HL Deb 01 April 1925 vol 60 cc876-90

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.