§ THE EARL OF BIRKENHEAD had placed the following Notice on the Order Paper:—
§ To ask His Majesty's Government what information they have as to the construction of aircraft in Germany—
- 1. For military and naval purposes;
- 2. For commercial purposes;
§ The noble Earl said: My Lords, some weeks ago I introduced the topic which is the general subject-matter of my present Question to the attention of your Lordships, and in the course of the discussion which then took place some reference was made to the rate of aircraft construction in Europe generally, and more particularly in Germany. I was at that time unprovided with any very definite information upon that subject—with none, indeed, that was definite enough to entitle me to make any statements of fact to your Lordships—and I indicated in the course of that discussion that I should accordingly take an opportunity of asking the Air Ministry, and the Government, whether they were in a position to give us authoritative information as to the ratio of that construction in Germany. I have put down that Question to-day in the terms which appear on the Paper.
§ I propose, if I may, to deal quite shortly with the two branches of my Question, and I wish, in the first place, to make it clear to-day, as I attempted to make it clear a month or two months ago, that this is not a question of delinquency or alleged delinquency of any kind on the part of the Government. If any Government was to blame for this matter it was the Government of which I myself was a member, because unquestionably the four critical years were the years which followed upon the Armistice. On the day that the Armistice was adopted we had in this country 74 an Air Force which was not surpassed by any Air Force in the world, whether you examined its technical equipment or the heroic qualities of those who were its pilots and its observers, and in material strength and resource it challenged comparison with the Air Force of any country of those which either for or against us had taken part in that stupendous struggle.
§ In every field of military preparation it has been the habit of this country, inveterate, incorrigible, to refuse always to anticipate those crises which experience and the study of history have, none the lees, taught us over long periods to be inevitably recurrent. It has never been possible, and I do not, for one, think it ever will be possible, to persuade the people of this country to prepare beforehand for great struggles and great military disturbances. They do not believe they are going to happen. They disbelieve every one who tells them that such a thing is going to happen. They disbelieved, in the five fatal years which immediately preceded the crisis of 1914, every one who predicted that a world struggle was going to arise, and, disbelieving, they naturally declined to make great military preparations. It is equally true of this people, and true throughout its whole history, that when the outbreak of these world convulsions has involved us in stupendous preparations of every sort, the moment the crisis is over they immediately resolve that no other is likely to arise. Therefore all our past military preparations were, at the earliest possible moment, abandoned.
§ I think, because I was a responsible member of the Government, that they were rightly and necessarily abandoned, having regard to all the circumstances in which we at that time were involved, and all the anxieties which beset the nation, economical, political, and a hundred others. But the one fact emerges at once, that, with a swiftness only comparable to the swiftness with which we had assembled those great armaments, we dispersed and dissipated them. The American nation, under the stimulus of somewhat different but still comparable motives, took the same course, and the American armaments disappeared not quite but almost as rapidly as our own did. Now this may have been necessary, or it may not, but do not let us delude ourselves for one moment as 75 to the gravity of the circumstance. The circumstance was that our power, and indeed the power of the American nation, had they still been adhering to the settlement at Versailles, would not have been comparable to the power of the other great nations whose political conditions made it possible for them to contemplate with composure the maintenance of those great armaments over the important years in which the decisions reached in Paris were to be made effective.
§ With the disappearance of our military forces, the complete dissipation of those Armies of millions which had contributed so much to win the war, came the disappearance of our Air Force. In many ways that was far more serious than the disappearance of our military strength, because we had, after all, faced hundreds of years of insular life with the security of our Navy, and only protecting ourselves upon the military side by a small but extraordinarily competent professional Army. Therefore there was nothing specially alarming about the reversion to those precautional standards which our ancestors had thought adequate, and which experience had, on the whole, proved to be not incommensurate with our national necessities; but, of course, there had emerged in the last twelve or fourteen years, what had been most vividly illustrated in the events of the war, the fact that an immense and incalculable permanent change had taken place in those conditions which are vital and fundamental, and upon which the security and very existence of this country depends: in other words, it had become clear, beyond a doubt, that it was no longer possible to estimate the security of this country in military or naval terms, but that there had arrived a third term—namely, that of an aerial security.
§ Involved in that question there is involved everything which for so many years was rightly treated as fundamental by successive Governments in discussions about the Navy. We were content for all those years with an Army which scarcely counted in comparison with the vast professional Armies of Europe. We were content with that because the moment you brought the matter back to the vital point of security, we were always able to 76 comfort ourselves with the reflection that we had a Navy, which in those happy and secure days we used to speak of as a Navy which was of the two-Power standard; in other words, we were content with the security that our Navy was equal to the Navies of any other two Powers in the world. The air menace at that time had not arisen. We could afford to be indifferent to military inferiority, because in regard to that which was vital to our existence and to our successful defence we were in a position so strong.
§ There has emerged this new danger, and I do not think that the nation has even yet accustomed itself to the new standards which are imposed on us unless we are prepared to be content with a standard of security which would have been swept away with national derision and contempt because of its gross inadequacy in days when we measured our security in terms of navies. And yet cannot we afford to adopt any different standard? Can we justify ourselves before the nation if we are compelled to say to them that there exists a Power—however friendly to us that Power may be—against which we are in a position of inferiority so striking that defence would almost be impossible.
§ These matters require to be treated, and they must be treated, with the greatest possible delicacy, and with a sense of great responsibility. I desire to approach the consideration of this question in that spirit. The maintenance of the maximum degree of friendship with the French nation, by whose side we suffered so much, with whose aid we asserted consequences and decisions so vital to civilisation, is dear to the heart of every Englishman. There is hardly any sacrifice consistent with our elementary conception of our duty to our own nationals which we would not make in order to maintain that friendship. But this observation must be made, and may be made without violating the conditions which I have laid down, that history has shown that enmities are not unappeasable, and that friendships are-not unestrangeable. And it has been the policy of our ancestors now for hundreds of years that we should claim to ourselves, with the utmost courtesy of language, with the most constant avoidance of anything in speech or in act that is 77 provocative, the right to undertake the duty, which we owe to our own citizens, against any conceivable contingency, however unlikely politically that contingency may seem at the moment, of guaranteeing to the citizens of this country the most complete and absolute security.
§ How do we stand? I have before me the answer which the noble Duke, who so well represents the Air Ministry in this House, gave me on March 21, 1923. I asked the noble Duke what were the relative air strengths of this country and of France, and your Lordships will forgive me if I remind you of the figures. The noble Duke said that my figures for British machines were quite correct; that is to say, that we have 34 squadrons and 395 machines; while the French figures were 140 squadrons and 1,260 machines. I do not here examine the exact distribution of these squadrons, because, though an important topic, it is a secondary one. Nor will that examination, I think, give great comfort to those who are concerned with the security of these Islands against all foreseeable and unforeseeable contingencies, because, owing to circumstances which are well within the knowledge of your Lordships, a great number of the British squadrons have been diverted from what would in normal circumstances be their primary duty, namely, the protection of the shores of this country. It must be plain that that disproportion in the air strengths of two neighbouring countries, however friendly the relationship between those countries, is so alarming that no Government can allow it to continue.
§ The subject is, as I am aware, at the present moment under the consideration of a Committee over which, I understand, the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, presides, and it is no part of my purpose to-night, even if I were successful—which I should be unlikely to be—to ask him to anticipate in any way the very important deliberations, discussions, and decisions which, for all I know, may be taking place even at the present moment. And if the noble Marquess, when he speaks on behalf of the Government, informs me that it is premature at this moment to ask for a statement of the policy of the Government in relation to the standard of air strength I, for one, should be the last man in the world to make any complaint 78 of such an answer. My purpose is by every means in my power to persuade your Lordships and to persuade our fellow countrymen, through such publicity as this debate gains, that this problem of air defence is, in the years that lie in front of us and for which we are responsible as trustees and custodians of the safety of this country, to be as vital a question as the strength of the Navy was to those who preceded us in Parliament in the last thirty years.
§ I have been trying, in the course of the last two months, to retrace the important days in which this matter was discussed when I was in office in the late Government. I have referred to such small records as I kept in a busy Ministerial career of my part in them, and I discover that I sat as a member of a Cabinet Committee—I am not going to involve myself, I hope, in any violation of old or new rules—a Cabinet Committee which was appointed to intermediate (if I may use the expression) between the Geddes Report and the different combatant Services. I did something, as others of my colleagues who sat with me did something, to mitigate the effect of the Geddes recommendations in relation to the Air Force. Looking back upon those days it is only fair to say—as, indeed, it is fair to the present Government to say—that we were in an extremely difficult situation in relation to the general finance of the country. The cry for economy was universal, the weight behind the Geddes Committee was overwhelming and irresistible; and it is also true that at that moment it had not been sufficiently realised—nor do I think it had, in fact, clearly emerged—how great was the force that was being built up in a neighbouring country, and how tenacious, as far as we can judge, is the intention of maintaining and preserving that as a great and permanent force. All those things were, perhaps, not fully realised. But I still clearly recall that we did mitigate the recommendations of the Geddes Committee. I think that if we had been more fully informed, and if I had been more fully informed at the time, I should have been disposed to go even further. But this I clearly recollect, that the full publication of the relative contemporary air strength of the two Powers was not made to the Cabinet for some weeks after this discussion took place.
79§ I am not going into this comparatively ancient history in order to attempt any particular justification either of myself or of my colleagues, but if I were putting this matter forward in a combative spirit I should certainly prepare myself much more fully to reply to the kind of attack which might reasonably be invited by such an attitude. My intention is a very different one. My intention is not to make it harder, but to make it easier, for the Government to take the steps which I am certain to-day are insistently expected and in a year will be most vehemently demanded by the country. I read with the deepest interest a speech which the Air Minister made a few days ago in which he stated plainly that the air strength of this country was not great enough for its protection and for its security. That statement made it evident that the matter was being considered by the Government and that the Government had already formed the interlocutory conclusion that some reinforcement of that strength was desirable. The purpose of my remarks to-night is to make it plain, so far as I can, that having reached the conclusion that we are not strong enough, you must reach some standard. It was always necessary in the old naval days to reach a standard. That standard varied, and reasonably varied, with the contemporary position of international politics. But unless there is a standard no construction upon principle can take place, and no Government and no Department knows where it stands, and no technical adviser knows where he stands.
§ Now, I presumed to say when I raised this Question on March 21 in the present year, that only one standard would ultimately and on mature deliberation be found acceptable to the people of this country, and I am still bold enough to re-state that conclusion very confidently. I do not believe that the people of this country can be content, or ought to be content, with any strength in the air which is less than that of a one-Power standard. I most deeply hope that economic reflections arising in other bosoms will lead to the conclusion in other countries that nothing is to be gained but everything is to be lost by involving us again in competition through the decades that lie in front of us with the air strengths of nations who find it necessary to maintain immense offensive 80 and defensive armaments in the air. I profoundly hope that wiser counsels will prevail and that saner conclusions will be adopted.
§ But if they are not, what course do we intend to adopt? Upon what principle can it be said that we can or ought to be content with less than a one-Power standard? Throughout the ages we have been protected by the fact that we are an island. That insularity is destroyed in face of the air menace, and we can protect ourselves, and can protect ourselves only on the most modest margin of security if we are able to say to those for whose safety and protection we are responsible that we are as strong in the air as any other country. I am not blind—how could I be?—to the economic considerations that are involved. I know perfectly well of the need of sustained and even of added economies; but it is not, and it cannot be, an economy that this country should at any moment be insecure, and the premium of insurance, grave as it may be, inconvenient as it may be at the moment of its incidence, is small indeed in relation to the treasured wealth which even after the war is represented by the possessions and the material possessions of this country.
§ I asked the special Question about Germany because I desired to have it made plain whether there was any such formidable menace in the centre of Europe as an alarmist section of the Press has attempted at intervals to convey. I have read statements which have appeared in certain papers to the effect that there was an immense, an almost feverish construction of aircraft taking place both in Germany and in Russia under the guidance of German artificers. All the information available to me as a private member of your Lordships' House was in the other direction. I had some sources of information open to me which, though not, of course, official, seemed to me to be reliable, and it was with the object of eliciting the views of the Government that I placed this Question on the Paper. Its significance and its relevance must neither be mistaken nor under-rated. If it be the fact that the German nation has studiously complied with its obligations and limitations under the Treaty of Versailles, if it be the fact that there is to-day proceeding in Europe no great programme of aerial construction, then once again one must re-examine the existing 81 European situation, and the result of that re-examination with that added knowledge cannot, I think, be such as to lead us to be more content with the figures which I have already explained to your Lordships.
§ I have taken the responsibility of introducing this subject again because I feel deeply about it. I have done it, I hope, without offending any legitimate susceptibility, and my object will have been attained if I have directed some degree of further public attention to a matter which I regard as so grave. I have already made if, plain that I shall entertain no grievance at all if I am told by the noble Marquess who replies to this Question that the matters under discussion are at this moment being considered by the Cabinet and that at some future date a statement of policy may be made.
§ VISCOUNT HALDANEMy Lords, I am in substantial agreement with what has been said by the noble and learned Earl, but before the noble Marquess the Deputy Leader of the House makes his reply there are one or two sentences which I should like to add. I wish to say to your Lordships that it is not enough to take the gross numbers that foreign Powers have in measuring what you require for security against invasion by the air. Aeroplanes in their numbers are, after all, what the mathematicians call functions of the infantry forces of the country, and if a country has very large infantry forces they may have more aeroplanes than countries which have smaller infantry forces. But there is also what the mathematicians call a constant, and that is a force which any foreign Power has available for a hostile expedition in the air against this country, and that, I entirely agree, requires a premium of insurance to be paid. You must be in a position to cope with any attempt on your security. If you are not, even although war may not be likely you will find it very expensive to have failed, and for this reason. Foreign Chancellories will know your weak spot and you will find your difficulty, in diplomatic negotiations. It will put you to expense, to embarrassment, and to inconvenience. For that reason I agree that it is right that we should have a proper home defence force against air attack.
I do not think the noble Earl had much occasion to apologise, if he did apologise, for the action of the 82 late Government in pulling down the Air Force that was. Nor do I blame the present Government for slowness in bringing up the Air Force to a proper standard. Both situations gave rise to very great difficulty. Our Air Force is a matter in regard to which we were behind, and that was partly the blame of the Government to which I belonged at a still earlier stage. Our Air Force was only slightly brought into existence, and in the course of the war we improvised, as the noble and learned Earl has said, with wonderful national energy and skill, but we improvised the Force for the purpose for which it was required—that is, we improvised it for dealing with an invasion from Germany by air, and also for dealing with the military situations on the Continent and elsewhere. These improvisations were admirable for the specific purposes for which they were demanded, but they did not afford a basis on which the Air Force in time of peace, in a permanent form, could rest.
That is the problem with which the present Government have to deal. It is a very difficult problem. It is a problem that takes time to solve, and, above all, one which requires—what is always the foundation of any permanent service of this kind—mind in the preparation of the Force; in other words, it requires a first-rate staff. What I should like to hear is that the Government are concentrating, in the first place, on building up an able first-rate Air Staff—the best Air Staff that the country can produce. I know that seems difficult when so few officers, comparatively, have been trained for the Air Service, but a great deal of the foundation for staff work in the Air is the foundation which is equally familiar in the Army and in the Navy. There are admirable officers in both of those Services who could be brought into the service of the Air Ministry, making it as completely a separate Ministry as you like, and added to the Air Staff. I do not want to say anything dogmatic on this matter. I know there are considerations which have to be entertained before an answer can be given about it, but if it can be done I am pretty sure that when you have got your staff you will be in a position to know the kind of Expeditionary Force that can be brought against you from any foreign country. When that is done you 83 know what is the best line on which to build the strictly limited and not very large Air Force required to counteract any invading force. The question of expense has been referred to, but I think this is a vital expenditure, and if it is not met we shall lose by it and not save money.
I wish, in conclusion, to say this. I read in the newspapers and in the proceedings of Parliament of a proposal to spend £9,000,000 on naval works at Singapore. I am not going to discuss that. It may be a most desirable thing to do. You may require it because of the new naval distribution, but to begin such an expenditure and pass by the much more pressing expenditure required for a small Air Force for the defence of the country seems to me insanity. It is looking at things only partially and from a particular point of view. There is far more urgency in putting the Air Force right than there is in spending large sums in the East. We have to spend large sums in the East—I am not making any question about that at the present moment—but what I wish to say is that the Air Force comes first. I should be glad to hear, if it is in contemplation to spend vast sums in Singapore or anywhere else, that that expenditure will not be allowed to progress far before the prior and necessary claim of the defence of this country from attacks by air is taken in hand. That is what I wish to urge, and I hope that the noble Marquess will, if possible, reassure us on that point.
§ THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY)My Lords, I feel some reluctance in rising, in place of my noble friend, the Duke of Sutherland, who is the responsible Minister for the Air Department in your Lordships' House, to answer the Question of the noble and learned Earl. I can only say that in the technical matters with which I desire to deal in a very few words I have been very much beholden to my noble friend for his assistance in preparing my observations. I stand in his place because, as the noble and learned Earl has reminded your Lordships, I happen to be at this moment Chairman of a very important Committee that is inquiring into the subject which your Lordships are now discussing, and, therefore, it was thought more appropriate that I should reply.
84 I should like, in the first place, to recognise the tone in which the noble and learned Earl has addressed himself to this subject. He has deprecated anything like recrimination as to responsibility for the situation of the Air Force, and I shall certainly imitate him in that respect, but it is necessary to say that whatever may have been the reason, good, bad or indifferent, which led the late Government to their decision in regard to the Air Force at the moment of demobilisation to which the noble and learned Earl has referred, the difficulty for us remains the same. We have found a situation where, as he has described it, the country has been deprived of the wonderful Air Force which it had at the close of the war, and we have been obliged to apply ourselves to a situation which requires very extensive remedying. The House therefore will realise that it is not our fault that the situation exists, and will give us all the consideration that is due in our efforts.
If I may I will deal at the outset with the noble Earl's specific Question about Germany, and I will read to him a few words containing the information necessary to answer that part of his speech. Germany is forbidden by Article 198 of the Treaty of Versailles from possessing any naval or military Air Force, and by the Nine Rules that were drawn up by the Commission Militaire Alliée from constructing any machine, civil or military, that have a substantial value for military purposes. From the information at the disposal of His Majesty's Government, there is no reason to suppose that the German Government is contravening either Article 198 of the Treaty or the Nine Rules. It seems, however, to be the case that the German aircraft industry is being to some extent developed outside Germany.
As to the second part of the Question, there are at present in use in Germany 111 commercial machines of 30 different types, 84 of these being old type military machines. These 111 machines are being used on the following lines:—The Aero Lloyd and the Junkers. The commercial machines in course of construction all comply with the Nine Rules, with the exception of the airship which is being built in Germany for the Government of the U.S.A.
85 That is the specific answer as to Germany, but, of course, the more important part of the noble and learned Earl's Question has to do with the provision of aircraft in this country. His Question as printed on the Paper speaks of a standard, and he recognised that it-was quite possible that in my reply I should say that to make a statement about any standard was premature at the moment. That is so. It is premature, and I ask your Lordships not to press me to make it now. I hope on that point, and on other points as well, that I, or someone on behalf of His Majesty's Government, shall be able at no distant day, either here or in another place, to go a great deal further, but at this moment we have hardly arrived at a stage in our deliberations in the Committee which enables me to go that length. I will bear in mind the observations of the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Haldane, especially on the necessity of an adequate Air Staff, with which, of course. I entirely agree.
The noble and learned Earl's remarks were directed to a comparison between our strength and the strength of another friendly Power, and undoubtedly the air strength of any Power, friendly or otherwise, must react upon ourselves. We must have regard to that strength by whatever Power it is wielded. I should be very sorry indeed if there was any idea that we were creating our Air Force because of any threat of aggression from that great friendly Power. We remain, of course, friends with France. As I ventured to tell your Lordships on the last occasion when this question was under discussion, your Lordships will realise that it is not quite fair to criticise the French for the creation of their Air Force. After all, the condition of Europe is still one of great tension and unrest, and no one has a right to complain when a Power placed as France is placed thinks it right to create what appears to be day by day the kind of force which is of increasing importance in the defence of any country. Having regard to her very natural desire to exercise every precaution which a country is called upon to exercise, it would be quite wrong to criticise France for having created so important an Air Force.
We must avoid, if we can, any reversal to that terrible competition in armaments 86 which the noble and learned Earl himself deprecated in his speech. We must, of course, do what is necessary; but let us hope that the good sense of European statesmen will find some way of avoiding that suicidal competition in armaments, which is pure waste from the point of view of the prosperity of a people, and which only leads, ultimately, to a temptation to war with all the horrors with which we are, unfortunately, so well acquainted.
So far as the present Government are concerned we have lost no time. My right hon. friend, the Air Minister, devoted his attention to the necessary increase in our Air Force within a very few days of taking office. It was, as it naturally would be, his first task. And let me also point this out. We are very anxious in whatever we do to carry public opinion with us. It would have been very easy for the Government to have said as little as possible about the subject. They were not called upon to make that spontaneous declaration which my right hon. friend made when ho introduced the Air Estimates a few weeks ago, but after very careful consideration with his colleagues he came to the conclusion that it was necessary to take the country entirely into the confidence of the Government so that the country might know exactly what was in front of it. I am sure your Lordships and public opinion will do us justice in this matter. It is an earnest that we are not going to neglect a matter which we could have concealed, but which we made no attempt to conceal, because we wanted public opinion behind us.
The Air Estimates provide, as it is, for a certain increase. Eighteen squadrons are provided for in the Estimates now before Parliament, and they will be pushed on with all due despatch. Broadly speaking, no greater haste could have been made in the provision of air strength, working to the ordinary normal rules which prevail in time of peace. No doubt you can make tremendous increases when working as noble Lords did during the war, but that is quite unnecessary in peace, and working to the ordinary normal rules which prevail in peace time no more could have been done than has been done. As I have explained, my right hon. friend has provided in his Estimates, at any rate for this beginning of an increase in the Air Force.
87 At the same time the Government appointed the Committee which has been so often mentioned in the discussion this afternoon. Since I last had the honour of addressing your Lordships that Committee has sat continuously. It is divided into two branches, but taking both branches together we have had sixteen sittings since the subject was last discussed in your Lordships' House, any number of memoranda have been prepared and witnesses have been heard. The matter has not been neglected. We have dealt with every part of the subject—the development of aircraft, the range of aircraft, and the personnel, what the relations should be with the Navy, and last of all, and most important of all, what the total strength of the Air Force ought to be. That is what we have done. A final conclusion has not been come to; 88 that would be premature. But the Cabinet has come to this conclusion: that they think a considerable increase in the Air Force will be necessary. I can assure your Lordships that whatever is necessary the Government will do their best to supply. We shall come frankly to Parliament and frankly to the country and tell them what are the results of our deliberations, which we have done our utmost to make fruitful with all the talent and experience which the permanent Service of this country affords us. When we have come to our conclusions we shall come to Parliament and ask Parliament to support us in whatever may be necessary.
§ House adjourned at ten minutes past six o'clock.