Lords Sitting of 1 April 1925

Preamble
The House met at a quarter before four of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
ROCHDALE CORPORATION BILL. [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.
LONDON AND NORTH EASTERN RAILWAY (GENERAL POWERS) BILL. [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.
HORLEY DISTRICT GAS COMPANY (ELECTRICITY SUPPLY) BILL. [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

THE EASTER RECESS.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY): My Lords, it may be for the convenience of your Lordships if I say a word as to the programme of business for the next few days. It will be necessary to ask your Lordships to sit at the beginning of next week. So far as I know, the business is not of a very important kind on Monday or Tuesday, but until I look more carefully into the Order Paper I cannot say. So far as Government business is concerned, that is true. We may have to sit on Wednesday, but it will be a formal sitting, and then I hope your Lordships will have a very good holiday until April 28.
VISCOUNT HALDANE: Can the noble Marquess inform us what business will be taken on the 28th? Is it on the Order Paper?
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: Yes. It is necessary to sit then because there are certain Bills the last stage of which we have to finish on the 28th, as they are Bills which depend upon a date. It may be necessary to put down effective Government business on that day. I will let the noble and learned Viscount know.

BELLIGERENT RIGHTS AT SEA.
LORD REDESDALE LORD REDESDALE rose to move, That having regard to the information now available as to the actual working of the sea blockade of Germany during the late war, this House requests His Majesty's Government to make a statement as to the effect of any Treaty, Declaration, or other diplomatic instrument now affecting the full rights of this country as a belligerent to act at sea upon sea-borne trade in time of war.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, in asking the indulgence of your Lordships for the first time for the very few minutes which it will take me to explain the reason of the Motion standing in my name on the Paper, let me say at once that it is not my intention to attach any blame for what has happened in the past to this person or that; neither do I intend to refer to the past except so far as it may be necessary to do so in order to ascertain the present situation and how that situation was arrived at. It is with the future that I am concerned, and it is in regard to the future that my Motion has been framed. There may be exceptions but, generally speaking, I think no one will be found to deny that the people of this country desire, and will always insist upon, the preservation of our sea power. But, as will be obvious to your Lordships, no amount of actual power at sea, however great, will be of any avail unless we can use that power to the full and in the proper direction. And the sole object of my Motion to-day is to ascertain, if possible from the Government itself, the exact nature and extent of any limitations at present existing upon our rights to use in future our power at sea.
This is a matter of immense practical importance. No man can doubt that for one moment who considers the events of the late war. In 1914 we had a supreme Navy, unmatched in strength, skill and resources. It is certain that had that Navy been used throughout in accordance with the long-standing laws and traditions of this country in the matter of sea power, the war would have been one of months rather than of years. It is impossible to estimate the value of the life and treasure that would have been saved. But it is common knowledge now that our power at sea was not, in fact, so used, at least until the war had already

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lasted for well over three years and the results were deplorable and far-reaching not only for England but for the whole world. I trust that in speaking of our power to use our Navy in war time I shall not be misunderstood. I do not refer to our right to use the Navy against an enemy's Navy; that right, of course, we always possessed to the full and it was most admirably exercised. My point is that the military value of overwhelming force at sea does not consist only, or even chiefly, in its power to overwhelm the corresponding naval forces of the enemy. It consists far more in its power to refuse the enemy all those sea-borne supplies for his armies and populations without which neither those armies nor those populations can continue their resistance for long.
In peace time no one denies the enormous economic importance of seaborne trade. The oversea trade of a country is everywhere regarded as an index of its prosperity, and if in peace times a modern State must have access to the sea, in war time under modern conditions that access becomes an absolute economic necessity for her, especially if the war is in any degree prolonged. The reason for this is simple. No country contains within its borders, not all the countries of Europe taken together contain within their borders, enough even of the physical materials required to enable them to carry on the operations of modern warfare for more than a very short time. They must replenish their supplies from overseas. The power, therefore, of cutting off those essential supplies from overseas is the true and final power of an overwhelming Navy and is the chief military reason for its existence. To secure the great road of the sea for its own people and to refuse it to its enemies—that, and not the fighting of great naval actions, is the primary and essential function of a Fleet. If, in order to fulfil that function, fighting becomes necessary, fighting must, of course, be done. But if a Navy can fulfil that function completely without fighting so much the better for that Navy and for the country to which it belongs.
The number of Fleet actions fought by England during the Napoleonic Wars was very small and the actual destruction of ships and men effected in those actions was slight; but the pressure of the Navy upon the trade of Europe destroyed the power
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even of the Emperor Napoleon, and Europe in these days is far more dependent upon the sea for its supplies than it ever was a hundred years ago. The extent to which Germany depended, in 1914, upon the sea for anything but a war of the shortest duration was admitted beforehand by her own leaders.
"It will be necessary"—
said General Bernhardi, in his "Germany and the Next War,"
"to take further steps to secure the importation from abroad of supplies necessary to us, since out communications will be completely cut off by the English"
That was what Germany was expecting at our hands at the time of the declaration of war in August, 1914.
This naval function of cutting off the enemy's sea-borne supplies differs from all other forms of fighting chiefly in this, that it sheds no blood, it destroys no property and is earned out always, not in the heat and confusion of battle but in the calmest deliberation, under the direction of legally constituted Courts—namely, the Prize Courts of the captor's country. It is surely impossible to conceive a more humane operation of war. It is with that operation of war, and with the right of this country to exercise those powers, that my Motion is concerned.
If your Lordships will look at the words of the Motion itself, you will see that it refers to the "full rights of this country as a belligerent to act at sea upon seaborne trade in time of war," and I should like to explain what I intend by that expression. I am no lawyer and I speak in the presence of the most distinguished lawyers in the land; but I think they will support me at least in these two general propositions—firstly, that the decisions and judgments of those Prize Courts to which I have just referred, especially the decisions and judgments of our English Prize Courts, have always been, and still are, accepted with the greatest respect and substantially without question by all civilised countries; and secondly, that the law which those Courts administer is not the domestic law of their own country but that great body of doctrine known as International Law or the common law of nations.
According to the accepted doctrine of that law, as it stood before the year 1856, the rights of a properly commissioned

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naval force at sea to act upon sea-borne trade in war time were substantially as follows: So far as property belonging to the enemy was concerned that might be captured upon the high seas, wherever it was found. If it were found in an enemy ship, then both ship and property would be condemned as good prize and confiscated to the Crown, but if the enemy property were found in a neutral ship, then the property alone was confiscated and the neutral ship was set free, with payment in full to her owners of freight and demurrage. In this way the neutral shipowner sustained no loss from his venture. The sole legal duty of the neutral was to observe neutrality, and the only conditions in which the Prize Court would hold him to have broken neutrality were three, namely:—he might not break blockade; he might not engage with other belligerents in what was called unaccustomed trade, and he might not carry to the other belligerent goods which, in all the circumstances of the case, a Prize Court would on the evidence hold to be contraband; that is to say, goods actually consigned to an enemy port and of such a character as to be of direct military assistance to the belligerent.
Those, broadly speaking, were the rights of a belligerent at sea and the obligations of a neutral up to the year 1856, and on that clear and simple basis we fought the Emperor Napoleon and faced a situation in which, for over three years, from 1809 to 1812, we had not a single friendly port in the whole of Europe. But we maintained our position, and what Napoleon himself thought of its strength he explained to Lord Amherst, at St. Helena, on July 1, 1817, when he said:—
"As long as you keep the command of the sea, yon only need Ambassadors to get what you want. For you are able to blockade the whole of Europe. And I know the effect of your blockades. You put a country in the situation of a body soaked in oil, which can no longer breathe."
It is perfectly true that in 1856, in circumstances which have never yet been explained, a document called the Declaration of Paris appeared upon the diplomatic horizon and was signed on behalf of this country. This Declaration contained four articles of which only one, the second, is of any importance to the matter in hand. This said that "the neutral flag covers enemy's merchandise with the exception of contraband of war."
Whether this Declaration ever became entitled to the dignity of being called a Treaty is doubtful, and it is still more doubtful whether it ever, in fact, came to form part of the common law of nations as administered by the Prize Courts, and there are two reasons for those doubts. One is the fact that on the same day as the Declaration itself was signed all the contracting Powers also equally formally agreed "to maintain the indivisibility of the four principles mentioned in the Declaration" and that indivisibility has never, in fact, been maintained in war time by one of them. The second reason is the fact that the United States of America have never to this day agreed to the Declaration at all. Then came the long negotiations begun at The Hague on April 3, 1906, which ended in the Declaration of London of 1909. That Declaration enormously weakened the rights of belligerents at sea, and at the same time greatly increased the uncertainties and difficulties to neutrals. It was signed on behalf of England on February 26, 1909, but, luckily for this country, a new Court, to be called the International Prize Court, was required to administer its doctrine, and this necessitated an Act of Parliament. A convenient vehicle was found in the already existing Naval Prize Bill into which, in 1910, new clauses were inserted setting up the proposed new International Court. This Bill was passed in another place, but was rejected by your Lordships' House on December 12, 1911. The result was, of course, that the whole thing fell to pieces, and all the countries who had subscribed to it upon grounds of high humanitarian principle, abandoned it with one accord so soon as it was seen that England would have nothing to do with it.
It is very difficult to avoid the conclusion that all these long negotiations were but one further instance of the determination of the military Powers of Europe to lessen, if they could, that very economic power of England at sea to which my Motion refers. In any case the practical result of all this, and the point which I would venture to ask your Lordships especially to notice, is this. In August, 1914, so far as strict law was concerned, no limitation existed upon our full belligerent rights at sea, except those contained in Article 2 of the Declaration

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of Paris, 1856, and whether or not that Article would, in fact, have been enforced by the Prize Courts is, as I have said, doubtful, but nothing else at that time existed, either in law or in Treaty, to prevent us, had we chosen to do so, from exercising our full belligerent rights at sea—to which I have already referred.
But this course was not adopted. On August 20, 1914, by Order in Council, the Declaration of London, with five quite unimportant modifications, was adopted, and there then followed a long series of Proclamations and Orders in Council altering and re-altering long lists of contraband articles, taking new ground, claiming new rights, imposing new duties upon all concerned; and to enable all these new arrangements to be carried into effect an entirely new machinery was set up in place of the old and tried machinery of the Prize Court. A series of Committees, which finally became crystallised into a body called the Contraband Claims Committee, were set up inside the Foreign Office, and it was this new and hitherto unheard-of body, not a judicial body but a Departmental body, which decided from day to day, upon a procedure of its own, what trade was to be allowed to run unchecked at sea.
It is not necessary to deal in detail with the effect of this course of action, because in the end each step in turn was denounced by its own authors. Thus the Reprisals Order of March 11, 1915, which destroyed the Declaration of Paris, was itself destroyed by the Maritime Rights Order of July 7, 1916, which also expressly denounced and abolished the Declaration of London and, in effect, brought us back at long last to at least the assertion of the old and settled doctrine in these matters. To quote the actual words of the Foreign Office explanation at the time, we must in future confine ourselves
"simply to applying the historical and admitted rules of the Law of Nations."
As a matter of fact, it was not until many months after July, 1916, that these historical and admitted rules were actually enforced, but from the moment that they were actually enforced, about four or five months before the Armistice, the effect was immediate and the resistance of Germany collapsed.
All these Orders in Council were entirely illegal, as was declared by the Privy Council in their judgment in the case of the "Zamorra." We are thus left at the
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present moment with no coherence or settled principles anywhere, and the result of this lack of coherence during the time under review was that while enemy trade and property were steadily exempted from capture as such, neutral trade and property was continuously and unlawfully interfered with, and the situation so created, while assisting the enemy on every hand, roused very real and justifiable resentment in America. It is interesting to observe now that the only justification ever suggested for this course of action was the necessity of avoiding disputes with America. If that were the object, it was certainly not achieved, as was amply shown by the long official correspondence with America which has since been published. That correspondence shows throughout that the complaint which America made against our proceedings in respect of her trade at sea in the earlier part of the war was that those proceedings were unlawful, and it also shows beyond doubt that if we had been content from the first merely to enforce against neutrals our ancient and undoubted belligerent rights at sea, America would have acquiesced in that enforcement.
Unhappily, this correspondence also shows that we ourselves, while engaged in trade on a large scale with Scandinavian neutrals under licence from the Contraband Committee, we were endeavouring to prevent America from con ducting a similar trade. The result of this was that while our friends, the neutrals, were thus unlawfully antagonised German trade flourished. Of this there can be no doubt whatever for the figures of the whole trade of Scandinavia during the war have been published, and published by no less an authority than Rear-Admiral Consett, in his book called "The Triumph of Unarmed Forces.' As your Lordships are aware, Admiral Consett was our own naval representative in Scandinavia from 1912 until 1919, and in 1920 was appointed Naval Adviser to the Supreme Council in Paris. The testimony of such an officer must be regarded as unimpeachable; in any case, not one of his facts or figures has so far been questioned.
I will not weary your Lordships by quoting more than three figures which will suffice to show the state of affairs. I. will take one commodity only, cotton, which, as I need not point out, necessarily

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came to Scandinavia from overseas and was of essential use to Germany in the manufacture of explosives. Sweden alone before the war, in 1913, was sending to Germany and Austria 236 tons of cotton. In 1914 Sweden was sending them 4,600 tons and in 1915 no less then 76,000 tons, and of this enormous quantity over 10,000 tons was supplied directly to Sweden by the United Kingdom and the British Empire. That is only one instance, but I think it is a sufficiently striking one, and I am perfectly satisfied that if any of your Lordships will examine the figures of Admiral Consett in further detail they will be found to show that from 1914 until 1917 Germany was being steadily supplied from overseas with all the essentials for war.
Your Lordships will observe the state of affairs. There was our Fleet, the finest and most efficient force at sea the world had ever seen. No merchant ship could get by that Fleet; every merchant ship was in its power. There also were the Prize Courts of this country ready and able to consider evidence and to apply the law in every case of capture brought before them. The whole machinery required for enforcing our undisputed rights at sea was there, and in the end every one of those rights had, in fact, to be enforced under the hard presure of events, but for over three and a half years of actual fighting, to the great injury not only of this country but of the whole world, the full belligerent rights of this country at sea were not enforced. On the contrary, they were deliberately set aside; and why? Simply from lack of belief in the old tried and well settled principles of (he law of war at sea.
I am prepared to believe that, sooner or later, the late war had to come, that it was inevitable, that it was forced upon us; but I do not believe for one moment that it need have lasted, as it did, for four years, with a loss of over five million men killed ashore. On the contrary, I believe that the surest, and indeed the only, way to have enduring peace in Europe for the future lies in the preservation by England of an overwhelming Fleet and a plain declaration by England to the world of the principles she intends to observe at sea in war time in the future. These last, as I have tried to show, are at the present time a matter of complete uncertainty. The
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Declaration of Paris was, in effect destroyed by the Reprisals Order of March 11, 1915. Is that still in force? The Reprisals Order was superseded by the Maritime Rights Order of July 7, 1916. Is that still in force? We do not yet know the answer to either of these questions.
Upon a subject of such importance and complexity opinions may well differ as to what principles should be considered to be sound, but I suggest that in such a matter, involving, as it does, the whole future peace and steadiness of Europe uncertainty and incoherence cannot in any case be right. They, at all events, can hardly now be adopted as the established policy of England, and, if not, then it is surely not unreasonable to ask His Majesty's Government to tell us our actual position in the matter at this moment. That, and only that, is what my Motion asks the Government to do, and to that end I hope and trust your Lordships will support it. I beg to move.
Moved, That having regard to the information now available as to the actual working of the sea blockade of Germany during the late war, this House requests His Majesty's Government to make a statement as to the effect of any Treaty, Declaration, or other diplomatic instrument now affecting the full rights of this country as a belligerent to act at sea upon sea-borne trade in time of war.—(Lord Redesdale.)
VISCOUNT HALDANE: My Lords, I rise to ask the Government to observe great caution in answering the questions put to them. The noble Lord, in a most lucidly expressed speech, has asked for two things. First of all—and this is quite legitimate—he has asked for a list of the diplomatic instruments which modified our old belligerent rights. It is quite desirable that we should know this. But he has asked a second thing which goes much further. He has asked the Government to declare that we intend in any future war to use the Navy in sufficient strength to put an end to the export to any country with which we may be at war by any neutral Power of materials which may assist the country with which we are at war. The noble Lord referred to the war which commenced in 1914, and he said, possibly with truth, that if we had put our complete rights into force, and if we had stopped all imports into

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Germany, the war might have come to an end very much more quickly than it did. That may be right, but should we have been entangled with Germany alone in that case?
I think one of the most successful things that was done in this country in the early stages of the war consisted of the negotiations—most delicate negotiations, accompanied by partial concessions—which enabled a great deal of trade to go on, trade with neutral countries and particularly with one very great Power which afterwards came to our aid, but which might not have come to our aid if the principles of the noble Lord had been adopted in the bold and bald fashion which he suggests. It is all very well to talk of Napoleon's conversations with Lord Amherst. That was a very long time ago and the face of the world has changed since then. International trade has become of enormously greater importance than it was in those days, and, what is still more to the point, of enormously greater volume. How can you commit yourself beforehand to a policy of interference on the scale which the noble Lord desires without prematurely raising questions which you may never have to raise?
I am not now entering upon the question whether the old rights are rights which can be successfully maintained in the days in which we move. Perhaps they can be. I am only anxious not to raise abstract questions because I am quite sure that if you do raise them you will prove to be trailing your coats in a way which will encourage other people to tread upon them, and you will do yourselves no good. What steps are to be taken towards defining our rights in any future war is a question which needs the most careful consideration. We cannot consider it as if it were an abstract question which we can take up or lay down. We have to bear in mind the susceptibilities of other people who do not see things as we do. We may be driven to the assertion of the rights which we did assert in the last two year's of the Great War. We may have to assert these rights if we are going to succeed, but we certainly do not make our position easier by laying down, in a period of profound peace, principles which will bring us at once into controversy with other great nations whose trade is upon the sea and with whom we desire to remain in
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friendly relations. At the present time no country is raising the questions which the noble Lord has raised. They may have to be raised, but do not raise them now. This is not a. good time at which to raise them, and by keeping silence about them you are giving nothing away. You are only avoiding finding yourself in a state of entanglement which it is very desirable that we should avoid.
I have risen, as I said at the beginning, to say that part of the noble Lord's Motion seems to me to be very legitimate. He is asking for information. But the wider question which he has raised seems to me a very undesirable one to discuss now. If we are to discuss it, it must be on some very important occasion with a Motion before the House going directly to the whole question. I hope that such an occasion will not arise, and I think that we shall do best to keep ourselves free from this kind of controversy.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, this Mot on has appeared on your Lordships' Paper on several occasions and has been postponed. I am not quite sure what motive my noble friend had in postponing it from time to time.
LORD REDESDALE: May I interrupt the noble Marquess for one moment to tell him that it was down for a definite date, and then the Government went out? That is the point. It was down for a definite date.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I do not complain of the noble Lord having postponed it. I was going to praise him. I was going to suggest that it had perhaps occurred to him that a subject of this great delicacy and importance might not be a very fortunate subject for public debate in your Lordships' House. I agree in that respect with ray noble friend who has just sat down, the Leader of the Opposition. I think that this is a very difficult and delicate matter, which requires to be approached with great care and, may I add, with considerable reticence; and I hope that in criticising that which I have to say this afternoon your Lordships will be good enough to bear that in mind. I am not, of course, in any way personally responsible—I am sorry in some respects that it is so—for any proceedings during the war. I was not in office, this Government was not in office and we had nothing to do with it,

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and therefore, if I have a word or two to say in defence of those great public servants who were Ministers at that time, it will be from a purely impartial point of view and merely because I am convinced that in the great efforts which they made to save this country, and in the success which crowned those efforts, they are entitled more to praise than to criticism.
My noble friend has spoken very clearly and very pointedly of the Law of Nations as it affects belligerent rights. I think he attributed much greater precision to it than it really possesses. At any rate, I do not propose to go back into the dim and distant past, for that would serve no useful purpose whatever. Suffice it to say that, so far as powers were concerned, the Orders in Council under which the Government of that day operated in the war were ample for all purposes. My noble friend says that they were modified. Of course they were modified. He seems to think that the matter was very simple. It was very complicated, and the Orders required to be modified from time to time as experience showed them to be defective. Order in Council followed Order in Council.
That has always been the practice of this country in time of war. There have been certain great principles of law which bind (he country, and those have been applied by Orders in Council, and those Orders in Council are far more precise in their character than the law which binds the country. These Orders in Council, giving ample powers—municipal powers of the country—to its belligerent servants alone, have been modified as experience of the war showed that those modifications were necessary. But my noble friend spoke all the time as if our action was a purely independent action, which we might take, or forbear from taking, just as it suited our interests. He strangely forgets what was the real situation in the war. We were in great difficulty. The position was not simple—it was very complicated. The matter was not entirely in our own hands. It was not merely a question of what our rights or our Orders in Council were, but what in the highest interests of this country, and of the world, it was politic to do under the circumstances.
Does he think we could ignore the great neutrals who stood outside the war? Does
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he think it was merely a question of enforcing just what our Fleet could enforce? He spoke with becoming pride of the power of the British Fleet. It is quite true it is enormously powerful. We were, and are, all proud of it, but he would not counsel this country, and would not have counselled it then, to use the Fleet without reference to the interests and wishes of neutrals. The noble Viscount said just now: What was one of the main objects of the policy which governed this country during the earlier part of the war? Was it not to make it possible for the United States to enter the war as one of our Allies? The whole event of the war turned upon that. It was the vital matter, and yet my noble friend does not think it mattered whether we embittered, or embarrassed, or antagonised her. All that appeared to him to be a matter of indifference: there was the power of the British Fleet! Yes, my Lords, it is not a question of power, but of policy in its highest sense, and therefore I cannot accept the criterion which my noble friend submits to your Lordships.
No, we had to consider the position of the great neutrals. Anything like a complete blockade in the old sense of the term was impossible in the circumstances. I need not go into the geography of it, but my noble friend knows that it was impossible. It was a question of how we were to treat neutrals and their property—how we were to treat the imports into neutral countries, consigned to neutral consignees, and the property of those neutrals. It may be that my noble friend thinks, or indeed that he knows, that some of that property ultimately reached the enemy, but that did not make it possible to ignore the rights of the neutrals. They had to be considered, and not only had they to be considered then but they will always have to be considered. He says that all these things were known by a certain gallant officer who has written a book. That gallant officer occupied an important official position, but he was not responsible for the government of this country, and that makes a great difference.
I wonder whether it is true to say that the attitude which we adopted towards neutrals in the earlier part of the war was misdirected, and that the much more stringent attitude adopted at the end of

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the war was more successful. I am not sure that it is true. I believe that the attitude of coming to an agreement with neutrals was, in point of fact, more successful than the more stringent and drastic policy adopted towards the end of the war; that is to say, we prevented more of what ultimately turned out to be contraband reaching the enemy by the former plan, than we did by the latter plan. I do not criticise the adoption of the later plan, but I doubt whether the more stringent plan was the more successful. Then my noble friend criticised us for keeping up trade with neutrals. Why should we not? There was certain trade which neutrals had and which we could not do without, and therefore to have quarrelled with the neutrals would have been equivalent to cutting off our nose to spite our face.
I have said as much as this in order that I may recall to your Lordships what you very well know—namely, that the matter was not simply a matter of the power of the British Navy or of what we should have done if there had been none of these great neutral Powers in existence. The matter was one of the greatest delicacy and difficulty, and had to be achieved by the greatest tact and diplomacy, and I think it ill becomes noble Lords, if I may venture to say so, after the great efforts made at that time, to criticise the policy which was, after all, in the end, wholly successful.
The noble Lord wants to have a declaration of the position of this country now. I deprecate going into that very deeply at this moment, and for this reason: The situation produced by the war, the experience of the war, the complete destruction of many of the ideals which had governed belligerent rights up to that time, have produced a situation requiring complete reconsideration by the Powers of the world, and that reconsideration is going on. It was going on, as I well remember, when we were in office two years ago. As a member of the Committee of Imperial Defence at that time I know that the matter was repeatedly under our serious consideration, and that consideration is going on at this moment. To go into it in any great detail now would not, I think, help matters forward, but rather retard them. That the public law of Europe is again in a stare of evolution—I mean
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the belligerent public law of Europe—can be seen by your Lordships by observing the provisions of the Treaty of Washington, which, of course, is binding on this country, or rather will be binding on this country as soon as it is ratified by the other signatories. At present, as your Lordships know, the Washington Treaty has been ratified by this country but it has not been ratified by France, and until it is ratified by France it is not binding on this country. So it would not be accurate for me to describe it as binding on this country, because it is not, actually binding, though it would be binding if France were to ratify it.
It will be seen, by looking at the particulars of the Treaty of Washington, that all these matters are being reformulated by the great civilised Powers. All the matters relating to the right of search, the authority to attack merchant vessels, the question of the conditions under which that can be done and the conditions under which they can be destroyed, are formulated in the Treaty of Washington, and also the use of submarines as commerce destroyers, which, as your Lordships know, under that Treaty is forbidden. This will show that the whole of this matter is in a condition of evolution. I do not think it would serve any useful purpose if I were to make a declaration of the position of this country while that process is going on, and I would therefore ask your Lordships to excuse me.
But of one thing your Lordships may rest assured, that the policy and attitude of this country will be governed by the experience of the war, by all those things to which my noble friend has called attention to-night, and in the ultimate result I earnestly hope we may be able to build up again something like a proper jurisprudence in these matters, which may help us, if ever the need should arise again, to conduct another war with some regard to those principles of humanity and civilisation for which this country has always stood.
LORD DANESFORT: My Lords, I think the House as a whole will be most grateful to the noble Lord for having brought forward this exceedingly important question, but I fully feel the force of what the noble Marquess said, when he pointed out the unwisdom, perhaps the impossibility,

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of His Majesty's Government making public any declaration of policy in these matters at the present time. But I do hope, and I rather gather from the latter part of his speech that it will be the case, that His Majesty's Government, with the help of their expert advisers, will consider the lessons that we learnt in the war as to the methods of blockade and as to the law to be applied by this country for the purpose of rendering that blockade effective. I do not suggest that they should make public the result of those deliberations, at present at any rate, but I do think it is vitally important that they should get the best possible legal, military and naval advice to go over the lessons of the war to find out where, if possible, improvements of practice may be made and where it may be desirable to follow the same course again if the same disastrous necessity should ever arise.
May I refer to one point raised by the noble Lord which is not without importance? Is the Declaration of Paris still in existence? As a matter of fact, it was never signed by the United States of America at all, but it was brought up in the House of Commons, shortly after it had been signed in Paris, I think no less than three times with a view of getting it ratified, as it required to be, and on each occasion there was opposition to ratification, with the very strange result that in each case the Government of the day avoided an issue upon it, and there was no decision whatever. In one case the previous question was moved, and on another occasion it was talked out. But there was this remarkable result, that this Declaration was never ratified by either House of Parliament. In those circumstances it is not immaterial to ask the question: Is that Declaration binding on us now? As the noble Lord pointed out, one of the most vital questions which arose in the late war was whether the Flag should cover merchandise, except contraband of war, and if we were not bound by the Declaration of Paris we should be in a position of much greater freedom.
I entirely agree with the noble Marquess that our action as regards blockade in the early part of the war was one of the most intense difficulty. Had it been mismanaged we should undoubtedly have had either a rupture, or something very like it, with the United
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States of America. For my part, I think that if we had not had here the late Mr. Page as American Ambassador during those troublous and most critical times the position would have been even more dangerous than it was. As a matter of fact, we did not assert anything like what we considered to be our full belligerent rights, but we adopted what turned out in the long turn to be rather an ingenious way of dealing with things.
We enormously extended the definition of contraband, extended it far beyond anything, so far as I know, that had ever been done by International Law before, and it is remarkable to remember that the Declaration of London, which was sought to be foisted upon us in 1909, would have made it absolutely impossible to declare cotton contraband, because cotton is one of those articles which, under the Declaration of London, was never in any case to be declared contraband. Well, we did declare cotton contraband. We declared a very great number of other things contraband which had not been declared contraband before, and we carried that doctrine of contraband into effect, as I think those who were concerned in the matter will agree—and I see the noble Viscount, Lord Cecil, here who knows the facts as well as any one—by greatly extending the doctrine of continuous voyage, and a very valuable doctrine it was for us. By it, we were able to trace cotton going into Holland for Germany, and to seize it en route. I only mention these things to show that these are matters which require consideration at the present moment, and I trust that the Government will be prepared, if ever the necessity should arise again, with a somewhat, more settled policy than we had at the beginning of the late war.
LORD REDESDALE: I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

GERMAN DISARMAMENT.
LORD PARMOOR LORD PARMOOR rose to ask His Majesty's Government whether the defaults in disarmament alleged against the German Government include matters for which a time limit is prescribed in Article 203 of the Treaty of Versailles; and to move for Papers. The noble and

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learned Lord said: My Lords, this Question has also been for some time on the Order Paper but, as the noble Marquess will know, there were special reasons why it was postponed. The noble Marquess, as is quite right in matters of this kind, asked me what the points were which I desired to raise, and I sent him a copy of the notes on which I am going to speak to your Lordships this afternoon. I do not believe in not giving full information on an important point of this kind.
Article 203 of the Treaty of Versailles is in common form, and part of the importance of my Question, as will appear when I come to what has taken place in the Council of the League of Nations at Geneva, is that it is in a common form applicable not only in this Treaty, but in the Treaties also with Bulgaria, Hungary and Austria. I think I ought to read the words of Article 203 in order to make the terms of my Question entirely intelligible:
"All the military, naval and air clauses contained in the present Treaty, for the execution of which a time-limit is prescribed, shall be executed by Germany under the control of Inter-Allied Commissions specially appointed for this purpose by the principal Allied and Associated Powers."
Your Lordships will see, therefore, that the powers given and to be exercised under the control of the Inter-Allied Commission are carefully safeguarded and limited—namely, to the execution of the military, naval and air clauses for which a time limit is prescribed.
The first object of my Question is to ascertain whether any of the complaints which have been made and are being formulated, as I understand, against Germany for not having fulfilled her obligations of disarmament, came within those terms and were they obligations for which a time limit was prescribed. I have noticed, and I think I may state it as common ground, that so far as naval and air matters are concerned no complaint is being made. The complaint is really limited to military questions. I may be wrong about that, but at least military questions are really the difficulties involved.
Let me call your Lordships' attention to Article 213 which is to be found not only in the Treaty with Germany but in the Treaty with Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria. It is in these terms—
"So long as the present Treaty remains in force, Germany undertakes to give every
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facility for any investigation which the Council of the League of Nations, acting if need be by a majority vote, may consider necessary."
Therefore, it is clearly contemplated that a time will come when the jurisdiction of control or supervision passes from the Allied control bodies to the Council of the League of Nations. That is a very important factor indeed, for two reasons. First of all, every one would allow, I think, the authority of an impartial body appointed by the League of Nations, and if that body found that certain obligations had not been complied with, would be satisfied that Germany or any other country might be regarded as being in default. Secondly, there is no doubt that the maintenance of these Allied Controls is not only a considerable expense to the countries involved, but is, naturally, a cause of considerable irritation. There can be no doubt that, while human nature is constituted as it is, control of the defeated by the military Allies on the other side is sure to raise friction and trouble.
That being the case, last June, when I was a delegate to the Council of the League in succession to the noble Viscount, I brought this matter before the Council on behalf of Great Britain and on instructions from Great Britain. I said that the time had come, in the opinion of Great Britain, when, at any rate in regard to Bulgaria, Austria and Hungary, the control should no longer be in the hands of the Allies; that those, countries should be no longer submitted either to the expense or irritation of it; and that the Council itself should institute a supervising body. When I brought that forward a resolution based upon it was proposed by the French delegates, and in the result the Council adopted the view that it ought to provide for a supervising body. The question, of course, arose as to how that supervising body should be constituted. There was one point with which I need not trouble your Lordships. There was a legal point which was referred to a commission of jurists who issued a report which we immediately accepted and adopted; the question being who were entitled to sit upon the Council when a matter of this kind was dealt with. But the more important matter was referred to the military and naval advisers of the Council of the League.
Your Lordships are aware that under the Covenant of the League a permanent body of military, naval and air advisers is constituted, which, at the will of the Council, give information upon all points concerning naval and military matters, especially those dealing with questions of disarmament. This matter was referred to and considered by the permanent Military Council of advisers. When the Council itself met again in August this question was raised. The British representatives said, and rightly said, that so far as the Council was concerned their duties were limited to Bulgaria, Austria and Hungary, and could go no further. The military advisers representing other countries upon this permanent body desired to include also the case of Germany. When I first went out in August I was confronted with this: We, the advisers appointed on behalf of Great Britain, have come to a deadlock. Our functions are limited to Austria, Bulgaria and Hungary; whereas the representatives of other countries—particularly France and Italy I think, though it does not matter for the moment which they were—say that it is no good providing for supervision by the Council unless the case of Germany is also included.
I need not tell your Lordships that a matter of that kind immediately raised a difficulty, but it was solved in this way. After reference home for instructions—the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary himself came to Geneva shortly afterwards—it was arranged that the British representatives should consent to the consideration of the case of Germany at the same time as the cases of Bulgaria, Austria and Hungary were considered. Consequently, at the end of the Council meeting, a joint proposal was made by the military and naval representatives of the various countries to include in their scheme of supervision a scheme which was" applicable to Germany as well as to Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria. Two or three days, I think, were occupied by the Council in order to reconcile certain views, and ultimately a unanimous decision was reached by which a supervisory system could be applied to Germany as well as to the other countries. That shows that this question has been considered very carefully and that provision has already been made for supervision by the Council and superseding the control of the Allied Powers.
I do not want to exaggerate for one moment. The Council was not deciding at that time whether its powers had superseded the powers of the Allied control bodies but was making provision for it. The Allied Control Forces act under the supervision of the Conference of Ambassadors sitting at Paris. Why they should sit at Paris, I do not know; but this question arises. The Conference of Ambassadors have not the staff, or the assistance of expert military, naval and air advisers which the Council have provided under the terms of the Covenant itself, so that in one case you have a body which is very little assisted by expert advice, and in the other you have a body with all—sufficient expert advice at its control.
There is one other matter also which I want to emphasise before I put my Question. There never was an intention of what I may call a unilateral disarmament of the defeatist Powers. The Covenant of the League contains, of course, a corresponding obligation upon all countries to disarm to what I may call a defensive level, and in the series of articles which are set out in the Treaty of Versailles under Part V this Preamble is inserted, which applies to all of them:—
"In order to render possible the initiation of a general limitation of the armaments of all nations, Germany undertakes strictly to observe the military, naval and air clauses which follow."
Your Lordships will notice the words" in order to render possible the initiation of a general limitation."
But beyond that, when Germany was raising objections to the terms of the Treaty, the Allied and associated Powers at Paris gave this official answer in a document to the complaint of Germany:—
"The Allied and Associated Powers have already pointed out to the German delegates that the Covenant of the League of Nations provides for ' the reduction of national armaments to the lowest point consistent with national safety, and the enforcement by common action of international obligation.' They recognise that the acceptance by Germany of the terms laid down for her own disarmament will facilitate and hasten the accomplishment of a general reduction of armaments."
Then they go on to say that they intend to open negotiations immediately with a view to the eventual adoption of a scheme of such general reduction.
We know perfectly well that, although that is the expression of an intention immediately to open negotiations, no general progress has been made up to the present time. I am not now dealing with the Washington Conference, to which a reference has been made, and in which this country, at any rate, made very notable and large concessions. I do not in the least complain of that, but there has been no move for general disarmament except—though I do not want to go into that to-day—that there was a practical scheme for a world conference under the. conditions mentioned in the Protocol. The noble Earl the leader of the Liberal Party pointed to two very important terms in the Treaty of Versailles in the speech he made the other day—namely, Articles 428 and 429. I should like to associate myself with the argument that he then addressed to your Lordships. It was, in effect, that those two Articles did not contemplate trivial matters but contemplated matters of real and vital importance. I think that is perfectly true, but that important question raises a different matter—who is to decide whether there has been a default or not? That is the important question that I raise.
Is it to be decided by the Allied Control Forces, or is it to be decided under supervision by a body appointed by the Council of the League of Nations? That is obviously an extremely important point. We are dealing with a question of fact. Are you to have it decided by an impartial body, or are you to have it decided by a party which, at any rate, would not be regarded as impartial by one of the parties concerned. When I was sitting on the other side of the House, and in close connection with the Foreign Office, this matter was a great deal considered. I will not go into the matters that came up for consideration. I believe that they eventuated in a difference of opinion between certain persons as to when supervision of the Council of the League superseded the provisions relating to Allied control.
My question raises this point: After all the specified matters have been dealt with, when does a time come for bringing in the impartial authority of supervision by the League of Nations? This is a matter which, I know, the Noble Marquess is much interested in. It
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is what I may call the general peace spirit in these matters. I know of my own knowledge at the present time that the method of supervision in the case of Germany will be determined and settled by the Council of the League so soon as the occasion arises. I do not want to exaggerate. They have not decided when the time arises, but they have the machinery ready, because it was present to the minds of a great many people that if the time had not arisen it was likely to arise very shortly.
There is one, point that has been raised on the other side that I want to touch upon very shortly. It has been said that until there has been a general absolution, so to speak, of these various countries—Germany, Bulgaria, Austria, Hungary—until they have complied with all their obligations, the Allied control should be maintained. I understand the strength of that contention, but the answer to it is this. If you look at the Treaty terms—and Germany is entitled to the full benefit of those Treaty terms—you find a distinction between matters which have to be set right in a prescribed time, and those for subsequent delegation or supervision to the Council of the League. I told the noble Marquess the points that I intended to raise. I think they are extremely important points, especially having regard to the issue to which the noble Earl referred the other night—namely, the issue of the further occupation of the Rhine bridgeheads, or a Rhine bridgehead, on the ground that Germany was still in default. I beg to move for Papers, if there are any which the noble Marquess can lay before the House in further elucidation of this matter.
LORD NEWTON: My Lords, it may possibly be of interest to the noble and learned Lord who has just spoken if I inform him that in the summer of 1921 I was in Berlin myself, that I had friends on the Control Commission, and that I was able to investigate their papers and to realise the work which they had done. Much to my surprise I was informed that their work was practically completed. That was in the summer of 1921. If the work was practically completed in 1921, what has been going on during the last four years, or nearly four years? There is one thing upon which I believe everybody

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is agreed. I believe all the military authorities are agreed upon the point that under no conditions can Germany possibly be in a position to make war for a comparatively long period.
The fact is that the Germans—I am speaking particularly of the military Germans—with that stupidity and clumsiness which they frequently show, have by their own action extended the retention of this Control Commission for a perfectly unnecessary period. If they had been rather more sensible, if they had not obstructed in a senseless way on trivial matters and had complied with the demands of the Commission, the Commission would have been got rid of long ago. It might have disappeared two years ago. It is largely in consequence of silly and senseless opposition that the Commission is still there. As a result, this foolish action on the part of the German Government—I must say there is some excuse to be found for it, because the Germans have always contended that the Allies have acted illegally towards them—has provided the French Press and a portion of the English Press which is more French than the French Press, with arguments to the effect that there are millions and millions of armed Huns underground, or in the air, who are prepared to burst upon an astonished world at a moment's notice and lay everything in ashes.
It is, no doubt, very reprehensible that the German military authorities should set themselves to evade the provisions of the Treaty. But who would not do the same? I often wish we could put ourselves in other people's places. I wonder what the position would be in this country if there was a military control here consisting of Germans and Turks and Bulgars, all ex-enemies, and an enormous force of these people occupied our industrial districts, perpetually impeding our traffic and our communications. I wonder whether we could sit down quietly under it; whether we should not obstruct as much as we could and nourish hopes that some day we might re-establish our old position. It does not seem to me to matter very much whether the German disposition is peaceful or warlike, because we have it on the highest military authority that, whatever their feelings may be, they are not in a position to carry out any acts of hostility
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whatever. That should be sufficient for anybody.
I have seen a number of these Control Commissions, not only in Germany but in other ex-enemy countries, and with all my heart; I should like to see them disappear as soon as possible. I should like to see them put an end to without any further delay. People here do not realise the position. We are always talking here about disarmament, the blessings of peace, and the curse of what we call militarism. Who has been disarmed, and who is disarming? The only countries who have been disarmed are ex-enemy countries. All the other countries, or some of them at least, are maintaining larger military establishments than they did before the war, but no Allied country shows any signs of disarming except perhaps our own. And yet the farce is kept up of maintaining in these miserable, bankrupt ex-enemy countries these Commissions at the expense of these bankrupt ex-enemy Governments. If they had to be paid for by their own Governments they would have disappeared long ago and none of these excuses would have been found for maintaining them.
The truth is, though nobody utters it, that whenever an ex-enemy country shows any sign of recovery then all their neighbours, who are all armed to the teeth, at once profess extraordinary alarm, assert that the ex-enemy country is plotting a new war, and demand additional precautions in the shape of Control Commissions and further military occupations. How is all this going to end? How can there be any finality to it? If the French ideas of security are going to be allowed to prevail, these Commissions will be eternal; we shall never see the end of them. And what is worse still, any technical offences discovered by these Commissions will be utilised for the purpose of prolonging the period of occupation. I may be quite wrong, but from what I have seen I am quite unable to believe that Control Commissions do any good at all. Far from eradicating the spirit of revenge, all they do is to accentuate it; they keep up that warlike atmosphere which we all profess to be so anxious to destroy. I believe that one of the most efficacious steps in a small way towards restoring a better feeling throughout Europe would be to put an end to these Control Commissions

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at the earliest opportunity. I hope the, noble Marquess, who is to reply, will hold out some hope that there is going to be a termination of this perpetual source of irritation.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, I have in the first place to express my most sincere thanks to the noble and learned Lord for his great courtesy in the matter of this Question. It has been postponed, I am sorry to say, entirely to suit my convenience. I am also obliged to the noble and learned Lord for his courtesy in furnishing me with some information as to the points he was going to put this evening. I will do my best to answer his Question, but I feel at a certain disadvantage in replying to him. In these matters he is an expert. He is not only very learned in the law, but has a great knowledge of the actual work of the League of Nations and of the subject matter of his Question.
The noble and learned Lord, in the terms of his Question, asks the Government:
"whether the faults in disarmament alleged against the German Government include matters for which a time limit is prescribed in Article 203 of the Treaty of Versailles."
The answer, of course, is in the affirmative; it is so. There are matters in default, matters of importance, which are included amongst the time-limit clauses. I do not want to overstate it. There is no doubt whatever that a very great deal has been done by way of disarmament in Germany. That is perfectly true, but it is also true that there are very substantial matters which have not been done. I do not desire to speak with anything like severity of the German Government. They, naturally, have had considerable difficulties to contend with, but they were bound by the Treaty to carry out certain measures of disarmament, and in material respects they have not done so.
I give as an example such matters as the transformation of munition factories into factories for civilian purposes, and the passing of the necessary legislation to carry out the Treaty. In both of these respects, and also in other matters, the German Government have not yet fully carried out the Treaty. They show a very good spirit at the present moment, which we are glad to see, but upon the specific
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Question of the noble and learned Lord the answer is as I have stated. That decision is in the hands of the Inter-Allied Military Commission.
My noble friend who has just sat down has spoken in strong terms—he generally speaks in strong terms—of these Inter-Allied Commissions. The whole machinery of war, and of the sequelæ of war, is in many respects unsatisfactory. It is not consonant with our ordinary procedure, whether national or international, and of course we shall all be delighted when the time comes that these special Commissions can be done away with. But I really cannot see by what other machinery the Treaty rights of the Allies are to be enforced except by such bodies as the Inter-Allied Military Commission. They are very adequately manned by very competent officers, and I am quite sure that your Lordships would believe that the representative of this country carries out his duties with every regard that he can possibly pay to the susceptibilities of everybody who is concerned so far as his duty allows him to do so.
I cannot agree with the strictures of my noble friend who sits behind me. Whether there has been default or not must be decided by these inspecting bodies, the Allied Military Commissions, and they must continue to act until the time-limit clauses are fulfilled. As yet, they have not been fulfilled, and I am informed that what is true in that respect of Germany is in a measure, though probably not in anything like the same measure, true of the other ex-enemy Powers to which the noble and learned Lord has referred. When the time-limit clauses have been fulfilled, when, that is to say, the execution by Germany of those clauses has so far advanced that a final settlement is assured—I think I have used the appropriate terms—then the Commission and its supervision will come to an end.
Then comes in, as I understand the procedure, the supervision to which the noble and learned Lord has referred—namely, the supervision which has been established by the League of Nations. They have a general right of supervision which extends, not merely to the time-limit clauses but to all the military clauses of the Treaty. The duty may be cast upon them of supervising the execution of all these provisions of the Versailles Treaty and, as I need not say, the noble

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Lord is quite right in stating that the League of Nations, I think largely at his own instance, took measures to institute the necessary supervising bodies so long ago as last September. That is a very prudent procedure. All the machinery is there already, so that as soon as the Inter-Allied Military Commission has finished its work under the conditions which I have described, the supervision will pass to the instrument of the League of Nations.
The noble and learned Lord spoke with a certain amount of criticism of the Conference of Ambassadors and said that he did not think that this Conference had any military expert advisers to keep it straight in military matters. The answer to that, as I understand it, is a very simple one. They obtain their technical advice from the very Inter-Allied Military Commission to which I have just referred, and when the Report of the Inter-Allied Commission was made recently it was submitted to the Conference of Ambassadors and was sent back by them to the Inter-Allied Commission in order that the special matters in which Germany was substantially in default might be formulated by that body. That is the position in which the matter stands at this moment. I have brought the thing absolutely up to date. The substantial defaults of the German Government are in process of formulation by the Inter-Allied Military Commission. That is the situation.
The noble and learned Lord concluded his speech by speaking in a very becoming way of the great interest which this country has in the limitation of armaments, and he said that I should, no doubt, agree with him. Of course I agree with him. It is to the great interest of this country that there should be a limitation of armaments, both on general grounds of international policy and also because it evidently reacts upon our own obligation to make preparations for another war. On every ground we ought to be in favour of the limitation of armaments, and I hope that your Lordships realise that no greater mistake could be made than to think that, because the Protocol has not succeeded, the interest of His Majesty's Government in the limitation of armaments has disappeared. That would not be at all the case. We still hope, and hope confidently, that the efforts of His Majesty's Government and
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of other Governments will tend towards that consummation of the limitation of armaments, which, as I have said in agreement with the noble and learned Lord, His Majesty's Government so much desires. I hope that I have been able effectively to answer the Question which my noble friend has put to me.
LORD LAMINGTON: My Lords, may I contribute one word to this discussion? I did not hear the whole of the speech of my noble friend Lord Newton, but I understand that his complaint was that these Commissions irritated without really doing very much good. I am reminded of an article which appeared some three or four months ago, I think in the Quarterly Review, by a member of the Military Commission in Germany, in which he showed that the limitation of Germany's troops to 100,000 is not really much use because this number is chiefly composed of officers and non-commissioned officers who would at once form the nucleus for expansion into a very considerable army at short notice. That article also stated, if I remember rightly, that the numerous chemical industries are capable almost at a moment's notice of being converted into industries for the production of poison gas. I think my noble friend's contention was that you cannot by any ordinary means or by the supervision of a Commission of this sort achieve the limitation of armaments. It is almost impossible to create a power which will prevent a possible enemy, at comparatively short notice, producing an army or some military force capable of aggression, and armed in some degree so that it might be a very dangerous instrument and a menace to the peace of other countries. That is the real objection to these Commissions. They naturally irritate the country in which they work, and at the same time they are not able to carry out successfully the intentions with which they were originally formed.
LORD PARMOOR: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Marquess the Leader of the House for the answer that he has given to my Question. It appears to me that on major points we hold the same opinions. There are just two matters upon which I should like to say one further word. The noble Marquess said, I think particularly in regard to the

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factories not being converted from war equipment to peaceful uses, and as regards certain laws not being passed, Germany was still in default.
I quite agree that so long as Germany is in default, under Article 203 the Allied control must remain in operation, but will it be possible—I do not say now but when further investigation has been made into the Report of the Allied Control in reference to Germany; I do not think there has been a special Report with regard to other countries—to give information either by Papers or in some other way showing what is the real nature of the defaults of which complaint can quite properly be made, in order to show whether they are really matters of substance or, as the noble Earl said the other day, matters in themselves, trivial? I think the question was asked in another place, and the answer was that the information could not be given at this time; that it required further investigation and further analysis. If, when that further investigation and further analysis has been completed, the information can be given, I think it will be of enormous advantage all round. It will bring the crucial matters to the mind of Germany, and bring to the minds of other countries the question whether the matters complained of were matters of substance or comparatively trivial. I agree with what was said by the noble Lord who has just sat down, that no amount of what I may call, for this purpose, hostile investigation is ever likely, in itself, to be wholly successful.
There is one other matter upon which I should like to say a word in order to show that I appreciate what the noble Marquess said, and in order to show what I meant. What I meant was that the Conference of Ambassadors had not military advisers except the Inter-Allied Control Commission itself.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I think I spoke hastily. The military advisers of the Conference are the Military Committee at Versailles, over which Marshal Foch presides. I think I misled the noble and learned Lord.
LORD PARMOOR: I thought he meant they were actually the Inter-Allied Commission. I have no doubt the noble Marquess is perfectly accurate, but what that brings to my mind, and to the minds of
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a great many people whose sole desire is all-round disarmament and a peaceful spirit, is that you do not get an outside body of military or naval advisers assisting the Ambassadors' Conference in the same way as you do the permanent Military Committee of the Council of the League. I do not want to go into that further, but so far as the League is concerned there is a special body appointed for this purpose in the Covenant itself. Having regard to the speech of the noble Marquess, I do not press for Papers and I hope that he will bear the other matters in mind.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

POST OFFICE METHODS.
EARL RUSSELL EARL RUSSELL had given Notice to call attention to the unbusinesslike procedure of the Post Office in such matters as the delivery of telegrams, the redirection of letters, the charging of an express fee when there is no express delivery, the refusal to give a free receipt for the charges on a telegram, and the repudiation of liability for registered letters; and to ask the Postmaster-General whether he will appoint a Departmental Committee of business men to make recommendations on these and similar unbusinesslike methods.
The noble Earl said: My Lords, I find it quite impossible to address myself to the Bench opposite without expressing my personal sense of the loss which we have sustained by the passing from our midst of the noble Marquess who so long led this House, and in saying that I am expressing, I know, the feeling shared by the House. Now, in the indictment, such as it is, that I propose to present against the Post Office to-day, your Lordships will be glad to learn that I am not proposing to include matters relating to the telephone service. Those matters are susceptible of having a great deal said of them. I have a record here of a nature which I think will be familiar to many of your Lordships, in which I get through to a number successfully at one moment, two minutes after I am rung up for the next number, a wrong number, three minutes after I am again rung up for a wrong number, an hour later rung up again for a wrong number, and then occasions on which I ask for a number, do not get it, and find afterwards that

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someone is sitting by the telephone all the time. The telephone service would be a fruitful subject of discussion, and I think it is fortunate for your Lordships' patience that I do not propose to include it to-night, particularly as I understand there already exists some sort of an Advisory Committee with regard to telephonic matters.
There are remarkable things done by the Post Office as a Government Department, in the way in which it conducts its business. They are methods of conducting its business which would be immediately fatal to the success of any commercial concern, but which the Post Office is able to justify owing to two facts—the fact that it has a monopoly, and the fact that it is a Government Department and therefore cannot be sued like an ordinary person who breaks a contract. Your Lordships' House is fortunate in having several ex-Postmasters-General among its members, and it has been suggested to me that I might perhaps say that in this year or that year the Post Office was not subject to any complaints. My complaint is not against any Postmaster-General, and at any rate not against the present one, in. whom I have great confidence, but it is against the system of the Post Office as a whole. Rightly or wrongly, there is a general impression—and I think when your Lordships have heard some of the instances you will think it is not unfounded—that the Post Office is rather a martinet Department and lives in a world of its own, without any regard to the trouble and the inconvenience caused to those who are compelled to use it, and is very reluctant to listen to complaints or to be moved by them.
I just wish to weary your Lordships with one or two instances of the sort of thing that does, in fact, happen. I should tell your Lordships that this Question has been upon the Paper for a long time, and indeed throughout the life of the late Labour Government, and when reference was made to it in the public Press I was inundated by shoals of correspondence and complaints. Here is a case where a packet, both registered and insured, and containing £10, was addressed to some address in Germany. The packet disappeared. The sender of the packet, to whom £10 was a consideration, made inquiries of the Post Office,
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and after several months the Post Office adopted a defence which was ingenious and, I dare say, in itself successful. It said that the packet had been seized by the Army of Occupation in the Ruhr. If that was the case, the Post Office can hardly be blamed. Anyhow, the unfortunate sender has lost his £10, and has received no compensation whatever for it.
A publisher wrote to me and said that he had sent off many presentation copies of a new book on July 4, 1924. Of the copies he sent off at least eight were neither received by the addressees nor returned to the sender. They simply disappeared in the post. He also says that several addressed to the London area took a whole week for delivery. Then there are many cases of letters which are clearly and correctly addressed, which are delayed owing to their being carelessly delivered at the wrong address, and perhaps being handed back to the postman the day after, or even the day after that. There are worse cases of letters, which are fully paid and correctly addressed, which are never delivered at all, and these cases are infinitely more numerous than they were before the war. The administration of the Post Office in this respect has become very much worse.
There are also cases, in which the Post Office may plead some excuse, in which a letter is not quite correctly addressed, but in which the address could be ascertained with the utmost ease by looking up any work of reference, even the Post Office's own publication, the Telephone Book. The Post Office now adopts the attitude that it is not its business to deliver a letter to the correct address and to take the trouble to look up any work of reference, even its own Telephone Book. It prefers the trouble and the annoyance, both to itself and the sender, of returning the letter to the sender, and simply saying "insufficiently" or "incorrectly" addressed. That does not seem to be a businesslike proceeding. I cannot see that it benefits the Post Office; it certainly does not benefit the sender of the letter.
I have here a case which is worth noting as illustrating what I said just now about the somewhat peremptory and martinet attitude of the Post Office. It is a case of letters, properly stamped and addressed, never reaching their destination,

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and never being heard of again; and. after correspondence, this is the Post Office's official reply, and I invite your Lordship's attention to it:
"The Postmaster-General is not legally liable for the loss, damage, delay, non-delivery or mis-delivery of anything sent by post."
No doubt that is true, but I do ask your Lordships whether any trader could conduct his business on that principle for a single moment, and I do ask you whether that is a sufficient attitude for a public Department to adopt when it has failed to render a public service, and a service which, owing to its monopoly, no one else can render? But that is the official attitude.
Then there are cases, now very frequent, of prolonged delay in delivery. I have a case here of a letter posted in the London area at 7.15 p.m., and delivered at an address in the London area at 1.30 p.m. the next day. These things are not unusual, I have a case here of a telegram handed in. at a country post office at 10.20 a.m., and not delivered in London, fifty miles away, till four hours later. Four hours for a telegram to go fifty miles!
There are other matters somewhat of the same kind. There is a new invention. I do not propose to mention its name, because I have no intention of giving it a free advertisement, nor do I guarantee that it is a good or a bad invention. It is an attachment to a telephone, which certain telephone subscribers desire to use, and which the person who makes the apparatus naturally desires to supply. The Post Office answer is that people are to be prevented from using this apparatus, even though they are. prepared to take the risk of a line going wrong or anything of that kind; they are not to be allowed to use a new invention which is not the Post Office's manufacture. There may be practical reasons for that, though I rather doubt it, but it is all part of the same attitude.
This is rather an amusing instance: In a village there is a collecting box, with the usual slit, which will only take an ordinary letter. An enterprising tradesman in this village desired to post some circulars, which were too large to go into the slit of the village letter box. He therefore waited until the postman came
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round to collect the letters, and said: "Will you take these circulars?" The postman, no doubt quite correctly, said: "No, I am forbidden to take circulars. I cannot collect anything unless it is put into the box"—and the box was of such a character that he could not put them in. That, again, is another instance of what I call unbusinesslike administration.
Further, there are cases of telegrams sent to a registered address which has been discontinued. The Post Office used to charge a guinea, and I think now charge two guineas a year, for a registered address, and there may, therefore, be something to be said for their refusing to deliver a telegram to an address which is no longer registered. Obviously they have not been paid for that special service, but they know perfectly well for whom the telegram is meant, and the sender did not know that the registered address had been discontinued. It seems a little hard if they cannot, perhaps by charging a fee, avoid such inconvenience. Then there is a good deal of trouble about telegrams sent to telephonic addresses. The Post Office Guide says that you can send a telegram to a telephone subscriber by simply putting his number and exchange. If you try to do that you are told that it is not enough, that you must also put his name, and, if you ask why, the Post Office quite frankly tell you that it is because their disbelief in their system is so great that they cannot guarantee to transmit numbers accurately.
And here is another curious thing, which seems to me not to be founded on any business consideration; probably some of your Lordships have experienced it. You have a telephone at your address, you move to another address, and you desire to have a telephone there. If you should ask to have your telephone moved from your old address to your new-address the Post Office make a charge for it. I do not know what it is, but it is something quite substantial. But if you say you will have a new telephone at the new address they make no charge for it, and you can start with a new telephone. Why you should be charged more for removing the old telephone than for putting in a new one is a thing that really only the Post Office can understand; I am quite unable to give any reasons for it.
My next illustration is, I think, unusual; I will do the Post Office the justice to say

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that. It is the case of a letter sent from the City to Bloomsbury, a total distance of a couple of miles. That letter took fifty-two hours in transmission. That seems rather a long time. Then there are things which the Post Office might do that it does not always do, such as the stopping of lottery circulars and betting circulars. I know it has often been urged upon them that they should interfere with this, but they have always shown a singular tenderness, even when they know what these circulars are.
Here is a business complaint, and a business complaint of a very serious character—a really remarkable record. I do not wish to give the name of the firm, except, of course, privately, but these are people who do a very large business in what is called the mail order system. That is to say, they advertise extensively, they receive remittances by post, and send off goods in response to those remittances. These people in three years, have suffered a loss by pilferage of the goods they have sent off—not of the postal orders coming to them—of £1,116. That seems to reflect on the administration of the Post Office.
Then there are great inconveniences in the shorter hours. There are smaller towns now in which the only post office in the place closes between one and two o'clock daily, and on the early closing day closes at one o'clock for the rest of the day, so that these towns, after one o'clock in the day, are cut off from telegraphic communication with any other place in the kingdom. In spite of high wages and shorter hours, I cannot help thinking that something might be done to remedy that state of affairs particularly since, as a rule, the telephone exchanges are not closed in this way. In another case which I might quote, a trader tells me that two gold chains were sent to him. value £25, of course with all the precautions of registration and insurance. They were not delivered, and he gets no compensation. And we have to remember the remark-aide contention which the Post Office has made about registered letters. I believe it still makes this contention. It is that if they deliver to the addressee the envelope of a registered letter they have completely fulfilled their contract, although the contents may have been abstracted in transit. That shows
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a courage of which no private trader would be capable.
There is another small matter which has been mentioned to me and I can imagine that there are some reasons for it. I should also think that some explanation might be made. There is a rule at present, I believe I am right in saying, that a poste restante address—that is to say, letters addressed to a post office—can only be used for three weeks. I can imagine some reasons for that provision, though they are not very sound ones. But I am told that in fact and in practice, it causes great inconvenience to commercial travellers and people of that sort who have no fixed address. They want a fixed centre at which their mail may arrive and they can be sure to get it, but it is impossible for this arrangement to be extended.
Then there is a matter I mention in my Question, the matter of an express fee. The Post Office, some years ago with a great flourish of trumpets, introduced a system by which a letter might be delivered out of course of post on payment of an express fee of threepence when the letter was sent; that is to say, that on arrival at the office of destination it should be sent out, as if it were a telegram, by a special messenger and delivered at once. Naturally, this only applies to comparatively big centres where there are telegraph boys available and where the distances are short. But instance after instance has come to my notice where the Post Office takes this express fee of threepence for a village in the country where they know perfectly well there is no express service, and where the letter gains absolutely nothing by this payment and is delivered in the ordinary course of post next morning. It seems to me that in cases like that the address might be looked up in the Post Office Guide and the sender might be told: "You are only paying your threepence for nothing." But it is not done. I am not sure whether this threepence is refunded. It might be, but the Post Office does not always return money for services which are not rendered.
I wish to call your Lordships' attention to the last part of my Question, which is:—
"… and to ask the Postmaster-General whether he will appoint a Departmental Committee …"
Of course, I am only suggesting that it shall be a Departmental Committee, and that it shall be staffed, not exclusively by Post Office servants, but by business men to make recommendations on these and other methods. The Post Office has undoubtedly difficulties to deal with. It is a very great organisation, and there are difficulties of administration. As soon as any organisation becomes as large as the Poet Office a good deal of strictness in rules is necessary. But I cannot help thinking that it might be organised on rather more businesslike lines. I cannot help thinking also, fearing as I do the tradition of the Post Office, that this might be somewhat assisted if advice were to be given to the Post Office by business men chosen by Chambers of Commerce, or in some other way, who could suggest means of getting over what to the departmental mind seems insuperable.
I should like to suggest that some Committee might be set up permanently which should be an Advisory Committee, not merely in the sense that they should only answer questions submitted to them by the Postmaster-General, but that they should be allowed to meet at their own will and to take the initiative in submitting recommendations to him. I think such a Committee would help to bring the Post Office more closely into touch with those whom it professes to serve. I am convinced that a great many of the matters I have mentioned to your Lordships could be solved by business people with ordinary business instincts, and that they have not really the insuperable character which the Department attributes to them. I should like to know whether the Postmaster-General would not consider the setting up of a Committee of this character, thereby making the Post Office more useful than it is. We cannot do without the Post Office. We do not want to break its monopoly, but I think we desire that the services for which we pay should be rendered, and that when they fail to be rendered some measure of justice should be meted out to those who have suffered. I beg to ask my Question.
THE EARL OF LUCAN: My Lords, may I in the first place thank the noble Earl for his kind reference to the late Leader of this House, the purport of which we very much appreciate. The Question of the noble Earl as it appears on the Paper
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contains a very sweeping indictment of the Post Office, but in his speech I think he has made that indictment and the scope of his charges even wider and more sweeping. He v as good enough to give the Post Office the heads of the questions to which ho wanted replies, and the Post Office have done their best to give information on those matters. I am sure the noble Earl will forgive me if I do not follow—he will not expect me to follow—all the different cases he has mentioned of which we have not had notices. If he could let my right hon. friend the Postmaster-General know what his complaints are in respect of them, I am sure that every inquiry would be made and good explanations would probably be found for a great many of them. They were such matters as the attachment to the telephone, circulars going wrong, the registered addresses to which telegrams are sent, the telephone at the new address, and in regard to the telegraph office which was cut off at one o'clock. There must be, I am sure, some very good explanations which I could have given the noble Earl had I had notice of those points.
With reference to the Question which the noble Earl has placed upon the Paper, first of all, the registered letter he referred to was, I think, a letter to Germany, and my information is that the registration compensation that we pay in this country applies only to the inland post. The foreign system is the outcome of the Postal Union Convention which is subscribed to practically by all civilised nations and, therefore, our terms of compensation do not apply. As to the registered letter which the noble Earl stated arrived as an envelope with nothing inside it, as far as I can understand compensation is given in such cases provided that all the conditions of the Post Office are adhered to, such as the sending of money or valuables or anything which wants registering in a Post Office registered envelope. There are other conditions, but I am afraid it is too much to expect everybody to read the Post Office Guide and to know it; but all the conditions under which registered letters have to be sent and compensation is paid are laid down in that guide.
The noble Earl asked also about a receipt for a registered letter. It is not quite clear what it is that the noble Earl

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wants. A certificate is given free when a registered letter is handed in, and, as a further safeguard, the sender can arrange to have advice of the delivery of the letter on payment of threepence.
EARL RUSSELL: It is done for no extra charge in the United States.
THE EARL OK LUCAN: A great many economies have been effected here and I have no doubt that is one of them. In regard to telegrams, the noble Earl in the memorandum which he sent to the Post Office referred to receipts for telegrams. A receipt for a telegram can be obtained at a charge of one penny. This is very seldom made use of. If a receipt were to be given gratis it is to be feared that there would be a very large number of applicants, and that there would be considerable congestion and crowding at post offices, so that those engaged in work at the counter would be considerably hampered and hindered in the sending of telegrams. The noble Earl suggested that the public should prepare slips to hand in in order to save time, but the Post Office consider that that would not materially hasten the operation, or save time, because the slips would have to be checked, and the time, probably, filled in, so that there would most likely be a loss instead of an appreciable saving of time.
With regard to the non-delivery of imperfectly addressed telegrams, to which the noble Earl referred, I can only tell him that wherever possible the Post Office do locate the addressee. The local directory is usually consulted, but very often the address is so abbreviated that it is very difficult to follow it up. If the telegram cannot be delivered, the sender is at once notified free of charge. With regard to imperfectly addressed packages, the Post Office do all they consider possible to get these packages to their right destinations. They consult the Post Office Guide, and in some cases the county directory. They also consult the local directory wherever that is possible. They believe that reference to the local directory at the delivery office is. usually, much more satisfactory than reference to the Telephone Directory. I do not know if the noble Earl meant to refer to cases where people change their address, but, as he knows, and as most of your Lordships know, it is possible
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for anybody changing their address to have their new address registered for the first year free, and for the second and third years at a charge of 1s., and after that at a charge of 5s. a year. If people would take the trouble to do that there would be no difficulty in their letters following them.
Express letters were also referred to by the noble Earl. He complained that express letters sent to be delivered from the delivering office by a messenger instead of by the ordinary postman very often fail to reach their destination as early as is expected. I understand that senders of express letters are always warned that it is only safe to send such a letter where there is a telegraph office, and, therefore, where there are boys or other assistants who can take the letters to their destination. Very often it is found that these express letters are posted in pillar boxes, and therefore the sender cannot be warned that very likely his letter cannot be delivered, but in all cases he can, on application, get back the express letter fee if the letter is not delivered. In places like London people are warned that it is no use sending an express letter by the night mail to a small country office which does not open until nine o'clock in the morning. If the letter arrives before that time it will probably be delivered sooner by the ordinary postman.
The Post Office know of no reason why copies of the books mentioned by the noble Earl should not arrive at their destination. They would be very glad to have particulars of any cases in which there has been a failure to deliver, and they would go into the matter. They have had very few complaints themselves. In dealing with this question of delay in delivery of letters, I should like to point out the enormous volume of correspondence that has to be dealt with by the Post Office. Yearly, about 3,500,000,000 letters and over 2,000,000,000 other postal packages are dealt with. The Post Office experience is that the vast majority are delivered at the proper time, but it is impossible, within reasonable limits of time, to produce safeguards against occasional delays. Efforts are constantly made to induce the public to post early, but those efforts meet with only a very limited degree of success. I have dealt, so far as the Post Office information goes,

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with the Question of the noble Earl, and I can only say in conclusion that my right hon. friend the Postmaster-General does not consider that it would be advisable, or that it is necessary, to appoint a Committee such as the noble Earl advises There is already an Advisory Committee of business men who are consulted, and who meet, I understand, to decide all matters of principle, but on these questions of detail the Postmaster-General does not think the Committee suggested by the noble Earl is necessary.
LORD GAINFORD: My Lords, as one of the ex-Postmasters-General to whom the noble Earl alluded I should like to draw the attention of your Lordships to the fact that it is one of the few supporters of the Socialist Opposition in your Lordships' House who thinks it necessary to attack the one Department in the State which is run on the principle of nationalisation. It has been thought advisable in the past that the State should distribute to all parties in the community an equal service, irrespective of distance. I shall not attempt this evening to justify the attacks which have been made on the Poet Office by the noble Earl. I think I could supply from my own recollections a number of excuses for certain of the faults to which he has alluded.
What I want to remind the noble Earl, and also those who think with him in regard to the nationalisation of the means of production and distribution, is that when they appeal to us to bring business principles to bear they should remember that these are services in which business principles in the ordinary sense cannot be introduced. It is for that reason many of us are opposed, and will remain opposed, to the nationalisation of services in this country. The last words of the noble Earl were to appeal to business men to carry on the industry on businesslike lines. The main reason why efficiency cannot be secured in public Departments in the same way that it can under a system of private ownership is the inability to discharge from the service men who are not thoroughly efficient. In the public service you can only get rid of men who, owing to some real dereliction of duty, are no longer required in that service. But the Post Office, after all, is a very capable service. I believe that nationalisation is a system that ought not
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to be supported, and I am very glad that a Socialist like the noble Earl has found it necessary to find fault with that system as embodied in the Post Office.
VISCOUNT HALDANE: My Lords, I have been deeply impressed by what has ex-Postmaster-General. It is, of course, inevitable that the Post Office should be a State service, but it is not inevitable that it should be loosely administered. The Navy is a State service, but the Navy is much better administered than most private undertakings of which the noble Lord, Lord Gainford, has spoken. So also is the Army in most respects. It is a question as to whether you have got that efficient organisation which enables you to bring proper supervision to bear, and whether you have that spirit in the service which induces the people in it to carry out what is required. It is not true that you cannot get rid of inefficient people in a State service. It is almost invariably from want of consideration and stupidity if you fail to get rid of people who do not succeed. Does any one suppose that in the Navy there is no method of getting rid of an inefficient seaman? Not in the least. Nor in the Post Office. It is all a question as to whether you have trained and supervised your people properly. We are not an intelligent nation so far as organisation is concerned—
LORD GAINFORD: Is the noble and learned Viscount in favour of military discipline being brought into the Civil Services of the country?
VISCOUNT HALDANE: No, but military efficiency. How to get lid of an unsuitable or inefficient man is a thing which is known in great private enterprises. It can also be done in the Navy and the Army. You have, of course, to proceed under a different set of Statutes; and this brings me to what I rose to say. I think my noble friend Earl Russell has brought out a case for an inquiry of the kind he suggests. There is a great deal of dissatisfaction all over the country about the administration of the Post Office. It is clumsily done; it is not done on a system which is up to the level of the system which obtains in other Departments. It would be very much to the advantage of the country if the

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Postmaster-General would appoint a committee, which should contain representatives of outside business interests, and ask it to look into the system, see whether it is as well administered as it could be, and whether the system is the best one that can be devised.
VISCOUNT BURNHAM: You have a Committee in existence at the moment. I had the honour of serving on it for four years.
VISCOUNT HALDANE: I know. But what we are complaining of is that it has not looked into these things. It would be well if a fresh and vigorous inquiry were made into the administration of the Post Office. The Army was subjected to a very severe investigation, and I do not see why the Post Office should not be subject to an inquiry. Until it is done you will not have that alacrity and keenness which you ought to have and which is required in order to put matters right. If the noble Earl's Question has served no other purpose it has served a useful purpose in bringing to the sense of the House that there is much dissatisfaction throughout the country with the state of things in the Post Office, a state of things which some of us think might be made much better.
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE DUCHY OF LANCASTER (VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD): My Lords, I am much interested by the speech of the noble and learned Viscount because he entirely supports his follower in the House in the attack he so brilliantly made on the administration of the Post Office. The noble Viscount says that, after all, the Post Office is not the only Department which carries on various duties in this country. That is true; but the Post Office is the only Department which carries on what maybe called something in the nature of a commercial business. That is to say, it does work for which it is paid and it makes a profit out of the work it does. It is the only Department of the Government which carries on a commercial business, and the noble and learned Viscount was well justified in saying that here was the only unofficial representative of the Labour Party in this House making a most brilliant attack on the system of nationalisation as applied to a commercial undertaking and perpetually
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saying that what you ought to do is to imitate the private trader; that it is the private trader that is really efficient in this matter.
Many of us on this side of the House heard these observations of the noble Earl with a great deal of sympathy, and if it were possible to transfer the postal service to private enterprise I have not much doubt that it would be carried on with greater efficiency than it is carried on at present. But it is the only nationalised commercial service of the State and it is the one Department selected by the representatives of the Labour Party in this House for criticism and attack. Surely that is an observation which is worth recording in the debates of this House.
As to the noble and learned Viscount's request that a Committee shall be appointed, what is it? He says we cannot trust the efficiency of the State to administer these services, what we want is that some private individuals, with their knowledge of private enterprises, should be appointed as a Committee to advise a Government Department how they can apply business principles to the work of that Department. "Business principles" was the phrase constantly recurring in the speech of the noble Earl. It is rather a striking piece of advice coming from the noble and learned Viscount. Such a Committee already exists, and the difficulty no doubt is not in laying down principles of organisation, upon which such a Committee would be admirably constituted to advise, but how to deal with the actual details of the administration of the Post Office.

TRAFFIC REGULATION.
LORD RATHCREEDAN LORD RATHCREEDAN had given Notice to ask His Majesty's Government whether it is proposed to take any steps further to limit the speed and weight of present-day traffic, more especially upon second and third-grade roads, which are now most unfairly starved to the detriment of the ratepayers: and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I have put this Question on the Paper because I think the time has arrived when the Government should take into consideration the question of the roads of this country, both as to their suitability to carry the traffic which they are now called upon to bear and as to

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the adaptability of the vehicles which now pass over these roads. The policy of the Government is a large expenditure, between £4,000,000 or £5,000,000, upon the main roads and certain of the great arterial roads leading to the Metropolis. As regards the latter point I make no criticism, because more than twenty years ago, in a letter to The Times, I defended the construction of these main arteries and I was supported in my contention by no less an authority than the noble Earl, the Earl of Balfour. But my contention is that whereas much is done for the main roads, it is at the expense of the second-grade roads that feed the main roads, and also of the third-grade roads.
How comes it that the second-grade and third-grade roads are in the deplorable state in which we find them at present in many parts of the country? There are many reasons, but the main reason is that the local authorities are unable to exercise powers of transferring certain heavy traffic for which these roads are unsuited or of closing certain portions of the roads. Possibly the noble Viscount who will reply to me from the Front Bench will draw my attention to subsection (4) of Section 7 of the Roads Act, 1920, which gives this very power to the local authorities. But the local authorities have not been able to put this section into operation, not only on account of the various difficulties with which it is surrounded but also on account of the expense. Some few years ago a local authority attempted to put the section into operation at a cost of some £2,000, and, as a result, other local authorities have refrained from doing anything of the kind, contenting themselves with doing the best they can for the roads under their control with the amount of money placed at their disposal.
Let me give an illustration of what occurs. A short time ago a certain road, about a mile and a half in length, had become broken up owing to the passage of a heavy motor omnibus. The local authorities would have liked to divert the route. The proprietors of the omnibus said that the route was unprofitable and that the loss to them would be something like 5s. Per week in fares. But the road had to be reconstructed at a cost of £5,000, one-half of which fell upon the ratepayers. Thus the ratepayers in that locality were paying many pounds perweek
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in order that the omnibus proprietor might make some 5s. a week. It may be asked how the road came to be in this condition. A road gets into this condition because these heavy vehicles, averaging anything between five and ten tons in weight, are, according to the evidence of surveyors throughout the country—and upon this question they are unanimous—faulty in mechanical construction.
It is true that when they are fully loaded and moving at a slow rate they do comparatively little damage, but when, towards the end of their journey, having delivered most of their passengers, they are comparatively empty and are trying to make up speed, the tail end of the vehicle, if I may use that expression, goes bump, bump, upon these lightly built roads and beats them into what is known technically as pot holes. If these pot holes could be treated without delay in the proper way by being filled up with tar metalling, and then if the road were tar sprayed in order to bind the whole surface together, comparatively little damage would be done, but the local authorities cannot do this because tar-spraying is a very expensive matter and they receive only one-quarter of the grant for this purpose.
There is another direction in which matters might be improved. If these vehicles were compelled to carry pneumatic or semi-pneumatic tyres there would be a great improvement. It will be said that this would occasionally cause some delay. That is, I believe, the only possible objection. Pneumatic tyres might be costly, but if sufficient time were given for the old tyres to wear out and the proprietors were only then required to put on new tyres of a stated pattern no great damage would be done to the owners of these omnibuses. It may be urged that eventually the expense would come upon the general public, that the consumer always pays. That is quite true, but surely it would be better that some infinitesimal charge should come back to the consumer than that the ratepayers, who already pay so large a proportion of the expense, should be compelled to make it good.
Let me give another illustration of what takes place in consequence of weight being placed upon roads that are unfit to carry

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it. In the district in which I live, the Chiltern Hills, there are numerous lightly-built, narrow and tortuous roads and considerable steep ascents and descents. In one place, where about half a mile of road had just been reconstructed and was in good repair, the following day a large tractor drawing a couple of trailers went down that half mile of road and practically broke it up. There was a pit at the bottom of the hill from which heavy ballast was being taken, and it suited the proprietors to cart it up this hill rather than take an alternative road of some three quarters of a mile that was at their disposal. As a result, in the space of three weeks, the road had more taken out of it than would have been taken out of it in as many months had conditions as to weight and rate of speed been different.
Now let me pass on to the question of speed. Again, I may be told from the Front Bench that the speed of these vehicles is limited to twelve miles per hour. That is perfectly true, but they not infrequently, on certain stretches of road, go at the rate of twenty and twenty-four miles per hour. I recently had a letter from the experienced chairman of an important road board. He stated that if the vehicles never exceeded a speed of twelve miles an hour the cost of upkeep of the roads in his district would be one quarter of what it is now. That is a very bold statement. It is frequently said that the public have the matter in their own hands and that the police and the magistrates deal with this question. The police force in this country performs its difficult duties, which call for so much tact, extremely well, but I venture to assert that if the police force of this country were quadrupled they could not succeed in apprehending one in a hundred cases of vehicles exceeding the speed limit. Perhaps some noble Lords present may have been familiar in days gone by with the King's Regulations for the Army in which there is a paragraph concerning discipline which points out that it is not the severity, but the certainty of punishment which acts as a deterrent from crime. Naturally drivers, knowing the chances are a hundred to one in their favour, take the risk. Then it is urged that the police are not backed up by the magistrates. I can only speak for the Bench on which I sit. As a rule, when
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we know that the driver of the vehicle is in the employ of a rich firm, who will presumably pay his fine, we invariably impose a very heavy fine indeed, but, on the other hand, where we know that the driver is a poor man or in the employ of a poor firm, and that in all probability he will have to pay the fine himself, as a matter of expediency we consider the possibility of throwing the man and his family upon the rates, and also common humanity, and impose only a small fine.
It may be asked: What is the remedy for this excessive speed? I have no remedy to offer. I leave that with the Government. But if I am asked why it is that the speed limit is invariably exceeded, it is because men in business are compelled, in self defence, to exact from their drivers the passing-over of a certain route within a given time, or the delivery of a certain number of parcels or packages within a certain time. The drivers are frequently delayed by customers en. route, and again, in certain parts of the country, on certain days, owing to their having to pass through market towns or other places where there is a glut of traffic, they are obliged to make up for loss of speed when they come to a stretch of road where they can do so.
There is one more point in close connection with the roads that I wish to bring to your Lordships' notice. On many of these narrow roads, which were never built for the traffic that they now have to carry, there is a considerable amount of cottage property, and this heavy traffic, going along those roads, particularly on certain soils and in certain states of weather, shake the foundations of the cottages, cause fissures in the walls, loosen frames and chimney-pots, and do other damage, and the unfortunate owner, who already has to pay heavily in rates for the roads, is having his cottage property destroyed at the same time. I do not think that any noble Lord will deny that that is a great grievance to property owners. It is a great grievance, particularly at a time when certain Acts with regard to small property are being extended for a number of years, with the result that many of us who, from patriotism or humanity in many cases, allowed these cottages to pass into the hands of tenants whom we did not want during the war, and now require these cottages for our own servants,

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are unable to regain possession because it is well known that in most places it is impossible to furnish alternative accommodation. So we are hit in both ways.
There is one other matter which I would like to bring to your Lordships notice, and that is the question of the railways in conjunction with the roads. In recent years much of the heavy goods traffic formerly taken by the railways has been carried by the roads, and particularly the main roads of the country, which cost between £3,000 and £10,000 per mile for construction only. A considerable amount of that traffic, which is now borne by the main roads at great expense to the ratepayers, might be put back upon the railways by the construction of containers for certain classes of goods. That has already been done in the case of furniture vans; and by means of simple mechanical contrivances, and by good will on the part of the traders of this country, and by incentives in the case of the railways, much of the traffic which is now upon the roads might be re-transferred to the railways.
My speech has travelled over wide grounds, and may I be permitted for a few moments to summarise what I have said? My suggestion is that greater power should be given to local surveyors, under the authority of their district councils, to divert heavy traffic from roads unsuitable for the carriage of that traffic; that an increase should be given as regards the tar-spraying grant to the local authorities; that every encouragement should be given to the railways, on the one hand, and to the traders of the country, on the other, to get back some of the heavy traffic from the roads to the railways. I can imagine that whoever replies from the Front Bench will say that this is a very large subject dealing with the whole of the roads of the country, and one in which some hundreds of millions of money is concerned. I concur. Therefore I ask the Government to set up a committee of experts on roads, railways, mechanical construction of heavy vehicles, and to add to these a certain number of ratepayers' representatives and a certain number of the representatives of trade. I consider that such a committee would be able to furnish a vast amount of valuable knowledge to the Government. Finally, let me say that, this is a great
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national question and has nothing whatever to do with Party in any sense of the word, and that there is no reason why any noble Lord, sitting in any part of this House, should not support me in the Division Lobby on this matter. I beg to move.
THE FIRST COMMISSIONER OF WORKS (VISCOUNT PEEL): My Lords, the noble Lord who has raised this Question has travelled over so many roads in the course of his speech that perhaps he will not mind if I confine myself to one or two of the more high-class, or classified, roads, instead of dealing with all the unclassified roads in the country. He has told us that, I think twenty years ago, he was a great pioneer of arterial roads, but if he has followed the road controversy during the last twenty years he knows that two very important limits on speed have been, and are being, constantly broken. One is the twenty-mile speed limit for light motors and the other is the twelve-mile speed limit for heavier motors. He has asked me a rather large Question, but he seemed to suggest not so much objection to the speed limits as to the enforcement of them. He has already complained of the charge for roads, both rates and taxes, hut he wants also to increase the number of police—which, although an efficient, is not a very cheap body--otherwise, I do not quite see how he can enforce these rules.
I may tell him that it is the intention of the Government as soon as possible to bring forward a Road Vehicle Consolidation and Amendment Bill because nearly all our rules and regulations about speed on roads, and so on, date from the years 1903 and 1904 when the motor car was a very different vehicle than what it is now. There has been no increase, I understand, from the max mum permissible axle weights or speeds since 1904, and in the interval there has been an immense improvement in the tyres and springs fitted to motor vehicles and in the construction of roads. This Bill will be based very largely on the Second Interim Report of the Departmental Committee on the Taxation and Regulation of Bond Vehicles issued in March, 1922. I understand that their recommendations follow the principles of differentiation as regards the maximum permissible speeds between heavy motor cars fitted with

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different types of tyres—namely, pneumatic, resilient and non-resilient.—and of different unladen weights, and whether drawing a trailer or not. By this means an inducement will be offered to the use of types of vehicles which do the least damage to roads.
The other point which the noble Lord suggested was that there should be special limitations imposed in the case of second and third-grade roads. I suppose he meant unclassified roads. I am advised that this suggestion cannot be carried out. The maximum speed, the unladen weight and the front and back axle weights of heavy motor cars are, by law, painted on the vehicle. You could not have special limits for Class I and Class II roads and other limits for other roads. Laden vehicles do not usually confine their journeys to Class I and Class II roads and as the driver would not be able to alter his load in passing from a Class I road to an unclassified road, the effect would be that you would have weight limits for unclassified roads stereotyped generally and that, of course, would be an impossible thing to do.
I will not call your Lordships' attention to the particular section, which the noble Lord quoted so correctly, relating to the powers of the local authorities and public inquiries, but I do not think he laid sufficient stress upon it, because under this section orders have been made during the last four years restricting the use of heavy motor vehicles on a large number of highways and bridges throughout the country, on the application of the county boroughs or county councils concerned. In some cases the order prohibits the use of the highway by locomotives and by heavy motor cars, or by passenger-carrying vehicles with a seating capacity for more than fourteen passengers, other than the driver. A great many regulations of that kind have been made, so I do not think the noble Lord really gives sufficient weight to what has been done under that section.
LORD RATHCREEDAN: It is the excess of cost.
VISCOUNT PEEL: To whom?
LOUD RATHCREEDAN: To the ratepayer.
VISCOUNT PEEL: Of holding these inquiries?
LORD RATHCREEDAN: Yes.
VISCOUNT PEEL: Whatever the cost may be I only want to suggest to the noble Lord that a great deal has been done to make orders under these particular Regulations. The last point he raised was the question of not dealing quite fairly and generously with the unclassified roads. He knows of the portions of 25 and 50 per cent. respectively received by Class I and Class II roads, and these grants, which are called classification grants, form by far the heaviest call upon the Road Fund. For this financial year they amount to £9,500,000 out of a net revenue of about £15,500,000. The county councils of England and Wales receive over £5,500,000 in classification grants, which indirectly provide a considerable relief to the county rates, to which the rural districts contribute. The rural district councils also receive directly about £400,000 annually in classification grants.
The noble Lord knows very well that a great many complaints have been made on the lines that we have heard this evening, pressing for the making of definite grants towards the maintenance of non-classified roads on the basis of 10 per cent. of the approved cost. It has been very difficult to adopt this suggestion, because of the tremendous charge on the Fund—which is contributed by the motorists themselves—for the reconstruction of existing Class I and Class II roads, and the construction of roads and bridges. Indeed, the grant of money to these particular roads would really run counter to the general principles governing the distribution of the Fund, which is that the money should be expended on the maintenance and improvement of roads bearing a considerable amount of through traffic, as distinguished from traffic of purely local origin. The Road Fund is not an institution devised solely for the purpose of relieving local rates.
During the last two years sums amounting to £3,750,000 have been specially allocated from the Road Fund for the improvement of important roads in rural areas. That policy was initiated two years ago, and these grants are given on two principles. One is to enable Class I and Class II district roads to be brought up to main road standard, so that they may be taken over by the county authorities

913
as county main roads. The second is to enable the more important district roads which are not in Class I or Class II to be reconstructed and made fit for the traffic passing over them, particularly those district roads which carry heavy local omnibus traffic.
The policy of pressing for Class I and Class II roads to be brought up to main road standard and taken over by the county authorities is sound on general grounds, and it has the advantage of spreading the charge for roads over the rather wider area of the county councils, and so relieving the rural rates. A great many of these rural district authorities have been attempting for years to maintain their more important roads with unsuitable materials, simply because they could not face the large capital expenditure of reconstructing them, and the object of these grants now being made is to enable them to reconstruct them in a better and stronger manner. I understand that the Minister of Transport hopes that larger provision will be made for this purpose in the financial year 1925–1926. In that way, indirectly perhaps, the complaints which have been made this evening will, to some extent, be met.
EARL RUSSELL: My Lords, the Question on the Paper is a serious one, but the noble Viscount, although his reply was somewhat ample, really did not very fully deal with it. What the noble Lord asked was whether steps will be taken further to limit the speed and weight of present-day traffic. What you want is not so much further to limit the speed, at any rate so far as enactment is concerned, but to enforce the limitation of speed. The noble Lord spoke as if there was no difference between the excessive speed-limit of a light motor car and of a heavy vehicle. There is all the difference in the world. The light motor car which exceeds the speed limit may, or may not, cause danger to the public—I do not think it does—but, at all events, it causes practically no damage to modern roads. But when you get these terrible vehicles, weighing from three to seven tons, bumping and dancing over the roads at twenty miles an hour, the damage they do is incalculable. I am very much opposed to waste, and public money is being wasted by repairing roads only in order that they may be broken up by these vehicles. It is really a very serious
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question, and I think something ought to be done to limit these vehicles to their statutory speed of twelve miles an hour.
The noble Viscount seems to think that extra police would be expensive. The cost of extra police, if they laid themselves out to entrap these vehicles, would be far more than repaid by the fines collected, and the local rates would be saved an enormous proportion of their present expenditure. This waste of public money that is now going on is remediable without any fresh legislation, and I hope the Government will not disregard that aspect of the matter.
LORD RATHCREEDAN: My Lords, I fully acknowledge that light motor traffic of under 20 horse power does no damage whatever, and it must be remembered that it is the motorists who supply the greater part of the money for the roads. But I contend, and all surveyors in the country admit, that a heavy motor omnibus going over one of these lightly-built roads, especially when the weather is bad, will do more damage in one day than the cost of the licence of one of these vehicles for a whole year would pay for—that is, between £60 and £70. I gave your Lordships an instance of a road on which there was a gravel pit at the bottom of a steep hill. That road was broken up in some three weeks. There was an alternative route some three-quarters of a mile round and less steep, which might have been used by these vehicles if only the local authority had had power to permit it.
I agree with what the noble Lord opposite has said. If a Bill is going to be introduced and various improvements made in different directions, I will reserve myself until then so as to see what the Government is going to do. I might mention, with regard to speed, that I specially said I had no panacea to offer; it was for the Government to see that the speed was regulated. I know of no way of keeping it down to twelve miles, and I consider that the police on the one hand and the magistrates on the other do the best they can in the circumstances.
VISCOUNT PEEL: The noble Lord does not ask for an increase in the police?
LORD RATHCREEDAN: No.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

GOVERNMENT OF INDIA (CIVIL SERVICES) BILL. [H.L.]
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (THE EARL OF BIRKENHEAD): My Lords, it has been my unfortunate experience for two nights running, at the moment when your Lordships or all the more volatile amongst you begin to think of preparing for dinner, to ask you to listen to a somewhat tedious disquisition, and I fear that I must repeat to-night the demand which I made upon your Lordships' patience last night. My excuse must be that the conscientious manner in which your Lordships have examined the Questions which have engaged attention in the House before mine has made the moment somewhat late at which I rise. I cannot for that reason neglect the duty which is imposed upon me, for this Bill is one which has great consequences for India. Its Parliamentary fortunes, too long by successive accidents delayed, are being attended with extreme anxiety by many meritorious public servants to whom its passage means much.
I think that the most useful manner in which I can deal with this important matter is to inform your Lordships as shortly as I can of the effect of the principal provisions of this Bill. They are limited in scope, but they are essential in the form in which I offer them to the consideration of Parliament if His Majesty's Government are to carry out a decision, already announced, to accept and put into force the main recommendations of the Royal Commission on the Superior Civil Services in India, which was presided over by a member of this House. Viscount Lee of Fareham. I have summarised those recommendations as briefly as I can. They aimed on the one hand at removing certain anxieties, financial and otherwise, of the Services and on the other at satisfying Indian opinion that the principles underlying the reform scheme would be observed in Service administration. I must, therefore, make it perfectly plain that the recommendations are a deliberate compromise between the Indian point of view and Service opinion and in approving them generally, as His Majesty's Government have now approved them, the need for maintaining the balance between the two points of view has been
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steadily kept in mind. No useful purpose is gained by ignoring the fact that there are two points of view amid which those who are responsible for the Government of India, either in India or in this country, must steer a prudent and in my judgment a middle course.
The recommendations which benefit the Service, are recognised as benefiting them, and have been accepted, are as follows. First, in the matter of pay, this takes the form of granting small increases in overseas pay and, perhaps more important, of issuing the overseas part of the rupee pay in sterling at 2s. the rupee as a protection against a fluctuating rate of exchange. This means an addition of about £135 a year to the pay of an officer in the middle years of his service. In the second place, there is an increase effected in the pensions of members of the uncovenanted Services from Rs. 5,000 (that is to say, £437 10 s.) to Rs. 6,000 (which is £525) for 25 years' service and from Rs. 6,000 to Rs. 7,000 for 30 years' service. In the third place, there is the grant to all officers of non-Asiatic domicile in the course of their service and to their wives of four return first-class passages and one single passage for each child. We may be asked quite reasonably in these days of economic stringency as to the cost of the financial relief involved under these three heads. It may be put at one crore of rupees at 1s.6d the rupee; that is to say, about £750,000 a year—no inconsiderable allowance.
The recommendations designed more particularly to bring the organisation of the Services into accord with the existing Constitution which have also been accepted include, first, the taking over by Local Governments of the responsibility of engaging and controlling future recruits for the Indian Educational, Civil Medical, Agricultural and Veterinary Services, of the Buildings and Roads branch of the Indian Service of Engineers and, in two Provinces, of the Indian Forest Service. Each of these Services has hitherto been uniform for all India, but the fields of administration which they serve have since the reforms been controlled by the Governor, acting with Ministers responsible to the Legislature, and this makes what is called
"provincialisation" of the Services concerned a natural, and indeed an inevitable, step.

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In the second place, there are certain Services directly administered by the Government of India—called Central Services—other than the Ecclesiastical and Political, which will now be controlled by the Government of India instead of by the Secretary of State, with certain reservations of control to the Secretary of State where either the Service has strategical importance, such as Railways, or its personnel is military, such as the Survey of India. In the third place, accelerated Indianisation, to use a phrase which I did not invent, is accepted as a principle with a view to producing, in the case of the Indian Civil Service and Police, a "cadre one half European and one-half Indian in 15 and 25 years respectively."
These three measures, which in the aggregate fill the opposite side of the scale in the kind of equipoise which has determined the conclusions of the Commission, and especially that which is known as Indianisation, are apt to be criticised, have been criticised, and will unquestionably be criticised on the ground that they will swamp the Indian Services and impair their efficiency. It is no part of my present plan to indulge in a lengthy historical survey, but it is only fair to the present Parliament, to their immediate predecessors, to the Government in which Mr. Montagu was Secretary of State for India and under which the noble lord, Lord Chelmsford, who I see opposite, was Viceroy—it is only fair to all of these to remember, if there be blame to be implied in the inception of Indianisation—which I certainly, holding my position, could never concede—that it is not of modern origin, that it is not the product or the child of any one of those Governments.
Let me very shortly remind your Lordships of how those who are accounted the classical teachers of the true principles which ought to be applied in our relations with India, have spoken of this. The terms of Section 96 of the Government of India Act, only reproduce the provisions of the famous Statute, the 1833 Act, which has been quoted and acclaimed as the Magna Charta of India for a period now of one hundred years. What were the words then used?
"No native of British India, nor any subject of His Majesty resident therein shall, by reason only of his religion, place of birth,
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descent, colour, or any of them be disabled from holding any office under the Crown in India."
That has been proclaimed indefeasible in law, and has for a hundred years been confirmed by this country in its dealings with India. That section which still stands as the governing principle of our relations with India, was supplemented in the Preamble of the Act of 1919 with the authority of both Houses of Parliament, and after this matter had been examined with scrupulous and meticulous care for many months by one of the most responsible and capable Joint Committees which the Houses of Parliament have ever appointed to deal with a matter of grave public moment. It was supplemented in the Preamble of the Act of 1919 by the express pronouncement that it is the declared policy of Parliament to provide for the increasing association of Indians in every branch of Indian administration.
I, therefore, found myself, in the responsibility which fell upon me, the legatee of a deliberate policy of long standing, and I had to apply my mind, in the recommendations which it was my duty to make to my colleagues in the Government, not as one who came there for the first time to deal upon a novel basis with matters which were open to dispute and discussion, but I found myself confronted by principles and provisions which I was bound to observe, and I had no hesitation in reaching the conclusion that it was our duty to support the very delicate compromise which the Lee Commission had reached in its entirety, with one or two inconsiderable exceptions, which need not disturb the generality of the statement that I make.
But your Lordships may reasonably ask how do I attempt to judge the future, and how do I think that this stipulation will in fact work out? In 1924, Indians in the Indian Civil Service constituted seventeen per cent. of the total number of officers and in the police eleven per cent. Though time alone can show, an increase of Indians in fifteen and twenty-five years to fifty per cent. for those two Services (which is not in itself a very violent change), should not prove too rapid a progress in giving effect to the policy of Parliament declared in the Preamble to the Government of India Act of 1919. But let us have no delusions. A condition of the possibility of maintaining that balance, of relying upon that balance to

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provide us with a competent and reliable civil administration in India, depends, and almost must depend, upon the inclusion upon the English side of its contribution of the very best of the young men whom the schools and the Universities of this country can provide. It is, of course, equally true—I will not say that it is a fortiori true, because no comparative statements in such a matter are desirable or indeed tolerable—that the standards of the recruitment of the Indian members of the Civil Service should be of such a character as to ensure that men of the best brains, the best character, the best all-round calibre are supplied to represent the Indian population.
But at this moment I am dealing in this House with the English contribution, and it is right that your Lordships should understand that, in my opinion, the gravest anxiety which confronts the Secretary of State for India at this moment does not lie with movements and tendencies in India, grave and menacing as some of these have been. I am not very gravely alarmed, attempting to look at the matter in real perspective, by these. The gravest anxiety at this moment, in my judgment, is in this circumstance, that that which beyond all question was almost the finest illustration of what I will venture to describe as the best Civil Service in the world has undoubtedly, since the year 1914, shown many signs of lack of popularity and of consequent decline. If you trace the history of the association of this country with that great sub-continent—as I shall still venture to believe, one of the brightest pages in the whole of our history—you will realise that never would the success with which we have maintained our position there have been conceivable had it not been for the devotion, the ability, the courage and the character of our Indian Civil Service. When I addressed myself some months ago for the first time to this question this was the element in the whole situation which alone caused me a vague, and at the present time an undissipated, anxiety.
I cannot give you the explanation completely why the Indian Civil Service has ceased to offer exactly the same attraction that it did in my young days
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at Oxford thirty years ago. I remember well when I was at Oxford that in every college the flower of the young men attempted the competition for the Indian Civil Service, the man, who was a scholar of his college, captain of the boats, or of the football team. If you took eight of such men in any given college, you would find three or four of them presenting themselves for examination for the Indian Civil Service, and you would always find that four or five of the best men in every college at Oxford would be successful in that examination and would carry on the great traditions of those who had preceded them. It was the efforts of these men, laboriously, unostentatiously and without advertisement, carried on through generations, that has made possible that association of partnership, discreditable to neither and honourable to those who undertook it, which has constituted the real history of this country in India. That membership has declined since the war. One explanation undoubtedly is that those poignant and pregnant years killed a large number of those who would naturally have presented themselves for this competition, disabled many others and atrophied in others the spirit of adventure.
Therefore we find that from the year 1914 there has been a distinct and grave decline in the number of those who have presented themselves for examination. I cannot doubt that the growing competition of our modern life, the fact that other professions, competitive professions, are so overcrowded, together with the comparative security which is still offered to the very high spirit of adventure of our youth, will redress the balance and restore the numbers of those who offer themselves for this Service. But I should be misleading your Lordships if I did not make it plain that at this moment the number of those who are offering themselves is not sufficient and that our problem, unless things improve, may not be to discuss whether there should be 50 per cent. of suitable natives of India but to ensure that there shall be 50 per cent. of suitable candidates from these Islands.
Such steps as are in my power to take I have not failed to take, ably assisted as I have been by many Englishmen with special and distinguished knowledge of

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India, who have been good enough, on my invitation, to visit the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the Scottish University, and many others. I have paid visits to some of these Universities myself, and contemplate more, and I am not without encouragement from meeting with the students themselves in these Universities and meeting the tutors who are in the capacity of advising them as to their career, that when I address your Lordships in twelve months' time, if I am still in the same position as I am now, I shall be able to give you better reassurances upon a point so vital to the future of India.
I have to mention two measures, unrelated to the matters I have hitherto discussed, which appeal both to Indian and Service opinion and have been accepted in principle by the Government. I cannot to-night make a more precise announcement in relation to them. In the first place, there is the question of the reorganisation of the Medical Services with a view to separating the Civil from the Military Services, so strongly recommended to the Commission. The result would be to put the former, that is the Medical Service, on a Provincial basis and secure for the Civil Services and their families medical treatment by European officers while maintaining a war reserve of officers in civil employ. The detailed proposals of the Government of India upon this matter have not yet been received but they are expected shortly.
In the second place a very complicated matter—which I will not pretend to deal with in detail to-night—presents itself for consideration—namely, the constitution of a Public Service Commission long since pressed upon the authorities both in India and at home. It was strongly recommended by the Lee Commission. It is conceived of as being a Commission charged on the one hand with maintaining adequate standards of recruitment in India for the Services, and on the other with protecting the Services by the establishment of a body of the highest standing to advise the Executive Government in regard to the discipline of the Services and their general interests.
I have been in close discussion upon this matter with the Viceroy for some weeks. I cannot pretend that we have
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yet arrived at a conclusion. The difficulties are enormous. In the first place, you have to determine whether such a body is to be subordinate to the Government of India, or whether it is to be independent in its decisions of that Government. In the second place, you have to decide whether it is to be allowed to invade some of the functions of the Secretary of State, and although I hope I am the least likely of anyone to allow any question of the importance or dignity of the office which I hold to came into collision with any consideration of public interest, I have at the same time to remember this always, that no one has ever left this country to undertake duties as an Indian civil servant who has not been assured before he went that he individually had an individual right to appeal to the Secretary of State, and I am bound most carefully to safeguard that position. I shall, I think, find it my duty to do so.
I have only a very few words to add. The Act of 1919 itself gives to the Indian Legislature and the Provincial Legislative Councils power to vote Supply, but in doing so they provide that proposals for certain categories of expenditure are not to be submitted to that Vote. Amongst these categories of expenditure are "salaries and pensions of persons appointed by, or with the approval of, His Majesty or by the Secretary of State in Council, and salaries of Chief Commissioners, Judicial Commissioners, High Court Judges and Advocates-General." Clause 1 of the Bill makes two changes in these provisions:—(a) by defining and extending the meaning of the expression "salaries and pensions," and (b) by extending the classes of persons whose "salaries and pensions" as now to be defined, are to be protected.
As regards the first point, it is probable that the intention of the framers of the Act of 1919 was to exempt from the Vote all emoluments and official payments of all kinds, whether by way of remuneration or pension, payable to protected persons. The use of the word "salaries," however, has made it necessary in the past to include under that heading various payments which cannot, except by a straining of language, be regarded as falling within the term "salaries" as technically used in India. Moreover, the decision taken on Lord Lee's Commission's proposals involve concessions,

923
notably the grant of free passages, which it would be impossible to class as salary.
The object, therefore, of subsection (3) of Clause 1, which might puzzle your Lordships, is to make the terms "salaries and pensions" all-embracing, and thereby to remove any doubts as to the meaning intended to be placed upon them. In this connection it may be noted that the Commission definitely recommended that the passage of the concession should not be subject to the votes of Councils. I will add one word only as to the second point. The concessions recommended by the Commission are to be granted to certain categories of servants whose members are not appointed by the Secretary of State in Council, and consequently whose salaries and pensions, however interpreted, would not be covered by the sections as they stand, and paragraph iii (c) and iv (d) extend the class of persons to be protected.
I do not think that I need at this stage of the Bill analyse in detail all its clauses and sections. I have stated enough of its general effect and its tendency to make it quite plain to your Lordships that this Commission was sent out to attempt a comprehensive examination upon two major points. The first was: In what respects, if any, ought there to be, having regard to post-war conditions, an alleviation in and an improvement of the conditions of service of the Superior Indian Civil Services, as they are called? The second was: What, if any, changes or modifications ought to be recommended which would make it possible to effect these alleviations without any affront to reasonable Indian opinion? The Commission was appointed, not, I think, by my immediate predecessor, but by Lord Peel. It consisted of a number of very experienced men, and I do not wish to pass from the Motion that this Bill should be read a second time without expressing my deep sense, and the sense of the Government, of gratitude to the members of this Commission for their devoted labours.
They travelled, not always at element seasons of the year, over vast geographical distances, and it may perhaps be an illustration of the exertions which they undertook that I believe that the Chairman is the only member of that body who has not since succumbed, to grave illness They presented a Report. There are some elements in that Report in relation
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to which I myself, as I examined them, felt some doubt, and certainly other members of the Government both felt and expressed doubt. But we formed a clear view on the whole that, having appointed men of ability and experience to undertake a task of great delicacy and difficulty, and being confronted by a Report from them with which on the whole, considering it in general perspective, we found ourselves in agreement, the wiser course was to accept that Report as a whole and to recommend it to Parliament as a whole, in the belief and expectation that when the perspective is examined it will be found that those who were appointed by our predecessors to report upon this question discharged their task adequately, competently and sympathetically. I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Earl of Birkenhead.)
LORD OLIVIER: My Lords, it would be quite unreasonable for me, having regard to the established habits of your Lordships' House, to attempt at this time of the evening to say some things that I would have liked to say in pursuance of the commentaries upon the present situation which the noble and learned Earl has so eloquently and so sympathetically developed, and I do not wish to stand in the least degree in the way of the Second Reading of this Bill by moving an adjournment of the debate, although some of your Lordships might have liked to have a further discussion on the subject. I will say as briefly as I can why I and my Party are prepared to consent to the Second Reading of this Bill.
I spoke in your Lordships' House, I think last July, on the subject of the then situation with regard to the Report of Lord Lee's Commission, and I indicated reasons why at that time I was prepared to agree to the principles of that Commission's Report. Put in the very briefest compass they are these. First of all, we thought it right that the emoluments of the Indian Civil Service should be as far as possible—although they could not be entirely—restored to what was intended to be their value when the contracts of service were entered into with many of those who are now in the Service; that is to say, that the impoverishment which they have suffered owing to the fall

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in the value of the rupee, and owing to the increase in the cost of living, should be so far as possible redressed, exactly in the same way as it has been redressed on behalf of at any rate the superior ranks of the Civil Service in this country. Here the Government recognised that owing to the fall in the exchange value of the £—that is to say, owing to the increase in the cost of living—the rates of pay in the Civil Service ought to be readjusted. The rates of pay in the Indian Civil Service were readjusted just about the time when the rupee was at 2s. Since then the rupee has very considerably fallen in value, and we thought it right to do in regard to India that which had been done with regard to our own Civil Service, and that something like a return should be made to what was intended to be the real emolument offered to civil servants when they were appointed. That is the first principle.
The second principle was this: That where a public servant has been appointed by the Minister, acting on behalf of His Majesty, the contract which has been made and entered into with him shall be safeguarded and observed, no matter what constitutional change may thereafter take place with regard to the administration of patronage and the control of supplies. That is to say, we endeavoured to guarantee that those officers who had been appointed prior to any modification of the Constitution and to any future modification of the administration of Transferred Subjects, should be guaranteed in the position in which they were appointed, and, inasmuch as the Report of Lord Lee's Commission makes the concession of the transfer of certain other subjects and Services to provincial management, that those civil servants who are at present serving in those Services should not have less security in regard to their emoluments and their position than they have at the present time before these changes are carried out. Those are the two main principles which, as I take it, this Bill is intended to implement.
The actual details of how those principles are to be worked out will be found in Rules which will be framed by the Secretary of State and the Government of India and which will be laid before your Lordships' House for consideration, and it would be idle for me to attempt to go into any of the other consequences
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sequences of this Bill before those Rules are before your Lordships' House When they come before the House I understand, from conversation with the noble Earl, that it is his intention that they shall be referred to and considered by the Joint Select Committee which has recently been set up, composed of members of your Lordships' House and of the House of Commons. That will be the place for scrutiny and examination of the details and of the actual effect of those Rules, and I take it that we may also understand that this Bill itself will be referred to that Committee for examination of its provisions before your Lordships deal with it on Report. On those two understandings I see no reason whatever why I should stand any longer between your Lordships and any other member of the House who may wish to address you on the Second Reading of this Bill.
I would like just to add one word with regard to what the noble Earl said as to the prospects of recruitment in the Indian Civil Service. I have been very glad to see the action taken by the noble Earl in inducing Lord Meston and others to go to the Universities and speak on the subject, and I know that they have spoken with great effect and public spirit, in order to endeavour to induce young men at the Universities to look with the favour with which they used to look upon the Indian Civil Service. In the course of the interviews which I had when Secretary of State with many representatives of all shades of Indian opinion, more than one Englishman, not in the Civil Service but rendering in a private business capacity very good service to England and the Empire, did say that he thought young men in England were a little unnecessarily discouraged, and a little less adventurous than they might reasonably be, in regard to the future prospects of work in the Indian Civil Service.
He said that, although the Indian Civil Service is not such a guaranteed job as it used to be, and although there is not the same prospect of being able to retire on a pension and come into Parliament, and there is not the same chance of going out as one of a privileged class, yet there is abundant field for public service. As everyone knows who has been in India, and has made private friends among Indians, if an Englishman will go out into

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the public service of India not as one of a class appointed to rule another country, but as private adventurers and bankers go out to take part in some of the social and organic work of the country, they will find an abundant response of friendship from Indians, and will find adventure in contributing to the work of the Empire as their predecessors did. That consideration has been impressed upon me by gentlemen working in India, not in the public service but in a private capacity. That was their hopeful feeling in regard to the future good work of the Civil Service, and it is because the noble Earl has tried, through his missioners in the country, to inculcate that spirit, that I am glad to support his endeavours.
VISCOUNT CHELMSFORD: My Lords, I owe an apology to the noble Earl for detaining the House for a few moments, because I told him yesterday that I was not going to speak on this Bill. I am tempted to do so because of the remarks he made with regard to the crusade among young men in the Universities, and because I happen, since November last, to have been residing at Oxford in connection with the Statutory Committee of which I am a member. I have therefore had an opportunity of hearing what has taken place and of learning the difficulties which are felt by the undergraduates with regard to entrance into the Indian Civil Service at the present moment. I would like to say, that I do not think, from what I have heard, that they are so anxious as to the monetary side. It is not the monetary side which is worrying them at the present moment. They would be quite willing to go out at a small recompense, merely from the spirit of adventure, but to the question of what is really worrying them it is, I think, rather difficult for us to find a true answer.
They feel that there is a certain insecurity of tenure if they go out; that they may find at thirty or forty years of age that, keen as they are upon their work, their task in India is finished, and that they have to resume public life in some other sphere. Of course, this insecurity is not peculiar to the Indian Civil Service. We know how many men in the Navy and Army, of recent years, although they had regarded both professions as life professions, have, through the exigency of circumstances, had to forego their careers prematurely; but it is cold
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comfort to hold out to these young men that the uncertainty which they fear is in common with other Services, because there are undoubtedly special reasons why they think that their position would be insecure in the Indian Civil Service.
I can only express my own personal opinion, because one can only look at it from one's own experience and one's inferences from experience. Personally, so long as India requires a British force and Army, whether to protect it from external foes or to maintain internal security, so long, I believe, will it be necessary to have that British complement in the Civil Service which will be the complement of the Army on the side of internal security. I think that the two are bound up together, and that the British Army in India is required, not merely for defence from foes outside but also for internal security, and that the British Army could not do its work with regard to internal security, unless it had with it and behind it the British element in the Civil Service. Therefore, my own personal opinion is that so far as we can see, with reference to candidates coming forward for the Indian Civil Service at the present moment, one can safely say to them: "You can enter the service and be sure that you will have a life service in the career that you have chosen." I will not enter upon other parts of the Bill, because Lord Olivier has made it abundantly clear that if he had been on the other side of the House he would himself have had to bring forward a Bill of this nature. I feel that it is not necessary for those on this Bench to add anything further to what he has said in supporting the Second Reading of this Bill.
On Question, Bill read 2a.
THE EARL OF BIRKENHEAD: My Lords, I have now to move that the Bill be referred to the Standing Joint Committee on Indian Affairs. Lord Olivier asked me whether the Rules would be submitted to the Committee. I am in slight doubt as to what Rules he means, but if he will speak to me privately I have every desire to be reasonable and have no wish to withhold anything from the Committee which will be useful.
Moved, That the Bill be referred to the Standing Joint Committee on Indian Affairs.—(The Earl of Birkenhead.)
On Question, Motion agreed to, and ordered accordingly.

CHARTERED ASSOCIATIONS (PROTECTION OF NAMES AND UNIFORMS) BILL. [H.L.]
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
VISCOUNT BURNHAM: My Lords, I beg to move the Second Reading of this Bill, which is commonly known as the Boy Scouts Bill, and I am glad to assure your Lordships at this late hour that it is an agreed measure. It was first brought forward in 1921, and it has twice been passed by your Lordships' House. The aims and methods of the Boy Scout movement were the subject of inquiry by the Privy Council before it received its Royal Charter of incorporation. I regret to say that they have been to some extent endangered by imitation and even fraudulent representation for some years past, and I believe that this Bill provides the appropriate remedy and protection. I wish to spare your Lordships any further debate, and I do not think there
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will be any opposition. I have, therefore, now to move that this Bill be read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Viscount Burnham.)
VISCOUNT HALDANE: My Lords, it is all very well talking of Boy Scouts and other benevolent organisations, but the noble Viscount has brought this Bill forward in a form which creates an entirely new criminal offence, and it also alters the law of copyright materially. I do not rise to detain your Lordships, for the exposition of these things, but to suggest to whoever represents the Government that the Law Officers of the Crown had better be consulted about this-Bill before it goes further
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.
House adjourned at ten minutes before eight o'clock.