Lords Sitting of 7 May 1936

Preamble
The House met at a quarter past four of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
The Earl of Suffolk and Berkshire—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.

HEREFORD CORPORATION BILL.
Read 2a, and committed for Thursday next.
UCKFIELD WATER BILL.
Read 2a, and committed for Thursday next.
WREXHAM AND EAST DENBIGH SHIRE WATER BILL. [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.
GLASGOW CORPORATION ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL. [H.L.]
Considered on Report (according to Order).
LONDON AND NORTH EASTERN RAILWAY ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL. [H.L.]
Considered on Report (according to Order).
EAST LOTHIAN COUNTY COUNCIL ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL.
Considered on Report (according to Order).
MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER (BRIDPORT JOINT HOSPITAL DISTRICT) BILL.
Read 3a, with the Amendments (according to Order), and passed, and returned to the Commons.

SUGAR INDUSTRY (REORGANISATION) BILL.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION (EARL DE LA WARR): My Lords, I beg to move

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that this Bill be now read a second time. It raises two most important questions. The first is: Should the beet sugar industry continue to receive any assistance at all? In other words, should it be allowed to go on? The second question is: On what basis should the industry be organised if it is allowed to continue? Your Lordships are aware that the Majority Report of the Committee of Inquiry presided over by Sir Wilfrid Greene recommended that it should not be allowed to continue, but the Report went on to make recommendations as to the basis of its future organisation if the Government did not adopt that proposal. It was, of course, the duty of the Government to take into consideration many points which could not possibly come before the Committee. The reasons why the industry should continue: the ruin that its termination would bring to vast areas of agricultural Britain, the employment that would be lost, both directly and indirectly, the impossibility of producing and distributing alternative commodities which might be grown on no less than 400,000 acres of land employing over 40,000 men—all these and countless other considerations have been discussed by your Lordships a great many times and voted upon, and it would therefore be wearisome, if not disrespectful to your Lordships' House, were I to repeat them all.
I would, however, venture to make just two points. The first is that, now that there is hardly an industry in the country that is not receiving some sort of assistance from the State, whether it be in the form of tariff or subsidy, there is no ground whatsoever for making the charge that agriculture in general and the beet sugar industry in particular is receiving special consideration. If we take, for instance, a particular industry that is specially favoured by His Majesty's Opposition, the treatment of coal for its by-products, action on behalf of that industry is constantly being proposed by the official Left Party. That industry is at least as uneconomic as, if not even more so than, the beet sugar industry at the present moment. My second point is that those who found it in their hearts to support the giving of assistance to this industry in the past will find even stronger grounds for supporting the present scheme in this Bill.
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Your Lordships will remember that it was the noble Viscount, Lord Snowden, who first announced on behalf of the then Labour Government the intention of His Majesty's Government to give support to this industry. Support was then to be given at the rate of no less than 21s. per cwt., to come down later to 14s. and then to approximately 7s. That Government did not actually introduce the legislation, because it did not remain in power, but the next Labour Government in 1929 was responsible not merely for carrying on that subsidy but actually for increasing it, and when—I think it was in 1930 or 1931—I appeared before your Lordships and asked your Lordships to increase The subsidy from 7s. 3d. per cwt. to 8s. 6d., I then had the honour of speaking on behalf of that very Party which at the moment is opposing this legislation—speaking on behalf of a Cabinet which contained as one of its most prominent members Mr. Alexander, and was loyally supported by Mr. Tom Williams, both of which gentlemen were recently engaged in leading the opposition to this Bill in another place. By 1935 the subsidy had again come down, from 8s. 6d. to 7s. 3d. The subsidy which we are proposing is at the rate of 5s. 3d. per cwt., but it is on a certain formula, and when that formula comes to be worked out this year it is likely to be rather at the rate of 4s. 9d. It is hoped, with the economies proposed in the Bill and for which provision is made, to bring that figure down yet lower.
This proposal that State assistance should be continued, but at a reduced rate, is a very important one. Equally important, however, if not more important, is the degree and the nature of the public control upon which we, as the National Government, are insisting as a condition of the enjoyment of this modified subsidy in a Bill which has been opposed, not by the reactionary Diehards supporting this Government, who are doubtless to be found in hordes sitting behind me, but by the official Labour Opposition. I cannot help thinking sometimes, as one who once had the honour of sitting with them, that if only the Opposition could spend just a little less time talking about Socialism and a little more in thinking and studying what is actually being done by this Government in terms of economic and industrial re-construction,

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there might be a great deal more chance of their being taken seriously in this country.
This Bill is a most important Bill. It is important not merely to the agricultural industry; but its great and fundamental importance; is that it is part of that new structure in industry which the National Government are gradually building up. I stress this point partly because it is of general interest, but also because it would not be right to ask your Lordships to pass this measure simply as an item of agricultural relief, when at the same time you were in fact being asked to approve great and important new principles which are equally applicable to other industries. As I see it, this policy which we are pursuing is the peculiar British reply to conditions which in some countries are leading their Governments to fasten the iron hand of the State on all energy and enterprise, and which in other countries who are not facing the problem at all are leading to chaos and political strife. We are endeavouring by this type of legislation to bring some order into the complexities which are facing us in the modern industrial world. We are doing so by taking industries one by one and trying to deal with them according to the peculiar circumstances of each. Our interference as a Government is undertaken not in the spirit of imposing bureaucratic control on the enterprise of those who are responsible for the running of those industries, but, as an effort to put at their disposal all those resources of knowledge which of necessity must be in the hands of the Government alone.
In addition to the advice which is necessary if they are to work out these schemes of self-government in a way which will help themselves and be valuable to the country as a whole, we have to give them powers, powers which frequently enable them to set up monopolies in the most important foodstuffs in this courtly. With those powers and those monopolies must go the right of the State to impose public safeguards and control. That brings me to the particular and peculiar circumstances of the beet sugar industry. That industry has really, I think it is safe to say, passed its dynamic stage of development. We have got to the stage of consolidation. In this Bill, on the factory side, your
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Lordships will find that we are proposing a form of organisation which is neither nationalisation, nor public utility, nor private enterprise; it really partakes of all three. On the growers' side—that is not in the Bill, because it can come into operation under legislation already in existence—we hope to see established a Marketing Board, and then, super-imposed on these two bodies, you will see that there is to be a Sugar Commission, whose task will be to co-ordinate the efforts of these two separate bodies. As I have ventured to say already, the principles of this Bill may well be applicable to other industries. They have already been applied to a very considerable extent in the electricity legislation, in the Railway Act of 1921, in various Acts for the regulation and reorganisation of the mining industry, and in our own Agricultural Marketing Acts of 1931 and 1933. Your Lordships will see, therefore, that it is really part of a normal development which has been taking place for the last ten years.
Your Lordships may wonder why I have wearied you with rather long general remarks not specifically applicable to this Bill which is before you, but it did seem to me that by giving a background of Government policy we might make it easier to deal with the actual provisions of the Bill at somewhat shorter length. If you will now turn to the Bill itself, you will see that the general policy which I have ventured to outline is embodied in its provisions. Its principal features are the continuance of State assistance to the industry, the setting up of a supervisory Sugar Commission, the amalgamation of the existing eighteen beet sugar factories into a single Corporation, and a scheme for providing a financial incentive—and this I will mention again when I come to it in the Bill—to the Corporation to attain the maximum economy and efficiency. If your Lordships will turn to Clauses 1 and 2 of the Bill, you will see that in those clauses are set up a Sugar Commission, and its powers and duties are there outlined. It is to be composed of a Chairman and not more than four other Commissioners, and its main duties will be to supervise the efforts of the Corporation and the Growers' Marketing Board, or such organisation as the growers may set up, and to act generally as, in a

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sense, arbitrators, in the event of any disagreement between those two bodies.
In Clause 3 you will see that provision is made for the amalgamation of the eighteen existing factories into one Corporation. You will also see that compulsory powers are provided for bringing about that amalgamation, but it is the most earnest hope of the Government that those powers will not have to be used. Indeed, I can inform your Lordships that there is every chance they will not be used. Already you may have seen from the White Paper, issued on March 26, that definite arrangements are under discussion, and we have every hope that those arrangements will be able to go through. The capital of the proposed Corporation will be £5,000,000. Actually, the amount of the capital that has been invested in that industry is approximately £9,000,000. If it had been depreciated at the rate of 5 per cent. per annum it would have come down to about £6,000,000.
LORD STRABOLGI: Is that paid-up, or nominal, capital?
EARL DE LA WARE: It is the total money spent by the industry on fixed assets. On another basis of calculation we arrive at a figure of value of just over £4,750,000, but taking a round figure the figure finally negotiated was £5,000,000. As an additional public safeguard to any contained in the Bill, your Lordships will be glad to hear that the Treasury has been able to negotiate an arrangement with the companies whereby the Chairman of the Corporation is to be nominated by the Government, and the Government have been very fortunate in being able to obtain the services of Sir Francis Humphrys for that task. He has been engaged for a very long time now on the advisory tribunal, helping to work out a basis of agreement between the factories, and I need not remind your Lordships of his distinguished services to the State in the past in connection with the Government of India, as High Commissioner for Iraq, and as His Majesty's Ambassador in Baghdad.
Turning now to Clause 4, your Lordships will see that provision is there made for a Treasury guarantee for £1,000,000 loan which it may be necessary for the Corporation to raise for working capital and other purposes. It is hoped that it will not have to be quite
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as much as £1,000,000. Nevertheless, that is the total that has been settled, and the reason why the Treasury is prepared to guarantee that sum is that, on the basis of assistance laid down in the Bill, the Treasury is going to save as a result of any economy made by the industry, so that if the industry is enabled by means of a Treasury guarantee to borrow money at a cheaper rate, that is all to the benefit of the taxpayer of the country. When we turn to Clause 5 your Lordships will see that it is there laid down that the factory Corporation is to negotiate the terms of a contract with the growers. I have already told your Lordships that there is hope of a Growers' Marketing Board. I think some of you will be interested to know how likely it is that the growers will form themselves into a board, and I can tell you what the position is.
Some time ago the representatives of the growers submitted to the Minister a scheme for a Marketing Board. That scheme has been referred back to them to be redrafted in the light of the provisions of this Bill. When it is re-submitted, it will be for the Minister to approve it or otherwise. If he approves it will have to be submitted to both Houses of Parliament for an affirmative Resolution, and if your Lordships and the other House pass that Resolution, then it will go back to the growers in the country for a poll. There is therefore, I think, every indication that the growers intend to put through a scheme, and I can only say here, that with which I am sure your Lordships will agree: that it is of the most vital importance to the smooth working of the machinery to be set up under this Bill that the growers should proceed with that scheme. In this clause there are certain other matters dealt with too. There is the question of price which is to be negotiated between the two bodies, the factories and the growers. Of course there is not time, or rather their organisations are not in existence, so it is impossible that the price should be negotiated this year. If your Lordships will turn to the Second Schedule you will see that the prices for 1936 are laid down.
Then reference is made to the "standard quantity"—a quantity equal to 560,000 tons of white sugar, which is referred to in Clause 32. There is a good deal of feeling on this question of

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laying down a standard quantity which may be sold to the factories. It raises the whole question—a question on which there are very strong feelings—of the limitation of production. Actually, of course, it is the limitation of sales, but I think you will all admit that the one does really amount to the other. If I might speak quite personally, I feel very strongly with those who criticise any scheme for the limitation of production of a crop that can in any way be grown on an economic basis. But in this case let us realise what is being done. This beet sugar crop can only be grown in so far as the taxpayers pay out of their pockets a certain sum per ton produced. Therefore it is not really a question of the ordinary principle of the limitation of production here, but a question of limiting the liability of the taxpayer, and we have the right as a Parliament to say that we are prepared to help and to finance and subsidise a certain industry to a certain extent, but beyond that point we will not go. The machinery of this Bill then directs itself to trying as far as possible to make that limitation of liability. Accordingly an agreement will have to be come to between the various parties concerned as to the basis on which this task will be carried out. It will have to be on an acreage basis. It could not be on any other, because, as the scheme is to be administered under the Agricultural Marketing Act, there is in fact no provision. The tonnage is put at 560,000 tons, which is approximately 40,000 less than was grown in 1934–35.
LORD PHILLIMORE: 40,000?
EARL DE LA WARE: Yes, it was about 600,000, I believe, last year. Lord Phillimore, who has been good enough to send me certain points in which he is particularly interested, has raised two points as to the basis on which these contracts, which amount to quotas of production are to be allotted, and he has made two suggestions which are certainly very attractive. The first is that provision should be made to ensure that existing growers should be enabled to maintain their existing acreage. That obviously seems to be a just and right principle to lay down. But unfortunately my advisers do not see how that can be incorporated in the Bill, and for this reason. On what basis would we assess their existing acreage? Should it be on
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the basis, for instance, of last year? If it were to be, you would at once come up against the snag that the factories this year have laid down a rule, which is being enforced, that growers should not grow beet on land which was growing beet last year. That has meant that a great number of growers have in fact had their production disorganised, and therefore if we take last year undoubtedly it would work out with considerable injustice to a great number of growers. Then if we were to take the year before you would find that figures had already been scaled down in that year, but they were scaled down by the factories, and there was in fact a good deal of dissatisfaction at the basis on which they were scaled down. Therefore I would suggest to the noble Lord that, excellent as his principle is, the scheme is more likely to be administered according to the principles laid down if we leave the matter to negotiation between the two parties concerned, supervised by the Sugar Commission, rather than if we tried to tie their hands in this Bill.
I would really give the same answer to the noble Lord's second point—again it is a most attractive point and a very important one—namely, that small holders producing an acre or less than an acre of beet should be excepted from the scheme of limitation and to that extent allowed to grow as they wish. The only trouble there is that we all know, if we look into the figures of small holders' crops, that we might get tremendous variations of the acreage if we adopted the noble Lord's proposal. Remember this, that if you give everyone the right to grow an acre or less it would mean, let us say, that a grower with quite unsuitable land would put in for a contract, which could not be refused, but which in fact would displace some other grower who probably had very much more suitable land. Again, I would suggest to the noble Lord that his point, which is undoubtedly one that should be put before the Commission as worthy of their consideration, would be more likely to be carried out on a satisfactory basis if it were left to their judgment than if we tried to tie their hands in this piece of legislation. We really must make up our minds which scheme we are going for—whether we are going to try to run this sort of scheme entirely from Whitehall, or whether we

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are going to appoint certain people to carry out the scheme and rely on their good sense. I suggest to the noble Lord that the machinery of the scheme that we are trying to adopt should be allowed to be carried through; but I would say this, that the Sugar Commission, which is responsible, has to give an annual Report to the Minister, and the Minister has to lay that Report before the Houses of Parliament. That means that the Minister has full Parliamentary responsibility for the administration of the scheme, and questions can be put to him on any occasion on its working.
Now we come to the portion of the Bill dealing with finance, Clauses 10 to 16. There are two other clauses, Clauses 8 and 9, which I ought to mention, but I will do that at a later stage. Clause 14 is really the main operative clause. The rate of assistance, as I have already said, is to be 5s. 3d., but as there has been a rise in the price of sugar already, that figure will, in fact, be 4s. 9d. I should like to draw the special attention of your Lordships to subsection (4) of Clause 14, because I have already told your Lordships that provision is made throughout this scheme for ensuring that any economies which are made will inure to to the Exchequer. That will mean that so far as we are able to improve the efficiency of the sugar industry, to that extent the industry will need less public assistance. That is a very excellent principle, but it has this disadvantage, that if the Exchequer is going to "snaffle" all economies there is not much incentive to the Corporation to achieve those economies. Accordingly, in Clause 14 (4) provision is made for ensuring that some of these economies do inure to the Corporation.
Perhaps I might at this point outline to your Lordships some of the economies that are already being made. I have already said that the subsidy was 7s. 3d., coming down to 4s. 9d. per cwt. That has meant an economy of not less than £1,500,000 to the Exchequer. Then the tonnage is being reduced from approximately 600,000 in 1934–35 to 560,000. That will mean an economy of £500,000. Then there are economies that may be made by the amalgamation of the factories into one Corporation. These economies will amount eventually to approximately £300,000—shall we say a quarter of a
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million? Then there is one last economy that is purely hypothetical, but for which it is not unreasonable to hope. That is the possibility of some rise in the price of sugar. It may seem a little optimistic perhaps, but your Lordships know that there is, in fact, no body of producers in any country in the world at the present moment producing sugar at a profit. It is therefore reasonable to hope that there may be some rise in the price of sugar; and in so far as the price of sugar does rise so will the rate of Exchequer assistance come down.
If I may jump from Clause 14 to Clause 18, a very important new principle is laid down in Clause 18. Your Lordships may remember that in Lord Bingley's Report on the fat stock industry the recommendation was made that the Marketing Board should be asked to co-operate in the efforts of the State in the matter of paying for research and education. In this Bill the first step is taken towards implementing that recommendation and, accordingly, provision is made for contributions from the factories Corporation and from the Sugar Beet Marketing Board towards a scheme for research and education. That scheme will be subject to supervision in order to see that there is no overlapping. It would obviously be undesirable for the State to be carrying out research and the Marketing Board and the factories Corporation to be carrying out a similar scheme.
Now I come to Clauses 7, 8, 9, and 19. These clauses deal with the refiners. Your Lordships will see that the Commission shall keep a register of refiners, and provision is made for an agreement to be come to between the refiners and the factories Corporation as to sharing out the white sugar market. If your Lordships turn to Clause 19, you will see that the Commission may license refiners, which is a very different thing from merely registering them. It means that in order to ensure full efficiency in the refining industry all refiners will have to be licensed. They will have to be able to prove their efficiency, and new entries to the industry will have to be approved by an appropriate body set up. But that can only be done if it is established that it is in the public interest. The scheme must be drafted by the Sugar Commission, it must be advertised, objections must be heard, and there must be an

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affirmative Resolution of both Houses of Parliament. Lastly, in Clause 23, provision is made for fair wages both on behalf of the Corporation and the refiners. Your Lordships will agree that when large sums of public money are to be paid out to assist this industry, it is only fair that we should ensure that those employed in the industry should have a fair share of what is being given.
This concludes my brief summary of the Bill. There may, of course, be many points which I have not mentioned and which will be brought up possibly at a later stage, but I think I have dealt on the whole with most of what I may call the Second Heading points. We shall have the Committee stage later, but it is important at the moment to keep in mind the main purpose of the Bill, which is to continue assistance to this industry and to reorganise it with a view to putting it on a sound footing. The Bill will keep in use some £5,000,000 of capital, and it will keep in use also very nearly 400,000 acres of land. It will keep in employment at least 40,000 men, and it will maintain a crop which has become of vital importance to great areas of agricultural England, a crop for which no one, however critical of this scheme, has been able to suggest any real substitute. The Government are determined that this industry shall continue. They are determined, that those engaged in the industry shall be sure of a fair reward. They are equally determined that they shall only grant that assistance after every attempt has been made to ensure efficiency and the public interest, both on behalf of the consumer and of the taxpayer.
LORD PHILLIMORE: Before the noble Earl sits down, may I ask him for a rather fuller reply to my third question which was: How far is the farmer's contract price related to the subsidy in any given year?
EAEL DE LA WARE: I am sorry I left that out entirely. The contract price for beet will be settled in future years before the rate of assistance for that year is prescribed, and it is hoped that in future the contracts will be issued in the autumn, so that the growers will know in good time how much acreage is expected by the factories and so that they can make the necessary arrangements for the preparation of the ground. In view, however, of what I call the incentive
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claim—that is the part of the Bill to which I referred for encouraging the Corporation and the factories to make economies—the prescribed rate of assistance for any year will not be able to be settled until the accounts of the Corporation for the preceding year are made up, say in April or May, and when the prescribed rate is being calculated one of the ingredients in that calculation will, of course, be the price of beet. But the original assessment of the price of beet will have to be made between the representatives of the growers and the Corporation or, in the event of any disagreement between those two bodies, by the Sugar Commission. Therefore, when that determination is made, and when that negotiation has been carried through, then the rate of assistance will be determined by the Treasury.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Earl De La Warr.)
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, I beg to offer a few observations on this Bill on behalf of the Opposition. These observations should really have been made by my noble friend Lord Noel-Buxton, who regrets that he is unable to be here. They will be brief because, among other reasons, I do not want to stand too long in the way of the debate to be initiated by my noble friend Lord Ponsonby, to deal with a situation which, in part, results from the same economic nationalism which is attempted in this Bill. Let me begin by stating quite plainly that I am an interested party. I am a shareholder in one of the companies affected by the Bill and already the value of my shares has risen on the London Stock Exchange. Nevertheless, though I am opposed to the Bill, if your Lordships divide upon it I do not propose to vote.
This Bill and what has led up to it are an example of the awful things that happen when an orthodox Free Trade economist strays from the narrow path of Cobdenite virtue while not following Socialist principles in the process. In 1924, as the noble Earl pointed out, Viscount Snowden allowed himself to be persuaded into subsidising, or promising to subsidise, beet sugar manufacture under private enterprise. Since then, up to May of last year, the unfortunate overburdened taxpayer of this country and the nine-tenths of the farmers who do not grow beet have had to find £40,300,000

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as subsidy. Of this sum only £15,400,000, I am informed, has gone into production costs and manufacturing costs, and there has been a trading margin, I am informed further, of £11,200,000, with the result that certain favoured companies have made very heavy profits indeed. I am told that three of what I may call the Dutch concerns paid 20 per cent. dividend in the four years from 1928 to 1931 as a result of the taxpayers' assistance. Now this Bill is introduced with its permanent monopoly and its permanent subsidy all under private enterprise. I really wonder that the noble Viscount, Lord Snowden, has not turned in his political grave and come here to see the result of his lapse.
I understand that the total annual consumption of sugar in this country is round about 2,000,000 tons. This Bill cuts production, as the noble Lord, Lord Phillimore, I gather, has already pointed out in his communications with the Under-Secretary, from 600,000 tons to 560,000 tons, so we shall be nothing like self-supporting in sugar as a result of this Bill, nor are we likely to be. The subsidy will be equal, I understand—the calculations are a somewhat complicated matter—to about 100 per cent. on the present price of sugar.
Now, about the employment given. In another place the Under-Secretary, Mr. Ramsbottom, on February 10, stated that 30,000 men were employed directly in this industry at a cost of £5,000,000, including the subsidy and the Excise abatement. This works out at over £3 per man per week; a subvention of £3 to keep one man in employment! But that is not the only assistance given to employment. Capital is to be assisted to be employed, and very remuneratively, too. I understand that the cash paid-up capital of the companies taken over was £4,550,954. There is some dispute about the definition of "capital." There apparently was some difference and the noble Earl who has introduced this Bill gave a capital valuation. I think he gave the figure of £4,500,000, or thereabouts, as the real assets. The Corporation will have a capital, guaranteed of course as to its profits by the subsidy, of £5,000,000 and a capital bonus immediately therefore of about 10 per cent. Why? Furthermore, the Treasury is creating, as we have heard, what is in fact a gilt-edged security on, I understand, a 4 per cent. basis, while trustee stocks, as your Lordships
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know, carry an interest of only 2½ or 3 per cent. to-day. In addition to that the companies participate in the extra dividend that it may be possible to pay up to one-third, so they have one-third in the equity as well. Is it difficult to understand why my Party is opposed to any such scheme?
As to what our policy would be, we would either taper off the subsidy gradually, until it disappeared, and leave the industry to get along as best it could; or we would make a public Corporation of the whole industry, a real public Corporation. If you are to tackle this matter properly, you should not only take over the factories at a fair valuation of cost but also the refineries. That is what we ought to do if we are really going in for sugar production in this country. If we are to grow beet for sugar, I do not see why we should not aim at producing the whole of our requirements; then, instead of having only 10 per cent. of the farmer growers in this country out of the total farmer growers benefiting, something like 30 per cent. would benefit. That would be a policy I could understand. It would be just as sensible to try and grow our own cotton in this country under glass as this ridiculous proposal of the Government. Needless to say my noble friends are opposed to it.
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, before dealing precisely with the Bill which is before the House, I desire with your Lordships' kind permission to say a few-words on this the first appropriate opportunity which has offered upon a subject which is of the deepest interest to a large section of the members of your Lordships' House. We have just had a Bill of first-class agricultural importance introduced to your Lordships by the Parliamentary Secretary of the Board of Education. Why? Because for the first time in memory there is neither a Minister for Agriculture nor a Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture with a seat in your Lordships' House. The House is well aware that in its personnel it happily includes elements which are fully representative and will be able to speak upon all the great questions of the day, but it still remains a fact that rural economy and agriculture has more representatives in this House than all the other subjects of interest put together. The circumstances

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are remarkable. I would not have believed it possible had it not happened, that there should be for the first time no spokesman for that Ministry in this House.
There is contained in this House persons well able to speak upon the practice as well as the science of agriculture, upon the administration of that great industry and upon its political aspect. The circumstances now prevent us from being able to engage upon the floor of this House in debates of the quality which the personnel of the House requires that they should be. Without any intention of any discourtesy to the Minister who has introduced the Bill I desire to make a protest. In the case of this Bill we know that the noble Earl's long service at the Ministry of Agriculture and his intimate acquaintance with this subject will ensure that the House will suffer no disadvantage—I gladly acknowledge that—but that in no way affects the principle which I am endeavouring to emphasise. The time must come, and come shortly, when the noble Earl, whose duties at the Ministry of Education will take him further and further out of touch with the Ministry of Agriculture, will be inadequate to represent before this House the topics which must arise and which we desire to discuss.
I say no more on the subject except to assert, as is the truth, that I speak not only for myself but for a large section of the House who have felt, and do feel, deeply on this question. It so happens that my noble friend the Leader of the House is engaged on an interesting domestic matter to-day. I wished he had been here, but he knew that I was going to say a few words on the subject. We must leave this matter to him and I feel sure that there is no one who, whether by personality or record of achievement, is better fitted to uphold both the rights and the dignity of this House. With that, my Lords, I leave it. At the request of the Minister who introduced the Bill I would add this further word, that he himself has left the House because of a domestic circumstance of great gravity to him. Most readily do I excuse him for not being here to listen to the further progress of this debate, and I feel certain that those noble Lords who follow me will do the same.
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Now, quite briefly, I will address myself to the subject of the Bill. I would like, if I may, to say how gratefully the agricultural industry as a whole and the sugar beet growing areas in particular have received this Bill. But it must not be understood for a moment that the Bill is going to pass entirely without criticism. In general principle it meets a request which has been pressed upon the Government—and not only this Government—for a term of years, that they should create an industry which can be stabilised and which agriculturists will know not to be subject to sudden abolition by the removal of the assistance under which alone it can be carried on. By those who do not live in the sugar beet growing areas there can, I think, never quite be realised the immense benefits which the sugar beet industry has brought to the people of the soil. To know that, with whatever limitations, this industry has not only been established but is to be continued, is of itself of immense benefit to all classes connected with agriculture not only in those districts but throughout England, because if those districts were unable any longer to engage upon this industry they would by force of circumstances be competing more strongly with other parts of England in the business by which those parts live.
But, having said that, and knowing that in saying it I am expressing the general sentiment of agriculture, I would add that I am personally disappointed with the Bill. The noble Earl, Lord De La Warr, referred in anticipation to what would unquestionably be put forward as the major objection to the Bill—the limitation of production which the Bill contains. The noble Earl advanced as a reason for it the perfectly sound one that Parliament had the right—I would have added also the duty—of limiting the amount of assistance which it could give to any industry, and I regret to acknowledge that there must consequentially follow a limitation in production. That must consequentially follow upon the limitation of subsidy in the circumstances under which this Bill is constructed. But the question arises as to whether this Bill is constructed aright. As the Bill is constructed I have little fault to find with any part of it, except on matters of detail which will arise on the Committee stage, but it is evident from the first to

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the last page of this Bill that it is in a sense a surrender to the Treasury.
It is an acknowledgment that the case for the continued growing of sugar beet has been so strong that the Government of the day have felt bound to give way to the arguments advanced for that continuation. Having felt so constrained, they have set to work to discover how cheaply it can be done, and throughout the whole structure of the Bill there appears to my mind a restrictive policy, an endeavour to make the thing as little as it can be. The noble Earl, in introducing the Bill to your Lordships' House, made far more of the small demand that is made upon the taxpayer in general than of the advantages that it gave to agriculture. I am afraid that is not an angle of approach which would appeal to me. If it had been given to mo to have anything to do with the measure I should have rather looked at it from another standpoint. I should have asked myself, how much sugar ought we to grow in this country to be safe? Sugar is an essential article of diet for human life. The human frame cannot exist without sugar. We know that during the Great War the quantities of sugar which we were able to import were less than those which the population reasonably required. Do we know that in the next Great War we shall be able to import any sugar? It seems to me that the minimum requirement of this country in sugar should have been the foundation upon which this Bill was built. If we do come to a conclusion—it is a matter for experts—as to the quantity of sugar we require, then by all means let us go further and see how cheaply we can achieve that particular production. But the Bill has not been framed on those lines at all. It has not been framed with any greater intention than that of preventing sugar production from getting any bigger than it was and is now.
The advantages of growing sugar beet in this country are manifold, and one of the greatest of them is that no crop like sugar beet so well maintains the fertility of the soil. If you were to come, as one day you may, to the necessity of being able to grow intensively upon that soil in times of emergency, how thankful would you be if you could be certain that all the soil of Britain was in a high state of fertility. That is just the state
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in which the soil of Britain is not, and there is no crop like sugar beet for maintaining it in such a state. Additionally, there has always been the great social advantage of the crop, that it retains upon the soil a labouring population without whom you cannot do and who would not remain if you were not from time to time able to devise forms of cultivation of this character which, by the wages which they pay and the constant employment which they give, encourage people on the soil to stay upon it. Sad indeed would be the case of this country if its rural population were to be depleted ever more and more and you had no resource upon which to fall back in time of need.
The question of subsidising and encouraging the sugar beet industry goes beyond mere terms of money, and I am sorry that this Bill has not shown a greater vision than it has. Limitation of production can never be sound. There might be, it is true, such production of a particular commodity as went beyond any conceivable requirement; but so long as you have a margin between what you produce and what you consume, surely it cannot be right that the production of that item should be restricted in your own country. Though I admit that, from the standpoint of the sugar beet-growing areas, restriction of production is, in the present instance of limited subsidy, to the advantage of those areas; yet, regarding the matter less from the standpoint of the persons interested in the sugar beet grown and more from that wider view which all of us ought to take, I hold and proclaim that limitation of production is a cardinal sin to which I cannot be a party.
Within the four corners of this Bill are contained quite a number of inconsistencies. You limit production and yet you provide what will be a great fund for research. There are clauses in the Bill which positively discourage the grower from producing better crops than he now does. If he does produce them, he is going to be disabled from selling them. To what advantage will this research work be applied? Research can only be intended to teach the grower to grow better what he now grows, and to grow it to greater profit. Limitation of production on a tonnage basis makes an ambition of that kind futile. I regret

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that it should have been thought worth while to embody it. Though on the face of the Bill it may seem wise, it is of no effect. The noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, dealt mostly with the financial clauses of the measure, which he criticised for what he conceived to be the over-generous gift to the manufacturing side of the beet sugar industry. We are all aware that certain groups on the manufacturing side of the industry have of recent years made profits which have made the growers' mouths water. But as growers we have never complained, for the reason that not until the factories are established on an absolutely certain financial basis may the growers be sure of a continued market for their product. Therefore, although financial criticisms of a perfectly just kind may be levelled against the proposals of this Bill, they will not come from the growers, because we recognise that our interests over a certain wide field are identical.
I think I have said quite enough on the subject of this Bill for a Second Reading purpose, to show that there is no intention on the part of agriculturists in any way to interfere with or retard the passage of the Bill. I have also shown, I hope, that there is much disappointment with the niggardliness of its structure, that it might have been a far greater measure than it is, and that, had it been a greater measure, it would have received a greater welcome. I thank you, my Lords, for your attention.
VISCOUNT BLEDISLOE: My Lords, there is no member of your Lordships' House who speaks upon agricultural topics to whom it is a greater pleasure—at any rate to me—to listen than the noble Lord who has just sat down, for he always speaks with full knowledge of his subject, with exceptional clarity, and with an eloquence which does not always distinguish some of us rustics from the countryside! I feel compelled to participate in this debate without, frankly, having mastered the details of this somewhat complicated Bill, first of all because I acted for a period of the Great War as Chairman of the Royal Commission on the sugar supply; and secondly because it was my experience to introduce on behalf of the Government in this House the British Sugar (Subsidy) Bill some eleven years ago.
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In the first capacity I realised that sugar is one of the most essential forms, possibly the most essential form of food in times of great emergency such as the Great War, and that its adequate supply from within our own borders affords, or should afford, a great measure of security to the country. There was one period during the summer of 1917 when two sugar ships were sunk by submarines in the course of three weeks, and we were faced with having a bare fortnight's supply of sugar in this country. I think your Lordships will agree with me when I say that, of all the food necessaries essential for the comfort of homes where children are to be found, sugar stands pre-eminently first. I therefore travelled a very long way with my noble friend when he suggested that, from the point of view of national security, it would be desirable to frame this Bill on the basis of what are the essential requirements of the country in time of emergency. As it is, I think I am right in saying that some thing like one-quarter of our sugar requirements—
LORD HASTINGS: Between one-quarter and one-third.
VISCOUNT BLEDISLOE: —something between one-quarter and one-third of our sugar requirements are raised upon our own soil. The noble Lord—and no one has done more than he has done to foster the development of this important industry in any part of England—has quite rightly emphasised the fact that, of all crops raised in any part of the world upon agricultural land, there is none that is more calculated to increase its fertility than that of sugar beet. And I go so far as to say that although I, very reluctantly, have to confess that the standard of fertility of British land has declined very considerably since the War, at any rate in those areas where sugar beet is mostly grown, as in East Anglia, the standard of achievement on the part of the arable farmers in the improvement of the fertility of the land has been raised, in my judgment, by at least 20 per cent.
The noble Earl, Lord De La Warr, has left the House, but I hope someone on the Front Bench is prepared to reply to our criticisms. Perhaps Lord Monsell will do so. The noble Earl incidentally made the remark in regard to subsidisation and protection generally, that the

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Government were taking industries one by one. I wish that instead of taking various branches of the agricultural industry one by one, they would develop a settled long-range plan, so that every essential branch of the agricultural industry may receive its due consideration; because what is the case to-day? Whether it is dairying or wheat production, or beet sugar production, the tendency is of course for farmers who are not engaged in a subsidised branch of the agricultural industry, in order to ensure a living for themselves, whether or not they themselves have the competence, and whether or not soil and climate are suitable for this particular enterprise, to go into a subsidised branch of the agricultural industry to the detriment of their land. It is happening particularly in the dairying industry, to-day, and without sharing the somewhat extreme views of Lord Strabolgi, I for my part most earnestly wish that, without any measure of nationalisation, the whole of our agricultural problems could be grasped by the Government as one great problem which should not be dealt with piecemeal.
What is exercising my mind in particular is this. I happen to live in an area in the West of England where excellent sugar beet can be grown but where we have no factory. I want to ask how is it going to be possible, if this Bill becomes law, for a new factory to be set up in such an area with any chance of its being able to stand upon its own legs, and serve the sugar beet requirements of that part of the country? And there is another thing which I am tempted to ask. First of all, I should like to say how utterly distasteful it is to me that the greatest industry of this country should require to be treated as mendicants, and require subsidisation from the Government at all. But I ask, more particularly with regard to this branch of the agricultural industry, where does the necessity come in? On the one hand Excise Duty is charged on the sugar raised in this country, and on the other hand a bounty or subsidy is provided, by way of balance, to those producing sugar, who have directly or indirectly to pay the Excise Duty. Why cannot one cancel the other and the industry stand upon its own legs as I have reason to believe any efficient producer of sugar beet can enable it to do to-day?
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However, I may be told that that is a matter for the House of Commons and not for your Lordships' House, and that it would be a breach of the Privilege of another place to introduce any Amendment to that effect. At any rate, if it is really necessary from a financial point of view to subsidise a branch of British industry, because there is some duty or extra burden like Excise upon that branch of industry, I do most sincerely ask why is it necessary to maintain that burden and thereby turn the producers in that industry into mendicants or the recipients of Government subsidisation?
I do not want to take up your Lordships' time further, except in order to refer to the remarks of the last speaker. I deprecate very strongly the fact that there is no longer any representative of the Ministry of Agriculture in this House. I think we can without egoism claim to give authoritative views with regard to agriculture at least as well as the members of another place. I would remind the noble Lord of this: My memory goes back to the year 1912, when I myself was a member of the House of Commons, and when I may confess I was instrumental in organising a deputation to the late Lord Oxford, then Mr. Asquith and Prime Minister, in order to protest to him against the non-representation in the House of Commons of the then Board of Agriculture by anyone other than an unofficial member sitting on the Front Bench. The House of Commons were then complaining, and to-day your Lordships are in a similar position, but at that time we were given clearly to understand that if a Parliamentary Secretary were inaugurated in connection with that Department, each of the two Houses would have its representative, in order officially to state the opinions of the Government with regard to the country's greatest industry. I, for my part, in general terms support the Bill, but I do most sincerely deprecate what the noble Lord has described as the limitation, possibly for all time, of the development of this most essential industry, as I believe there is none more essential to the security of the country and the improvement of our agricultural methods.
LORD RHAYADER: My Lords, I do not want to take up the time of your Lordships at any length this evening, for I have had previous opportunities of

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giving expression to my views on the subject of beet sugar, but I cannot allow this Bill to pass its Second Reading in this House without entering my protest against what I think is the most complete and most scandalous instance in history of a Protectionist ramp. This Bill, in my judgment, violates every sound economic principle. I do not want to take your Lordships through the whole story. It is very well known. It began when, in an unfortunate moment, Mr. Snowden, a member of the Labour Government and Chancellor of the Exchequer, thought he could help an infant industry by a subsidy for a few years, to enable beet sugar growing to get on its feet in this country. Even the great economist John Stuart Mill said that you might help an infant industry to get a start and Mr. Snowden in a weak moment opened the door for the Protectionists who have followed him.
It was laid down that the subsidy was to last for ten years only, on a diminishing scale. It lasted its ten years. Forty millions of public money was spent. The larger part of it went to the investors in the beet sugar factories, a smaller portion of it to the farmers. There was no scarcity of sugar. There was no pretence that you were going to get a crop which would enable you to have sugar when otherwise the country would get nothing. On the contrary, there was in the world a surplus of sugar. Sugar growing was not very profitable in the West Indies before beet sugar was subsidised in this country. The sugar growers in other parts of the world were not making very large profits. Well, the deed was done, the subsidy has been paid, and at the end of ten years we had an inquiry into the working of the system. The Greene Report went fully into all the circumstances and explained—what was really well known before the inquiry—that sugar beet was not a profitable crop in any country in the world, and that it could never be grown in this country without a Government subsidy. They therefore recommended that the subsidising should be brought to an end, and beet left to resume its former position in British agriculture.
It is not uninteresting to notice, by the way, the growth of this legend. Sugar beet, which was a rare crop in old days, has now become the stable foundation of British agriculture, and we are
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told by the supporters of this Bill that without this crop British agriculture must infallibly die away. Well, what has been the result? The Government have not accepted the recommendations of the Greene Report. On the contrary, they have set them on one side, and are now going permanently to subsidise the crop. As a result of their operations shipping has suffered enormously, and we are coming down to subsidised shipping for the loss of freights due to the setting up of a subsidised beet sugar industry. The West Indian sugar grower surely had competition enough in the world before, but a new rival was brought in, subsidised by Government money in this country. And now a permanent subsidy is to be given to it.
Thus, there are three things all of which are repugnant to any one with a sound financial economic sense. The first of them is that public money is to be used to set up a monopoly. That is one of the criticisms which have always been addressed by Free Traders to Protectionists—that you take the public money in order to bolster up particular interests. This is an extreme case of that policy. The sugar factories are to be all united together in a monopoly, so that no fresh rivals can arise without the utmost difficulty. I listened with great interest to the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, whom we knew well in the House of Commons as an agricultural authority, pointing out that in his part of the country he sees no means by which a beet sugar factory can be successfully started. I believe the Bill sets up a quite firm monopoly in the interests of the shareholders in the present eighteen sugar beet factories. The refiners, of course, have had to be squared. Without a reconciliation of the interests of the refiners and the factory owners the scheme could not go through, and after long negotiations behind the scenes the sugar refiners and the factory owners have come to an agreement by which they will be able to share out the Government swag. I am using the plainest language I can find. I am afraid it will be something of a shock to refined cars, but the thing is a grotesque ramp.
Finally, this monopoly having been set up, it is to be used to limit production—another of the evil effects of a Protectionist policy. You set up a monopoly, you square the interests, pressure is put

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in all directions, then you limit production, and presently you are hoping, as the noble Earl told us to-day, for a rise in the price of sugar. Well, sugar is not dear, but the cheaper sugar is. The moment the Government pay a subsidy to grow sugar, naturally they want the price to go up, and the general community in this country are sacrificed in the interests of those whom the Government see fit to subsidise. Looking at the whole history of the thing, it would have paid the farmers a great deal better if you had handed over to them £2,000,000 a year not to grow sugar than to do what has been done over the last twelve years in regard to the sugar beet business.
And may I say this to Lord Hastings, to whom I always listen with the greatest interest on this question, both because of his knowledge, his eloquence, his power of putting his point, and I think I may add his realisation of the other man's point. I am sorry he is not quite contented with the Bill. It is a little hard after all these years that he should not get complete satisfaction. But he really is indulging in too great a hope when he says the matter is finally settled now and put on a permanent basis. This subsidy cannot be put on a permanent basis. When financial pressure becomes heavier in this country—and it is growing year by year—a future Government will undoubtedly have to ask itself: "Where can we economise? Where can we cut off wasteful expenditure?" And there is no waste in the whole record of Government waste at this moment comparable with the money which has been paid out to the beet sugar industry.
Lay not the flattering unction to your souls that this is going to last for ever. You had agriculture put in an even stronger position than this in 1920, when the guaranteed price of wheat was put into an Act of Parliament. That Act was repealed within a year of its passing when financial pressure came on the country. And so it will be with sugar beet. The subsidy should never have been paid. When pressure comes it will be taken off. I hope those who are interested in agriculture will realise that, and not believe that this exotic crop can be the stable foundation of agriculture in this country. I do not know if your Lordships are going to divide against the Bill. I should like to vote against it,
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but it does not matter. You have your majority, you do what you will, but I leave it on record that, of all the Protectionist deals I have seen in the course of an unhappy experience now lasting many years, this is far and away the worst, and for that sooner or later agriculture is going to have to pay.
LORD STONEHAVEN: My Lords, the noble Lord who has just addressed us said he was going to use the plainest language, and he referred I think to this measure as a Free Trade ramp.
NOBLE LORDS: Protectionist ramp!
LORD STONEHAVEN: I beg jour Lordships' pardon. I am going to follow his lead by suggesting that the views he has advocated are a marvellous example of what I may call Free Trade futility. The reason I say that is that the noble Lord ignored altogether the points made by my noble friend below me as to the advantage sugar beet cultivation has been to agriculture. It is no small thing to put 400,000 acres under a very productive and most beneficial crop, to provide work for something like 30,000 people in agriculture alone, to say nothing of the subsidiary advantages to transport, to coal-mining, and to the jute industry of Dundee.
LORD RHAYADER: I did not go into that side of the question because I dealt rather fully with it last year, and I wanted to save the time of the House. I am not oblivious of the considerations which the noble Lord is now urging.
LORD STONEHAVEN: I did not hear the noble Lord on the last occasion, and I was not aware he had dealt with the matter, but surely it is material to bring out the advantages of the case and not dwell merely on the other side. It gives a very one-sided impression if you do not indicate both sides. There is another question, and that is the question of national defence. Surely in the matter of national defence food is a very important item. I believe that during the War, in 1917, we spent in buying something like 1,300,000 tons of sugar not less than £32,000,000, and we were then going very short. In 1919, the year after the War, we spent in buying rather more sugar no less a sum than £52,000,000, and the Sugar Commission, as my noble friend will be able to say, on one occasion—I think in 1920—had to pay for

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Mauritius sugar £90 per ton, and they bought 200,000 tons at that rate, paying £18,000,000 for what is considerably less than the amount we are now growing in this country. That is about one-third of the amount of the sugar crop in 1934–35. The cost of that crop to the country as a whole was £18,000,000, and of that amount £7,000,000 was paid to British, industries.
This measure may be repugnant to those who are upholders of sound financial and economic sense, but it represents a pretty good thing for the country both in peace and in war, and I suggest that from the practical point of view we would make a great mistake to follow the noble Lord in opposition to this Bill. There were two other points which the noble Lord made. He referred to the competition which this measure is introducing with the sugar growers in our Dominions and Colonies. We take every ounce of sugar that the Dominions and the Colonies produce; and, as regards shipping, if the noble Lord will consult the statistics he will find that so far from carrying less sugar, our shipping industry is carrying more sugar than ever before. This Bill is not perfect, but I consider it represents a great advance. Moreover, representing as it does a measure that was drawn up by the Socialist Party and first of all studied by Lord Noel-Buxton when he was Minister of Agriculture in the other House, and eventually introduced by the noble Viscount who leads this House, it may be regarded as a very good piece of national legislation, and I am sure it is in the national interests.
LORD PHILLIMORE: My Lords, I shall be brief, but I desire to associate myself in the first place with the protest made by my noble friend Lord Hastings as to the absence of any representative of the Ministry of Agriculture from the Front Bench in this House. It is quite clear that we want, not one representative, but a team of representatives of agriculture on the Front Bench if we are going to have many more Bills of this complicated kind. Your Lordships will observe that the noble Earl who introduced the Bill was careful to point out that Parliamentary control over this scheme was maintained through the Ministry of Agriculture. If Parliamentary control is to be maintained through the Ministry of Agriculture, it is surely very necessary that
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the Ministry of Agriculture should be represented in this House. If your Lordships' House is going to take its fair share in watching over this new scheme, it is absolutely necessary that persons who have the time to devote themselves to these questions should be represented on the Front Bench. No one knows better than I do the charm, courtesy, and competence of the noble Earl who now represents education in this House and speaks for agriculture. He has beaten me too many times in the Lobbies for me not to be able to recognise that he is one of the most competent "putters-up" of a case, if I may say so, of any of your Lordships in this House. But that is not enough. The man dealing with this complicated legislation must be able to give his whole time to it.
May I dwell for a moment on a personal matter? I interrupted the noble Earl to ask him a question, and I realise that my behaviour was eccentric and perhaps out of order. I should like to tell the House that I knew from private knowledge and consultation with the noble Earl that he had to leave the House owing to a necessary engagement, and I had come to a formal agreement with him that he should deal with certain points before he left which otherwise it would have been impossible properly to consider. I am not going to take up much time on this Bill. It is a difficult and complicated Bill, and its chief features were very well and very clearly explained by the noble Earl. The Bill is part of the new structure of industry which His Majesty's Government are gradually building up. It does behove us to watch very carefully how that structure is being built up and how each stone is being fitted in. When we were talking about the Cotton Spinning Industry Bill the other day, I pointed out that we were gradually committing ourselves to a piece-meal system of industrial organisation which involved us in some very startling and very anxious commitments. I pointed out then, and I point out again, that restriction is one of the principal features in this structure. In this ease it is limitation of production of wealth which could well be got out of the land if the farmers of England were only allowed the opportunity.
Your Lordships will have noticed that the noble Earl, in reply to my question,

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held out no hope that small holders would be allowed to cultivate even small patches of sugar beet and sell to the factories on contract. That is a very serious hindrance to the work of setting up small holdings which the Government, with another hand, has entrusted to another body of which I am a member. Sugar beet is essentially a small holder's crop. It is one requiring a great deal of manual labour and gives a reasonable return for that labour. The noble Earl who introduced the Bill did not, I think, appreciate that my suggestions were directed quite as much to the setting up of new small holdings as to existing small holdings, and if we are to take what he said as final it will be impossible on any new small holdings for the holder to grow sugar beet as a crop. You cut off one of the most valuable and suitable crops for a small holder that he can possibly have; yet you are anxious to take unemployed men from the distressed areas and establish them on the land. That is one of the consequences that follow from limitation of production.
Some of your Lordships may have noticed that I put down a long complicated Question about potatoes in regard to Mr. Rowley's case just before the holidays. The gist of that was that that particular landlord had had last year to pay a fine of £5 per acre, amounting to £250, in order to enable his tenant to grow fifty acres of potatoes, and that without that inducement he could not keep the tenant. In other words, he was fined for production. What followed? Potatoes were a short crop, and the Tariff Advisory Committee were asked to agree to reduce or knock off the tariff on main crop potatoes in order that more potatoes should flow into the country, whilst Mr. Rowley, whose case I was quoting, was prevented from growing them except under fine. The results of limitation of production are numerous, and hard to trace in some cases, but most important, and I do join with the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, in making our protest against that restriction. We could not ask, and we do not ask, for a penny more from public money. What I suggest is that that public money might have been allowed to be freely competed for by the farmers of this country.
Your Lordships will notice that very little has been said so far about the
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vastly important consequences of this Bill which deal with the quota agreement, and the refiners, and the licensing to refine. You will find there the other characteristic feature of this structure which is being gradually built up, and that is the imposition by Parliament of a monopoly on the trade. I will not go into that very big question to-night, but I do hope, when our minds are not so charged as they must be to-day with more important matters, Parliament will give very careful consideration to these important principles.
THE FIRST LORD OF THE ADMIBALTY (VISCOUNT MONSELL): My Lords, the noble Lords, Lord Hastings, Lord Bledisloe and now Lord Phillimore, have all made a complaint that a very important agricultural measure is introduced by a representative of the Board of Education. As First Lord of the Admiralty I find myself even further removed from the soil than the representative of education. For that reason, with your Lordships' permission, I shall not attempt to arouse the ire of noble Lords who have spoken on this subject by attempting to reply in detail to any of the criticisms that have been made, except to say that the undoubted feeling of your Lordships' House as to having a representative of the agricultural industry on the Front Bench here is, I think, a very strong one, and I shall represent it to the Leader of the House at the first opportunity. It may be that one of the reasons against having a representative of the Ministry of Agriculture will be that your Lordships' House has already such a galaxy of agricultural talent, as has been exemplified by the speeches that have been made to-day. Several points have been raised this afternoon that I think your Lordships will agree are Committee points. The noble Earl who moved this measure has been called to a sick bed, and, as your Lordships know, there will be a Committee stage on the Bill. The noble Earl will then reply in detail to all the criticisms that have been made this afternoon. In view of that I will now ask your Lordships to be good enough to give a Second Beading to this Bill.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

ELECTRICITY SUPPLY (METERS) BILL.
Amendments reported (according to Order).
Clause 1:
Appointment of examiners, etc.
1.—(1) Not later than the appointed day the Electricity Commissioners shall appoint and thereafter keep appointed a sufficient number of competent and impartial persons as meter examiners who shall have such powers and duties as are conferred or imposed upon them by this Act in relation to meters, and such meter examiners shall comply with any directions given by the Electricity Commissioners as to the exercise and performance of their powers and duties.
(4) Subject as hereinafter provided, meter examiners appointed under this Act shall have the powers and duties in relation to meters which are conferred or imposed on electric inspectors by Sections thirty-six, fifty, fifty-one and fifty-seven of the Schedule of 1899 and such powers and duties shall cease to be exercised by electric inspectors accordingly, and the said Sections fifty, fifty-one and fifty-seven shall have effect in relation to meters as if references to a meter examiner appointed under this Act were substituted for references to an electric inspector:
Provided that this subsection shall, in its application to the Administrative County of London, have effect as if for the words "fifty-one and fifty-seven" in each place whore those words occur in this subsection, there were substituted the words "and fifty-one."
LORD ELTISLEY LORD ELTISLEY moved, in subsection (1), to leave out "have such powers and duties as are conferred or imposed upon them by this Act in relation to meters" and insert "be charged with the examination and certifying of meters used or intended to be used in connection with the supply of electricity by authorised undertakers." The noble Lord said: My Lords, this Amendment should be read with the first part of the Amendment to Clause 5, page 5, line 5, relating to the certifying and examination of meters which are hereby repealed. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 1, line 9, leave out from ("shall") to ("and") in line 11 and insert the said new words.—(Lord Eltisley.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD ELTISLEY: My Lords, the next Amendment in my name is drafting. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 1, line 25, after ("officer") insert ("or servant").—(Lord Eltisley.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD ELTISLEY LORD ELTISLEY moved, in subsection (4), to leave out "thirty-six." The noble Lord said: My Lords, this also is a drafting Amendment, and is consequent upon the first Amendment which has already-been carried. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 2, line 7, leave out ("thirty-six").—(Lord Eltisley.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD ELTISLEY LORD ELTISLEY moved, in subsection (4), after "inspector," to insert "under the Special Order, to an electric inspector appointed under the Special Order or to an electric inspector." The noble Lord said: My Lords, this also is a drafting Amendment. The inspectors are appointed either by the Electricity Commissioners or by local authorities.
Amendment moved—
Page 2, line 13, after ("inspector") insert the said words.—(Lord Eltisley.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 2 [Apparatus for meter testing, etc.]:
LORD ELTISLEY: My Lords, the two Amendments down on the Paper in my name to Clause 2 are drafting. I beg to move.
Amendments moved—
Page 3, line 21, leave out ("them") and insert ("the parties")
leave out ("were") and insert ("are").—(Lord Eltisley.)
On Question, Amendments agreed to.
Clause 3:
Transitional provisions as to existing meters.
3.—(1) Subject as hereinafter provided, every meter to which this section applies shall be deemed for all purposes to be a proper meter for ascertaining the value of the supply, and the register of any such meter shall be evidence, but not conclusive evidence, of that value, and the Schedule of 1899 shall apply in relation to any such meter as aforesaid as if it were a certified meter within the meaning of that Schedule:
Provided that Section fifty-seven of the said Schedule shall not apply in relation to any meter to which this section applies.
(2) This section shall apply to every meter installed on the premises of an ordinary consumer for the purpose of ascertaining

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the value of the supply, being a meter which has been installed on those premises for that purpose before the appointed day (except any meter which is a certified meter within the meaning of the Schedule of 1899, or is the subject of a special agreement between the consumer and the undertakers), but shall cease to apply to any meter at the time when it is first disconnected and removed after the beginning of the appointed day, or at the expiration of ten years from the beginning of that day, whichever first occurs, except in so far as it may be material to adduce the reading of the register of the meter as evidence of the value of the supply in any previous period.
(3) In this section the expression "the value of the supply" has the same meaning as in the Schedule of 1899.
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (THE EARL OF PLYMOUTH)THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (THE EARL OF PLYMOUTH) had an Amendment on the Paper to omit the words "but not conclusive evidence" from subsection (1). The noble Earl said: My Lords, instead of moving the Amendment which is down on the Paper in my name I should like to substitute for it the following Amendment: After the word "but," insert "save where the consumer has proceeded under subsection (2) of this section, and there is a final and binding decision under that subsection." I beg to move the Amendment in that form.
Amendment moved—
Page 4, line 1, after ("but") insert ("save Where the consumer has proceeded under subsection (2) of this section and there is a final and binding decision under that subsection").—(The Earl of Plymouth.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE EARL OF PLYMOUTH THE EARL OF PLYMOUTH moved to insert after subsection (1):
"(2) Where any difference arises between any consumer and any authorised undertakers as to whether a meter to which this section applies (whether belonging to the consumer or to the undertakers) is or is not in proper order for correctly registering the value of the supply or as to whether that value has been correctly registered in any case by such a meter, then, if the consumer desires that the difference should be determined under this subsection, he may serve a written notice to that effect upon the undertakers, and in that event the difference shall be determined by such meter examiner appointed under this Act as may be designated by the Electricity Commissioners and the meter examiner may also direct by which of the parties the costs of and incidental to the proceedings before him shall be paid, and his decision shall be final and binding on all parties:
Provided that the preceding provisions of this section shall in their application to the Administrative County of London have effect as if for any reference in those provisions to a meter examiner appointed under this Act there were substituted a reference to an electric inspector within the meaning of the Schedule of 1899, or, where the local authority are the consumers, to an inspector appointed by the Electricity Commissioners."
The noble Earl said: My Lords, this Amendment requires a word or two of explanation but I will not detain your Lordships more than a minute or two. Under the existing law any consumer who desires to dispute the accuracy of his meter, provided the meter is, as the law assumes it to be, a properly certified meter, can apply to the Electricity Commissioners for the appointment of an electric inspector, who thereupon examines the meter and gives a decision which is final and binding on both the consumer and the supply undertaking. Similarly a supply undertaking which desires to dispute the accuracy of a meter can apply for the appointment of an inspector. Owing to the fact that a very large proportion of the meters installed in ordinary domestic consumers' premises have not in fact been certified, and therefore are not strictly meters at all, this right of the consumer to demand a simple and inexpensive test has become ineffectice. The present Bill deals with these uncertified meters and allows them to be admitted in evidence in any Court proceedings.
If this Bill became law as at present drafted, the position would be that any dispute with regard to these uncertified meters, whether raised by the consumer or by the undertaking, would have to be taken into Court. As far as the undertaking is concerned which is responsible for the installation of these uncertified meters, we think that this course is only right and proper, but it would appear reasonable that the consumer in whose house an uncertified meter has, through no fault of his own, been installed, should have the right to have this meter tested by an examiner if he so desires without prejudice to the right to take the dispute into Court. This Amendment gives to the consumer an option to demand that his meter shall be tested by an examiner instead of leaving him under the necessity of starting proceedings in Court. If an Amendment to this effect is not carried, many consumers who desire to

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have their meters tested would hesitate to start proceedings in Court and would instead accept the supply undertaking's contentions. With that explanation I hope your Lordships will be prepared to accept the Amendment.
Amendment moved—
Page 4, line 7, at end insert the said new subsection.—(The Earl of Plymouth.)
LORD ELTISLEY: My Lords, I welcome this Amendment. It gives further protection to the consumers.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE EARL OF PLYMOUTH THE EARL OF PLYMOUTH had given Notice of two Amendments to subsection (2), namely, to insert (a) after "as far as," and to add to the subsection the words:
"or
(b) the meter may be the subject of proceedings under subsection (2) of this section."
The noble Earl said: My Lords, I do not propose to move the next two Amendments on the Order Paper, but I want to substitute for them the following Amendment: On page 4, in line 20, leave out from "material" to the second "the" in line 21, and insert "for the purposes of any proceedings (including proceedings under subsection (2) of this section) to determine whether or not the meter has correctly registered." It is really a drafting Amendment.
Amendment moved—
Page 4, line 20, leave out from ("material") to the second ("the") in line 21 and insert ("for the purposes of any proceedings (including proceedings under subsection (2) of this section) to determine whether or not the meter has correctly registered").—(The Earl of Plymouth.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE EARL OF PLYMOUTH THE EARL OF PLYMOUTH moved an Amendment to make subsection (3) read as follows:
"In this section the expression 'consumer' and 'the value of the supply' have respectively the same meanings as in the Schedule of 1899."
The noble Earl said: My Lords, this is also a drafting Amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 4, line 23, leave out from the first ("the") to ("as") in line 24 and insert
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("expressions 'consumer' and 'the value of the supply' have respectively the same meanings).—(The Earl of Plymouth.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 4 [Definitions]:
LORD ELTISLEY: My Lords, my Amendment to this clause is simply a drafting Amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 4, line 38, leave out ("the") and insert ("any").—(Lord Eltisley.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 5 [Short title, citation and extent]:
LORD ELTISLEY LORD ELTISLEY moved, after subsection (1), to insert:
"(2) In subsection (1) of Section thirty-six of the Schedule of 1899 the words 'the certifying and examination of meters' are hereby repealed, and so much of Section fifty-seven of the said Schedule as makes provision with respect to the appointment and functions of an inspector in a case where the local authority are the consumers shall cease to have effect except in relation to the Administrative County of London."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, under the Bill which we are now considering no local authority can appoint meter examiners. These appointments will be made by the Electricity Commissioners. Therefore this provision under the Act now becomes redundant. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 5, at end insert the said new subsection.—(Lord Eltisley.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.

LEAGUE OF NATIONS.
LORD PONSONBY OF SHULBREDE LORD PONSONBY OF SHULBREDE rose to ask His Majesty's Government whether they are making preparations for proposals to the League of Nations for a thorough revision of the system of collective security in view of recent experiences; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, it is rather late but I do not think that your Lordships will blame me for the lateness of the hour. Considering that the main subject of debate this afternoon has been agriculture I consider myself very fortunate to get in before dinner at all. I am not going to say that because of the lateness of the hour I am not going to detain your Lordships. I am going to

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detain your Lordships, because the subject that I have put on the Order Paper is one of paramount importance and it is to be discussed at a very critical moment. I do not want to blame any one, least of all the noble Earl, Lord Lucan, for the business being so arranged that the debate does not take place until such a late hour, but I feel sure it is a matter which many of your Lordships want to face and to discuss very fully before Monday next. If in my remarks I express views that are clearly out of harmony with those expressed by the spokesman of the Opposition in another place yesterday, it will be understood I am sure by your Lordships, that that is the reason I sit where I do now and do not sit where I sat formerly.
We are faced with one of the bitterest tragedies that history records. I am not here to-night in order to indulge in recriminations, but I am here in order to ask the Government to face the future with very full knowledge of the lessons which they must have learned in the past. I do not think it is impossible that the tragedy of Abyssinia and the terrible betrayal of this undeveloped nation may have driven home lessons which, if learned, may lead to the strengthening of the League of Nations by the final disillusionment of the theorists who have pressed for straining the League capacity in a way which has amazed those of us who have understood from the first how limited that capacity must be in the nature of things as they stand at present. We have been too near the brink to regard with any complacency the machinery so far devised for the prevention of war. The crisis is not over. We are already faced with another, and that will not be the last. I want to press on the Government that they should make up their minds that the best diplomacy is not to take crisis by crisis with a view to steering round difficult corners, but to lay plans now for dealing with these international conflicts in a way that will be far better than any method adopted hitherto.
The Government have been too late in nearly all the steps they have taken. I think they realise now that, once the momentum of war is started, there is nothing that can really check it. I think, and I hope, that they realise now that it was in April, 1935, at the Stresa Conference,
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that this question of Abyssinia should have been faced. I see it said in defence of the Government policy that they waited for Signor Mussolini to raise the question. Of course he was not going to raise the question, and the very fact that Great Britain and France also did not raise the question allowed him to suppose that he had more or less a free hand. It is only by nipping these difficulties in the bud and by tackling them at the earliest possible moment that there can be any sort of hope of preventing the calamities of which we have been witness during the last year.
Now, my Lords, may I put to the Government certain questions to which I hope they have learned the answers? Do they realise now, and do the supporters of the policy which they have been adopting realise now, that whatever dispute may arise between nations, amounting even to actual conflict, and however apparently unanimous the condemnation of any nation may be, yet, as in human affairs, sides will be taken, and even a condemned aggressor will have sympathisers and friends? It is no good our blaming other nations for placing self-interest first. Of course they do, and of course they are reluctant to make economic sacrifices in the future. It is no good blaming France for having divided and conflicting loyalties. France found herself, just having made friendly relations with Italy, just having drawn up instruments by which she and Italy were drawn together, faced with a conflicting loyalty and obligation under the Covenant of the League. It is all very well saying that it is clear what France's choice should have been; but statesmen faced with a dilemma of that sort are hesitant, and if they are hesitant, there is a division of opinion in the country and they cannot make up their minds.
We also have been accused of being actuated by self-interest. It may be unfair: I am not saying that if in certain circumstances British interests had not been involved in any sort of way, we should not have come forward in defence of the Covenant, but it is very difficult to think of any part of the world, in view of our far-flung power, in which we cannot be suspected of having interests which guide our motives. Therefore I hope the Government have faced up to the fact that in an incomplete League there must

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be nations who will stand aside, nations who will go no farther than a declaration, nations who will reluctantly do as little as they possibly can, and just a few who will come in whole-heartedly to the fullest extent. This is not a hypothetical supposition. I have said it before, and I am only saying it now after it has become a conclusion that has been reached by positive experience. This is where the Government, I think, are to blame. I do not agree at all that the Government did not take the lead; I think the Government took too much lead. I do not agree at all that the Government did not press for sanctions. They did. What I blame the Government for is having gone in for the policy of sanctions without any conviction. Not only that, but, although it was the most extreme case possible, they had doubt in their minds as to the possibility of sanctions.
I must just refer to the great speech of Sir Samuel Hoare at Geneva, because he realised and expressed a doubt then. He said:
"The obligations of the Covenant remain; their burden upon us has been increased manifold. But one thing is certain. If the burden is to be borne, it must be borne collectively. If risks for peace are to be run, they must be run by all. The security of the many cannot be ensured solely by the efforts of a few, however powerful they may be."
He would not have said that if he had not had grave doubts in his mind whether the other Powers were going to pull their full weight. The Prime Minister—I do not? want to quote him; I have quoted him so often—said that collective security in the present circumstances was an impossibility. He was right. Why, then, did not the Government have the courage to come out and say: "We do not believe, in the present situation, with a depleted League and national differences, that the full force of sanctions can be brought to bear against Italy, and we do believe that any attempt to do it incompletely and ineffectively is likely to cause very great danger to Europe." If they had done that, with their big majority and many of their own Party in favour of that policy, they would have saved a very great deal of the tragedy which we have seen.
The Government having never really-believed in the policy and yet having reluctantly gone on with it, sanctions such
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as have been imposed may have burdened the Italian people. The noble Earl who will reply for the Government has informed us that sanctions have to a certain extent been successful. My information is very different. At any rate sanctions have done nothing to stop the war. I would go farther, and I would say that sanctions have helped Signor Mussolini to consolidate his country in such a way as to win a rapid victory, which without sanctions he would not have done. That is just what he wanted. The disillusionment of the Italian people was always possible. The soldiers coming home from that sterile, devastated country would not bring good news to their families. But some exterior, international opposition—"the nations of the world," as he could declare,"against Italy"—that gave him just the impetus which allowed him to bring about his coup with such rapidity.
It is a matter of real surprise to me that in these circumstances there should be people who still continue to press for sanctions against Italy. What was the purpose of sanctions? To stop the war. We have not stopped the war. The war is now over. What is the purpose of sanctions now? To punish whom—the wretched Italian people who have been taken in? Sanctions are not going to touch Signor Mussolini; they are not going to affect the war, which is over. Just petulant vindictiveness, in order to prove that we want to go on and that we were not wrong in what we have done! Anything so foolish, anything so petty, anything so misguided as to suppose that sanctions against Italy are of any use whatsoever now cannot be imagined. No, my Lords; I hope the Government are sitting round a table to consider that Article 16 must be cut out of the Covenant of the League of Nations. Then have the Government learned that the nearer you get to parading force, to threatening force, the more dangerous the situation becomes? Of course, I have said from the very outset that you could never have economic sanctions unless you had force behind them, because if they are going to be effective there must be force in the background. So the Government found. Then began the movement of the Fleet in the Mediterranean, and then began public indignation in Italy against us as the main enemy, and then we got very near the brink where

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war would have been extended into Europe. Just as much as force is threatened or contemplated or prepared, so must the danger of the extension of war increase.
I know that in what I am going to say now I shall not get much support, but it is my firm belief that to feel pride in squadrons of aeroplanes, smart and sparkling regiments of infantry, and imposing lines of battleships may be natural enough, but to declare that international peace and national security are to be gained or maintained by such means is the purest and most unadulterated bunkum. Every man, ship, aeroplane, tank or bomb that you add, and that you spend your treasures upon, is bringing you nearer to the tragedy of war. I say that, not only of this country but of every country.
EARL STANHOPE: Including Abyssinia?
LORD PONSONBY OF SHULBREDE: Force as a factor in the regulation of world affairs is of no avail whatsoever. The threat of it and the preparation of it only brings you nearer to the danger-point. I often wish that that doctrine was preached by the great organisation that has the power to do it, the need to do it, and the right to do it. I mean the Established Church. In the absence of the most reverend Prelates I do not want to attack that institution. I should like very much to have seen the Bishop of Durham in his place. The Bishop of Durham ought not to be a Bishop; he ought to be an Air Marshal. I find that sane pacifist opinion is held more in the Services, in the fighting Services, than you would ever find it in the Church. Your Lordships will remember what the late Field-Marshal Lord Haig said of the Church. He said: "Your job is to make my job impossible." They have not done much in that direction.
Now I hope that the Government are realising that there must be a redefinition of collective security. I am sick of the phrase. You hear people talking of it on platforms as if it were some magic. We have had an example of it, and for heaven's sake do not let us attempt another one. It has been shown that it is neither collective, nor does it mean security. It is straining the League of Nations to attempt the impossible, and expecting too much of it. A man who
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over-estimates his strength becomes a weakling. I was glad to see in a recent debate that the noble Earl who is in charge of foreign affairs in this House said:
"…if the League is eventually to take its proper share in the affairs of the world and to attempt to stop aggression and to bring forward conciliation, every nation must take its part."
He also said:
"It is obvious that when the whole of this unfortunate struggle is at an end"—
it has come to an end since the noble Earl spoke—
"both the League and this country will have very carefully to consider the whole situation, and to decide upon what our future policy will be based."
All I can say is that I am very glad to hear the noble Earl express those views. I hope there will be no delay about it. There is a tendency in foreign affairs to think that you can do nothing in the intervals of crises. It is fatal to twiddle your thumbs between crises. I am not accusing the noble Earl of twiddling his thumbs, but we know that there is a good deal of thumb twiddling in Government offices.
EARL STANHOPE: Not in the Foreign Office.
LORD PONSONBY OF SHULBREDE: Not an hour should be wasted in putting forward proposals for bringing to an end this whole system which, up to now, has been called collective security. What has saved us so far from a European War? What prevents us, to-day, from thinking that war is coming? We do not think so. What is it that has prevented that? Not collective security. Not the flaunting of Article 16, not the parading of the Fleet in the Mediterranean, not the speeches of His Majesty's Government, not the handling of diplomacy by the Government. It is one of those small things which people overlook and take for granted, but it is a most significant thing, and one reason why I wanted a League of Nations to be brought into being. It is not Article 16, but Articles 3 and 4 of the Covenant, which nobody reads. They are the Articles which make meetings of the representatives of the nations automatic—meetings to which they all agree to come; conferences, whether in Geneva, in Paris or in London; the meeting together of men who want

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to understand one another's point of view. There is nothing very spectacular about a round table. I know that fleets and armaments are much more popular, but I have great faith in a round table, especially in these days when events move so quickly. Here they have periodic meetings and are able to discuss together as representatives of their nations. It is that which has saved us from calamity.
Representative politicians, they may not be very wise or far-seeing, but they come together and they begin to understand one another's points of view. Claims, complaints, fears, jealousies must be faced and examined by these representatives of the nations. But here I hope I am going to press the Government to come to a decision. Do not let us have another Disarmament Conference. I have inveighed against the Disarmament Conference every time I could in this House, and again I was right. The rules for waging the next war are not going to be observed, but will be disregarded. Here you have seen, not some small undeveloped nation, but one of the great nations of Europe flouting the prohibition of poison gas. I say that the real danger with a nation intent on rapid victory, or a nation with its back to the wall, is that it is going to flout all these regulations which are drawn up by your Disarmament Conference. No, it is not the regulation of the weapons of war but the regulation of the desires and ambitions which make Governments want to use the weapons of war; that is what you have to get at. You have to get at the very basis of the whole trouble, and this must be the first concern of the League of Nations.
Before I sit down I am going to make a specific and constructive proposal. I read an article recently by the noble Viscount, Lord Cecil, and there was one sentence in it with which I was in complete agreement. He said:
"The existing Covenant of the League may be neither perfect nor complete, but unless a nation's word is its bond the most perfect Covenant cannot conceivably work satisfactorily."
I entirely agree. The question is how to make the nations accept their word as their bond. What is the trouble? The interpretation of these treaties. I remember very well in August, 1914, going to the House of Commons Library, climbing on a ladder, and taking from a dusty
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shelf the treaty guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium, the treaty of 1839. And as I looked down I saw a queue of members all waiting for it—nobody knew what was in it—a treaty that was between seventy and eighty years old and was our stand-by to take us into the War. What do we see in the case of the Treaty of Versailles? Year by year pieces nibbled off it, disregarded by this nation and that nation, flouted by the other nations. Treaties are supposed to be drawn up rebus sic stantibus—the existing things being as they are. What we see in the world to-day—the existing state of things—does not continue for more than a few months, and yet these treaties gradually get their coats of dust over them and nations are blamed for having dishonoured their word. We all want to know what our obligations are and what the obligations of other nations are.
My proposal is this, therefore, that all treaties should be submitted—not on the appeal of one nation or another nation, but automatically and periodically—to a permanent department of the League of Nations for examination with a view to their being confirmed, revised or, if need be, discontinued. Revision is always shelved now because of the awkward problems that will arise, or it is demanded by some nation or other, or else a treaty is flouted by some nation or other. But this, which should be part of the duty of the League of Nations, would bring every treaty periodically—I think every two years or five years—under review in such a manner as to make everybody aware what the obligations of the various nations were. Until you get that you will not get what the noble Viscount desires, that a nation's word should be a nation's bond.
We must get at the root of the trouble, and we must not wait until these discarded, disregarded, infringed treaties cause trouble. We ought to know what the commitments of other nations are. To give an example. I wonder if anybody in your Lordships' House knows that in September, 1920, a treaty was signed for a military alliance between France and Belgium. That treaty was registered under the League of Nations, but its provisions have never been published. It would make our grandfathers in the early nineteenth century turn in their graves to think that the whole of the coast was completely under the

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domination of France. We are friends with France. In the whirligig of time we never know where our friendships and where our enmities may be. In 1887, when there was a danger of an attack by Germany against France, there was not the smallest fear or disturbed feeling in this country in case Germany should infringe Belgian neutrality. In 1914 it was the casus belli. These things are matters of expediency, matters of the circumstances of the moment. By my suggestion the League of Nations would undertake to make nations clearly aware of what their obligations are, and if there is any complaint to make it should be openly stated in order that revision of the treaty should be made.
I put it quite specifically. Add to Article 18 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, which is the Article under which treaties have to be registered by the League:
"All treaties thus registered shall automatically be subject to periodic examination every"—
I should say—
"two years by a Department of the League, established for this specific purpose, with a view to their confirmation, revision, alteration or discontinuance, on the agreement of the signatory Powers in each case concerned."
There must be an amendment of the Covenant of the League of Nations, and that is already provided for in Article 26. I hope that this suggestion of mine will be brought to the notice of the authorities by the noble Earl who will speak later. They will probably dismiss it and they will probably say: "Oh, this is just one of Ponsonby's notions." I hope that the noble Earl will then say: "Yes, but it is very curious that Ponsonby is almost invariably right." I hope others will join in this debate. I have gone on for longer than I intended, but I wanted to put these points. I think it is important that the opinions of so many noble Lords in this House who have great experience of foreign affairs should be expressed, and if it is too late to-night, as I fear it may be, I hope the Government will allow this debate to be continued on an early day next week. I beg to move.
Moved, that an humble Address be presented to His Majesty for Papers relating to any preparations for proposals to the League of Nations for a thorough revision of the system of collective security
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in view of recent experiences.—(Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede).
TUB MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, I feel that your Lordships are grateful to the noble Lord for bringing forward this Motion to-night., because there is no subject upon which it is more important that we should clear our minds than the defects, such as they may be, found in the Covenant of the League of Nations, which for fifteen years or more has been accepted as the basis of British policy and Dominion policy in international affairs. I am glad that Lord Ponsonby has protested against the use of the words "collective security." I do not know who invented these words, but I have always felt they were a perversion of the underlying concept of the League of Nations, strengthening in every possible way the idea that it was fundamentally a League for coercion, and losing sight of the fact that in the original idea the Covenant was intended to be the means for altering situations which were out of date, and did not even rule out war as a method of bringing that about if no other method could be found. But I cannot agree with him when he says that force is of no avail in international affairs. I am afraid we have had only too clear an example in the last few months that force is of avail in international affairs. The real question is whether what the Covenant of the League of Nations, under Articles 10 and 16, provides is an effective method of dealing with the problem of uncontrolled force in the world.
I suggest—and it is the only main point I am going to make to-night, because it seems to me we have got to try to clear our minds as to where the root of the difficulty is—that the League as an idea has not broken down. I mean the idea of what I may call, not collective security, but collective diplomacy. What has broken down is the principle contained in Articles 10 and 16—that is to say, the assumption by the Members of the League of a universal, automatic, inescapable commitment to resist any alteration of the status quo anywhere which is attempted by force, by methods which, as the experience of the last few years has proved, can only be made effective by a resort to war. That is the core of the difficulty. It has always been, as I have felt, the central weakness of the Covenant, and it is the principle which

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has almost destroyed it, because no League of sovereign States can alter the status quo except by the consent of all the nations concerned, and collective action by sovereign States in the last resort can only be made effective by a resort to war; and because in a partial League any such resort to war, a police war, must risk extending a local conflict into a world war.
May I give some illustrations? The noble Viscount, Lord Cecil, will perhaps forgive me if I remind him of an episode which has probably escaped his memory, but in Paris at the time when the League of Nations Commission was holding its deliberations, Mr. Lloyd George, whom it is fashionable now to despise, asked the noble Viscount and General Smuts, who were the British representatives on that Commission, to come and have a discussion with him about the principles which were then emerging in the Covenant. He said, and a number of other people associated with him urged very strongly, that we should not attempt too ambitious a Covenant in the first instance; that the primary need was, as Lord Ponsonby said, to establish the habit and practice that all the nations of the world should sit round the table and see whether they could not mitigate one another's ignorance and prejudice and bring about agreed solutions of international problems—in other words, that the principle which has been so successful in the British Commonwealth of Nations, which contains none of these rigid, automatic, collective obligations, should be applied as the basic idea of this new, unexampled, and unparalleled experiment of making a League of all the nations with a view to preserving peace. I believe that was put about, but for reasons of which I am unaware it was disregarded, Articles 10 and 16 were embedded in the Covenant, and President Wilson, most unfortunately but most loyally, went about the United States saying that Article 10 was the heart of the Covenant.
I have been recently reading Senator Lodge's book on the history of the Senate and the League of Nations, and he says quite specifically—and I do not think there is any reason to dispute it—that Article 10 was the centre about which the whole controversy raged, because the Senate or a minority of the Senate—not a majority, but a sufficient minority to defeat the Treaty, which had to be
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accepted under the American Constitution by a two-thirds majority—were convinced that the only way in which a nation could live up to its obligations under Article 10 was by going to war. That conclusive argument was the argument, which, I think, was most effective in keeping the United States out of the League. Look at the Manchurian case. It was precisely the sort of obligation which we had signed under Article 10 which compelled all the Members of the League, when faced by that obligation, to begin to threaten in the kind of manner that they did threaten, though when it came to the point, for precisely the reason that has become clear recently, it was manifest they were not prepared to take their protest to the only point at which it could have been effective—namely, willingness to take action which would have resulted in war with Japan. Yet the same Articles, for these reasons, led to the withdrawal of Japan from the League.
Take the next case. Germany came into the League, and, as every noble Lord recognises, despite every effort, despite the loyal and energetic efforts of the noble Viscount, Lord Cecil, to bring about universal disarmament, it proved impossible to modify the Treaties of Peace sufficiently to give Germany the equality she had been promised in December, 1934. And when in October Germany was asked to wait another four years before any effective steps could be taken in that direction, and was told by M. Paul-Boncour that any steps would be dependent on the political conditions at the end of the four years, Herr Hitler left the League of Nations and left the Disarmament Conference and began that rearmament by which alone he believed he could recover the equality of position in the world to which he thought Germany as a great nation was entitled.
Now we have got to the Abyssinian crisis, and, if you consider the question, what was it that made Sir Samuel Hoare take the position he did on September 11? I think it was an honourable act, though as I said at the time I thought he was personally misguided, but he did see, as Mr. Eden and everyone else has stated, that he was faced with the question: Does our signature mean anything or not? Not "is it wise or unwise?" but "we have pledged ourselves to take these unlimited economic sanctions in the

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case of aggression. Are we going to default of our signature or are we not?" It was that appeal, that call to this country, which I think more than anything else united this country behind the policy of September 11, and united fifty other nations as well. But what happened? Economic sanctions were put on, but as everybody knows, and many people prophesied, owing to a partial League of Nations, economic sanctions were either ineffective or became effective so slowly as to fail to produce the result that we intended them to have.
Therefore we were faced from October or November onwards with either having, let us say, oil sanctions or the closing of the Suez Canal under League authority as the only effective method of forcing Italy to come to the Peace Conference table. But from the moment in which it became clear, as Signor Mussolini persistently threatened, that if oil sanctions were imposed or the Suez Canal closed he would regard it as an act of war, and would retaliate with acts of war, every single Member of the League began to retreat, because none of them would face the responsibility of putting their own countries into modern war for the sake of Abyssinian or any interest which did not seem to them vital to their own security and their own national interest. There was not a single nation which did not retreat, not a Dominion that did not retreat, and Mr. Eden was honest enough yesterday to tell the facts. He said, quite emphatically, that in his judgment closing the Canal must inevitably have led to war.
I will say a word or two about that later, but that was his judgment, and I think it was quite clearly the judgment of His Majesty's Government. He said the reason why they did not propose that was not because they were afraid of the consequences, but because of their horror of war, and a very legitimate horror, too, when you consider what modern war is and the way in which it may spread all over Europe. Further, I do not believe any other nation was prepared to contemplate war, but, if they were willing to make any further advance towards the risk, it would only be as a result of our undertaking a similar obligation to go to war all over Europe. That meant we had to undertake to go to war to defend Austria from remaining under the control of Mussolini, and defend every other
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frontier in Europe, and if we pressed the nations to run the risk of war in the case of Abyssinia, it was not an illegitimate answer for them to make that we should also undertake the liability to go to war in matters that affected them. That is why the Covenant and why the Abyssinian enterprise failed. It is because nobody would face the inevitable consequence of Article 16 when they came up against it. That is the reason, and to that extent we have led Abyssinia into expecting things which many people who had thought about these things before realised from the start it was extremely unlikely we should ever fulfil.
Moreover, this universal, unconditional obligation to take action, as modern experience shows, can only be made effective by war. We cannot possibly apply it in half the things to which under the Covenant we are still pledged to apply it. Are we going to undertake to do it to protect Russia, and Japan, if she comes back into the League, or Germany, or Austria, or Latvia, or Italy itself? It is an inconceivable obligation for any one country, or any small group of countries to undertake all over the world. Therefore, I think, as long as we append our signatures to Articles 10 and 16—however much certain people may argue that it is possible to slip out of them by legal interpretations, the principle underlying them is perfectly clear—as long as we believe ourselves, or let the rest of the world believe, we are bound by those Articles, we are in a dishonourable and equivocal position; and the sooner we make it clear to our own people and the nations of the world that we cannot be expected, and shall not attempt, to honour this universal obligation which, in the light of recent experiences, can only be fulfilled by action which may lead to war, the sooner shall we get out of the position in which we are to-day, and back to a situation in which diplomacy may once more tackle the real problems of the peace of the world.
I go further. I do not believe you can possibly get the League to revive until you do this thing. I believe the League will revive as soon as its main function is peace and not war. It may even recover universal membership. There have been some very remarkable letters in The Times. I do not say they matter very much, but Americans write and say:

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"If you can take Articles 10 and 16 out the people of the United States may come to look at this problem in a way quite different from the way in which they have looked at it hitherto." It is a straw and a small one, but I think it is symptomatic. Removal of compulsory sanctions would remove the fundamental objection in the United States to the League. I would not alter the Covenant in any other important respect. I believe that Article 11 is perfectly sound. When international problems occur which are serious and threaten the peace of the world, it is essential that the nations of the world should sit round a table and see what they can do to prevent it. But do not try to bind them beforehand by an automatic obligation which can only be fulfilled by going to war. They will not attend if you maintain that obligation. The only sound course is for them to sit down at a table without military commitment, and deal with a situation as it arises as we do inside the British Commonwealth of Nations, and do what they can agree to do in the light of the circumstances. I think all the provisions for delay, investigation and report and arbitration are perfectly sound, and certainly the provisions in Article 22 for international inspection of the way in which mandatory countries discharge their duties to colonial people are sound.
VISCOUNT ELIBANK: What about Article 12?
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: I cannot remember at the moment what Article 12 is.
VISCOUNT ELIBANK: Delaying the war for three months while the question is being discussed.
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: That is perfectly sound. What I object to is that we should all be bound to an obligation which can only be fulfilled by going to war, which can have no power to alter the status quo which we are bound to defend even at the price of war. Delay and investigation is one of the essential functions of the League of Nations and will be honoured by its genuine Members among themselves. When we excise this obligation I think the League may become a healthy organisation for the promotion of peace, and not what it has
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been in the last few months, an organisation for war—an organisation which, when you read the speeches of many of the champions of the League at this moment, has become an international movement busily inflaming the passions of war. Under such a League you will have to make other arrangements for regional security, but you still have the power to take collective action, and collective action which in certain cases may be decisive, when they can agree upon it in the light of the facts, but which will not be imposed on Members automatically. They will be able to consider how collective action may be made effective without the risk of war. The only point I want to make to your Lordships to-night is that until we remove this unlimited, universal, inescapable obligation to take action which now can only be fulfilled by war we shall be in a dishonourable and equivocal position, and the League will tend to perish and will be unable to revive.
LORD SNELL: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Ponsonby, I feel, rendered a public service by initiating this discussion in your Lordships' House to-day. I think, however, it must have been a surprise to him, and perhaps also an embarrassment to find himself being cheered so heartily from quarters of the House that do not usually pay him that compliment. I agree with him that the Government owe to the nation—a patriotic, a very patient and very disillusioned nation—some explanation of what they propose to do in the present circumstances. I believe that no such national humiliation has occurred in my time as that which we have gone through or are going through at the present moment. One speaks under a sense of moral defeat and an overwhelming sense of shame that wrong has once more triumphed in the world. But in spite of that I do not feel able to join in the chorus of depreciation of the League of Nations. The Labour Party believes, for good or for ill, that in the League of Nations we have the one body which in its present or in a better form is likely to give and ensure peace to the nations of the earth. I beg that we shall not indulge ourselves by exaggerating its faults, by underestimating its difficulties, by hampering its power to do its real work.

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There has always been a section in this country that has depreciated the League. It has never liked the League. It has always tried to injure its reputation before our country. But let us remember that the League is a body of men. It was not fashioned in the kingdom of heaven. It was formed at a time of international strain, and, as I have said before, it would have been a miracle if the League had been perfectly equipped for the work it had to do. On the other hand, let us make this quite clear to our own minds, that it is not the idea of the League that is wrong; it is the fact that the nations of the earth have not been able to live up to the great opportunity that it presented. If the time has come when the qualifications of the League for the work that it is to do, the powers it is to have, are to be reconsidered, let that question be approached with some sense of obligation to what the League has already accomplished. We hear so much about its failures and very little indeed about what it has helped us to get over. We should start again if necessary and never give up until the idea itself has been proved wrong, rather than the achievements.
My noble friend behind me said that the war was over. I wish it were. I am not at all certain that the war is over. I am not surprised at what has happened in Abyssinia, because I realised, and I have said so previously in your Lordships' House, that in one form or another this last remaining native kingdom would become subject either to some capitalist country or to some capitalist enterprise. What one feared has taken place. But I cannot feel that His Majesty's Government have any right to feel satisfaction for their part in what has happened. I hope it is realised by your Lordships how, and to what extent, our interests are involved. The black races throughout the whole of Africa are now going through a period of deep resentment and distrust of the Power they have looked to for protection and for strength. I believe that a black revolt has been brought twenty-five or even fewer years nearer because of what has happened. All our work in Kenya, Tanganyika and elsewhere in trying to build up the ideal of self-government has been jeopardised, and we are faced with the possibility of a black Fascist army being created in Abyssinia, to the menace, the danger, the disaster
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of the black races throughout the world. These are things that His Majesty's Government should take into serious account.
There is a great deal that I had wished to say on this matter and it is only because I find myself unable to be present at the time when the debate may be resumed that I trouble your Lordships by speaking now, but I will cut most of what I desired to say. I would like to say this, that Abyssinia was encouraged to resist and then her powers of defence were hampered and every capitalist country profited from trade with her aggressor. We have sinned against the Abyssinian people in that we did not tell them at the beginning that the capitalist nations of the earth, in spite of all their words, would never let a moral obligation interfere with the more sacred business of making illicit profits out of supplying war materials. If we had said that, then the Negus would have known where he stood. I feel tempted to go into questions of sanctions, but in mercy I refrain at this hour. I will only say that I have no theoretical objection to sanctions. If sanctions would have stopped the war I would have imposed sanctions at once. My sole doubt about them was that I felt that you could never trust the capitalist Governments to be loyal to their word.
I just take the opportunity of saying that France may take what pride she can for her part in this miserable business, because I feel that upon her falls the greatest responsibility of all. One can only be satisfied that it was not the wish of the French people, as has been recently proved by an Election. The French Election, I think, shows what the French people feel, and the Peckham election shows what our own people would feel if they had the privilege of expressing it. I do not know whether your Lordships realise that yesterday M. Blum, the distinguished leader of the Left in France, and destined probably to control the policy of France for some time, said:
"Hereafter Great Britain may rely freely upon France to support the collective action of the League of Nations."
He went on:
"It is tragic that we have come too late to prevent the Italian conquest of Abyssinia but if the past was not in our hands, the future is."

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I hope His Majesty's Government will take note of this new France, and that they will advance to meet the new opportunities—or perhaps they will be too superior to have any contact with a wicked Socialist Government! But the opportunity is there, and the responsibility is there.
If it is necessary to go into the question of the revision of the League let it be undertaken, but always remember that if a revision is undertaken every effort will be made by the isolationists in this and other countries, by big business, by grasping Governments, to rob it of all authority, moral and otherwise, and to try to reduce it to the status of a mere secular prayer-meeting. I hope, in conclusion, to hear from the Government, when they reply, a little less about their own virtues and a little more about what they propose to do to deal with a situation for which their responsibility is as yet unassessed. I feel a debt of obligation to my noble friend for bringing the matter before your Lordships' House, and I very much hope that the Government will try to give the House more information than we have yet had.
LORD RENNELL: My Lords, the hour is late, but I understand that the discussion is to be prolonged for a short time yet. The question which has been asked of His Majesty's Government by my noble friend Lord Ponsonby covers practically the same ground as one which I submitted some three months, ago. The reply which I received on that occasion was not very encouraging, and I probably should not have reverted to the matter, because I had rather come to the conclusion that I have been regarded in authoritative quarters as a sort of Cassandra, ever since, in the autumn of 1934, I laid before the proper authority what I conceived to be convincing proof of the intended invasion of Abyssinia. If I were frankly to state to-day the reasons which give me such grave preoccupation at the present situation, I should only encourage that reputation of a Cassandra still further.
I welcome very much, however, the reopening of the question by Lord Ponsonby, with whom on foreign questions I often find myself in cordial agreement. If I rise to say a few words to-day, it is because I should like to carry the
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whole question rather farther, and to say what seems to me to be a preliminary basis for any really valuable revision of the League of Nations. Collective security is no doubt a consummation most eminently desirable, but to-day two questions seem to me to be quite unavoidable. One of them is whether the principle of collective security is practicable in application, in view of the spirit in which it has apparently been interpreted in certain quarters; and the other is whether that principle can still be redeemed from the failures of which recent experience has given abundant evidence.
The Covenant of the League has been understood to constitute Part I of the various Peace Treaties concluded after the War. Violations of one or of the other may therefore fairly be placed in the same category as violations of the principle of collective security. Hitherto Members of the League, present or past, have shown a much readier disposition, when their own interests became involved, to believe in forcible action than to respect their obligations to Treaty or to Covenant. Witness the experiences of Fiume, of Vilna, of Memel, of Corfu, of the occupation of the Ruhr, of the transformation of Manchuria, and, lastly of the invasion of Ethiopia. Witness again the evasion, except on the part of Great Britain, of the general undertaking given to disarm, which, after a series of compromise proposals had been unceremoniously rejected, drove Germany into a direct breach of the Peace Treaty.
These negative experiences lead me on to the further, more positive, question whether any nations have really gained advantage by the adoption of the principle So far as we are concerned it has been responsible for our unilateral disarmament and for thus indicating the line of least resistance to those who advocate dangerous living and are ready to take great risks. I imagine that the far-reaching consequences of our attitude must be providing some matter for reflection to-day for those who constantly insist on our giving to other countries an example which not one of them had the slightest intention of following. It has also entailed for us the sacrifice of old and valued friendships without achieving any other practical result. (I am not, of course, now discussing moral obligations but merely questions of fact.)

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France, a warm advocate of the principle when it seemed likely to be to her advantage, was quick to show how little faith she had in that aspect of it with which she was most chiefly concerned—namely, her own security—and sought additional guarantees in alliances which were contrary to the spirit in which the League was conceived. So little faith, indeed, had her statesmen in the virtue of the principle of collective security that they have recently completed the encirclement of Germany by contracting a military alliance with Russia, which may very possibly diminish France's own security. China can hardly be said to have gained by her membership, and of Ethiopia, who rested all her faith on the League, it is impossible to speak.
The States which suffered defeat in the War were admitted to the League, but only under conditions which, if the other nations did not implement their obligations to disarm, offered no assurance of equality or independence, since the stronger Powers denied to the weaker the means of national defence. The smaller nations which looked to the League as a guarantee for their existence have had their eyes opened and have realised the unforeseen entanglements in which they may become involved. They have had to renounce the rights of neutrals and make economic sacrifices for sanctions, for which it appears that we are to be asked to compensate them. This mention of sanctions brings me to speak for one moment of them here. The aim of sanctions was to terminate war if an act of aggression had brought it about in violation of the Covenant. Any attempt—if there has been one—to make sanctions a matter of international bargain would manifestly be in contradiction of the spirit of the League. Sanctions were intended to be a means of exercising pressure and not a punitive instrument. With the close of the military campaign it is to be hoped that the whole question of sanctions, which we have been told by the Prime Minister lead to war, will be shelved until the League, belief in the efficiency of which has been so rudely shaken, has been considerably revised.
The League as at present constituted has failed either to prevent or to terminate war, and it has failed in establishing faith in collective security. It has revealed how the national bias of its
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Members can be exercised to evade or procrastinate procedure on the lines laid down in the Articles of the Covenant. The very words "collective security" and the "framework of the League" seem to me at any rate to have lost all sense of reality. Nevertheless we, or some of us, continue to pronounce collective security to be the basis of our policy. Are we not nailing our colours to a mast which has been quite inadequately stepped to carry such a heavy sail? Yet, my Lords, while endeavouring to make it clear that the League as actually constituted offers no basis of collective security, I do not wish to convey the impression that I in any way despair of a revised League. On the contrary, I can conceive of a reconstituted League binding the peoples of the world together in a moral solidarity which would replace the prevailing spirit of mistrust and mutual suspicion. Therefore I give my earnest support to revision.
The League probably attempted too much, in view of the absence of any real spirit of collectivity. It seems, as Lord Lothian recently suggested in a remarkable letter, that American statesmen saw more clearly the dangers involved in subscribing to the present League than our people, whose sentimental enthusiasm overlooked so many of its implications and entanglements. Had the obligations of the United States to intervene been confined to the American Continent, they might have taken a different view about adhering to the League. That was one of several reasons for my putting forward here, some ten weeks ago, a plea for three League Councils in three Continents, while maintaining Geneva as an ultimate Court of Appeal—a suggestion which, if it was held in the Government reply to entail more difficulties than advantages, has nevertheless brought me many letters of approval from the Continent and some support from South American statesmen. As it seems hardly possible in the present day for any single Power to be so preponderatingly strong as to be able to impose peace, and to prevent aggression, as the Roman Empire succeeded in doing over several centuries, an alternative prospect may seem perhaps to open out for the most optimistic of us in a preponderatingly strong block of Powers working together in a spirit of comradeship and common interest.
In the last two or three minutes that I wish to detain your Lordships, I really

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want to get down to bedrock things. No one can fail to realise that the principal obstacle to European unity, and to a great extent to the efficacy and stability of the League of Nations as we have known it, has lain in that almost unconquerable spirit of mutual mistrust which separates France and Germany. If Great Britain, France and Germany could only be brought into line, and reciprocal confidence restored, we should have that preponderatingly strong solidarity in Europe which would ensure its economic revival and guarantee a western civilisation, which is the greatest inheritance of humanity. I refuse to believe that it cannot be achieved, that the prejudices of an evil historical tradition cannot be eliminated, and that a better foundation and securer corner-stone for a new and more practical League of Nations cannot be devised.
The people of this country, though with minds which perhaps work more slowly than those of some of their Continental neighbours, can generally be trusted to form sane and right judgments. They have, if I am not wholly mistaken in the appreciation I have formed of public opinion here in all classes, very definitely made up their minds that the proposals put forward by the Chancellor in Germany, as a basis for twenty-five years of peace and friendly co-operation, offer a great opportunity which it would be deplorable to reject. We have heard from the Leader of the Opposition of the new France. Those who have recently had the opportunity of visiting Germany have been greatly impressed by the democratisation of the country, and the new social unity of classes which the Chancellor has so zealously promoted. They have seen there very much to admire, and something also to envy. The people of this country are, I believe, ready to grasp the out-stretched hand. There is in France a great and growing number of people also who wish to live on terms of amity with Germany, in spite of the gospel of mistrust which others continue to preach.
There is hardly a man in Germany who does not desire it, and wants nothing from France but good will and economic co-operation. There may be elements
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there—I wish I did not think there were—whose interests are bound up with—I will not say war, but the maintenance of unrest and the spirit of fear. In France the people only want the assurance of peace. Our guarantee to France is inviolable. It arouses no misgiving in Germany, because she has no sinister intentions against her neighbour. It is not only in Europe that our interests are intimately bound up with those of France. My Lords, we have before us a very grave Asiatic question as well as a European one, which people in this country do not sufficiently regard or realise. France and Great Britain are responsible for vast areas in the centre of that Continent, and having these immense interests to defend in the coming time, they must needs stand together. Therefore, I believe that our country has a very great part to play as an intermediary, to effect that reconciliation which is indispensable to the peace and economic recovery of Europe, and I trust and must believe that His Majesty's Government are alive to the potentiality and the duty of laying the foundations of a solid block which will ensure the fabric of a revised and more practical League of Nations.
VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD: My Lords, I beg to move that this debate be now adjourned.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
LORD SNELL: Can the noble Lord opposite tell us when the debate will be resumed?
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR AIR (VISCOUNT SWINTON): My Lords, on Tuesday it is proposed to take the Committee stage of the Sugar Industry (Reorganisation) Bill, and to resume the present debate; on Wednesday, the Malta (Letters Patent) Bill in Committee and the Third Reading of Trial of Peers (Abolition of Privilege) Bill; and on Thursday the Committee stage of the Cotton Spinning Industry Bill.
House adjourned at twenty minutes before eight o'clock.