GOVERNMENT POLICY AND DEFENCE SERVICES.

HL Deb 17 November 1936 vol 103 cc140-96

LORD STRABOLGI had the following Notice on the Paper:—To move to resolve, That inasmuch as the extent of the armed forces of the Crown depends mainly upon national policy and the purpose they are designed to serve, this House calls upon His Majesty's Government to furnish full information to Parliament as to what measure of rearmament has already been achieved and as to what is the programme for the immediate future; and at the same time to make an explicit declaration of the policy in relation to the League of Nations and foreign affairs which they are pursuing as a justification for the heavily increased expenditure on armaments.

The noble Lord said: My Lords, the Motion which I am moving at the request of my noble friends has been drawn widely because a great many noble Lords, I understand, can make very useful contributions; in other words it is not really an Opposition Motion, but we present it to the House as a whole, and, speaking for my noble friends and myself, we have no desire to make Party capital out of the present situation. Your Lordships will observe that we state the truism that armaments depend upon policy, and I suppose to a certain extent the converse is true also, that policy depends upon armaments. The case put forward for an increase of armaments for many months now from the Government side and from their apologists and defenders in the country is that we have to increase our armaments principally because other countries are increasing their armaments, and the most spectacular increase, for easily understandable reasons, is of course the German increase. My noble friend Lord Noel-Buxton will have something to say about policy, and I only want to touch upon it very briefly because I wish to bring up certain technical matters on which I think we should invite some information from the Government.

But I think it right to say that if the Germans, as we are told, are arming because they are afraid of Russia, then we should inquire what they are afraid of. The answer, I suppose, would be that they are afraid of some form of aggression. If it is spiritual aggression, we who wish to preserve the peace of the world, as I presume every one in your Lordships' House does, might point out to them that the way to meet spiritual aggression, in other words propaganda, is by improving the conditions of their people; and if the Germans on their side say, "We cannot improve the condition of our people because we have certain economic difficulties," I suggest that it is our business to see if we can find some way of helping them to remove those economic difficulties. If, on the other hand, it is military aggression which is feared, then my friends say we should invite Germany once more to come into the League of Nations, ask her what her terms are, and what grievances still remain that she desires to have removed.

In connection with this, a very great event has happened in the last few days and that is the Presidential Election in the United States of America. I suggest to His Majesty's Government that now that that Presidential Election is over, with its astonishing result, we should for once turn our eyes westward instead of eastward and approach Washington to see if we can get some form of collaboration for the improvement of economic conditions in the world, for the removal of economic grievances, and, in the last resort, for the preservation of peace. It is always delightful for me to be able to congratulate His Majesty's Government on anything. I do congratulate them on the financial arrangement which they have made with France and the United States, and I suggest that that is a very great precedent. If Washington can collaborate with Paris and London for the stability of currencies, which is very important indeed, why cannot it collaborate for the preservation of the stability of civilisation? I do not believe that the United States are so isolationist as some of the politicians in that country make out. One proof is the Pan-American Conference now assembled. There is a tremendous prize here to be striven for. If we could get the collaboration of the United States of America in the economic field, in peace or, if necessary, in war, I believe it would be the greatest step forward that is within our power. If only the United States would agree to join in an economic boycott of an aggressor, I submit to your Lordships that that would be a tremendous step forward.

The last occasion on which your Lordships discussed defence matters was on the last day of the last Session when the dispute between the Air Ministry and certain motor-car manufacturers was very much in the public eye. I do not propose to refer at any length to that matter, especially to the Air Ministry's scheme of shadow factories for aeroplane and engine production, except to say this, that since that debate, through the kindness of my noble friend Lord Austin, I have had an opportunity of obtaining further details of this scheme. Lord Austin was good enough to show me what is being done at Birmingham. I was very surprised—I say that quite frankly—and I formed the opinion that, without dislocating the normal industrial and commercial work of the country, the greatest possible production is being prepared for under all the circumstances, the only lack being the supply of certain materials and certain highly-skilled technicians; and the problem we are working up for, to come to fruition, I suppose, some time next year, is far greater than is generally known.

That is all right for 1937. The only criticism I venture to make—and it is not a very severe one—is that we have been slow in getting under way. That has been the fault of the Cabinet as a whole and not of the manufacturers themselves. I will say this in the Government's defence, however—and they certainly need defence at the present time—that I think it was worth while making one more effort at international appeasement leading to an agreed limitation of armaments. I think they have that excuse. But now I have to make an indictment, unless a satisfactory answer is forthcoming. For the future, I repeat, I believe our production of aircraft is the greatest possible under all the circumstances. Now let us look at the past. I drew your Lordships' attention on an early occasion this year, and so did the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, to certain grave technical weaknesses in the Forces. Let us see what happened last year, at the time of the League of Nations' crisis over the Italian aggression in East Africa. We can speak of these things more freely now. It is a fact—this is known, I am betraying no secrets—that no real preparations had been made to protect Malta, the key naval dockyard and base in the Mediterranean, against air attack—none—within sixty miles of a great air Power threatening us; no bomb-proof shelters, no special precautions for the dry-docks, and many other matters into which I do not wish to enter here. That is inexcusable, quite inexcusable.

There is no question here of alarming the electorate or losing votes at a General Election. Preparations of that sort are Staff matters, and there is something radically wrong, as I have suggested to your Lordships before, in the higher direction of our strategy. That is bad enough, but, as has been said in public, both in Parliament and in the Press, one of our difficulties at that time last year was the alleged—I say "alleged" advisedly because I hope to get a denial from the Government—shortage of heavy gun ammunition for the Navy. I am speaking in the presence of the late Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleet, the noble Lord on the Cross Benches, who will, I think, agree with me, that if that is true, knowing as we do what the system of outfit of ammunition is for the Fleet, and reserve ammunition, that if we have been economising on heavy gun ammunition for the Fleet, it is a scandalous state of affairs. It is the worst thing I have ever heard of in my life, if it is true. That has been stated, and it is known to have been stated, and is known to every General Staff in Europe.

Now there is another statement that has been made publicly, and published in the Press. It has been stated publicly that at the time of the Italian aggression last year—one can speak of these things now because if there were these deficiencies then, presumably they have now been made good, and perhaps we can have a. word later from the noble Air Marshal, Lord Trenchard, on this matter also—when we were proposing, in defence of the national interests, to send air squadrons to Southern France in case of an Italian attack on the States Members of the League, there was found to be a shortage of bombs. That has been stated publicly; I am therefore giving away no private information. I propose to say nothing in these remarks to your Lordships that has not been common knowledge in one form or another. If that is true, there is something inherently wrong in the whole higher direction of our fighting Forces. This is not a question of not wishing to alarm the electorate or of hazarding the fortunes of any Party at a General Election, and I suggest to your Lordships that such matters should be cleared up.

Before I come to one or two details upon which I would invite information, I would like to draw your Lordships' attention to a threatened worsening of our strategical position. I am referring to what is happening in Spain. I am not going to enter into the political aspect of what is happening in Spain. I do not propose to match my claymore against the Toledo blade of the Earl of Plymouth. The time for that will come. I want your Lordships to consider what will be the effect of a Fascist régime in Spain I now speak "as one having authority and not as the scribes." I had the duty of having something to do with our strategical position in the last War, and it was my duty to know what was going on in Spain. It may be asked why we should. have anything more to fear from a Fascist Spain than from a Liberal or Republican or Socialist Spain. The answer is in the facts. No one to-day is alarmed by the increase of the American Fleet, which is approaching parity with our own. Nobody is alarmed by the strength of the French Air Force, which, I believe, to-day is the strongest in Europe. The Powers which are held to be a possible or potential menace to peace are the Fascist Powers.

I wish the Duke of Westminster was here to-day in his place because he knows a great deal about this subject, and he could not deny what I am going to say. It is a fact that in the last War the people in Spain who were on the side of the Germans and who wished their Government to intervene against us are the very people who are fighting the present Government in Spain, and it is a fact that the people who were on our side—the side of France if you like, or the side of liberty and democracy against the authoritarian States of Austria and Germany — are the Republicans and Socialists and Liberals of Spain. If my premises are right, and if a Fascist Spain is a greater potential menace to us than a Republican Spain, let us see what happens. We will suppose that we are involved in war. We have to suppose that, because otherwise we could not be spending this immense amount of money and effort on armaments. If Spain comes in against us, in the first place Gibraltar as a naval base is untenable. We all know that. With modern artillery the harbour and the dockyard of Gibraltar can be commanded by medium sized guns mounted in the perimeter of hills round the Bay of Algeciras. I do not say that the Book of Gibraltar itself could be taken. I should say the Rock of Gibraltar is as impregnable to assault to-day as ever it was, but a naval base, if it can be shelled, is useless to you. You would have to send an expedition to capture the perimeter of hills round the Bay of Algeciras.

Furthermore there are our potential or rather possible enemies. Take the case of Italy, at present penned in the Mediterranean. I do not like to say Italy is a potential enemy; I do not want to pick out any nation. Germany is hemmed in in the North Sea as in the last War. But if there was this Fascist combination against us, our opponents would have the magnificent Spanish harbours at their disposal commanding the Southern Atlantic and Western Mediterranean trade routes. Hostile cruisers and submarines operating from Vigo and Cadiz would be on interior lines to our cruisers operating from Brest or Plymouth. That is a fact. You would have to reckon with raiders based on the magnificent naval bases in the Canary Isles and the Rio de Oro on the North-West corner of Africa. Operating from them the southern Atlantic trade routes can be threatened by hostile cruisers. I will not spend time speaking of the situation of France, with her lines of communication weakened between North Africa and Toulon and Marseilles flanked by the Eastern ports of the Spanish Peninsula and the Balearic Islands. I am speaking now only of strategy. I am not going into the rights and wrongs of the matter, as to who is right or wrong in this struggle. I am speaking of facts. IE the present insurrection succeeds in Spain our strategical position from the naval point of view is immensely weakened, and there is no naval officer and no strategist, and no man indeed of common sense who can read a map, who can deny that. Therefore I think that our Motion is very appropriate.

I want to raise one or two matters connected with His Majesty's Army. Let me say at once that I have read with the greatest interest the letters written by the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, with regard to the Militia, and I would like very humbly to support him in that matter. I am not a soldier, but I know that the Militia used to draw a certain class of men who made very good soldiers indeed, and who are not attracted to the Territorial Force. I think the Militia was a very valuable force and that it should be revived. With regard to the Army itself I think the time has come when His Majesty's Government—I hope it will be done before this debate closes—should make some statement as to what the Army is to be for; in other words, what part in our contribution to collective security is the Army to play? Is our main contribution going to be the provision of aerial and nautical navies, or are we once more prepared to intervene on a great scale on the Continent of Europe with an Army? If I may venture an opinion I would say that there are far better uses for our Army in case of the dread tragedy of war than helping to man the Maginot line.

Might I ask the Government if they would tell us what is intended to be done with regard to the. voluntary system for the Army? Is it intended to maintain it, or do the Government intend to grasp the nettle and propose conscription? The voluntary system for the Army is breaking down, but not for the Navy and not for the Air Force which can, I understand, get all the recruits they want. But for the Army there is this increasing difficulty, and if I might make two suggestions with regard to recruiting they would be these. If by an unhappy chance I had the responsibility of raising troops in this country for His Majesty's Army I should go about it in an entirely different manner from that adopted now. I would democratise the Army from top to bottom. Class differences are breaking down everywhere, and I believe that the sooner they are abandoned in the Army the better. I believe that if you held out the Army as a career for the right type of lad, that if he does his duty and proves his fitness he will automatically rise to be an officer, you will get all the suitable young men, physically and educationally, that you want, but if you still keep this rather narrow avenue of promo- tion from the ranks into the officer corps, and if you try to maintain your old-fashioned officer class, I do not believe you will get the right type of young men in sufficient numbers.

Now I want to take this opportunity of referring to the recruiting of the Territorials. I really do not know what the War Office are doing in that matter. I was talking recently to the Colonel commanding the 4th battalion of a famous regiment, a regular officer commanding a Territorial battalion. Actually his battalion is complete. Most of his men are adherents of my Party, he told me, and a great many of them are unemployed. He recruits in a special distressed area. He told me the following, which, I think, is very extraordinary. An unemployed man goes into camp for a fortnight for training, and during that time he gets ten shillings or seven shillings a week—I am not sure of the exact sum—as a camp allowance. He gets that money because a soldier in camp has certain expenses which he cannot avoid. That camp money is deducted from his unemployment allowance, so that he is out of pocket in consequence and his wife and children suffer. That is how the War Office or the Ministry of Labour, whichever is responsible, treats a man who is making the sacrifice that a poor man has to make when he joins the Territorial Army and tries to become an efficient soldier. I really think if those are the facts, and they were told me quite recently by the commander of a Territorial battalion, the practice ought to be stopped at once and a little more generosity should be shown to men who answer the call.

I want to say a word or two before I sit down about the Royal Navy, and I must devote a few sentences to the Report of the Committee that looked into the question of aeroplane versus surface battleships of which the noble Viscount opposite, the Leader of the House, was a distinguished member. Your Lordships, I am sure, have read that short and very interesting Report. I think that two of the admissions in it are very extraordinary. It is stated in that Report, if I have grasped the meaning of the noble Viscount the Leader of the House and his colleagues, that large scale realistic experiments to ascertain the effect of concentrated and heavy air attack on warships have not been carried out. No doubt that was due to lack of money, but still they have not been carried out. Secondly, it is admitted in so many words in the Report of that important Committee that there is a lack of close co-operation and liaison in these matters between the Admiralty and the Air Ministry. That is what some of us, including the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, the noble Marquess opposite and others, have been saying for a long time.

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR AIR (VISCOUNT SWINTON)

Will the noble Lord tell me on what page there is that reference to the lack of liaison?

LORD STRABOLGI

I have the Report here but I should have to search through it to find the page. It is an implication more than actual wording. Of course I may have misread it, but it seemed to me to stand out clearly. I will send the reference to the noble Viscount before he speaks. What I think is obvious in this controversy about the defence of warships against air attack or the efficacy of aeroplanes against warships is that the most difficult problem the Government have to face is the defence of harbours against air attack. Remember, my Lords, a battleship in dry dock cannot use her guns. In reference to that there are two points I would like to put to the Secretary of State for Air or any other member of the Government who may be interested. I understand that the Germans have gone very thoroughly into the question of defending concentrated vulnerable areas by the use of artificial fog. I am told that the engineering works in the Ruhr can be blotted out by artificial fog in the case of threatened air attack. I hope His Majesty's advisers are looking into that matter.

The other question which I hope is being examined is whether it is possible to make a dry dock for a battleship invulnerable to air attack. It is an engineering problem. We know that it is possible to house a battleship's topmast or make her masts to go down altogether, so that a roof to cover a battleship need not be very large. It has occurred to me that it might be possible to do on a large scale what the Germans did at Zeebrugge on a small scale, when they roofed over the docks and basins where their destroyers and submarines were lying during the last War. I hope that sort of possibility is being examined closely, par- ticularly in relation to Malta, Singapore, where we are making a great new base, and, of course, Chatham—the three most exposed naval bases With regard to the building of large battleships, I admit at once that I can see the difficulty of refusing to give naval officers large Super-Dreadnoughts when they say that they require them if other nations are building them. It is a very grave responsibility to have to take even if you think that these very large warships are not quite worth the money. I think the ease is rather like that of a wife who wants a fur coat. She must have it because her neighbour has one. Well, John. Bull can afford a very good fur coat for his wife, but I hopes it will not be given her at the expense of the children's milk.

There is another matter to which I must refer while I am dealing with this Report on the Vulnerability of Capital Ships to Air Attack, I would like to know the calculations on which it is figured that for the cost of a Super-Dreadnought only forty-three medium bombers can be provided. The fact that the two professional advisers agreed on this matter does not satisfy me. When. I look at expenditure over a series of years I find that Navy Estimates have been voted of the order of about £60,000,00—that was before the recent expansion—and Air Force Estimates of the order of £15,000,000, £16,000,000 or £17,000,000. Approximately four times as much has been voted for the Navy as for the Air Force. After all those years of expenditure the Navy has fifteen large battleships. But we started with fifteen, and we have replaced two. Both Services have certain police duties to perform and I think those cancel each other out, but we know that to-day the Air Force can dispose of more than forty-three times fifteen bombers—that is 645 bombers—although the expenditure has been only approximately one-fourth of that on the Navy. The Air Force is working up to a strength of about 2,000 first-line machines. If only half of those are bombers—and I believe the proportion is greater—we shall have at least one thousand bombers in the metropolitan Air Force, not counting those in outlying parts of the Empire, before the next two battleships are built.

There must be something wrong in the calculations. Something has not been taken into account. Overheads have not been reckoned out. If report is true, the Germans are working up to a first-line strength of 3,000 machines, and I am told that the Russians—I have given the figures before to your Lordships—are working up to a strength of 15,000 aeroplanes. In any case we all of us know that in reckoning the strength in the air of the leading Powers—the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Russia—we have to reckon not in hundreds but in thousands. Therefore when this Committee, of which the noble Viscount, Lord Halifax, was so distinguished a member, speaks of forty-three bombers for the price of one Super-Dreadnought, I suspect that there is something wrong, that there is something missing. If we were involved in war and the enemy chose to concentrate his Air Force on the Navy, which he might do, warships must be prepared to stand up against a mass attack far greater than anything visualised in this Report. Before I leave this question I must mention the most urgent, the most pressing, the most terrifying problem of the defence of London and the Home Counties against air attack. That is what the country wants to know about.

I do not want to sit down without referring in a very few sentences to the controversy about the control of the Fleet Air Arm. I hope we shall have the benefit of the views of the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, on this question, and the views of other noble Lords who can speak with great authority. If, however, I might venture my opinion, it is that we need greater unity in the centralised control of the available Air Force in time of war, and I believe that all this difficulty would be got over by a combined General Staff. I am sure that we shall have to come to this conception of a combined General Staff sooner or later, and the sooner the better. I have great sympathy with the Navy wishing to have control of their own specialised machines and pilots, but I am so afraid that this campaign which is being waged now is the beginning of another attempt to split up the Air Ministry, and I hope that will be resisted.

I do not wonder that the noble Viscount nods approval of that hope. Might I ask, as I have ventured to speak on air matters to your Lordships, whether we are developing the system of carrying military detachments by air and landing them by parachute? I understand that it is being developed by other Armies—the Russian, the German and the French. I saw a film recently of the great Russian military manœuvres round Kiev, and to ray lay mind the carrying of a whole division by air was most impressive. The advance guard of soldiers was dropped by parachute—the whole brigade were landed in that way—and then tanks and medium artillery were carried by air and landed by parachute on the ground held by the advanced brigade. This impressed me very seriously indeed. The fact that this system is being copied in the German and French Armies makes it worthy of attention by those responsible for the efficiency of His Majesty's Army. In the past we developed our most brilliant Imperial strategy by the methods of amphibian warfare, which I am sorry to say were abandoned in the last Great War. I hope that if we are ever involved again we shall return to the amphibian method of using our sea power to employ a small and highly efficient Army to the best advantage. In the same way we can develop this system; we can use what I hope will be an equal strength in the air for combined operations of that kind.

Then may I ask the noble Viscount, the Secretary of State for Air, if he can tell us, without betraying any State secrets, whether we are developing the type of engine that the French Air Force has recently specialised in, with a cannon disposed to fire through the engine and the hub of the propeller? This is not a new invention; I have seen a British patent of the year 1916 for this method. It was tried, or at any rate experimented upon, in the Great War, and it has been developed now by the French. Your Lordships will be aware that in air fighting you can pepper an aeroplane with the ordinary machine-gun bullets but so long as you do not hit the pilot or the engine you do not bring that aeroplane down. To-day, however, there is a very delicate fuse which even the ordinary fabric wing of the aeroplane will detonate and which can be fitted to small shells, and the French Air Staff apparently believe that this will have a very great effect in air fighting. Instead of firing bullets they fire this pompom shell—a rapid-fire shell, no doubt—with this delicate fuse. There is a great "rumpus" going on in France, led by the Royalists, who objected to the plans of this cannon engine being given to the Russians. I do not go into the merits or demerits of giving a French invention to the Russians, but I should like to ask the Air Minister whether we have the plans or whether we are doing anything about it. I am told that we are a little behindhand there, though I hope I am wrong.

I am afraid I have gone on rather longer than I had intended, but I must meet the answer which either the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, or the noble Earl, Lord Stanhope, is bound to make before this debate is over, and that is, what is the Labour Party's policy with regard, to armaments? My Lords, the Labour Party, quite frankly, has been going through a very painful process. I know it is very easy to laugh, but we very largely founded our strength upon the natural revulsion of ordinary decent people against the institution of war. We still feel that revulsion; we look upon war as the most stupid and useless method of settling disputes between nations that the devil has ever invented.

NOBLE LORDS

Hear, hear.

LORD STRABOLGI

In the revulsion after the last Great War we took up a definitely anti-war attitude, and anti-war we still are. Nevertheless, we have to face facts as they are and the world as it is, and, as was shown at Edinburgh, at which we had a very representative Conference, the voting was about three to one in favour of strengthening the system of collective security and providing the necessary forces to play our part in a system of collective security. It is said that there is no half-way house. I turned to see if my noble friend Lord Ponsonby was still in the Chamber.

LORD STONEHAVEN

He went away.

LORD STRABOLGI

A one-quarter minority in our Party say that there is no half-way house between heavily-armed strength, which is the policy of His Majesty's Government, and the doctrine of non-resistance, or Tolstoyian Christianity, or whatever you like to call it. The majority of the Party, the three-quarters of the Party for whom I have the honour to speak this afternoon, believe that there is a half-way house, and that is the system of collective security. That is, we have a half-way house between heavily-armed isolation—anarchy—and absolute non-resistance—100 per cent. Christian pacifism. But then the Government say: "Oh, yes, but we believe in collective security too." Now, see the dilemma that we are in! If we support an increase of armaments at the present time, we have no sort of guarantee as to the purpose for which the present Government will use the armaments, none whatever, except their word, which, of course, we believe, but they may not always be there, and their great Party remains; also, forces may be too strong for them. Moreover, they do not act as if they believed in the doctrine of collective security.

SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS

Oh, oh!

LORD STRABOLGI

NO, they do not. You cannot have it both ways. Under a system of collective security, an international system of collective security through the League of Nations, you cannot pick and choose who shall be the beneficiaries of the system. You cannot say, because you do not like the form of government in this State or that State, that they are not to have the benefits of collective security, To come right down to the point, my Lords: is it honest, is it really honest, is it playing the game, to accept Russia as a State Member of the League, a fellow-Member of the League with us, and then to say that if she is a victim of aggression she is to be denied the benefit of collective security?

THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (VISCOUNT HALIFAX)

Who said that?

LORD STRABOLGI

Are you prepared to carry out your system of collective security with Russia as a victim of aggression?

VISCOUNT HALIFAX

I asked the noble Lord who had said what he ascribed to somebody unknown.

LORD STRABOLGI

My Lords, if the noble Viscount who leads your Lordships' House says that we are prepared to play our part in a system of collective security for the defence of Russia, I will withdraw all this part of my speech. But he will not say that. The whole trend of middle-class opinion in this country, which I am sorry to say for the most part still supports the Conservative Party—as exemplified in the Press, and you can hear it every here—is that we must limit our commitments in the League of Nations—

SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS

Hear, hear.

LORD STRABOLGI

Exactly—to the West. I have support from noble Lords on the Back Benches opposite. I say that that is not honest. You either should say the League of Nations was a fantasy from the beginning, and did not work, and should withdraw from it honourably, or you should try to strengthen it and make it clear that you intend to play your part. I say this to show where our doubt lies. I only mention Russia. I think the same might be applied to all the countries of Europe. I do not believe at all in an inevitable war in Europe. I think the peoples themselves realise what war will mean, and that no Government in Europe will deliberately embark upon war. I include the German Government also. I think the real danger in the world is in the Far East. That is the real danger spot.

What is your policy there in regard to the Far East? You betrayed China. What are you going to do if Russia is attacked? Perhaps the noble Viscount who leads the House will give us some assurance. We at any rate have this additional safeguard, that while we have these doubts about how His Majesty's present Government will use the arms if we help them to get them, we know this, that they dare not go into a war without us. By "us" I mean the great industrial movement of the Labour Party, which is a more formidable Party than it was before the last War. You have to carry the united nation with you, and you have to satisfy the great industrial and political movements of the Labour Party, which you could not destroy in 1931, and which you will not be able to destroy now. That is our point. It is much more important than winning Elections or vote-catching, and I believe that the great Labour movement, if it is convinced that it is fighting for things which we hold dear and for which our ancestors fought in the past, will play its part. We have got to be convinced, and we do not believe that this country is so weak now, even after five years of the present Government. We have great war potentialities in our powers of production, our strategic position, our Navy, which is still the strongest in the world, and in our prowess as warriors. I am speaking now not as a member of my Party for the moment, but as a citizen of my country, and I resent the insults to citizens of this country in any part of the world, and I am tired of the humiliations which are put upon the British nation because of our supposed weakness. We are spiritually strong, and that is what, in the last resort, really matters. I beg to move.

Moved to resolve, That inasmuch as the extent of the armed forces of the Crown depends mainly upon national policy and the purpose they are designed to serve, this House calls upon His Majesty's Government to furnish full information to Parliament as to what measure of rearmament has already been achieved and as to what is the programme for the immediate future; and at the same time to make an explicit declaration of the policy in relation to the League of Nations and foreign affairs which they are pursuing as a justification for the heavily increased expenditure on armaments.—(Lord Strabolgi.)

THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN

My Lords, it is a little surprising to me that the noble Lord who has moved the Motion spent so much of his time dealing with details of the defence programme and so little in speaking to the Motion which stands in his name. It is true that towards the end of his speech he dealt with that Motion, and it is to that Motion that I propose to direct the remarks which I shall make to-day. It is an old saying that armaments are the instrument of policy. Therefore I think it is legitimate that we should ask His Majesty's Government for a clear statement of the policy for which they are asking for armaments. But it is not less true that your policy is conditioned in no less degree by the armaments which you have at your disposal. That has been the defect of the policy of the Labour Party for the last few years. They have apparently thought that their policy of collective security would be effective without there being effective armaments to support it.

In the gracious Speech from the Throne, His Majesty's Government stated that their policy was "based upon membership of the League of Nations," and they added as an additional element in their policy the policy of trying to bring about a new Locarno Agreement between the five signatories of the Locarno Treaty. What does the Government mean by a policy based upon membership of the League of Nations? It is surely essential at this stage that we should have some clear idea of what obligations are involved by that statement. That was the statement which was made by Sir Samuel Hoare in September, 1935, and which led to the greatest humiliation which British policy has suffered for a hundred years. Does it mean that at the next great crisis the policy of the Government is going to be to repeat the speech made by Sir Samuel Hoare in September of last year, which is to impose economic sanctions against an aggressor but to make it clear that in no circumstances will they go to war? If so, then not only will it result in humiliation on the next occasion but in an almost inevitable European war. The policy of September was quite clearly a bluff and it produced the inevitable consequences of a bluff. Is that still His Majesty's Government's policy? Because if that is so it means not only another humiliation but inevitable embroilment in war. The noble Lord who has just sat down told us that the policy of the Labour Government is support of collective security. I wish he had spent as much time in considering the practical implications of those two beautiful words, words which exercise so much fascination upon members of the Left and some of my own Party. Mr. Winston Churchill recently in another place gave a definition of this policy. He said that the Western democracies must gather round themselves all the elements of collective security, or combined defensive strength against aggression, which could be assembled on the basis of the Covenant of the League of Nations. Is that also the policy of His Majesty's Government? If so two questions arise. Does it mean we are committed to use our armaments to maintain the status quo in Europe indefinitely unless the League of Nations can change it? Does it mean that we are bound to go to war to maintain a European system based on twenty-six sovereign States each armed to the teeth and with tariffs to the skies? Are we to ask this country to go to war to maintain this system in all circumstances? That is the practical implication of the policy which the Government and the Foreign Secretary apparently seek to commit us to, and the Labour Party also.

Secondly, if you do go to war in the interests of collective security are you going to win that war or lose it? Surely the first article of British policy should be to ascertain from the General Staff whether in a war for collective security you are going to have superior power on your side. The small Powers will not be of much account. In the event of war the great Powers would have an overwhelming majority of strength in armaments over the smaller countries, and, as in the late War, could rapidly put them out of action. In the case of the air, because of their manufacturing capacity, at the end of the second or third week of the war they would be completely dominant in the air. How many of these so-called small nations are going to take part in military operations at all? Before committing ourselves to that policy let us have some clear idea of the force there is actually going to be behind collective security. How many of the small nations of Europe are going to be effectively in the battle for collective security?

LORD STRABOLGI

As the noble Marquess puts that question to me, I will answer it. The test was last year when we were threatened in the Mediterranean. We asked the small nations—Turkey, Greece, and so on—and they all said they would come to our help.

THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN

I have yet to learn that any of those nations undertook to go to war—any of them; and if they do intend to go to war, I then want to ascertain how long they will maintain it and the strength of the combined forces they will bring to it. And if under collective security you do go to war, are you going to win your war or lose it? If the policy of the League of Nations in the ordinary sense means anything, it means that you are bound sooner or later to go to war simultaneously with Japan, Italy and Germany. Which side is going to win in that war? It is a vital question if it is going to be presented to us, as it was in the spring of this year, in a form which we shall have to answer or go to war.

I think the most dangerous element in the public life of this country to-day is the refusal of the Government to state specifically what their policy is in these matters. It is far more dangerous than disarmament. To-day we are incurring liabilities all over the world. Nobody knows what we are going to fight for. Nobody knows where we stand. We may-wake up one morning, as we did in September last year, faced with the necessity of either going to war or being humiliated. Are we going to get into that position again? From every public utterance of the Government that is the position they take to-day. Supposing you have this war for collective security. In the last resort it will depend on man power or. anyhow, armoured divisions. How many are the British Government prepared to put into a Europe whose divisions are now numbered by hundreds? How many are we in a position to put in? Is it one or two? And is there one that can go in at all until it is brought back from Palestine? Those are the facts and everybody in Europe knows them. What is the use of saying we are going to stand by collective security when all the small nations, like the Scandinavian nations, have no forces to send in, and we have one division?

That is the position we are in, and that is the position which officially the Government are taking up. It is imperative that these things should be cleared up, otherwise you are going to get an ultimatum, as you had in the past, and then you have to choose between peace and war without having thought out your policy. I am very doubtful whether the League system can be made to work in terms of collective security. I will not come to a final judgment until I have had. suitable evidence from a General Staff as to the side on which the majority of power will rest in the event of war. I hope the Government may possibly give us some information on that point. The British Empire to-day is in a more dangerous condition than it has been in for 200 years. Everybody knows that, and the only people who are not talking about it are the people of this country. Anyone travelling, as I have travelled, on the Continent of Europe and in the United States will find that everybody is talking about it there.

Great Britain to-day is liable to two menaces to which she has never been liable before. One is attack at the heart from the air, and other is the possibility of a simultaneous attack on her vital communications—a simultaneous attack in three different places; and whether you can meet that attack depends, firstly, on your own armaments, and secondly, on who your friends are, and where they can go. Those are the questions we have to face to-day, and to mumble about collective security is simply to confuse the matter. The first thing we have to consider is whether we can preserve and, if so, under what conditions, that system of free institutions which is known as the British Commonwealth of Nations. That is one of the great things we have to preserve in the world. The United States is preserving another system under the name of the Monroe Doctrine, and she is arming herself to see that there is no interference from outside with the nations of North or South America. That is her contribution to peace, and she is determined at any cost not to get into the fight of a maddened Europe. Are we in a position to defend the equivalent system known as the British Commonwealth of Nations? That is the first thing we have to consider, and I am quite convinced that we cannot do that and take on the business of maintaining peace throughout the whole of Europe which is divided by Nationalism, Communism and Fascism. If we do that we shall destroy the British Empire.

May I say a word about the Locarno Treaties, and what is the essential question underlying those negotiations, which are always talked about and never come to a practical meeting—namely, the Franco-Russian Treaty of Mutual Assistance? Everybody on the Continent knows that that is the issue, but you never hear it talked about here. That is the issue that underlies all these negotiations. As a result of the reoccupation of the Rhine-land by Herr Hitler last March we entered into a new Locarno obligation which has got to be re-defined—an obligation that no longer concerns the demilitarised zone, but involves a pledge of mutual support between France and ourselves—and I think Belgium—to go to one another's assistance as against unprovoked aggression That is an obligation under which we now stand, and which I in certain circumstances am prepared to support indefinitely.

But in introducing that new arrangement in the House of Commons the Foreign Secretary used the following words: Our obligations are world-wide obligations, are the obligations of the Covenant and we stand firm in support of that. I have already asked for a definition of what that means. Mr. Eden went on: But we do not add, nor will we add one jot to those obligations, except in the area already covered by the Locarno Treaty. Let us make that absolutely clear. We accept no obligations beyond these shared by the League except the obligations which devolve upon us from Locarno. I take it that that position still holds, and I shall be glad of an assurance from the Leader of the House, when he comes to deal with these matters later on, that that limitation on the Locarno obligation that applies in Western Europe is still valid.

Now let us consider the Franco-Russian Treaty. I confess it is very difficult to say what it means. I have read the text one way and another, and it is very difficult to say what it means, except that it quite clearly is outside the normal procedure of the Covenant of the League of Nations. That is the one, thing that is perfectly clear from it for this reason, that the Protocol which deals with its interpretation contains the following clause: It is agreed that the two parties will act together in trying to obtain from the Council of the League its decision— in regard to violation, that is— with all possible speed, and that if, none the less, the Council, for any reason whatever, makes no recommendation or does not arrive at an unanimous decision, the obligation of mutual assistance will remain equally in force. In other words, it is a technical military defensive alliance of the traditional kind; and it is completely outside the Covenant, and comes into force regardless of anything that we or any Member of the. League of Nations may think or say about it. Now, why is that such a vital matter in the politics of Europe to-day? I do not think there is any serious risk of any great nation deliberately starting war to-day. In that I agree entirely with the noble Lord who has just spoken.

LORD STRABOLGI

In Europe.

THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN

In Europe. I do not think there is any risk, knowing what we all know of the last War, of any nation deliberately pressing the button to start a general war. But that is not the danger of war. The danger of war in an armed world, in a world in which the military time-table has once more been carefully framed, in which hours, even minutes, may make the difference between decisive advantage or decisive disadvantage in the early days of the war—the risk of war arises from acts or events over which nobody has control, or the consequences of which nobody can control. You might quite easily have had a war over Abyssinia. There were very powerful elements in this country which were pressing for a policy which might have led to war. If a war had begun between ourselves and Italy, who can say where it would have stopped? Nobody.

There are many people who were frightened that the Spanish situation so eloquently described by my noble friend might lead to war. It may still. It has produced a very dangerous situation, and imposed a great strain on the Government of more than one country in Europe. An assassination might occur. It was an assassination which precipitated the War of 1914, and nobody has yet attempted to prove it was the Central Powers who committed that assassination. There are the situations that every student of European politics knows very well, dealing with the future of Czechoslovakia, the relations between Hungary and Rumania, and between Hungary and Yugo-Slavia, that may produce a very dangerous position in which a nation which is not very anxious to prevent war, or an impetuous excited Foreign Minister, may start events which nobody can control; and then every nation in Europe will be faced with war immediately ahead of it and have to decide what to do.

What is happening in Europe to-day is that every General Staff is being asked by its Government: "What are you going to do to preserve our nation in the event of war." They are not being asked to plan this particular war or that, but "What are you going to do in the event of our being involved in a war, not one started by us but by somebody else?" Nobody is going to start talking about frontiers. The question the General Staffs are being asked is: "Can you destroy the enemy power with the utmost possible speed, with the most ferocious and intense attack?" That is the only question that is going to arise in Europe when war comes. Look at the effect of this Treaty on the military mind of Europe. Nobody really knows what it. means, but everybody takes it to mean that in certain eventualities there will be simultaneous action by Russia and France, presumably directed against Germany or in resisting an attack by Germany.

LORD STRABOLGI

Germany is invited to come in.

THIS MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN

That is not the point. What the General Staff in Germany is being asked is: "If there is a war in the East, can you be sure we shall not be attacked in the West? This is not a question of policy, it is a question of military fact, because if we have to face a war on both frontiers simultaneously, we must begin in the West." That is the central issue of the day. That was the issue that precipitated the War of 1914, and that is the question we have got to face. If Germany has to face simultaneous war on both frontiers, she will begin in the West, because the arguments for doing that are stronger to-day than they were when the Schlieffen Plan was formulated in 1905 and came into force in 1914. Then Germany had to consider the possibility of a, formidable attack on her Eastern frontier because Russia was on her Eastern frontier. To-day she is not; she has not that to consider. Now there are 500 miles of territory between Russia and Germany, and therefore Germany can plant all her forces for a long time in the West. All this has nothing to do with policy. The last thing that Germany wants to do is to get into a war with France or this country, but if you produce that situation in Europe as the result of military menace in which Germany is faced with the possibility of simultaneous war on both frontiers, the German General Staff will say: "We are bound to attack in the West."

That is the issue that underlies the Franco-Russian Treaty. It is not a question of politics; it is a question of war. I am not going to ask His Majesty's Government to give any definite answer about that question, but I would urge them with all the means in my power to face it, and to ask the Dominions next May what their view is about it. As I have said, I do not believe the system of collective security can be made effective in a rearmed world with four nations outside the League of Nations. I think that all the events are going to show that you are going to get a regional system of grouping round the seven armed Powers, and if you get that you may have peace for a generation, but you are going to have a very dangerous year or year and a-half. If a war is started anywhere it will spread all over Europe, and it will be directed straight at Paris and this country. There is the real issue to be faced, and I urge His Majesty's Government to consider it before it is too late, before they have to face it as the result of an ultimatum produced, as in 1914, not by the deliberate policy of any country, but by the necessities imposed on every country once war begins in any part of Europe. I am not going to ask His Majesty's Government to give an answer to this question, but I would urge them, as I have said before, to face it, because, as I see it, it goes to the absolute root not only of the problem of war, but of the problem of security of this country and the preservation of its free institutions which are the glory of the British Commonwealth of Nations.

VISCOUNT SWINTON

My Lords, I think it will probably be for your Lordships' convenience if I intervene early in this debate, which will cover several days. There will be other speakers from the Government Benches, including the Leader of the House, and I certainly propose to follow the advice that remember Lord Balfour giving when, listening to an interminable and very dull speech, he said to me: "It is always desirable to tell the truth, but it is seldom or never necessary to tell the whole of truth." I shall therefore try to select certain aspects of the defence question which I think will be of particular interest to your Lordships, and leave a good deal of the field for others to cover.

The Motion which the noble Lord has moved is in two parts. It asks for a declaration of the foreign policy of the Government which has made rearmament necessary, and it asks for information as to the plans for rearmament and as to the progress of those plans. I really should have thought, after the speech which the Leader of the House made on the first day of this Session—a very full speech on foreign policy—and after the speech made by the Foreign Secretary in another place, that whether our policy is agreed with or not, it was at any rate plainly stated. If I may summarise it in a sentence or two, it is to make the League effective and to strengthen the organisation of all forces which make for peace. It is exactly in that spirit that we have made two sets of proposals at Geneva which will be considered by the Committee which is going to meet, I think, next month. One proposal, which I should have thought very relevant to the points made by the noble Marquess, Lord Lothian, is that it would be for convenience and security if the countries who are Members of the League could state at an early stage what are their intentions. I should have thought that a highly practical proposal. There is the other consideration—I do not want to dwell upon this—which the Foreign Secretary advanced at Geneva, the problem which inevitably arises from the fact that Article 19 contains these territorial clauses, and the question we have to face is as to whether some amendment of the form of the Covenant in that respect is not going to be necessary if—and this must be really the hope of everybody—the League is to bring back into its orbit as many Powers as possible. It is in that spirit that we have made, and are prosecuting assiduously, our negotiations for a new Locarno.

In order to play our part in the appeasement of Europe one thing at any rate is necessary, and that is that the influence of Britain for peace should be the influence of a strong Britain and a strong British Empire. But it would be indeed a grave mistake to assume that foreign policy alone, that our foreign policy, is the sole justification of our defence programme. The execution of that programme is, I believe, necessary in order to make our policy effective, but, apart altogether from that, there is our own plain clear duty to see to our own security by sea and land and air. There our duty is plain. I am asked to give, and I will give, such facts as I properly can, but I should like to say this. I have always felt—I think all of us in the Government have felt—that it would be a very good thing if there could be the fullest possible disclosure by all 3ountries of their armaments and of their plans. Ignorance breeds suspicion, and one does terribly want to avoid that in these times when suspicion is rife. But disclosure of information, like disarmament, cannot be one-sided. It has got to be given by all.

There are some critics who say that whatever you do is unnecessary. I was indeed, as a matter of fact, rather surprised at the indictment which came from the noble Lord speaking on behalf of the Labour Party who moved this Motion—an indictment of dilatoriness on our part in rearmament. It is a matter that might be well argued, certainly it might be contended by some who feel that we tried for disarmament too long, but I would remind the noble Lord that if he will look at the votes which have been east by the Party for which he speaks he will find that for the last three or four years I do not believe there has been a Service Vote in the House of Commons against which his Party has not consistently and continuously voted.

LOED STRABOLGI

No, only once. They voted for reductions as usual, as the noble Viscount himself did when he was in Opposition, but they have only once voted against the whole of the Estimates.

VISCOUNT SWINTONT

I am surprised. I have a very clear recollection, and I do not think a vote has ever been cast for them. I think I have a pretty clear recollection when I say that in the House of Commons pretty continuous votes have been given against them. There are, indeed, other critics who say that whatever we do is inadequate. I am not going to make a debating point that these two may tend to cancel one another out, but I do want to say this, and I say it with conviction, the Government, any Government, must take the responsibility for the size of the programmes they put forward and be prepared to stand by them. I will also say this, and I think any one who has served in a Government will appreciate that it is true, for obvious reasons and in the nature of the case only the Government of the day can have the fullest sources of information on which its judgment can and should be based.

Broadly I would say this. Our defence plan must be such as adequately to discharge our domestic and Imperial responsibilities. At sea, our life routes must be kept safe. So far as. the vital communications of this land go we are still an island. The Army is limited in size, but it must be adequately equipped to discharge its Imperial responsibilities, and though there are no commitments as to how or when or where it should be used, it must be properly armed so that it can be an effective force whenever it is to be used. In the air I would say we must have a force defensive and offensive. It will be at once the most effective defence and the most effective deterrent. I say advisedly defence, because I do not, and I do not think there is any member of the Air Staff who would, hold the view to-day that the only form of defence is attack. The power to attack, to retaliate, must be there, but you want the combined force, the defence and the deterrent. The original programme, what we have called the 1937 programme, itself a great increase of the Air Force, has been, as your Lordships know, expanded into a. larger and longer programme.

I pause for a moment to deal with the question that the noble Lord raised about the calculation respecting medium bombers and battleships in paragraph 44 of the Report. There is a figure taken of forty-three medium bombers. Of course that does not mean for a moment that you can buy a battleship for the same amount as you can buy forty-three bombers. Obviously you can buy hundreds of very satisfactory bombers for the price of a battleship. But this particular calculation, to which I must say neither the General Staffs nor the Committee on which my noble friend sat would wish to attach any importance as basing their conclusions upon it, was a very complicated calculation based on the assumption that you would have to build a station for three squadrons, that you would have to maintain the whole of that station, that you would have large reserves behind the first-line strength, that your bomber squadrons would constantly be replaced by new types, whereas the battleship has a long life. I do not want to pursue that, because I think it was only put into the Report in order to show that you could not just dispose of this matter by saying that one battleship costs as much as hundreds of bombers, and to show that if you really are going to make a comparison at all you have to take a good many other factors than prime cost into account.

I leave that for something much more important, because I want to deal now—and if your Lordships will allow me I want to deal in some detail—with the air programme. The programme has to cover men for the regular squadrons and men for the reserve. It has to cover constant and continuous training. It has to cover the provision of aerodromes on a very large scale, the provision of machines and other equipment, and the ultimate use—indeed use during the present emergency—of our industrial capacity outside the regular armament firms. Let me first take the question of men. I can best show the size of our task and the way in which we are accomplishing it if I take a normal pre-expansion year, taking the financial year as the year. I will take 1932 as a normal pre-expansion year. In 1932 the Air Force accepted as pilots for the Regular Service 347 men. In 1935 we accepted and put into training 1,300 pilots. This year we set ourselves the task of accepting 1,512. We have already reached 1,462, leaving only fifty more to get for the whole year. But we are not going to stop. We shall go on as pilots come forward, anticipating the demand which must come upon us next year. Therefore let no pilot who wishes to put in his application be deterred. We shall go on anticipating next year's requirements.

Let me now turn to airmen. In 1932 there was an intake of just under 1,100 airmen and in 1935 an intake of just under 15,000. This year we want 10,500 and we have already got over 7,000. I think that is a good record and it is a tribute to the way in which the call has been answered. I would like your Lordships to consider for a moment what that enormous expansion has meant in training and in the establishment of new schools. Before the expansion we had five Service training schools. At present we have eleven Service training schools working at high pressure. We have, as I explained before, mobilised and greatly extended the civilian training schools. Before the expansion there were four. At present there are thirteen, and as the new scheme for the volunteer reserve which I explained to your Lordships just before we adjourned in the summer comes into play at the beginning of the new year, we shall be adding something like twenty to the number of these civil training schools.

THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN

May I ask the noble Viscount whether he has any equivalent figures for the other Air Forces in Europe? After all, that is the essential point. Our figures are being disclosed here and in view of that would it not be possible to disclose the equivalent figures of other Air Forces?

VISCOUNT SWINTON

I will give an undertaking not to give figures to-day which I think it would be wrong to give. I am sure your Lordships would not wish me to do that. We do make a good deal more disclosure of strength and of information of one kind or another than other Powers. I have, of course, a good deal of information about other countries, but for reasons which I think are obvious I cannot disclose that in full detail. I can however give the House an assurance that the whole of our training system is highly satisfactory and will bear comparison with any other country in the world. That assurance I can give with confidence. Your Lordships will appreciate what an enormous strain has been put upon what was originally a small Air Force by an expansion of that kind in training, coupled with the formation and development of new squadrons as new pilots come forward. That it has been able to take the strain, and take it completely successfully, is a great tribute to people like my noble friend Lord Trenchard and others who were responsible for the system under which that small Air Force was built up, and particularly the system of short service Commissions which has given us the reserve which has been so invaluable to us in the civil training schools. Let me add that satisfactory as are those recruiting figures the Air Force has just as much interest in the recruiting figures of the Army. Air defence depends not only on the Air Force. It depends also on the Army and unless the Territorial batteries and the searchlight companies and so on are at full strength air defence will be inadequate.

The next point with which I wish to deal is the expansion of aerodromes. Before the expansion we had fifty-two Service stations. We have already put in land and largely completed the expansion of thirty-four of those stations. We are using and have equipped five civil aerodromes. We have completed and occupied six entirely new aerodromes. In twenty-nine cases aerodrome sites have been acquired and work is now in active and satisfactory progress. In seven cases sites have been selected and work is about to begin. We still have to acquire four stations for operational units, two more armament training camps and certain further stations for maintenance units. In regard to aerodromes I think the position is entirely satisfactory.

I turn now to machines and to the policy which we have followed in the provision of machines. Under the old system it was the practice never to order a machine until it had been completely tried out. It is a practice which I have seen advocated, rather to my surprise, in one or two quarters. The practice was to order one of two prototypes. The machines were constructed and tried out and very often a development squadron was then formed, but the bulk order was not placed until the machines had been completely proved. That may have been sound policy—I dare say it was—when we had only very small orders to place, but we felt that it was quite impossible to follow that practice to-day. It has been our plan to get new types into production and into the squadrons as quickly as possible. In many cases we have ordered off the drawing board. It was particularly important to get those new types into production as soon as we could, because we were, just reaching a new stage in air development when a new technique in production was coming to fruition in which we should get an enormously greater range, performance and general power.

It would have been perfectly easy to order a large quantity more of machines which we knew everybody could make. You could have had a very nice balance-sheet on paper, but you would not have had the real machines that matter. We have deliberately gone for those new types. We have had initial delays and setbacks; so has any other country. Any one who knows anything about aircraft construction will tell you that when you are developing a new type, of course you have your difficulties: the design does not work out exactly as you expected it was going to. But it was worth while, because those initial setbacks and delays are being overcome, and satisfactorily overcome. Behind them you have a big order placed, the material ordered, the jigs set up, the work ready to go forward, and as you surmount your delays, so the big production sweeps forward rapidly. It is no exaggeration to say that by ordering the largest types of machines in this way we shall have saved, not months, but years in getting efficient machines into our squadrons.

We felt it right to go for the best types. We felt it also right to avoid the multiplicity of types as far as we could. Any one with any factory experience knows what a difference it makes in getting production if you can have a clear run through in the factory on a single type instead of having your factory cluttered up with half a dozen types, half a dozen different sets of jigs. Many of your Lordships know it a great deal better than I do. But it is not only in the factory that it is important. There are members of your Lordships' House who have held great administrative posts in the Services. How well some of your Lordships will remember the difficulty you experienced in the War when you had to have a great variety of types, when you had to have spares for twenty types of engines—interminable difficulties which should be avoided by sound planning if you possibly can. You cannot buy aeroplanes, much less aero-engines, as you can buy a box of assorted chocolates.

As regards the types, I can give your Lordships the assurance that they are good. I do not ask your Lordships to take that on my word, but I have had the experience of having the Chiefs of Staff of country after country come and ask whether, even at a long delay, they can buy these machines. They want to buy them, not because they have any great attraction to buy in this country, not because they are particularly cheap, but because they believe them to be the best type. What we want is to get those types out, and the help any firm can give which is invited to co-operate in this supply programme is not to offer something which is not wanted and is really no use to the supply programme of the Services, but to play its part, so far as it can, in producing those things which are needed.

Lord Strabolgi referred to other forms of equipment. Of course, machines and engines are only a part; there are also guns, bombs and instruments. Your Lordships will be pleased—those of you who are interested in aeronautics—when you see the new panel of instruments which will go on to every machine in Service use. I do not think the noble Lord need be anxious about the provision which is being made for the bomb supply; the programme, of course, embraces them all. The noble Lord referred to a gun of higher calibre as against the machine-gun. That is no new proposition. I will put it moderately when I say that it is a very arguable point whether the concentrated fire of machine guns is not at the present time, and taking all circumstances into account, at least as effective for attack and defence as the fire of a gun of higher calibre. But the matter will be kept under constant review and experiment.

So much for the nature of the programme. Your Lordships would next ask, and rightly ask: Are our production facilities adequate for that purpose? What steps have to be taken to ensure that production? Let me enumerate them as briefly as I can. In the first place, the firms which have been making aircraft and engines in the past have all made great extensions of their premises, very great extensions indeed. I have, with the full approval of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, arranged that where a large extension of a factory which is necessary to carry out the Government's programme, when the whole of the programme is over, is wholly or partly redundant, then that firm shall have a claim to fair compensation. That, I think, is an eminently fair provision, and firms have readily responded by making enormous extensions. New firms are being used on direct orders. A vast amount of sub-contracting has been undertaken, and that is of great value to employment generally in the country. It is of value to the Depressed Areas. I remember quite early, soon after I took office, seeing the very able Committee from Lancashire, finding that they had a very able engineer on the Board, and suggesting to them that they should specify firms in Lancashire with machinery which was capable of doing sub-contracting in aircraft work, and saying that we would readily put them in touch with firms that had direct contracts for the machines which were required in the programme. A good deal of work has been spread in that Way. Then there are what I may call certain marriages which have taken place with our full approval; we have indeed chaperoned them.

LORD STRABOLGI

Do you give a dowry as well?

VISCOUNT SWINTON

I would not say a dowry, but we give employment. There are two particular examples which I think would interest this House. All the House knows the firm of Shortts, who have made the great Empire flying-boats, the great builders of seaplanes. They have allied themselves with Harland & Wolff in Belfast. You therefore get married together the designing skill of a great aircraft firm and shipbuilding experience and labour, and a great factory for aircraft is now in process of construction by Harland & Wolff in Belfast. In the same way a union has been formed between Blackburns, the well-known aircraft firm, and Dennys, the equally well-known shipbuilders on the Clyde. I think those are very lawful unions, and I believe their issue will be fruitful.

Then there is the whole of the shadow plan. I was very much interested to hear the noble Lord say that, now he has had time not only to study it but also to go and look at what is happening, he is becoming a complete convert to the shadow plan. I believe that the more that plan is studied the more it will be accepted as sound. Your Lordships will remember that in the debate on the Committee of Imperial Defence I explained how the Committee of Imperial Defence had done a great deal of work in going through the. firms of the country—firms engaged on civil work—seeing what those firms could most usefully do in war, and allotting to a number of firms their work in the event of war. It was that initial work which enabled us to put the shadow scheme into operation. We have employed some of these great firms to erect for us at the Government's expense, and to manage for us, large factories closely associated with their own works. In this way we get a double advantage. Working entirely consistently with the war plan, we give to firms which would turn over in war practical experience of the kind of construction they would then have to undertake; and we get the benefit of their skilled management while they get the benefit of experience in that kind of construction. What is more important, we use the technical skill and personnel to the best and most economical advantage. Those factories are going ahead. The noble Lord has already seen them and the work is being actively prosecuted.

when it comes to aircraft, there is no question. The aeroplanes or frames are made in a single factory. I would also tell your Lordships of another shadow undertaking now being put in hand—namely, a factory for making variable pitch air screws. It is very important that there should be no possible risk that we should fall down in the number of these. All the high-power aeroplanes require them, and we have in hand an arrangement which I think will give us an adequate supply of the right type of variable pitch air screws. I want to say just a word or two about the shadow plan in relation to engines. The whole of the plan, and the justification for it, is put as concisely as possible in the White Paper. The immediate problem which we had was a problem of getting a given number of Bristol engines in a given time. That particular engine was the only engine that would do. It was the engine required for the aeroplanes which had been accepted for the programme. If our paramount need had been for speedy production of those engines the best course would have been to have doubled the Bristol works and to have got the engines from there, but because the engines were largely for reserve the time factor was not so important, and we had an opportunity of bringing the shadow factories in.

We have brought them in strictly in accordance with the allocation of the war plan. Each firm brought in is a firm which would turn over in time of war, I think, entirely to aircraft production. I took—I think your Lordships will agree that it was a most practical step—the course of giving the firms notice of exactly what was the problem which they had to solve. I asked them to see me, and I put the whole thing to them. I asked their advice as to what they, as great engineering firms, thought the most practical way of doing the job, and I asked them to consult with the Bristol Company as the designers and makers of the engine. As your Lordships will see from the White Paper, they considered the question amongst themselves. I saw them three times before their final decision, and they gave as their firm and considered opinion that the only safe and practical way of doing this at the present time was for each of the firms to take a section of the work, and to have two assembly plants. They took the view that at a time when there was an enormous demand on machine makers it would be a serious handicap to multiply indefinitely the number of tools, plant, gauges, etc., required.

I will deal with two criticisms which have been made. The criticism was advanced—I think hardly anybody advances it now—that it was an unsound engineering proposition to have your engines made in more than one factory. That ignores the regular practice of great engine firms such as the Rolls and the Bristol, who employ many sub contractors for their parts. Great firms like Austin, Standard, Humber, Daimler and Rover, who are second to none in their engineering experience, said that they had not the least doubt that it would be a wholly practical proposition, and they are the firms who are staking their reputation upon carrying the job through. The other criticism was a perfectly clear one—namely, that you would want to modify the scheme in war. I dealt with that on the last occasion, and I explained that in the event of war we should require a change and have several chains instead of a single chain.

Your Lordships will observe that in the event of war those firms will turn over the whole of their manufacturing capacity, and you have a great deal of plant in motor works which is suitable for aircraft works. It will be possible, and indeed necessary, at a later stage to supplement that plant with other plant as required; but all the time, under this contract, these firms will be working together as a team in close association with one another and with the Bristol Company. I have not the least doubt that their confidence in their success is entirely well founded. We have complete confidence that they will succeed, and we have no doubt, whether you take the long or the short view, that this plan is right. With these facilities—the extension of the existing factories and the marriages that I have indicated—the great shadow factories when they are working at full capacity will have, of course, a productive capacity far in excess of their productive capacity at the present time, and I would point out that they would reach that peak of capacity a good deal quicker than it would be reached with any new diversion of factories.

I will come back to that when I deal with the question of a Ministry of Supply. Before doing so, however, I want to refer to one other subject, and that is the balloon barrage for the London area, which was mentioned in another place. I am afraid I have a rather conservative liking for talking about a thing after one has done it, and I have said nothing about this until all the orders were placed and the whole scheme was well in hand. The orders have been placed, and delivery will begin at the end of this year. There will follow a further opportunity for men, and particularly for older men, to enlist for local defence in their own locality in the different parts of the London district. In all that we are doing on this we are working in the closest possible touch with the War Office. I will make an announcement when we are ready to receive enlistments, and until that announcement is made I rather hope that people will not write in and volunteer their services. I need hardly say that before I make that announcement I shall not only have agreed entirely with the War Office—we are in complete agreement on the plan—but I shall have approached the Territorial Force Associations in the areas concerned to get (as I am sure I shall get) their help, in the same splendid way as they have given it over the Auxiliary Squadrons.

I come now to the question of a Ministry of Supply. I suppose any Service Minister, if he merely consulted his own selfish interest, would welcome a Ministry of Supply. It would at least halve his work. But a Ministry of Supply is not a creed, or even a formula. If it is anything it is a means to an end, and the end is to accomplish our programme. The Government have no prejudice in this matter, but we feel—I am sure your Lordships feel—that to take a right decision we must appreciate what are the real problems we have to face. A mere union of the Supply Departments of the three Services under a new name would be little except a divorce of strategy from design and construction, which in itself is a disadvantage.

May I observe in passing that there is one suggestion made by the Royal Commission—all of whose recommendations are receiving careful consideration—which does appear to run counter to the soundest canons of administration? If I understand their Report aright, they suggest that you should have what they call a body and a Minister who shall be responsible really for saying how contracts ought to be made, but that you should leave the three Supply Departments of the Services to make the contracts. I believe the more you think of that, and the more you work it out, the more impracticable will that particular proposal be found to be. You cannot in administration divorce responsibility from executive action. It is perfectly simple to have a Ministry of Supply which places all the orders. It is equally simple to have three Service Departments each of which places its orders. But what I believe is really impossible is to have somebody saying how the Service Departments ought to do their job, while the Service Departments are left with the entire responsibility of doing the job. And it is, after all, in the placing of the contract, negotiating the terms of the contract, that the responsibility lies, and that the policy must issue in action.

I mention one other matter of the Royal Commission. They say, quite rightly, that we do not want any profiteering. I am quite sure that when the contracts I have made come to be reviewed I shall not be accused of having—if I may put it colloquially—let firms get away with it. I think it will be found that we have driven sound bargains for the State, but I do want to put this with the full approval of my colleagues. I have made it a cardinal point in negotiating, whether with ordinary contractors or with the shadow firms in their management agreements, always to have an incentive to efficient and economical production. I have set my face absolutely against the old time-and-line system of the War whenever I can get away from it. You must do it to a certain extent. When you are dealing with wholly new machines you must have a period of time during which to work on cost until you get at a fair basic cost; but it has been my principle—and I am sure the House will endorse it—to get away from that in every case as soon as possible and always to have an incentive to the firm to give efficient and quick production.

I will not trouble the House with the details, but both for aircraft and for engines we have made with the shadow firms—they receive a management fee—this agreement, that as soon as we can we will arrive at a basic price, what I may call a bogey price which they have to try to beat; and that where this is beaten, where therefore the taxpayer gets a machine at a less price than he otherwise would get it and where I get delivery of machines more quickly, the economies that are made are shared between the taxpayer and the firm, the taxpayer getting much the larger share. I want to tell the House quite frankly that I have been proceeding with all my contracts with that a in before me, and I believe that in the interests of production for the Service and in the interests of the taxpayer that is an entirely sound principle.

Let me now put what are the reasons, as I understand them, which are advanced for a Ministry of Supply. I think they are three. First, that a Ministry of Supply would avoid overlapping and resolve questions of priority as between the Services; secondly, that it would ensure a supply of materials required for Service needs; for example, steel or alloys or machine tools; and thirdly—and I think this is advanced as a most important argument—that it would quicken production by using available firms to the beat advantage and by diverting firms and labour to munitions production. I will take these arguments in turn. First of all, to avoid overlapping and to settle questions of priority. I can assure your Lordships that there is no serious difficulty between the Services at the present time as regards that. The firms with whom we deal are allocated to us. I think we have had hardly any questions of priority that have troubled US. If we have, they are easily resolved by the Minister for Co-ordination and the Cabinet Committee which is always in session.

Then there is the supply of materials. There again, if difficulties arise, they are not going to be difficulties as between the three Services. They are going to be difficulties as between the Services and civil industry. That is really where the conflict will come. As a matter of fact, we have anticipated and we have gone a good way to meet possible difficulties. We are in close touch, in the Government, with the industrial organisations, for instance, in steel and in machine tools. It has been possible to arrange for a sort of voluntary priority to be given where it is necessary; but if matters became so serious that we could not settle difficulties of that kind as they arose by voluntary adjustment that would not mean rationing as between the Services, it would mean control and rationing as between civil demands and Service demands.

Regarding the argument that you will quicken production, very briefly, as I pointed out to your Lordships on a previous occasion, the real difficulty and the real problem is the problem of skilled personnel, skilled draughtsmen, production engineers, and so on. That is the core of the problem. I am not in the least worried about there not being enough firms to allocate and do the jobs that are required. What is going to be a problem is: Is there going to be the skilled personnel for these firms to do the jobs sufficiently quickly? The plans which are in hand—the expansion of the factories and shadow factories and wide sub-contracting—will at the peak, if the labour is there, give you a very great production capacity. It would not help in the least to divert a lot more firms to go on munition production; they would not come to the peak anything like so soon. It is very important, as I pointed out a little earlier, that firms should do the job they are wanted to do. Under control, of course, they would be made to do it, there is no question of that; but, with good will, there is no reason why that should not be done without control.

If you ask, is there anything that would speed up production in the munition firms? I would answer: "Yes, there is." If I had to consider that alone, if I could take the eyes out of the engineering industry, if I could go round firm after firm and take skilled draughtsmen, skilled toolmakers, skilled pattern-makers, and skilled engineers, of course, that would make production a simpler proposition for the particular firms engaged on munitions, whether for the Air Ministry, the Admiralty, or the War Office. But just observe what that would mean, that picking of the eyes out of industry, particularly out of the engineering industry. That industry is not just a few firms producing consumers' goods. The essence of the engineering industry is that it not only makes consumers' goods but makes machines for almost every other industry in the country, and you would very rapidly put a stop to a great volume of production, you would throw people out of work, the unskilled people in those firms, and the reaction would flow through to all the firms that are looking to draw their requirements from the firms from whom you are taking your labour. That great dislocation would only be justified if it was absolutely necessary. I want your Lordships and the country to realise that that is the major problem, and what it means. Believe me, it is not indecision to refuse to do an act which must cause such grave national loss unless circumstances actually compel you to do it.

The conclusion I venture to come to is this: Our plans are sound and well laid. A Ministry of Supply without compulsory powers would be a delusion. If these powers were exercised, and exercised solely in order to get munition production, they would be exercised in the direction of diverting labour and materials on an ever-increasing scale from civil industry. That must mean very serious upheaval to civil industry and to the economic life of the country. I am certain that this country would not shirk even a grave upheaval of that kind if it were necessary, but it would wish to avoid it if it could be avoided. It is certainly well worth trying to avoid, and we can best avoid it if we all cooperate to make our plans work, by industrialists playing their part in manufacturing what they most usefully can, by accommodation, and by according priorities when they are required. I believe that our plans are right and that our present decisions are right. Let us do all we can to achieve the double purpose of a great defence programme and a great industrial and economic revival. If that prove possible, if these two can be accomplished together, then indeed democracy will have been justified of her children.

LORD STONEHAVEN

My Lords, we have had a very full and satisfactory statement, I think, in regard to recruiting for the Air Force and to the position of machines and engines. One point which I think was touched upon by the noble Lord opposite and which I do not think was dealt with by my noble friend was the question of the Fleet Air Arm. There are people far more competent than myself to raise that point, but it is one which is causing a good deal of anxiety and one regarding which many people believe a change should not be made unless it can be justified up to the hilt. I think that was the attitude of the noble Lord opposite, and I did not notice that my noble friend made any reference to it.

I am concerned with the latter part of the Motion where the noble Lord asks for an explicit declaration of policy in relation to the League of Nations and foreign affairs. We have had, since this Motion was put down, a very explicit declaration in another place—indeed two declarations—a full and frank speech by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and an equally full and frank speech by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. A good many of the questions that were addressed to my noble friends by noble Lords opposite ought properly to have been addressed not here but in Geneva. The future of the League, what the League is going to do and not going to do, is a matter that can only be settled at Geneva. Indeed I think it is one of the weaknesses and disadvantages of Geneva that Ministers cannot tell the House of Commons or your Lordships' House what the policy of His Majesty's Government is or is going to be until they have gone and taken counsel with the League of Nations at Geneva. But surely it is not merely unfair but extremely unwise that our Ministers should accept responsibility for actions and policy which are entirely a matter for the League of Nations.

That brings me to one comment that I venture to make on the statement with regard to the League of Nations made by the Secretary of State in another place a few days ago. The Secretary of State, with great frankness, invited the country to face certain realities. The first reality was that in his view the principles of the League were the best yet devised for the conduct of international relations, and he went on with equal frankness to say that that view was not held by a certain number of countries. I venture to suggest that emphasis should have been laid not on the number of countries but on the particular countries that do not share that view. It would be easy to draw up a list of a score of countries with regard to whom it would be a matter of entire indifference what their views were. We have, I think, in the past attached too much importance to numbers and too little importance to weight and authority in the countries which are Members of the League.

Which are the countries that do not share the view that the principles of the League of Nations are the best for the conduct of international affairs? First of all, the United States. They may, or they may not, feel that the principles are suitable, but they have resolutely refused to take any part in its proceedings or to accept any responsibility. That was a crushing blow to the League from the start, and I was surprised that the noble Lord opposite continued to harp upon the desirability of the United States participating in the work of the League. No one denies that that participation would have been, and would be, invaluable, and that the League has been handicapped Train the start because the United States did not see their way to implement the undertaking given on their behalf by the President. But that is the affair of the United States, and it does not beseem us to dwell upon that very much. I should have thought that the noble Lord would have been the last man to have dwelt on that point, because did not his Party send a most efficient deputation over to the United States for the express purpose of endeavouring to get the United States into the League? Than Mr. Lansbury, who would appeal to the heart, and Mr. Morrison, who would appeal to the head, you could not have a more efficient couple. From the little that was said about that mission and the short time that it lasted I cannot help feeling that they discovered, as everybody else has discovered, that it does not suit the United States to come into the League of Nations, and that, being out of the turmoil which Europe is now finding itself in, not unnaturally the United States have no intention of coming in. The noble Lord shakes his head.

LORD STRABOLGI

I am sorry, but if the noble Lord will forgive me I want to say that I never suggested that America should be invited to come into the League. I said she could co-operate, as she has in many matters already co-operated, as in the currency stabilisation, with other Members of the League.

LORD STONEHAVEN

The noble Lord must forgive me if I have read more into what he said than he intended. Co-operation no doubt there has been frequently, and there was an instance recently of the value of the co-operation of the United States in the monetary arrangements which have been reached, but my impression was that the noble Lord meant more than that. However, do not let us pursue that. The fact that the other nation to which I am going to refer will not collaborate is a more serious matter, I think, and that is Germany. The defection of Germany from the League, and the adoption of the policy which Germany has adopted, and, in particular, the character of that policy as disclosed in the propaganda which is being so actively used in Germany on the one hand and here on the other, are, I venture to think, very serious factors in the situation. The propaganda in Germany is carried on mainly I think through the spread of the book "Mein Kampf." It is a great misfortune that the edition of "Mein, Kampf" available to those who do not read German is only one third as long as the original, that a great many vital points have been omitted from it, and that the translation is inaccurate and misleading in some places. Therefore those of us either in America or here who are interested, as we all are, in Germany, do not know what the propaganda is that is being spread there.

There is this further. Remember that over two million copies of "Mein Kampf" had been distributed up till last year; that last Christmas the employers were compelled or invited, which is more or less the same thing, to distribute to their employees copies of this book; that the book is distributed by the Government or by local authorities to every married couple and, finally, that it was described as recently as July, 1935, by Mr. Alfred Rosenberg, who is the head and leader of the culture department of the Reich, as representing for all future days, for to-day, to-morrow and the days beyond, the unshakeable basis of the National Socialist feeling. Add that the author of "Mein Kampf" is Herr Hitler, and it cannot be denied that that kind of propaganda is something to be recognised. Perhaps your Lordships will forgive me if I introduce a personal experience to reinforce the point I am trying to make. It happened to me to interrogate one of the prisoners we made at the battle of Mons. I asked this young German, a typical, intelligent, decent young German such as we all knew very well both in Germany and outside it in the past: "What in the world induced your people to undertake this war? You have the whole world against you, you are sure to be beaten, and if you had only carried on as you were doing, you would have got everything without war. "The answer was:" We had to do it; we were surrounded, and we had to break through. "I venture to inflict that story upon your Lordships because that is almost exactly the propaganda that we are hearing to-day.

Germany complains about being surrounded: Germany must find an outlet. If it is a question of a return of Colonies, it is not there that she is going to satisfy her craving. It is not without importance to remind your Lordships that at the beginning of the War there were in the German Colonies a matter of nineteen thousand Germans, including a large number of officials and so forth. In 1934 there were almost seventeen thousand Germans in those same Colonies, and as the officials and soldiers had been withdrawn, manifestly there cannot have been many departures of Germans apart from those officials and so forth from those Colonies. As to the advantages from the commercial point of view, the Colonies cost Germany more to administer and develop than she got out of them, and though they covered over a million square miles of territory, they were Colonies which never offered the slightest prospect of absorbing any large number of European settlers. Nor were the inhabitants of a character to provide much of a market for German goods. All that we know on this subject of the return of German Colonies is that Herr Hitler has repeatedly said he has not withdrawn his demand for Colonies; but we do not know what that demand is. In any case, one hopes that it will be addressed in the ordinary way to His Majesty's Government, and His Majesty's Government will no doubt deal with it as and when they think proper in the appropriate manner.

But I do think that propaganda is important from the point of view of those, myself among them, who desire nothing more than good relations with Germany. Thirty-seven years ago my duty took me to the Sudan when Fashoda was the burning question of the day. I remember that it occurred to me and I think to all of us British officers there at the time, what a crime it would be if two European nations came to blows over a ghastly bit of country like that. The French and ourselves nearly did come to blows over that country, and only the wisdom of the statesmen in both countries at that time prevented that calamity. The analogy is I think, a very good one. I happened this summer to cross from east to west and north to south the territory of Tanganyika, which is one of the territories the Germans desire. Two-thirds of it is unpopulated and never can be populated. Again the thought occurred to me after an interval of thirty-seven years, what a crime it would be for two European nations to fight over a bit of country of that sort. It is worth noting that the Fashoda question was the end of a long period of bad relations between ourselves and France. Thanks to Lord Salisbury a wise policy was initiated which resulted in the entente with France, and, as we had the satisfaction of hearing from the Secretary of State a day or two ago, the relations between the two countries have never been better. I venture to refer to that because I think there is no earthly reason why, because Germany happens to want something we have got And cannot give up without damage to our own people, we should not come to a satisfactory arrangement.

The future of the League of Nations is quite clearly in the melting pot, but I would suggest that any failure in the policy or action of the League is a far more serious matter for us than for the League as a whole. The League is a new institution, untried, going through teething troubles. Some may think that these troubles are rather exaggerated and that it is not a particularly promising child. We are a very old institution not accustomed to failures. By way of illustration I would mention that this summer an Abyssinian said to me that Great Britain had let Abyssinia down. I asked a friend of mine living in Italy whether it was very unpleasant to live there during the war. He said: "No, there was nothing unpleasant about it, but I am afraid the Italians have rather lost respect for us. "It is no satisfaction to the Italians or the Abyssinians for us to say that we were only incurring a collective responsibility in this matter. They do not believe it. They are accustomed to see us deal with our own matters in our own way and they do not understand it.

All these things must be borne in mind and I am perfectly satisfied myself that the Government must have them in mind in dealing with the question on which they are now engaged, the reconstruction of the League of Nations. It is at any rate all to the good, as was pointed out I think by my noble friend below me, that among the reforms of procedure that are being pressed by our own Government is the desirability of so arranging matters that we shall know early what we are going to do. Nothing is worse than uncertainty, and I do not suppose for a moment that, if the Government find that the League will not work, they are going obstinately to incur the appalling risks which would be involved in retaining a system when they have convinced themselves that it will not work. Meanwhile, let them see whether the League cannot continue the useful things which it has done in social and humanitarian directions. It is obviously impossible that it should carry the weight that it was intended to carry when the two main points were that the League should be universal and that it should function in a disarmed world. The League is not universal and the world, so far from being disarmed, is more heavily armed. What might have been a good scheme when it was contemplated cannot be a good scheme to-day. There is, however, surely no cause to be despondent for the future provided we are strong. It will be much more easy for us to make friends and to argue if we are strong than it can possibly be if we have nothing but very fine sentiments to offer.

In that connection there was a point in the speech of the Secretary of State with which I cannot find myself in agreement. He said that other countries, particularly the small countries of Europe, were pleased that we are rearming. We have one quarter of the population of the globe and one quarter of the land of the globe as our responsibility. Nothing could be more unfortunate—the unhappy events of last summer in Abyssinia show it—than that small nations unable to defend themselves should look primarily to us for their defence, having regard to the enormous responsibility that we have on our shoulders. Surely if we can succeed in keeping inviolate the frontiers of an Empire which covers one quarter of the globe that is a pretty good contribution towards peace. I think the Government are quite right in continuing to endeavour to make the League of Nations more effective than it is. But their primary business is not the League of Nations. The League of Nations is a means to an end. Their primary business is the safety of the Empire and of this country. There is no reason to suppose that they are not as well aware of that as anybody else.

I think the developments of the past few months have been satisfactory to this extent, that the Government have shown that they recognise that there is no incompatibility between using the League for the work it is capable of discharging and at the same time endeavouring to settle outside the League matters which can be more properly and better settled outside. We have not yet seen the far-reaching effect of the recent monetary agreement, but nobody can deny that that was a suitable transaction for settlement outside the League. If we had adopted the public meeting system of the League in dealing with this question we should have achieved nothing. Another example is the Non-intervention Committee now sitting. It may not appear to have been very successful, but I thoroughly believe that it has succeeded in preventing war, and that, after all, is the main thing. I think it will be admitted that that also is a form of activity that could not have taken place within the rather cumbersome machinery of the League of Nations.

We are engaged now, I understand, in devising some arrangement for agreement between five European Powers to meet. That scheme, though the League comes into it, and it was definitely stated that it was not in substitution for the League, is nevertheless complementary to the League; and it shows a wise willingness, I think, on the part of the Government to recognise the fact that, in a world which does not recognise the League as universally capable of carrying through international relations, while maintaining our support of the League we have to adopt other methods for the purpose of carrying out specific objects. We shall have, no doubt, another lucid statement from my noble friend on foreign affairs. I venture to think that in the difficult conditions through which the world is passing the Government are taking the right line and that they are entitled, as always in the matter of foreign affairs in particular, to that united support which alone gives the proper strength to the foreign policy of the country.

EARL HOWE

My Lords, I cannot claim to be able to follow the noble Lord who has preceded me in the very interesting speech in which he has just dealt with foreign affairs. Of the two subjects with which I want to deal, the first is one with which I am very much concerned outside your Lordships' House. If unfortunately this country should ever go to war, or should ever be involved in war, it is more than possible that that war, at any rate in its initial stages, will take the form, as I understand it, of a terrific aerial attack against this country. It is quite possible that in the early stages of that war the London docks might be put completely out of action and might even be smashed to bits. One-third, I believe I am right in saying, of the imports into this country, and a very large proportion of our food supply, come through the London docks. If the London docks were placed out of action we should presumably be thrown back on the Western ports, and the problem would then arise of how we could possibly move our supplies from the Western ports to the London area and to the other areas which are dependent upon it. We should probably first attempt to deal with the difficulty by means of the railways. Not being an airman myself, I cannot speak with knowledge, but many members of your Lordships' House are airmen, and I have always understood that a railway affords one of the most vulnerable targets, perhaps the second most vulnerable target, that an airman can wish for. We cannot expect that an enemy would leave his job half done. If he found it necessary to attack London and to attack the docks he certainly would not finish the job there, and I think it is quite likely that the railways would suffer just as much as the docks.

If that were so, we should prepare, as I see it, to be thrown back upon road transport very much for the movement of supplies, in much the same manner, perhaps, as we were thrown back on road transport in the General Strike. We have only to go back to the late War; all your Lordships will remember what happened at Verdun, what happened at Amiens, and so on, and how the armies were fed and supplies were kept going by motor lorries. We must all realise the extraordinary flexibility of movement with which the motor lorry is endowed in comparison with the railway. If a road is damaged, well, perhaps the lorry can choose another road or go some other way round. It is obviously very much more difficult for any aircraft to put out of action the trunk roads or road system of the country than it is to put out of action the railway system or the London docks. What I want to ask His Majesty's Government is, have the Government a plan? I should like to submit to your Lordships that road transport on the enormous scale which would be necessary in order to provide for the feeding of this country and the maintenance of its industries cannot possibly be organised in a day. You have only to think of what might be involved. We all of us know the enormous cold storage depots which there are in the London docks. Supposing those were not available and the cold food—frozen meat and so on—had to come from other directions; that has all to be thought of and very carefully organised if any scheme is ever to be prepared which is going to be adequate to deal with the problem.

Your Lordships will remember that to deal with the load of a ship carrying 6,000 or 7,000 tons of cargo, something Between 500 and 600 lorries would be necessary. Fuel oil is another problem; you cannot provide in a day for the very large number of oil tanker wagons which would be required to carry cargoes of fuel oil from one end of the country to the other. It has all got to be very carefully thought out. The problem is really rather a difficult one from the point of view of the road carrying industry. At the present time, and for some years past, infortunately—very unfortunately—there has been a regular war going on between the rail and the road interests. You have seen, we have all seen, deliberate attempts on the part of the railway companies to drive the long-distance road transport off the roads. There was a case the other day which was accepted on both sides, by the railway people and by the road people, as one in which the railway companies deliberately attempted to drive one of the biggest road carrying companies off the roads altogether. Both are essential for the welfare of the country, as I see it, and it seems to me that it would possibly be a very serious thing indeed for this country, if we were involved in a war or in any national emergency in the future, if we had not an enormous road carrying industry ready to step into the breach and possibly to be the only thing that would keep the country going. I do not suppose that any appeal which I can make here to the railways to consider things a little more from the national point of view rather than from their own private point of view will carry any weight, but I do hope that the Government themselves will keep a very careful eye upon the situation and will hold the scales evenly.

That brings me to another point. The transport industry in this country, both road and rail, as we all know, is under the charge of the Minister of Transport, and I am glad to think that the Minister of Transport is now a member of the Cabinet. The Minister of Transport is obviously in a very difficult position when it comes to road versus rail. If it is necessary in the country's interests, from the point of view not only of our day-to-day life but also from the point of view of defence, as it is for many a European country, to organise a new road system, the Minister of Transport must obviously be in a difficult position, because if he does a good deal for the road interests of the country it is very likely that those interested in the railways will say: "Well, after all, you are doing much too much for the roads and they are our chief competitors; you are supposed to look after us, and you are encouraging our competitors at our expense."

The position is a difficult one. I do not know whether the Government have been able to give consideration to the road problem from a national point of view and from the point of view of defence, but I do beg His Majesty's Ministers to consider the matter, because it is, as I see it, a very urgent one. Every European country has been going in for a system of motor roads which are no doubt designed and intended to be used very largely for strategical purposes on the outbreak of war. The existing road system of this country is becoming every day more and more inadequate, and I hope that His Majesty's Government will give consideration to this point, because it really is very serious. If our road system is inadequate at the outbreak of another war it is quite possible that it will be very serious for the country from the point of view of national defence.

From that particular problem I want to pass to something quite different. I listened with the greatest care to the speech of the noble Viscount the Secretary of State for Air, and, like the noble Lord who preceded me, I was very much struck with the fact that the Secretary of State for Air did not say one single word in the whole course of his speech about the problem of the Fleet Air Arm. Like many another member of your Lordships' House, I am one of those who are profoundly anxious with regard to this particular problem. In fact, I have been profoundly anxious about it the whole time I have been in Parliament, and during all the time that I was in the House of Commons I devoted a great deal of attention to it. I am profoundly anxious about it, at the present moment. We are supposed to have under the Washington Naval Treaty a 5–5–3 standard—an equal standard with America and a slightly stronger standard than Japan. To-day no Navy can go to sea and be considered to be in every respect ready for action unless it has its necessary complement of aircraft. When an American Fleet goes to sea it takes over 500 aircraft with it; when a Japanese Fleet goes to sea it takes over 400 aircraft; but when the British Fleet goes to sea, even if it goes to sea in its entirety—there are varying estimates as to the actual number of aircraft in the Fleet, Air Arm—I have seen it stated in another place that the number of aircraft taken is 217. My own information was that the figure is 180. We will take it as 217. How can we say that we are maintaining the proper standard for our Fleet under the Washington Treaty if the American Fleet takes over 500, the Japanese over 400 and ourselves only just over 200?

Those figures should show your Lordships that the British Navy is under a considerable disadvantage so far as the Fleet Air Arm strength is concerned. It is never stated what are the reserves of the Fleet Air Arm, either in material or personnel. It was stated in the House of Commons in the Defence debate that during the War the Air Arm of the Fleet consisted of 2,000 machines and an enormous personnel of about 50,000 altogether. I do not know whether those figures are accurate, but it does give your Lordships an idea of what was considered to be necessary in the last War, and we are not likely to require less in the next war. Then, again, the coastal patrols in the last War accounted for some 600 machines. I do not know whether the Air Ministry to-day can give us any very exact figures with regard to coastal patrols, but I imagine that the enormous Air Force which the Ministry is so busy trying to build up would find it very difficult to organise a system of coastal patrols such as was found necessary in the last War. Surely I am right in thinking that something of a similar character will be wanted in the next war.

With reference to the Fleet Air Arm, the position seems to me to be so extraordinary that I cannot understand how the Government allow it to continue for one further minute. In an aircraft carrier the control of the Fleet Air Arm, as I think some of your Lordships probably know as well as I do, is naval. When those machines are landed the control is in the Air Force. When the same machines are in the air the control goes partly by seniority and partly by good will. How can such a system operate successfully in war? Not only that, but take the matter of flying boats. I have touched upon the point in debates in this House before now. Flying boats are completely under the Air Ministry. They do not necessarily ever operate with the Fleet at sea, and if they do it is by accident. In war the flying boat squadrons are bound to operate with the Navy. Take Singapore. There are three squadrons at least of flying boats based on Singapore. During the late War the "Emden" got away in the Indian Ocean on a great raiding expedition. She was finally run down by H.M.S. "Sydney" and destroyed, but it took thirty-two cruisers to run her down. Yet in about two hours, by the modern system of searching, you could search an area double the size of Great Britain, and it is perfectly certain that if raiders do break out in the Indian Ocean in another war, these flying boat squadrons will have to go out in search of them.

Yet those in charge of these flying boat squadrons, not being trained with the Navy, would find very great difficulty in recognising ships. I have known instances even of naval officers who have made mistakes in recognising ships. It does require trained sailors, and yet there is not a single trained sailor in any one of those flying boats. I understand that 30per cent. of the personnel are Air Force, and 70 per cent. the Fleet Air Arm. Originally they had to serve in the Fleet Air Arm for four years, but I believe I am right in saying that very seldom to-day do they serve in the Fleet Air Arm for more than two years. When they leave they must obviously leave at the summit of their experience, and they do not necessarily come back to the Fleet Air Arm again. Anybody who talks about these matters is, I think, looked upon as being suspect by our air-minded friends, and is always being thought to be trying to break up the Air Ministry. The one thing which I personally am anxious about is to develop the maximum amount of power out of the Fleet Air Arm, because I do not believe that any Fleet in future will be able to exert its full power unless it has an Air Arm under its own control.

In the House of Commons the other day the honourable member for Wallasey made an extraordinary speech. He is an airman himself and a very distinguished man, but he advocated that in war apparently the whole of the Fleet Air Arm should be taken away from the Fleet and used for the defence of these islands, or other purposes. That gives an indication of the way in which some people look at the Fleet Air Arm. Apparently he spoke for himself without authority, but there is nothing to prevent the whole of the Fleet Air Arm being withdrawn from the Fleet at any moment. You might almost as well suggest that the whole of the guns of the Fleet should be landed because they were wanted somewhere else.

I am afraid I have spoken too long already, but my only excuse and the only apology I can make is my extreme anxiety with regard to this problem. I hope that even at this eleventh hour the Government may go afresh into the matter. The noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, held an inquiry into it, but that was some time ago, and conditions may have changed since then. I submit that this question is one of extreme urgency. It is not one that can wait, because I understand that if any change in the status of the Fleet Air Arm were made it might take at. least two years before the change-over could be completed. I therefore hope, in common with many others who are extremely anxious about this problem, that His Majesty's Government will go into it afresh, if possible with an open mind, and not with the idea that people desire to break up the Air Ministry—nothing would be further from the mind of any naval officer—for I feel that the Fleet Air Arm will never be able to pull its weight in the Navy until the control and the manning are entirely naval.

LORD NOEL-BUXTON

My Lords, the noble Earl will forgive me if I do not attempt to follow him in his arguments, and if I invite your Lordships to turn for a moment to the political side of my noble friend's Motion. Speaking for myself, I want to raise two or three points as to the policy which is advanced in justification of the rearmament proposals. The Labour Party has been much criticised for not giving unqualified and unquestioning support to the rearmament policy as we know it. But surely, recent events justify a certain hesitation on the part of us all in supporting the policy, because we have just learned that not so long ago the situation which justified the Government's policy was concealed from the public. The Prime Minister himself shocked many of his supporters by giving them the feeling that they may not even now know what is the information on which the Government are acting. They know that in 1933 and 1934 the situation was still concealed. I remember that not long ago the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London making a very earnest appeal to us on these Benches to support without further question the armaments policy. The right reverend Prelate would surely see now why we want to know all we can of the policy which in our view would justify the armaments proposals.

Now we have Conservatives themselves asking very eagerly for a further elucidation of the armament policy. It is surely reasonable that we ask for further information as to the policy for which armaments are needed. All support of Government policy is conditional. There are many Conservatives who are concerned for a League policy, and are not so fully informed as they would like to be as to what the Government's League policy is, or would lead to. The Government want as generous support as they can get, and surely, if they want wider support, the most explicit elucidation that is possible ought to be given, because we have bitter experience of declarations which were not clear, and which in the autumn of 1935 were not made good.

I would like to ask in particular for an assurance from the Leader of the House, when he comes to speak, on two or three points. First in regard to collective action. It is a great relief to me that the Government constantly express firm belief in League machinery to prevent or to stop war. But the other day the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the debate on foreign affairs in another place, made a very interesting reference to the evils of policies of alliance. He very cogently urged that the only alternative to League policy is that of alliances, and he condemned alliances with very welcome force. He used words which I should like to quote. He said: The general obligations of the Covenant do not necessarily imply the use of military sanctions but regional pacts do imply the use of military force. What I hope he meant to imply was that while military sanctions are not enjoined as a general obligation by the Covenant, economic sanctions are so enjoined.

The Covenant distinguishes very markedly between the general obligation of economic sanctions and the more conditional obligations of military sanctions. The words are these: Should any Member of the League resort to war in disregard of this Covenant it shall ipso facto be deemed to have committed an act of war against all other Members of the League, which hereby undertake immediately to subject it to a severance of all trade or financial relations, the prohibition of all intercourse between their nationals and the nationals of the Covenant-breaking State, and the severance of all financial or commercial intercourse.… That is a very marked distinction, and I hope the noble Viscount may be able to assure us that that is a distinction which the Government draw, and that the general obligation to apply economic sanctions is recognised as binding.

It was noticeable that the Foreign Secretary in another place made no reference to what obligations the Government may hold to exist in regard to Russia. That is a thorny question, connected with military sanctions. But on the question of economic sanctions, I think that wide bodies of opinion would feel happier in supporting the Government's programme if that assurance about economic sanctions can be given. As an illustration of the value to the Government itself of giving assurances which will relieve certain public doubts, it was very welcome to all of us that at Geneva, the Foreign Secretary spoke of the necessity of removing the Covenant from the Versailles Treaty. I hope that he meant not only that we supported that action, but that we would give a lead in it, because our obligation is very great. In regard to another item in the Treaty which has for years needed to be dealt with, that of the navigation rights of the German rivers, that question is finished now, but might we not draw the moral from what has just occurred? If we had taken the action years ago in regard to those defunct and mistaken clauses of the Treaty, as I think we ought to have done, we might have avoided the injury to the tradition of legality which has now been inflicted.

There is one point to which I would very specially ask the noble Viscount's attention, that is in regard to the Colonial question. It is very welcome that Sir Samuel Hoare's proposal for a conference on materials has been followed by the appointment of a Committee of the League; but that is not enough. The insulting references to the German record in colonial administration of course ought to go. It is in regard to the open door in the Colonies that I want very specially to say a word. I was very disquieted to read a speech made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, at Margate, in which he attacked a pamphlet published by the Labour Party in which a programme of Colonial action is advanced. That programme includes a return to the open door policy in Colonial Dependencies—I do not speak of Dominions—on which we for so long prided ourselves, a policy which would also regard those Dependencies inhabited by weaker peoples as a trust to be held for world interests and impossible to be held for our own interest alone, or by preference. Such a policy would secure to other countries as well as ourselves a chance of Government contracts and concessions, and, in order to guarantee these rights as they should be guaranteed to all the trading countries of the world, there was urged a policy of adopting in regard to the Colonies mandatory conditions which would be a permanent guarantee of the open door.

That policy the Chancellor of the Exchequer appeared to attack, but I only hope that he had not in mind Colonial Dependencies but Dominions. His language was not perfectly clear on that point. If the Government's policy regards as permanent a system of Colonial administration under which, for an indefinite time, the world outside is not to have equal freedom of access for trade and for exploitation, as well as for the purchase of materials, then on this side of the House we should regard that as a policy not heading for peace but heading ultimately for war, and as an exceedingly dangerous policy. I only hope that we can have an assurance that the reference was not to the Colonial Dependencies but only to the Dominions.

At this late hour I will not detain your Lordships longer, but these are points which we cannot, I think, ignore, otherwise we are not pursuing an active policy of peace or following the principles that the Foreign Secretary laid down in his speech last week in another place. Neither can the Government expect that general support which they want. There are masses of public opinion desiring assurances such as I have suggested. It is a desire which is reasonable. It is a desire which embodies as much real loyalty to the interests of the country as the attitude of those who offer unconditional and unquestioning support. I trust His Majesty's Government can define their policy in the directions that any noble friend and I have named. Only so far as they do that, in my opinion, can they win the wider support which they want.

THE EARL OF LUCAN

My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, I beg to move that the debate be now adjourned.

Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to, and debate adjourned until to-morrow.