to be very much affected by the fact that on a certain occasion Sir Percy Scott made a declaration, because noble Lords who advocate this policy must remember that Sir Percy Scott is not telling you that you are to abandon this and adopt some other expenditure; his view is that the day of the capital ship has gone.

Then the noble Viscount went on to say that the capital ship is practically of no use in war, because she has got to be accompanied by her complementary ships. If that be true, the capital ship was never of any use, because that statement is no more true to-day than it was before you had the aeroplane. The noble Marquess said, and I can support this from my own knowledge gained at the Admiralty, and from a great deal of information which has reached me since, that it is urged in many quarters that the capital ship ceases to be of real value because she can be destroyed from the air or from beneath the sea. Before the war came to an end, in addition to the fact mentioned by the noble Marquess, that not one capital ship had been destroyed by either of those methods, those who were responsible at the Admiralty and elsewhere for protective methods against attack from below the water and from the air had brought their work almost to completion, and were able to say that if those powers of attack developed the power of defence would equal them.

When I listened to suggestions for further expense, to be met by abandoning the capital ship, I asked myself what did they mean who advocated this policy? What is the capital ship? It is not only essential as the training ground of the Navy, for without the capital ship you can never make the personnel of the Navy what it is to-day, and what it must be if the Navy is to be effective; but it is something more. It is the great gun platform which in war commands the whole destiny and future of the fight. It is from the big ship that the big guns are fired which can sink ships of less power before they can get near enough to the big ships to use their guns. You may hold that the day of the big ship has gone, and say that we should think only in terms of aeroplanes and submarines, but the abandonment of the big ship policy has not been adopted by any other Power in the world. If those who believe in this policy believe that the Navy can be scrapped, and that you can depend in future solely upon the Air Force, and upon possibly a certain number of submarines, that is a definite policy and they should so propose it, but do not, under cover of a desire to increase the Air Force, suggest a policy which would be absolutely fatal. I believe that the Government have made the reductions in the Navy which were necessary for reasons of economy. I regret that more than I can say, but they had to be made. I believe, to use a vulgar expression, that they have got down to the bone, and I believe that if they go further in reducing the Navy they will run a very grave risk. Whatever reduction they may have to make, so long as they retain a Navy, I hope and believe that they will make it their business to see that, in regard to the big ship, no step is taken which will render our Navy worthless as the means of keeping us mistress of the seas.

One other word. I know that this country has always rather prided itself upon taking a line different in many respects from that of other countries. It is a remarkable fact that in this air question what we do is to adopt a policy for the Air Force which is not adopted anywhere else. When I was First Lord it was my business to go, amongst other places, to Paris, and to have a long interview with the Minister of Marine and other Ministers who accompanied him at the interview. I shall never forget the emphatic manner in which the Minister of Marine, and his advisers, declared that nothing would induce them ever to abandon the right to have their own Air Force for the French Navy, which they could control. Every other country which has a Navy and an Air Force has done the same. I said a few nights ago that I am as strongly in favour of an increase of our Air Force as anybody in this House or outside it, but I believed that you would get not only efficiency, without which nothing is of any avail, but also considerable economy, if you were able to arrive at a settlement of this question which has been so long discussed between the different Departments and by the Committee of Imperial Defence, as to what shall be the allocation of powers and duties as between the Navy and the Army on the one side and the Air Force on the other. I believe that that would secure economy, and I am satisfied that it would secure efficiency. I know that I am speaking the view of most experienced Admirals at present advising His Majesty, or on active service, when I say that this is the remedy that they would recommend alike for the provision of an increased Air Force and for greater economy in that provision

I realise that this is really not germane to this debate, and I only mention it because I believe that this is the direction which reform should take if we want at once to strengthen our Air Force as a whole, and to reduce its cost. Of course, as we know from figures which have been given, the French Air Force is much stronger than ours, but in France you have compulsory service, whereas here you have voluntary service.

There are other considerations upon which I will not now enter, but I want to say this one word further: I notice on this occasion, as I have noticed on previous occasions, that certain references have been made to the Naval Staff at the Admiralty, as if they were a young and inexperienced body, and as if they were something really different from what they really are. I venture to say that the naval advisers of the Crown throughout our history have constituted some of the ablest and most distinguished of those who serve the Crown. We have had many strong Boards of Admiralty, which have included the names of many great sailors, but I believe that we never have had a better combination for this purpose of staff work than we have had since the war at the Board of Admiralty. The staff of the Board of Admiralty is not precisely the same to-day as it was when I left the Admiralty, but how has it been recruited? It has been recruited, from the First Sea Lord downwards, from men who came straight from their ships, straight from the experiences gained in the war, men who played great and distinguished parts in the war, and who brought to the Admiralty the very latest information as to the way in which naval battles have been fought and are likely to be fought, and as to the needs to-day of the Navy for fighting our battles.

Therefore, whether you are prepared to accept their views or not, I hope that it will be recognised that the Government of the day have got in the Naval Staff—I hold no brief for them, for they are well able to defend themselves—a body of men whom I know to-day in their work, and whom we all knew when they were serving afloat during the war, a body of men who can be relied upon to give you the best and shrewdest and most experienced advice. And I assure your Lordships that there is no more complete illusion than the one I so often hear that the sailor's experience and ability ends with his own profession, and that he has not thought of what the cost of his recommendations will be. I have presided over many meetings of the Board of Admiralty, and I can safely say that that is a ludicrous description of the sailor sitting in Whitehall. He knows perfectly well not only that his policy must be capable of defence on all grounds, and when challenged by other Departments, but that he is not justified in asking for money unless ho can at the same time justify the expenditure of every farthing of it on national grounds.

THE EARL OF BIRKENHEAD

My Lords, I rise to trouble your Lordships for a very few moments, and I may perhaps be excused as I have taken some interest in this air question. No one will dispute the high tribute which the noble Viscount who has just sat down has paid to the Board of Admiralty. It would, indeed, be eloquent of unwise selection if, at any given moment, the Government did not succeed in accumulating at the Admiralty and on the Board the best naval brains that could be discovered in the nation. That circumstance and that admission, freely made, do not, of course, in matters of strategy, render it any the less necessary to examine their conclusions. It has always been true, roughly speaking, that at a given moment the best naval experience is to be found collected at that Board, and yet there still exists—as might be usefully remembered by the noble Marquess, who, I thought, spoke in a tone of somewhat kindly admonishment to the noble Viscount who introduced this question—somewhere in the archives of the Admiralty or elsewhere, a Memorandum by a former Board of Admiralty proving, with the most scientific profusion of argument, illustrated even by the science of trigonometry, that it was absolutely impossible that steel ships, either now or at any other time, could float. This was a highly technical matter, well within the competence of naval experts, and I only recall it now because it is very necessary that we should remember that Parliament and Governments ought not always to accept the more recommendations of experts where very important points of policy arise.

I am not going to take a side on the Singapore controversy, but I listened to the speech made by the noble and learned Viscount who sits behind me, and it left upon my mind an impression which I can very shortly state. It was that there is at least a case which requires the deepest consideration as to whether we are justified, in relation to this now naval base, in contemplating an expenditure so considerable (however it may be distributed) as £10,500,000. It may well be that there is a case. It may well be that that case has been established. And I, like the noble Viscount who has just spoken, am impressed by the view of the experts, and I understand it to be the view also of the Committee of Imperial Defence. But I do not rise to examine, to-night, either the arguments which relate to Singapore or the arguments which relate to the value and the durability in modern maritime warfare of the capital ship. I rise for a different purpose, and it is to point out that the form of debate is not really a very useful one which determines the merits of a case for expenditure in relation to one of the fighting Services by establishing a comparison with the rate of expenditure upon the other fighting Services. It is an unscientifie method of examination. It can only be justified if we were driven to this necessity: that we had to ear-mark X pounds and say that is all that we can spend whatever the emergency of future developments. We might, if our financial situation were so unfortunate, be driven to this necessity, but no sensible person would ever consent to take part in the discussion upon that basis except with the knowledge that he was driven by circumstances to a decision and a method which were alike unsound and indefensible.

And therefore I say nothing more about the Army, except this, that I am absolutely satisfied that no further economy of any substantial kind at all is practicable in relation to the Army without altogether diminishing its value to us. I speak with some knowledge on this point, because I sat for many weeks upon the Cabinet Committee which suggested sweeping reductions in the Army, and it was my fortune upor many points, both in dealing with the Army and in dealing with the Navy and the Air Force, to differ from the Geddes recommendations, and, with the help of others, I was able to procure very substantial modifications of those proposals. But of this I am sure—that you will never be able to effect any very great reduction, any substantial reduction, in the expenditure upon the Army unless and until the whole world situation alters for the better. And I see no signs whatever of the world situation at this moment so altering for the better.

I have nothing to add to what has been said about Singapore. I think that the primary responsibility for that must obviously rest with the Navy. And I observe that even the noble and learned Viscount appeared to admit that it would be an advantage to have this base at Singapore. He said that if we could afford it no doubt it would be a great advantage, and that admission seemed to me to dispose of much of the argument of the noble and learned Viscount when he insisted that perhaps we were starting some new race and some new competitive standard for maritime expenditure in the Pacific. If it, indeed, be the fact that if the financial circumstances permit it would be an advantage to us to have this base, then obviously the answer to the question depends entirely upon what is the weight and the authority of the naval opinion given to the Government and the strategical answer to this proposition which has been made by the Committee of Imperial defence and the Cabinet which is ultimately responsible.

I have one further word to add, and that is upon the question of the Air Force. I have already deprecated the propriety of an estimate of our expenditure upon the Air in reference to other expenditure. I cannot help noticing that the noble Lord. Lord Gorell, has upon the Notice Paper a very interesting Motion which deals with this topic. My noble friend. I understand, if it is convenient to your Lordships, intends to follow me in this debate, and I shall not anticipate what he will say, but the two topics, while they contain much that does not relate to one another, evidently contain much which can and ought to be considered at the same time. The purpose of the noble Viscount who moved in the present discussion was to say you must spend more upon the Air, and you must spend less upon the Navy and upon the Army. The purpose of my noble friend who is to speak, and possibly to move, next, is to say this in effect:—" While I agree that some increase in the Air Force is necessary, at the same time I lay stress upon the immense importance of economy, and I recommend that further representations Shall be made to foreign countries in order that by agreement we may procure some diminution in the actual and threatened expenditure upon the Air."

Let me make this observation upon the immediate Motion, because it does covet-by anticipation and, I think, without irrelevance, some of the points which are contained in the Motion of my noble friend who is to follow me. The real truth is that whatever our financial circumstances are we cannot afford to fall short in that duty which the Government declared the other day in relation to the Air. We only have to ask ourselves this' question: What is it, in terms of insurance, that this expenditure, great as undoubtedly it is, amounts to? What is it, in relation to the capital valu" of the interest which it safeguards and which it alone, acting together with the Fleet, can safeguard? The amount of the expenditure, if it is measured in that calculation, is almost pitifully small.

The noble and learned Viscount who sits behind me (Viscount Haldane) said that he did not know why, after the war, we had dissipated the Air Force. The memory of the noble and learned Viscount must be short indeed. Give me leave in the first place to point out that, while I have already admitted in this House that I would gladly have seen more strength preserved in the Air and struggled, so far as my province was concerned in such matters, to obtain a larger strength—while that is true, it is not true that we dissipated the whole of the Air Force. It is not true that we did not leave in existence the nucleus from which, under such intelligent co-operation as has taken place to-day a great force can be swiftly created and almost improvised. It is not true that we did not maintain the training centres and all those indispensable arrangements without which the cadre of a force is irretrievably lost.

May I remind your Lordships, in a moment, of another point of history which I presume that very few retain in their minds? Had the Geddes recommendations, which were introduced to and received by the country with so much enthusiasm, been accepted in relation to the Air without amendment by the Cabine Committee and subsequently by the Government, I say that many of the valuable training establishments which now exist and upon which we now depend would have disappeared and the recreation of our strength in the Air would have been rendered a task of infinitely greater difficulty. I have beheld with sympathy and with admiration the efforts which have been made and are being made by the present Air Ministry, in the very difficult situation which they have inherited, to make adequate provision for the safety of these islands. It seems to; me that by propaganda work, enterprise, and organisation they have made the most of very inadequate material. The time has come when they must be more fully equipped with everything which constitutes a strong Air Force. It is of no use deluding ourselves as to the realities of the actual world situation.

It is of no use forgetting that persuasiveness in all diplomacy marches hand in hand with reliance and adequacy in defence. To make this statement is entirely unprovocative. It is made without challenging protest, in the Par liament of every country in the world. It was made in the plainest possible terms in a debate which lately took place in the Parliament of one of our Allies. And, human nature being what it is, and the teaching's of history in this regard never varying, you cannot avoid this conclusion, that the whole difference between a great nation and a small nation, between an influential nation and an un-influential nation, does not lie in the geographical area over which its influence or its government extends; it lies and it lies only in its power to protect itself and to defend itself if unreasonable demands are made upon it. In no other terms since the dawn of the world has the strength of nations been measured, and in "no other terms by the ultimate analysis, until a very different Laague of Nations has achieved very different results, will national greatness be measured. No opulence no prosperity in commerce, can take the place of those simple gifts by which, throughout the ages, the decline and the fall, the waxing and the waning of great Empires has been determined.

For this reason, the moment it was an established fact that another great nation on the Continent of Europe had no intention of ceasing in any way to maintain vast armaments in the air, without nourishing, as we were aware and we are glad to believe, any aggressive intentions against this country, it nevertheless was plain that vast armaments in the air were in fact to be maintained. We are concerned only in facts. We have nothing to do with intentions, nor can we any more accept good intentions, though we question not their sincerity at all. We can no more accept them, or afford to accept them, than we could afford to accept the expression of good intentions in any question of maritime supremacy in the days that lie behind us in order that the wishes of Great Britain in Europe or in the world might be considered. Not that we assert any domination in the councils of Europe or the world: but we claim that we should be entitled, when serious issues are in debate with which we are obviously deeply concerned, that our representations and our views shall receive that degree of attention to which our greatness and the part which we have played in the past in the world entitle us.

By whatever terms you measure the strength of nations, in those terms this country must continue to be strongly represented. That is why I listened with such extraordinary pleasure to the decision of the Government, as I heard it announced by the noble Marquess, Lord Curzon, in this House a few days ago. The vital part of that message did not lie in the statement of any particular expenditure that was contemplated, still less did it lie in the enumeration of any particular number of pounds that were to be spent in a given year. The pregnant part of that message was contained in the sentence which laid it down in dignified and unprovoeative language, that it was the policy of this Government to ensure that the defences of this nation should be strong enough to protect the country against the Air strength of any nation which was within striking distance in the air. That policy covers and embraces everything, Nor is it, I think, necessarily one that need be resented by my noble friend Lord Gorell. He has said, and said truly in his Motion that which I have no doubt he will say more elaborately in a moment—that no art or occasion should be neglected to convince every other country in the world of our readiness to enter into agreements by which this costly and competitive expenditure might be averted. It has been plainly said by the Government, it has been plainly raid, I think, by the Prime Minister in another place, that we will most readily and most gladly make any arrangement with any country in the world which is spending great sums upon armaments in the air with a view of effecting mutual reductions. But, of course, that mutuality of reduction must in its turn depend upon the maintenance of the principle already laid down by the Government.

If my noble friend thinks that by making some still further communication to France or to any other country at this moment we could procure such a mutual process of reduction—well, he is entitled to his view. I do not happen to share it; but I have not the slightest doubt that the noble Marquess, when he replies to this debate, will state in the most formal manner that we will give encouragement to any such proposal if we receive on our part the slightest encouragement for supposing that it may help if we make suggestions. I have no doubt that this Government, or any other Government in this country, will immediately indicate its willingness, and indeed its strong desire, to enter into such discussions. This matter is one which, unless adjusted in some such manner, is likely to involve us in grave anxieties for many years, and in an expenditure which, in relation to our financial circumstances, must be pronounced not inconsiderable, if, indeed, we are committed to it. Let us, without saying over much about it, none the less make up our minds that when the test is put upon us in these difficult days to maintain a vital arm upon which the security of the country depends, we shall not show less resolution or less determination than was shown by those who went before us when they were concerned in their day and generation first with naval strength, and secondly with military strength.

LORD GORELL had the fallowing Notice on the Paper:—

To call attention to the recent decision of His Majesty's Government to increase the Royal Air Force and to move to resolve. That, whilst the House admits the necessity for an increase in the air defences of this country, it views with alarm the further burden of expenditure upon armaments, and calls upon His Majesty's Government to take immediate steps to co-operate with other Governments with a view to its limitation.

The noble Lord said: My Lords, as the noble and learned Earl has just said, it may be convenient, as the subject of the Motion which I have placed upon the Paper, though not strictly the same, is nevertheless very cognate to the Motion of which Notice was given by my noble friend, if I make my remarks upon my Motion now and put the Motion formally afterwards. It will enable the noble Marquess to reply to both together. I would like, first of all to refer to the supplementary answer given by the noble Marquess the Leader of the House to the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Haldane, on the day when he first made the announcement of the Government's decision. The noble and learned Viscount called attention to the fact that the noble Marquess had mentioned the Army, the Navy and the. Air Force, and asked whether we were to deduce from the statement of the Government that there were to be three. Forces. The reply of the noble Marquess was that this was a matter which was still under examination.

I think that before we express our satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the action of the Government we are entitled to know a little more clearly what they mean. Are they going to take away with one hand what they are giving with the other? The question of the integrity of the Air Force was settled, as far as anything can be settled, last year. Of course, one understands that no Government can bind its successors, but the whole matter after it had been exhaustively examined for two or three years was made the subject of a formal pronouncement on the part of Mr. Lloyd. George's Government by Mr. Austen Chamberlain in the House of Commons. I would like to ask why the matter is still under examination. What new factors have come in, and what is known now with relation to the air and the sea which was not known last year?

it is perfectly true that the basis of inquiry has shifted. Originally it was a plain demand for the splitting up again of the Air Fore. Now it takes the form of the demand of the Navy for the Naval Air Wing, but the principle is the same had occasion, when speaking last year on this subject, to point, out that the Navy have complete operational control of all Air units serving with them, and though it sounds extremely specious that the Navy should have their own Air Wing I want, if the Government are prepared to answer the questions I am directing at them on this subject, to point out that there is no stopping place. We have heard a great deal of naval air and military air, and other absurdities of that kind in this discussion. There is one air just the same as there is one sea, and it is perfectly impossible to draw a line of demarcation as to which part of the air shall be given to the Navy and the rest of (he air to the Air Force. Everybody who has had any experience of the Air Force knows that perfectly well, and I venture to say also that all the naval authorities know it quite well; in fact, one of their protagonists in your Lordships' House, Lord Vernon last year stated that the basis of their action was to endeavour to lift the Navy into the air. There can be no dividing line.

For example, if there is to be a Naval Wing who is to have responsibility for the coast defences of this country? At present that rests with the Royal Air Force. Who is to have responsibility for the air defences of Malta, and who again is to have responsibility for the air defences of the dock that you are now going to create at Singapore? It is impossible to come to any conclusion as to what the decision of the Government means if, in fact, under the cover of strengthening the Air Force they are really going to split it up into three—that is to say, to substitute for one efficient force three that must be weak and inefficient. The noble Viscount, Lord Long, stated that so far as his experience, which is very great on this subject, went, duality would be less expensive than the present system. The whole experience of the war goes quite definitely to prove the reverse. I may remind your Lordships that the most striking indictment that was ever drawn up against that dual system was drawn up by the noble Marquess the Leader of the House, and one may hope that at any rate he will not be a party to going back in any shape or form to a system which he himself has so radically condemned.

That is very germane to consideration of the Government's decision but it is not the main theme, to which I will now pass without delay. I do not wish to say anything as to the general scheme of the increase. The announcement is rather vague, and so far as I can gather—no doubt the noble Marquess will tell us more the general scheme is one that is based upon that which was worked out under the predecessors of the present Government—that is to say, the plan for the territorial expansion and to rest, it as far as possible upon a healthy civilian aircraft industry. With that I am necessarily totally in agreement, and I have no words of criticism to offer upon it. I think it unnecessary at this stage to endeavour to argue at all the necessity for the increase. The figures which have been given in this debate, and were given by the noble Duke in March last to your Lordships' House, speak entirely for themselves.

I would only draw attention to the fact that within the last few days there have been speeches in apparently responsible quarters denying that there is any necessity whatever. I even see that the decision was " the outcome of a capitalist stunt. I do think that there is great danger of speakers in more or less responsible positions treating audiences as if they were quite as ignorant as the speakers themselves, because that is not a statement of opinion, it is a definite and deliberate misrepresentation of facts which could be very easily proved. I, therefore, do not propose to give the figures of the strengths of different Air Forces, but I would like to give some figures with relation to the financial side. The expenditure of our great neighbour and Ally, in 1920, was 333,000,000 francs on Air strength, and in 1923, apart from any subsequent additions, it was 617,000.000 francs. The inference I draw from that is that the French have come to an earlier appreciation of Air power than ourselves, and I think they are absolutely right. They are paying twice as much attention to the power of the Air now as they were three years ago.

Our figures arc on a correspondingly falling scale. For 1919 and 1920 they were £22,900,000, and in 1923, £12,000,000, plus the addition necessitated by the recent increase. That is to say, while the French have paid twice as much attention to Air power, we, so far as financial figures arc concerned, have paid only half the attention. The noble and learned Earl described as dignified and unprovocative the words of the Government's announcement. They laid down clearly a principle of policy. I do not know whether the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, will be able to explain a little more what they mean. I should like to ask whether it is the decision of the Government that the increase is sufficient to meet that principle or whether we are to accept the decision as in the nature of a first instalment of increase.

It need hardly be said, though it is perhaps just as well to say it, that in nothing we say are we actuated in any sense by a spirit of rivalry with our great neighbour and Ally. I have taken the trouble to notice, as far as I can, the comment of our neighbours on the decision announced by His Majesty's Government. I suppose that in no country is any comment upon any action of a neighbour unified, but I have been struck on the whole with the sense which our comradeship together in the war enabled them to know that in the British people there is a very definite absence of the spirit of aggression. Perhaps the best example of French comment upon the Government's decision are the words spoken by M. Flandin at the end of the International Air Congress on June 30. M. Flandin is not merely one the best known authorities on the Air, he is also a very good friend to this country. This is what he said:— Our most ardent wish is that you may be spared the criticisms and expressions of frowning wonder to which we" were subjected when taking exactly the same step.''

In other words, he looked forward to an alliance in Air power such as distinguished us on land in the war. His concluding words are words which we should do well to ponder. What is " the same step "? We, in this country, are increasing our Air Fore. Our French neighbours have also shown great and increasing appreciation of Air power. I understand that the United States of America is also paying more attention to this question.

In what direction are those steps tending? With that question in my mind I put down on the Order Paper a Resolution which, to some extent, is a double Resolution because it seems to me that, the problems involved are double. I most heartily agree with the noble and learned Earl when he said that the first duty of the Government was "insurance,'' another word, and perhaps a better word, than "defence." It is quite obvious that defence is the first duty, under cover of which all other duties may be performed. But there is a second duty, and I cannot find a single word which expresses it better than " economy." Bat it is a much wider duty than that. One realises that in all these matters it is essential that the state of the world should be taken into account, and that it is idle to pass Resolutions which, when they were passed at a conference the other day, were described as " meaningless heroics." It is well that we and other nations should pause and consider the direction in which the world is once more tending.

I take our figures on armaments in 1913–14, just before the war. They were £77, 000,000. In 1919–20 they were £585,400,000; figures grossly swollen by the cost of demobilisation and war liabilities. For this year the figure is £122,000,000. plus such additions as may be necessitated by the recent decision of the Government with regard to an increase in our Air power. That is at least £45,000,000 more than we were expending on armaments before the war, leaving out of consideration all expenditure in the next ten years on the dock at Singapore. One feels a certain spirit of dismay creeping over one when one hears, first, from the noble and learned Earl that he sees no hope of reduction anywhere, and from the noble Marquess who spoke on behalf of the Admiralty—let me say that I thought his speech provided as good an argument based on the inability of the Admiralty to understand Air power as I have ever heard—that in no consideration can Air power be regarded as an alternative to sea power. Some of es had hoped that in that direction there might be some chance of reducing expenditure.

The main points I wish to make are that our expenditure on armaments is now greater than before the war; that the war has definitely exploded the old aphorism Si vis pucem, para bellum. And the power of the air now and in the future is as yet hardly realised. In the last war, whenever there was a raid—I am speaking not only of this country but of other countries as well—there was a practical stoppage of industrial life for twelve hours. It took that time before the workers could be got back to their work, before machines could he re-started, and before trains could run again. That is the experience of the power of the air at a time when it was still in its infancy, and it is perfectly certain that if, and when, there should ever be another great war the power of the air will not be exercised spasmodically but continuously. And with the lessons of the war before us one knows only too well the temptation, if any country has a great power whether on land, on sea, or in the air, to see how well it will work and let loose that, power somewhere upon some one.

Therefore, I again ask the question which the noble and learned Viscount asked from a financial point of view, but I ask it in a very much wider sense: Quo Vadis? In which direction is the world going now on the whole question of armaments? I notice that the noble and learned Earl, whose recent interest in the air since freed from the burden of office we welcome very much, speaking at Derby the other day, after the announcement of the Government decision, said he was not quite clear whether the decision meant that the Government were adhering to a one-Power standard. It is obvious that in all human matters there must be some relation between what one does and what one's neighbour dues. But have we really come to this, that after the war which was to teach us so much we are once again to see re-emerging the old formulæ of rivalry and competition? We all know the world's experience of what it means to talk about one-Power and two-Power standards, and we are once again confronted with the expenditure of many millions upon armaments. Is it to be said of us, in the old phrase attributable to the Bourbons, that we are forgetting nothing, nothing of ail that scientific progress in gas and other means of destruction, and remembering nothing, nothing of all the sacrifices and burdens?

It is for that reason that I have placed this Resolution upon the Paper, and I have worded it with some care because I wish definitely to avoid that very easy task, especially easy in opposition, of calling upon the Government to achieve the impossible. A resolution was passed at the Labour Party Conference calling upon the Government to summon an international air conference to abolish by agreement all armaments, air and otherwise. It is very easy to call a conference. Anybody can do it, just as they can call spirits from the vasty deep, but it is perfectly obvious that to invite the Government now to call an international conference with such an object is totally impracticable and does not take into consideration the state of Europe. I doubt very much also whether those who spoke upon that resolution had ever really studied their subject.

There was no sign that any speaker had made himself aware of the report of the Committee on Aircraft of the Washington Conference. That Committee, as many of your Lordships will know, came to an unanimous finding. It was, in a sense, only a side issue of the main Conference, but a good many nations, including ourselves, were represented on that Committee. The finding was that: The Committee is of the opinion that it is not at present practicable to impose any effective limitation upon the numbers or characteristics of aircraft, either commercial or military. I do not wish to be in the position of one who invites the Government to do something, of the difficulties of which he is clearly in ignorance. That Committee, whose Report is open to all to read, drew attention to the inseparable connection between commercial aeronautics and the development of a nation's Air power, and decided that it was impossible to limit Air power effectively without limiting civil aviation, which would be undesirable in the interests of intercommunication and peace. That opinion was adopted by the Conference. A note, however, was attached by the Italian representative to which I would draw the attention of the noble Marquess. He states that he did not share the objection of his colleagues in that he felt that it was possible to place a limit upon the number of pilots.

I would make this further suggestion, because I think in a matter of this difficulty it is one's duty to be as constructive as possible. It is very easy to convert a commercial aeroplane into a bombing machine, though the battle machine bears the same relation to the commercial machine as the battleship to the merchant ship. It is possible, however, to place a limit upon the training. It is obvious that unless one limits civil aviation altogether there will be large numbers of men, increasingly large as this means of communication increases, who will be flying regularly over certain well-known routes, safely guarded and with all those appliances of security and all those landmarks which are now regulated by international agreement. But it is a very different matter to fly by night over uncharted routes in conditions of great danger, and still more to perform all those marvellous feats of airmanship to which the Royal Air Force have accustomed us. It is not a quick process, nor can it be secret, to train war pilots. I venture to suggest therefore that this is one avenue which demands further exploration on the part of any Government that genuinely desires to see a limitation of Air armament. One cannot say that, difficult as the matter is, it has yet been by any means fully explored.

I have included the words " immediate steps " in the Resolution which I shall have to move later because the Government in announcing their decision expressed their intention, if and when the opportunity occurred, of co-operating with other nations with a view to limiting armaments. We want something more than that. We want a definite statement from them that they will make it their unceasing aim. I do not desire to tie the hands of the Government by that form of words. They have channels of communication denied to others by which they can tell when and how means may best be taken. But unless some steps are taken, with this great and increasing menace from the air coming over the world more and more—and it is not a case of what may be but of what must be if the Air Navies of the world are allowed to develop—we shall see a deadlier race of armaments than we have ever seen hitherto, and one cannot believe that, with this development threatening civilisation—and it will do no less—the Government can remain supine. We call upon the Govern merit, therefore, unequivocally to make plain their intention to spare no effort in this direction, and in that spirit and in that spirit alone I placed my Resolution upon the Paper.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

My Lords, I am sure your Lordships will forgive me if at this hour of the, afternoon I do net attempt to go into some of the details which have been raised by successive speakers. I recognise to the full the, difficulties to which my noble friend, the noble Viscount, Lord Long, referred as to arranging the relations between the Army and the Navy on this subject, and the noble Lord who has just sat down also referred to that point. It would be in the highest degree inconvenient if I were to pronounce any opinion upon it, for it is still under discussion. The only thing I will say is that I rather deprecate the view taken by the noble Lord that it is a very simple matter. He seemed to think that everybody was agreed. If he had had the opportunities which I have had during the last few weeks he would have found that there is no subject in connection with this great question upon which people so profoundly differ. Nevertheless, the Government must, of course, come to a decision upon it, and I confess frankly to the House that I am disappointed that. I have not been able to announce sooner what that decision is. The difficulties have been very great, and I must ask for a little more indulgence in that respect.

Let me come to the larger points which have been raised. The noble Lord who has just sat down is, like all of us—this was apparent from his speech—torn between the conflicting demands of national defence and national economy. The whole of the first part of his speech was directed towards increases for the purpose of national defence, and of the latter part of his speech to deprecating undue expenditure in the interests of national economy. We must face it. The two things are not altogether compatible. Some compromise must be drawn somewhere. The line must be fixed, and I do not think we gain anything by ignoring the difficulties which lie in our way. This much may be said, but it is little more than has already been announced in this House and in another place, in the declaration of the Government upon Air policy, that our objective must be to render this country strong enough to hold her own against any Power within striking distance of tin's country, and we are taking the steps open to us to bring about that result, but of course we bear in mind the heavy expenditure that that involves. That difficulty besets us just as it besets the noble Lord, and I must say that I thought it very unkind of the noble Viscount, who opened the, proceedings, to say that I had lightly swept away all considerations of economy on the ground that we had plenty of money. I do not recognise it, that account of my speech the least resemblance to anything that I have ever said. On the contrary, I began on the last opportunity that I had of answering the noble Viscount by congratulating him upon his economical tendencies, and by adopting them as those of the Government and of myself

It is, of course, fundamental that we have to consider economy. How easy policy would be if you had not to consider economy. Why, it would be the simplest thing in the world. Anybody could run the Empire if he did not have to think of money. But you must think of it, and especially must you think of it now. Every pound that we spend unnecessarily does an injury to the country, and a very deep injury, and you may take it from me that in the proposals which we, have made for the expansion of Air power we have not exaggerated one iota beyond the necessities of the case. If anything, we have erred by not going far enough—certainly not by going too far. That is the case. I do not want your Lordships to give too much weight to the figures, which I think were exaggerated, which the noble Lord who has just sat down gave, as to the comparative expenditure before the war and now. I may have misunderstood him. I do not quarrel with the actual figures that he gave, but it must be remembered that in comparing the expenditure of the joint Services now, with what it was before the war, you have to take into consideration the fact, for one thing, that we are spending already £10,000,000 more on the Air Service than we were before the war—1 mean without the expansion which the Government are now proposing. You also have to take into account the difference in the value of money, reflected in the difference of pay and the difference in pensions. If you make all those deductions you will find that the resulting difference, between what was spent before the war and what we are spending now, is comparatively small. I only say that because I do not want it to go out to the country that these gigantic differences exist. In one way they do, but if you analyse the figures the real difference is very much smaller than would appear.

I turn now to say one word about the attack which the noble Viscount who opened the debate, followed by the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Haldane, made upon what I may call the Singapore policy. I do not think it is necessary for me, after what he perhaps will allow mo to call the very admirable speech which the noble Marquess who represents the Admiralty made this evening, to enter into a defence of the use and necessity of capital ships. The noble Viscount did not quite say that he did not want capital ships at all, although he hinted at it but the noble and learned Viscount, who knows the subject very intimately, was clearly of opinion that sea power was essential, and he did not question that sea power, according to the best technical advice open to the Government, is absolutely tied up with the maintenance of capital ships. Well, if it is the case that you must maintain sea power, and that you must maintain the capital ships—if, in a word, you must maintain a fleet and a Navy as heretofore, you must make it useable. What is the good of continuing a fleet which you cannot use? What grosser extravagance can there be than to have this enormous expenditure upon the personnel and materiel of the Navy, and yet be unable to use them?

The noble and learned Viscount thought he had put the Government in a dilemma when he asked: "Against whom are you gong to use the Fleet in the Far East?" A very easy question to put, but a very difficult one to answer discreetly. But I will answer him by asking him another question. Against whom does he propose to use the Fleet in home waters? He himself explained to your Lordships that the German sea power had disappeared. Against whom would he maintain the Fleet? He did not propose to scrap the Fleet, but upon his argument you ought to get rid of the Fleet altogether. It is very expensive. It stops education and sanitary reform, which the noble and learned Viscount mentioned to us as being vitally important, and I say this, that if you are looking at the question from the point of view of statesmen who regard not the present only but the future, and who wish to ensure not only against certain danger but possible accident, the Fleet is just as important in the Far East as in home waters, and if he cannot find an answer to my question, neither am I bound to give publicly an answer to his.

No, my Lords, the Fleet is essential. The noble and learned Viscount says we have a democracy. That is true, but we have an Empire, too, and we have to treat our democracy with candour and fairness, and to tell them that they have to make provision for the defence of our Empire. We are going to meet, a few-months hence, the Prime Ministers of all the great Dominions of the Crown, and amongst others the Prime Ministers of Australia and of New Zealand. What do you suppose they would say if we said to them: " We propose to render the Fleet impotent in all the waters which wash your shores "? It is quite evident that they would say that if Great Britain is unable to provide for the defence of these great Dominions, and for all the trade which passes to and fro, she is unfit to have Dominions at all. It is part of our fundamental obligation to provide defence for all our Dominions. I think my noble friend Lord Linlithgow said that a very valuable contribution was going to be made by the Dominion of New Zealand. That is an example which I hope may be followed, and I need not tell your Lordships that any contribution from the great Dominions will be received by us with gratitude, not merely because of its pecuniary value, but because of the great spirit of comradeship, and interdependence and responsibility which we are proud to acknowdedge. That is our answer about Singapore.

Then I come to the second part of the noble Lord's speech, the part in which he urged us to do everything we could for economy. We arc doing so. And I speak now, not as the representative merely of this Government, but as the representative of the Government of this country irrespective of Party, and irrespective of the particular Ministers who happen to be in office. We are doing our utmost. Look at the Washington Treaty. That was a splendid example of a determination to limit naval armaments. I am delighted, as your Lordships arc delighted, to see that the French Government are taking the steps which arc necessary to ratify that Treaty. I think that is a matter of most profound satisfaction on every ground. When we think of other polities, to which I shall not refer now, but which will be referred to to-morrow, and the differences of opinion which have arisen between us, it is a great satisfaction to the Government and to your Lordships to find that, in this great department of public policy, we hold, as we have held all along, the cordial support of the French Government. That is a great testimony to the desire of Great Britain in the direction of the limitation of armaments.

But it is not, of course, confined to the Navy. We have reduced the Army, reduced it to the last point that is safe. I think the noble and learned Viscount-said so. At any rate, it is quite true. My noble friend the Secretary of State for War staled in his place the other night that we had gone to the extreme limit, and he was speaking, as I am sure your Lordships realised, for the whole Government when he said so, and that we could go no further in the reduction of the fighting forces of the Army. What is true of the Navy and what is true of the Army we would like to be true of the Air Service, and that was why we placed in the formal declaration which my noble friend and the Prime Minister made to Parliament the other day, that assurance that we were ready and anxious, following on the lines of the Washington Treaty and applying it to the Air Service, to co-operate to the utmost of our power with foreign Governments in limiting the Air armaments of the world. We went further, and we said that this declaration of ours applied, and was intended to apply, to the programme of expansion which at that moment we were laying before Parliament and the country. I do not think a more formal assertion of our policy is possible.

But the noble Lord is not satisfied. He wants us, as he calls it, to take steps. To take steps What steps does he mean—write a despatch? These things are not very effective, but they may be very inopportune. The reason why the Government could not accept the Motion, as the noble Lord has drafted it, is that he asks us to take immediate steps to produce this co-operation. Whenever the opportunity serves, when the state of Europe is a little less strained than it is at this moment, then perhaps we may have an opportunity of carrying out what is the announced and convinced policy of the Government. But it would be very unwise if your Lordships placed upon record a Resolution that immediate steps should be taken to produce this co-operation, when the probability is that not only would the immediate steps be wholly unfruitful, but that they would be almost certainly misunderstood. No, that we cannot do.

If the noble Lord asks me what the policy of the Government is I will tell him. Our policy is to carry out in the Air Service, as we have carried out in the Navy and in the Army, the principles of the Washington Treaty. That is what we desire to do; that is what we hope for. Who but can agree with the noble Lord when he says that this senseless competition in armaments is a profound evil? Of course we say so, of course we think so. Doubly do we think so, responsible for the finances of this country an a time of this strain. But until that opportunity comes we must go on protecting the country, protecting those who trust us from the evils which would befall any country which is unarmed. These economics, necessary though they are, are not to be sought in impotence. We must have an adequate Air Force until we can arrange some terms upon which there can be a mutual limitation of air armaments, and we must have adequate provision for our Fleet in order that we may protect the humblest subject of the King in every part of the world. That is our duty. Within those limits we must study economy, and we ask your Lordships to trust us, we ask the country to trust us. We do not think we have done anything to forfeit that trust. Everything we have done has been bona fide in the spirit of what I have said. And I would ask your Lordships not to give the impression that there is any division of opinion, either in the House or in the country, as to these essentials, and to allow the Government to pursue their policy in peace.

VISCOUNT GREY OF FALLODON

My Lords, I do not propose in any way to criticise the policy of the Government with regard to Air. And I welcome the emphasis which the noble Marquess who has just sat down has laid upon the desire of the Government to take the very first opportunity, at any time when it presents itself, of conferring with other Governments, in any way in which other Governments may be disposed to concur or can be persuaded to concur, for a mutual reduction of expenditure on armaments. But at the moment I agree that the Government have no choice but to put forward the programme for increased expenditure upon the Air Force which they have put forward.

We are really in a peculiarly sensitive position with regard to attacks from the air. Supposing the proceedings of the night before last had been an air raid instead of what they were and the Government of the day had been as defenceless against them as they were against the behaviour of the elements, I do not ask what the position of the Government would have been. We should have been within measurable distance of a revolution in this country. The air danger is one which may come upon us very suddenly. It is, therefore, one which is especially likely to give rise to national panic. I think in this country we are not more liable, but less liable, to national panic than other countries, and that if it arises it will, perhaps, take less violent forms than it has sometimes done in other countries. But it would be a very undesirable thing, and we arc more liable to a state of panic arising suddenly if we are defenceless with regard to the Air than we are if we have fallen behind in regard to any other arm. So, at least, it seems to me looking to the future and to the effect which danger from the air is likely to have on national opinion.

As that may arise very suddenly and as we are peculiarly sensitive to it, for the reason that not merely London but a great many other parts of this country are more liable to attack and are more easily attacked by the air from the Continent than the vital parts of Continental countries are easy of attack from our shores, it is a danger as to which other nations ought to recognise that we even more than a Continental country are bound to feel exceedingly sensitive. I hope, therefore, that notice will be taken abroad of the fact that this expenditure which we are now incurring is one which we really regard as an essentially defensive expenditure. It is not intended as a preparation for any war which is in contemplation. Considering how vulnerable we are from the point of view of the air it is intended as a defence which is absolutely necessary to make the public mind secure. So far as that is concerned. I support it and I hope your Lordships will not think that in what I am going to say I wish in any way to qualify, or to make reservations with regard to, that support of this particular expenditure.

But do let us bear in mind that essential as this expenditure is on Air, it is the beginning of a new competition in armaments. The standard is that of the strongest Air Power within striking distance. That, of course, is France. It is, therefore, a competition in armaments between two countries who have lately been in absolute and devoted alliance in war and, though they have differences of policy at the present moment, are still linked together by an understanding and an entente and all the close sentiment which arises from the fact of having fought on the same side in defence of their joint liberties. Yet between those two the competition is beginning. It is only a beginning; but I am sure of this, that it ought to be noted as a most unfavourable sign for the future. If competition in armaments begins and proceeds without being checked, it will, undoubtedly, lead again to another war worse than the last war. I think the lesson of the last war really is that competition in armaments makes war inevitable, that it puts some countries in such a position as to precipitate war.

I agree with the noble and learned Earl, Lord Birkenhead, that a country which becomes opulent and prosperous in commerce and does not take measures for its defence will perish. But that is not the only way of perishing, and if competition in armaments goes on and gets ahead again amongst European countries, it will lead to another war in which they will all go down together. It is not yet certain that Europe or we ourselves are going to recover from the last war. It is, I think, practically certain that if there is another European war, neither Europe will recover from it nor European civilisation. We shall perish and we shall all go down together. If we must perish, I agree that I would prefer that we should perish all in common than that we should perish alone. But I would like ourselves and other nations to have a better alternative, and the only better alternative is that they should come to an agreement, in time that this competition in armaments between them is not to begin and increase again. That is really the only way.

The noble and learned Earl, Lord Birkenhead, says what is true—I think ho said it twice in his speech to-night—when he states that at the present moment the League of Nations is not a guarantee on which even the members of it can build securely against an outbreak of future war. I do not object to that being stated so long as it is true. But I sometimes wish that the noble and learned Earl would not state it with such an appearance of equanimity. I regret that it should be true. I believe it, is only by making that cease to be true, by making the League of Nations a greater reality than it is, and, through the League of Nations, working for a firm agreement which shall prevent competition in armaments growing up, that such security can be brought about. Anyhow, there it is. Therefore, I would like to make those two points clear. First of all, that I will support without reserve this present expenditure that we are asked for with regard to the Air. Secondly, that. I regard the fact that it is a beginning in competition in armaments as a reason—I think we are alive to it here—why other countries should become more alive than they are to the necessity of preventing this becoming the starting point of an increasing and perhaps, a rapidly increasing expenditure on armaments.

I must say a word or two, though it is late in the afternoon, on this question of the Singapore dock. I thought that the noble Marquess who spoke on behalf of the Admiralty quite earned the compliment which the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, paid him, for having marshalled his facts very clearly and put in a very convincing and attractive way the fact that a good naval base at Singapore would be an advantage. But that is not really the point of the noble Viscount's Motion. I do not think he argued that we should not be better off with a naval base at Singapore than without one. The whole question is whether it is expedient and essential expenditure. I would like to take one illustration from those which the noble Marquess, speaking on behalf of the Admiralty, drew from the experience of the last war as showing the advantage of a naval base at Singapore, equipped with docks and so forth. He pointed to the damage which the " Emden " and the German squadron in the Pacific had done, and his argument, as I understood it, was that if only we had had this naval base at Singapore we should have settled those particular items of the enemy's Elect more quickly than we did. That, no doubt, is true. Yet it would have been a great mistake had we attempted before this last war to spend money on that dock at Singapore. After all, we did round up those items of the German Fleet eventually. They caused some loss, bur not a loss which was vital to us.

But before the war we had many difficulties about naval expenditure. Everybody's memory will bear me out—indeed, it was notorious—that there was great controversy at certain times as to whether the Government of the day was spending enough on the Navy. Looking at public opinion as it was before the war, looking at public opinion as it was expressed in the House of Commons and by the Government of the day, which after all is but a reflection of the House of Commons just as the House of Commons is a reflection of public opinion outside, I have no hesitation in saying, with full knowledge of all the difficulties which have to be encountered and discussed in the expenditure on the Navy, that we did ask Parliament before the war for the utmost expenditure which any conceivable Government at that time or the House of Pommons was prepared to vote. We got the most money that the House of Commons, representing public opinion was prepared to vote, or a united Government was prepared to propose. When the war came we had a Fleet stronger, better equipped, more ready than we had ever had in our history before. Had that money which the country voted for the Navy been spent on a dock at Singapore to the neglect of anything which was essential on which we did spend money, we might it is true have disposed of those items of the German Fleet more quickly, but we might have lost the war. Therefore, when you are limited in your expenditure, it is really necessary that you should consider how that money can be best spent on what is essential, and you should be very careful not to spend any of it on anything which is not essential. Before the war, undoubtedly, I think, it was right that the money which we had to dispose of should be spent on the capacity to concentrate a very strong Fleet, as we did concentrate one when the war broke out, and that we should not take any money from that purpose and spend it on outside purposes.

Let me come to the present day. How have the conditions altered which make it desirable that we should now spend money on a dock at Singapore? There are two conceivable things. One only has to be mentioned to be dismissed, and that is that we have more money to spend now than we had before the war. I recognise that the noble Marquess in his speech emphasised the fact that we really have got to economise every pound. So far as money is concerned we have less money to spend for anything which is not essential or not expedient than we had before the war. Therefore we car: put that aside. Then, for what contingency are we providing? I should hold, if the money is being spent on the dock at Singapore simply for the contingency of another war against a European Power, with their main fleet in European waters, that it was not essential expenditure, and I think the noble Marquess who spoke for the Admiralty will probably not object to my saying that he did not wish us to infer that the trouble we had had with the " Emden " and the German Fleet was the real motive cause for asking the country to spend this large Sum on a dock at Singapore.

The real cause is not preparing for war with another European Power, but preparing for a contingency which we had not in mind before the last great war. The noble Marquess deprecated being pressed upon the point as to what the contingency was. He said that he could not answer it in public without being-indiscreet. There are many advantages in not being in a Government but in Opposition, and one is that one can be indiscreet with less damage to the public interest than if one is in office. I should like to go quite frankly into this question of what the contingency is for which this dock at Singapore is wanted. The whole case for it this afternoon was that it is wanted to make our Fleet more effective in the Pacific than it is. Then it is intended for the contingency of war against some Power.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

And the Indian Ocean.

VISCOUNT GREY OF FALLODON

Yes, but, so much stress was laid upon Australia and New Zealand that I am sure the Pacific is what is really in mind. In other words, if the Indian Ocean is being threatened it is going to be threatened by a Naval Power from the Pacific. That is the threat you are guarding against both in regard to the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. There are two great Pacific Naval Powers, one the United States and the other Japan. Nobody for a moment dreams, not even in the United States, I imagine, that this expenditure at Singapore is preparation against the United States, and I think that ought to be quite frankly admitted. It will really make much less trouble with Japan if we admit frankly that the contingency really in our mind with regard to this expenditure at Singapore is the possibility of war in the future—the possibility of war, however remote, in the future—with Japan. Let me look into that question. I was not a member of the Government which made the Japanese Alliance.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

I was.

VISCOUNT GREY OF FALLODON

I was a member of a Government which renewed it at least once, and I would like to say this. I am sure the feeling in both countries. Japan and here, must be that that Alliance was of very great advantage to Japan in its earlier years, and of great advantage to this country in its later years, so that it was of great mutual advantage to both countries. Now that the Alliance is at an end—or rather I ought to say now that its place has been taken by the Washington Agreements—I still hope the memory of it will remain in both countries, and make it exceedingly unlikely that there will he a conflict between them. I hope it will also be borne in mind that both countries are members of the League of Nations, and that they cannot go to war with each other without violating their word in signing the Covenant of the League.

But I do not say those things in order to dispose of this as a contingency which ought never to be taken into account. What I would ask is this. Even supposing the contingency is most remote, is this expenditure on a dock at Singapore really essential? As regards the protection of Australia and New Zealand, are they perfectly persuaded that the dock at Singapore is a better way of protecting them than a naval base in their own countries? Then, if the contingency has to be contemplated, I think we ought further to bear in mind that should that very unlikely contingency come to pass, and should there be something which brings the British Empire and Japan into conflict, it is going to be a thing so momentous—something threatening Australia and New Zealand—that it is, as far as anything human can be certain, I think absolutely certain that it will be a race conflict in which the United States as well as the British Empire will be involved on the same side. I am not at all clear that 10 spend money on this dock at Singapore is the best way of preparing for the contingency. I am not, at all clear that it is not going to make matters worse.

Is it really quite in accord with the spirit of the Washington Agreements? The noble Marquess said that the naval experts at Washington, when the Agreements were being made, had before them the map, and, with their eyes open, drew the boundary, leaving Singapore outside the area which was covered by the stipulations of the Agreements. That, no doubt, is true. I assume they did look at a map, and they did realise where the boundary was being drawn. If what the noble Marquess told us this afternoon had this behind it, that during the Washington discussions our naval experts said to the American and Japanese naval exports: "We must have this line drawn so as to include Singapore because we intend to engage in large expenditure on a naval dock at Singapore," then, of course, the sooner that is made known the better, because there is undoubtedly an impression of surprise abroad—I fear even in the United States, though they know perfectly well that the expenditure is more likely to be helpful to them than otherwise—that so soon after the Washington Agreements we are engaged in a large naval expenditure so close to the limits which were laid down.

It is not fair at this late hour to press the Government for answers to such questions. If I had wanted answers I should have spoken earlier, and am not going to press for replies to-night. But I should like to know whether the Washington Agreements forbid other nations who are Parties to it from responding with similar expenditure in the Pacific to that which we are engaged in at Singapore. If they do, and if it was not stated at Washington when the limits of the Agreements were drawn that we intended to engage in this expenditure, then I am afraid that the other naval Powers who are Parties to the Agreements may consider that we have been that very undesirable tiling, rather clever.

THE MARQUES OF SALISBURY

I do not want to interrupt the noble Viscount, but he will see that he is making suggestions which really may do a great deal of harm if they are allowed to go without any comment. There has been no suggestion whatever, so far as I know, from any Government calling in question either the letter or the spirit of the Washington Agreements in relation to Singapore. That the base at Singapore was prominently in the mind of the British negotiators at Washington I know for certain. I cannot say, and I must not deceive the House, that they communicated this to the other Parties, but I should be immensely surprised if they had any doubt on the subject.

VISCOUNT GREY OF FALLO DON

I have been told that this feeling is abroad, and I want it countered as much as possible. It is clearly within our rights, technically, to do it, but I want this feeling countered, and I should like it made clear to public opinion that the other naval Powers in the Pacific do not suffer anything of which they have any reason to complain by the expenditure we are going to engage in at Singapore. That: is to say, that they knew, or had before them enough to know, when they signed the Washington Agreements, that they placed a restriction upon themselves, knowing perfectly well that this sort of thing was liable to happen as regards naval expenditure outside these limits, and quite close. I hope the noble Marquess is quite right in saying that there is no such feeling.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

So far as I am aware.

VISCOUNT GREY OF FALLODON

Then, when the Washington Agreements come to an end, the noble Marquess who replied for the Admiralty said that by this dock at Singapore the potency of the British Fleet, as regards the Pacific and Indian Oceans, would be greatly increased; that when the Washington Agreements come to an end, so far as I understood his argument, if we had not this base and this expenditure, and if there was again open competition in naval shipbuilding, we may find ourselves with the necessity of building many more ships than we should have to do if we increased the efficiency of our existing ships by making this dock. That argument impressed us, but we shall not be the only people who will be impressed. For every million pounds of expenditure we make in increasing the efficiency of our Fleet in the Pacific one way or another, either before or after the Washington Agreements come to an end, there will be a corresponding expenditure by any other naval Power who feels that it may have to provide for precisely the converse contingency for which we are providing.

I am afraid that at Singapore we are again at the beginning of an increase for which you can make a perfectly good case, but which will lead to further increases and result in defeating in the long run the very objects which the Washington Agreements were designed to secure. I cannot feel that the expenditure on the dock at Singapore is really essential compared with other expenditure, and in times when great national economy is necessary it is absolutely essential that expenditure should be confined, first, to the things which are essential. I am not going to presume that the Government would accept any advice or suggestion from me with regard to the dock at Singapore seeing that they have so fully convinced themselves that it is not merely desirable but essential. I would say this, however. I am sure that in their own minds they intend to go very slowly in regard to expenditure at Singapore. It does not arise with this House to vote money, but the Government are beset on all sides with demands for expenditure. I hope and believe it will be the case that, though they feel that they are now committed to this expenditure, they will not be in a great hurry to commit themselves to large contracts; that they will go slowly until they have some opportunity of judging what its effect will be on the Washington Agreements, and will not place themselves in the position of finding themselves committed to such large contracts at Singapore that when they are confronted with demands, much more essential, in the House of Commons, they will be obliged to refuse them by asking the House of Commons to vote money for what seems to me an advantage but not an essential, and in some ways an expenditure which is of doubtful expediency and policy.

On Question, Motion negatived.

LORD GORELL

It seems to me, after what the noble Marquess has said this afternoon, that it may be possible by the alteration of one word to make my Resolution such as may be accepted by the Government, and that is to substitute for the word " immediate " the words " at the earliest opportunity." That would bear out what actually fell from the noble Marquess, and I hope in that form the Government may be prepared to accept the Motion.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

I hope the noble Lord will not press us to take that step. It would have the appearance that the House was forcing on the Government a policy from which, after all the declarations of the Government, we ought to be immune. We have said all that we think it discreet and proper to say To agree to the Motion of the noble Lord now would, I think, have the appearance that we were not all united in this policy. I am afraid I cannot accept the Motion.

LORD GORELL

In view of the noble Marquess's statement, and at this hour of the evening, I do not think that I need put the House to the trouble of a Division.