LEAGUE OF NATIONS.

HL Deb 30 June 1938 vol 110 cc452-508

VISCOUNT ESHER had given Notice that he would call attention to the necessity for amending the Covenant of the League of Nations, so that the redress of grievances shall precede the punishment for aggression; and move for Papers. The noble Viscount said: My Lords, in moving the Motion which stands in my name I am, of course, declaring myself to be one of the small and I think rapidly declining section of the population who still believe in the League of Nations. When I say the League of Nations I should like to be understood to mean the League of Nations as it was intended to be and not the pitiable wreck of an institution which it now is. The Prime Minister has drawn this distinction in his policy and it is also drawn privately by hundreds of people, myself included, who have resigned from the League of Nations Union because of its continual concentration upon Article 16 of the Covenant. I think it is the same sense of the loss of an ideal which has prompted the noble Lords, Lord Sanderson and Lord Arnold, to leave the Labour Party and has prompted the noble Lord, Lord Allen, to express his disbelief in the doctrine of collective security.

The Labour Party, who have other ideals in addition to the League of Nations, have a perfect right to hate Fascism more than they hate war, and it is perhaps natural that they should do so, but surely it is tragic when the same political poison enters a body like the League of Nations Union which should be devoted solely to the service of the League. Since, however, such is unfortunately the case, the Union finds a natural recruit in Mr. Winston Churchill, who has been unwise enough to inform the world of the truth of the slogan which will be proclaimed from a thousand platforms at the next Election, that collective security means war. Speaking at Manchester, Mr. Churchill proposed the encirclement of Germany by the collective League States, not only before the grievances of Germany have been examined, but also before any actual aggression has been made. A great and powerful nation like Germany faced with such unprovoked encirclement must take the direction towards war. Your Lordships will not be surprised, I think, that Mr. Winston Churchill, who was almost the last to oppose reconciliation with Ireland, should make such a proposal, but what is surprising is that he should do so as the spokesman of the League of Nations Union. If a body such as the Union, a body created to promote peace, can sponsor such a policy, it has clearly become an instrument of punishment rather than an organ of conciliation. It is using the League as a weapon against Fascism.

Surely, then, it is time that we who believe in the League as it was intended to be should endeavour to discover whether there is any defect in the Covenant which has made or is making it the institution that it has become in the hands of its present supporters. In my opinion it is the failure to develop Article 19 of the Covenant, combined with the threat to use Article 16, which has been the ruin of the League. If under a reformed Article 19 the virile and dissatisfied nations had been able to feel that they could get their grievances redressed, I think their attitude to Article 16 would have been so far different that it would have prevented them from leaving the League. I should like to quote an extract from one of Herr Hitler's speeches. He said: I quite understand that those interested in this system of justice look upon the League of Nations as a pleasant moral forum for the maintenance, and if possible the defence of their possessions, obtained formerly by force. But I have no understanding for the fact that he who has just been burgled by force should now join this illustrious company. We do not belong to the League of Nations because we are of the opinion that it is not an institution of justice, but rather an organisation for the defence of the injustices of Versailles. It is clear that in Herr Hitler's view the League as it is will not provide any redress of grievances and that it exists solely to preserve for the satisfied Powers the status quo.

What is it that has driven Herr Hitler to this conclusion, and on what is it based? It is a common opinion among those who believe in the League as it is that all the humiliations of the League are derived from the fact that it did not impose Article i6 of the Covenant upon Japan after the seizure of Manchukuo. Those who believe in the League as it was intended to be do not share that opinion. We go back to the policy of the League at an earlier date when it failed to redress the grievances of Austria. It then became clear to all the unsatisfied nations that it was useless to seek justice at Geneva and that only by the use of their own power would they get their grievances remedied. I hope I shall not weary your Lordships by reminding you of Austria's experiences seventeen years ago. I will quote from a letter from Mr. Conwell-Evans which was published in The Times on March 28.

In that letter the writer said: On March 18, 1921, the Government of the Province of Tirol decided in execution of a resolution passed by the Tirol Diet to hold a plebiscite on April 24 on the following question: 'Do you demand union with the German Reich?' The result of this plebiscite was: 144,324 for union, 1,794 against union. On April 27, 1921, the Diet of the Province of Salzburg decided to hold a plebiscite on May 29 on the following question: 'Do you demand the Anschluss to Germany? 'The result of the plebiscite was: 103,000 for the Anschluss; 800 against the Anschluss…. The people of Salzburg then decided by more than 99 per cent. for the Anschluss. The participation in voting exceeded 90 per cent. of the voters. The Province of Styria decided to hold a plebiscite for the Anschluss to Germany on May 29, 1921. Owing to pressure from the Entente Powers this plebiscite did not take place, and further plebiscites for the other Austrian provinces were postponed. The French, British and Italian Ministers in Vienna took strong steps in 1921 to put an end to these efforts at self-determination. An Act unanimously passed in 1921 by the Austrian Parliament which provided for a plebiscite in the whole of Austria on the Anschluss to the German Reich accordingly had to be dropped …. The Austrian Chancellor, acting in agreement with the German Chancellor, Bruning, decided in 1931 to bring about a Customs Union of the two countries. They were asked by the Council of the League of Nations not to make the agreement until The Hague Court of International Justice had pronounced whether such an agreement was compatible with the Versailles Treaty. The Court decided, as is known, by a majority of one, that the Customs Union could not be arranged, as it would constitute a violation of the Treaty. It is clear, therefore, that all attempts of Austria and Germany to obtain the Anschluss were thwarted, with the results that we have recently seen.

It is obvious that a League which was anxious to do justice according to Article 19 of the Covenant should have boldly burst through the legal bonds of the Treaty of Versailles and insisted on one of two alterations in the status quo, either of which would have prevented our recent unhappy experiences. The League should either have granted self-determination to Austria and allowed her to join the Germany of Brüning, or should have re-united Austria with Hungary and placed the Hapsburgs back upon the throne. But what in fact did the League do in face of the legitimate demand of Austria for justice? It did nothing whatever, except to dole out some money to the uneconomic State that had been created at Versailles. This failure to remedy the grievances of Austria was not lost upon the unsatisfied Powers. They did not come any more with their grievances to Geneva, and as they did not come the League ignored their grievances, but did not ignore their subsequent taking of the law into their own hands.

I turn to the justifiable aggression of Japan in China. When I use the word "justifiable," I do not mean according to the relatively high standards of English morality but according to the standard of international morality reached by the nation in question. Even if it is difficult for Great Britain to understand this point, surely it is the business of the League of Nations to recognise that its Members are in different stages of moral and cultural development. Japan has reached the stage of international morality roughly corresponding with that of England in the latter half of the eighteenth century—the morality of those great Englishmen, Clive and Warren Hastings. The situation in England then and in Japan now is curiously similar. Both are islands of restricted area in the process of changing from an agricultural into an industrial community, though the population question is far more serious in Japan now than it was in England of 1770.

I should like to read to your Lordships a quotation from China and Japan: Information Department Paper No. 21: Japan has a population density of 2,774 to the square mile of arable land, compared with 2,170 in the United Kingdom and 467 in France. The population is increasing at the rate of a million a year. The country lacks raw materials, and North China offers a potential source of supply. The first motive of Japanese encroachment in East Asia is economic—the normal expansionist tendencies on the part of a virile and ambitious people, with a rapidly increasing population living in circumscribed conditions. Japan obviously needed a large trading area to support her industrial population. She needed in fact an India, and she naturally turned her eyes towards the vast undeveloped spaces of China, which was divided very much as India had once been into many warring provinces. The problem was perfectly well known and has been discussed ever since I can remember.

What did the League do in the face of this menace to the peace of the world? Nothing whatever. Yet it was obvious that if it was desirable to prevent the absorption of China by Japan the League must provide for Japan some other economic outlet. We come at once up against the unredressed grievances of Japan. All other exits from her crowded islands were stopped. Australia would not allow the Japanese to emigrate into her vacant spaces. The United States in 1924 passed the Exclusion Act replacing the previous "Gentleman's Agreement," under which a trickle of immigration was allowed. But more serious still were the high tariffs of the United States and the Ottawa Agreements of Canada and Australia which excluded Japan, and made her feel that if she needed a trading area it must be a possession of her own. It is a lamentable fact that the League made no attempt whatever to approach the various Powers about the grievances of Japan. The long years were wasted and, much too late to do any good, the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, was sent out on a hopeless quest. Article 19 of the Covenant was never used, but with alacrity Japan was declared to be an aggressor and great pressure was brought to bear upon the Pacific Powers to bring Article 16 into operation.

I turn to the justifiable aggression of Italy in Abyssinia. Once more, when I say "justifiable" I do not mean according to the standards of English morality, but according to the standards of international morality reached by the nation in question. Italy is of course far more advanced in such ideas than Japan. She has in fact reached a standard of morality that I myself remember, and many of your Lordships will remember, as existing in this country at the time of the South African War, the morality of that great Englishman Lord Milner. There was for the English in South Africa an Adowa, a defeat to avenge. I refer of course to Majuba, and the leader of the Liberal Party, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, asserted that the war had been conducted by methods of barbarism. There was indeed a strange similarity between the South African War and the Abyssinian War, but there was one difference between them, and that is that in the latter war there was in existence a League of Nations. Did the League, under Article 19, take any steps to prevent this war by redressing the grievances of Italy? None whatever. These grievances were perfectly well known ever since 1920, and I will venture to remind your Lordships of them. During the Peace Conference the Italian Delegation, in a moment of anger, left Versailles. The rest of the victorious Powers selected what was obviously an excellent opportunity of distributing among themselves the German Colonies and giving Italy none. It was a smart piece of work. But the League had many years in which to remedy that grievance by insisting upon a redistribution of the German Colonies under Article 19 of the Covenant. In fact it did nothing at all, except that, when Italy redressed her own grievance, the League at once named her an aggressor and imposed upon her penalties and punishments under Article 16 of the Covenant. I have no doubt in my own mind that if Italy had been given a Colony under a reformed Article 19, to soothe her inferiority complex and occupy her attention, she would never have invaded Abyssinia.

I turn to the recent crisis in Czechoslovakia. The ill-treatment of the Sudeten Deutsch has been known in Geneva for many years. No attempt whatever was made to redress the grievances of this minority. No pressure, such as was brought at the dangerous last minute by Great Britain and France on the Czechoslovak Government, was ever brought by the League to secure decent treatment for the German population. I should like to quote to your Lordships an extract from a speech made by Herr Henlein, at Carlsbad on April 24. He said: The Sudeten Deutsch have brought before the League of Nations no less than twenty-two complaints. None were placed before the Council, none have been settled. Severely disappointed, we have recognised that this way is hopeless. We shall bring no more complaints before the League; we shall go other ways in order to obtain our rights. In fact the League once more waited in apathy until events brought about a crisis, and no doubt if Germany had marched to the assistance of the ill-treated Sudeten Deutsch the League would once again not have hesitated to call her an aggressor.

The lamentable story of missed opportunities which I have endeavoured to unfold to your Lordships is perhaps open to the criticism that it is easy to be wise after the event. But surely it is better to be wise after the event than never to be wise at all. For these problems, and these opportunities of dealing with them, will recur again and again. What is the League doing, for instance, about the Colonial grievance of Germany against Great Britain? Herr Hitler has shown great forbearance in his approach to this grievance, saying only that his demand for justice will become more and more insistent as the years go by. His attitude is, of course, a natural but flattering tribute to the status and power of Great Britain, and it is an attitude that he would not adopt if he had a grievance against Lithuania. It is the same natural instinct, for instance, which dictates the conspicuous difference in tone in which Great Britain asks Mexico to pay its debts, compared with that in which she asks Russia to repay her much larger debts. But to what uses is the League putting this respite of time before the problem boils up into a serious crisis? As far as I know the League is doing nothing about it at all, and yet it is clear to everybody that it would be far less difficult for the uneasy conscience of Great Britain to be magnanimous at the request of the League than on the demand of Nazi Germany.

Surely the necessity for the development and use of Article 19 is an urgent matter. It was a new order that the League set out to create, but, except in this country, I am afraid we must admit that no nation ever believed that a new order had been created. I leave out of account in this connection all the nations who may in any way be considered to have a low standard of international morality, and I would take only two great democracies, the United States and France, both of whom must be assumed to have as good international morality as our own. The United States displayed its disbelief in a new order by refusing to join the League. France displayed a similar disbelief by erecting outside the League a vast system of defensive alliances.

In my opinion the development and determined use of Article 19, combined with the retention of Article 16, would create a genuine new order in which a sceptical world could believe. I will venture to quote to your Lordships an extract from a speech of Professor Lawrence Preuss, reported in the Michigan Daily of March 3. He said: War is the substitute for legal change in the international sphere. If International Law is to be an effective force in the maintenance of peace, there must be a peaceful means for altering the status quo. The noble Viscount, Lord Cecil, who directs the policy of the League of Nations Union, has the power, with the assistance of the Government, to erect this machinery at Geneva.

VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD

I would remind the noble Viscount that he has told us many things about the League of Nations Union which are entirely new to me, and I would point out that the Union for many years past has advocated an increasing use of Article 19.

VISCOUNT ESHER

My own experience and that of many other members of the Union, and the reason why I resigned from it, was that the Union directed its entire energies to the punishment of the aggressor rather than to the redress of grievances.

VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD

Quite untrue.

VISCOUNT ESHER

Although the noble Viscount does not agree with me, he has power to erect this machinery at Geneva. The great work that he has done in the past for peace has given him this fortunate power. We who believe in the League of Nations have during the last twenty years watched the noble Viscount traverse the whole gamut of the Middle Ages from Sir Galahad to Don Quixote, and students of literature know that there is no decrease in integrity or nobility between one knight and the other. For many years it seemed to us that the noble Viscount held in his hand a torch which lighted up for us the hope of the world. Only lately have we become aware, and I think all your Lordships have become aware, except perhaps the noble Viscount himself, that the torch has become a sword. Yet surely, my Lords, the League of Nations should be like the symbolical figure of Justice, and if it has the sword in one hand it must have the scales in the other. I would appeal to the noble Viscount to leave those sinister Benches on which he has learnt to hate Fascism more than he hates war, and to help to rebuild the League of Nations as it was intended to be.

It is the fashion in these days to consider that humanity is hopeless, and that in the modern world there is no place for any noble institution, whether it be the League of Nations or the Liberal Party. I do not share that pessimism. I think that on the whole humanity is more foolish than wicked, and that it has been the folly of the victorious Powers in the years between 1920 and 1930 that has led directly to the wickedness we have had to experience since 1930. The speeches of Herr Hitler, that strange mystic, are always worthy of close study. He has drawn a picture of himself, slowly tearing up page by page the Treaty of Versailles. It is not the business of Herr Hitler to tear up the Treaty of Versailles, and it should never have been left for him to do so. It was the business of the League of Nations; and surely the Covenant should be so amended that under Article 19 it would have the machinery and the power to do so. I beg to move for Papers.

LORD STRABOLGI

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Snell is fulfilling a public engagement in the North of England and he asked me to do my best to express the views, of the Labour Party on the very important Motion which stands on the Order Paper in the name of the noble Viscount, Lord Esher. The noble Viscount has dealt with it in a very weighty speech—in a very important speech, if he will allow me to say so. For many years I, to my own profit and advantage, studied the great writings of his illustrious father. I detect some of his literary style in the speech to which we have just listened, but none of the vision and the practical common sense which so distinguished the noble Viscount's great ancestor. The speech to which we have just listened contained very many grave inaccuracies, which are not so important, but it contained statements which, going out from a member of your Lordships' House, are bound to do great harm.

Before I come to the few remarks which I have prepared in honour of this occasion may I particularly draw attention to the fact that a member of your Lordships' House could be found at long last—it is the first time it has happened in your Lordships' House—to defend the action of Japan in China? The noble Viscount excuses the Japanese by declaring that they are of an inferior morality and civilisation. It is perhaps as well for him that he made those remarks within the precincts of this House and not in Japanese company, because he would have been immediately taken to task and, I expect, very grossly insulted. But to defend in your Lordships' House what is now happening in China and to declare that it is justifiable aggression is, I am sure all your Lordships will agree with me, most unfortunate, and will do a great deal of harm. I propose to pass over what the noble Viscount has said about the murderous attack of Italy, against all her solemn engagements, on the weak State of Abyssinia.

The subject of the noble Viscount's Motion has been the object of a great deal of close study by the Party for whom I have the honour to speak this afternoon. We have for a very long time been engaged, through the services of the strongest Committee we could gather together, in looking into this very question of the redress of grievances, and the one part of the noble Viscount's speech with which I found myself in some measure of agreement was when he declared that the redress of grievances was desirable, and I am going, if I may, to give the Government and your Lordships the conclusions we have now reached. I may say that we approach this great subject in a constructive frame of mind. We realise that one day—I hope soon—we may find ourselves faced with the responsibilities of Government and having to deal with a very tangled international situation, and we have attempted to shape and hammer out a policy to deal with that situation as we may find it. To begin with, I must refute as strongly as I am capable of doing this curious doctrine of Lord Esher that those who sit on these Benches—I speak for those who expound the official Labour policy—hate Fascism more than they hate war. That is completely wrong. What we would do would be to fight to prevent Fascism being imposed upon us in this country and, curiously enough, I have heard the present Prime Minister say the same thing. That we would do; but we would not fight in an attempt to destroy or injure Fascism in other countries. That has never been our doctrine. We would fight to prevent Fascism being imposed upon ourselves or upon those for whom we have accepted responsibility.

The tendency we find is that the grievances which good people like the noble Viscount think must be redressed are always the grievances of the strong and powerful nations. The noble Viscount himself only mentioned the more powerful military nations, Japan and Germany, and also Italy. There are other grievances, and I am going to run through them in a moment or two if only, as I hope, to carry your Lordships with me in the view that the whole subject bristles with difficulties and complexities. If you are to carry out the conception of justice for which the noble Viscount, Lord Esher, pleaded in the League of Nations —the sword in one hand and the scales in the other—you must not only seek to redress the grievances of a powerful and loud-voiced demagogue—

VISCOUNT ESHER

I mentioned Czechoslovakia as one of the nations. That is hardly a great and powerful nation.

LORD STRABOLGI

But the grievance in Czechoslovakia, which I thought was very mischievously dealt with by the noble Viscount, was the grievance of the German-speaking minority in Czechoslovakia, which we should have heard little about if the curious racial doctrine of Herr Hitler had not made it necessary to exploit and exaggerate it.

The conclusions we reached were that there are a great many grievances of great and small States at the present time which arise from a variety of causes. Some of them are economic grievances, the lack of outlets to the sea and troubles of that kind; others are false boundary arrangements made in the past for strategic reasons; others arise through the natural growth of population and what I may call nationalistic ideologies. But we believe that these grievances will to a very great extent disappear—they will almost all automatically disappear—if we can restore confidence, if we can remove the fears which so beset the peoples of Europe to-day. The noble Viscount mentioned the ex-German Colonies. I think those for whom I have the honour to speak would be very agreeable to satisfying Germany with regard to the Colonial question. I believe His Majesty's Government would like to find a solution of that, and I believe that applies to the French, Belgium and Japanese Governments as well. But the trouble is that the moment we consider this question of the ex-German Colonies we cannot help thinking—it is unconscious perhaps—of the possible use of those Colonies as submarine or aeroplane bases or as recruiting grounds for black armies. If you can only get some sense of security in Europe half these grievances could be settled, or would automatically disappear.

Where you have a state of civilisation frontiers really do not matter, and most of the grievances to-day in Europe are concerned with frontiers. Those of your Lordships who will presently go north to your own country will see the ruined castles once guarding the frontier of England and Scotland. That is a frontier that has practically disappeared. The ideal frontier between sovereign States is the boundary between the United States and Canada. There you have a civilised frontier. I wonder if Lord Esher has ever heard the story of the Canadian who was delayed on his journey and wanted to get late at night across the frontier at a station in the United States. There were no police about, and the Customs official had gone to bed, so he knocked him up. The man put his head out of his bedroom window and the Canadian said, "I want to get across into Canada." "Do you?" replied the Customs official: "I am not stopping you." It is an open door. That is the ideal state of affairs and we were approaching that state of affairs in Europe before 1914. The frontiers were really beginning to obliterate themselves. Most intellectual Frenchmen refused any longer to regard Alsace Lorraine as a real grievance. If we could get back to that state of affairs now, and get rid of the terrible fear that is obsessing the mind of Europe, I believe these matters could be settled.

In this connection, and again reverting to the policy of the Party for whom I am speaking, we believe that a great deal is being accomplished by the work that is being done at the present time, not through any Government agencies, but through the various international movements, of which the League of Nations Union movement, which was so heavily assailed by the noble Viscount, is one. In addition to that you have the international Socialist movement which creates a feeling of solidarity among the workers of all States and which is being pursued and strengthened very much. We have also at the present time the International Federation of Trade Unions. I am sorry to say that the so-called Dictator States cannot be represented at our meetings, but these are very regularly attended. Some of the most eminent members of the trade union movement in this country attend, and they meet men of equal eminence and importance from other countries, and gradually they are wearing down fears and suspicions. One of the tragedies of 1914 was the breakdown of the Second International, but we have the Socialist International gradually being built up again and strengthened. Apart from what Governments may be doing, and particularly our own Government, we in the Labour movement believe we are doing good work in these directions. We exchange ideas and try to get an understanding between important public men whom we have opportunities of reaching through these channels.

Now let me briefly run through some of the desirable changes which we all know ought to be made or one day should be made in Europe. The noble Viscount dealt with past history, I propose to venture on future history. I have here a list of the changes which require to be made, not necessarily in order of importance, which I shall venture to mention to your Lordships. There is first of all the question of the boundary between Poland and Lithuania. The present frontier is a strategical frontier in order to give a complete Vilna-Latvia railway line to Poland, and ethnographical questions have been ignored. Would the noble Viscount agree that that is a proper question to study under Article 19? Then there is the question of Danzig. The noble Viscount would immediately agree that Danzig should be returned to Germany. We think so too, subject to Polish trading rights being safeguarded. We recognise that the attempted government of the Danzig Free State is a failure. Then there is the question of Hungary. There are solid Magyar districts in Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and Yugoslavia which might be rectified after a plebiscite. Then there is the South Tyrol, with solid German districts, which for purely strategical reasons were handed over to Italy, and we would like to remove the grievance of the South Tyroleans. Then there are the districts of Eupen and Mahnedy. There are also certain difficulties regarding the Italian-Yugoslav frontier, where whole regions inhabited by Yugoslays are under Italian sovereignty. There is, too, the rectification of the Greek-Albanian frontier. The same thing applies to the Bulgarian-Rumanian frontier.

I do not go into details, because I do not want to take up your Lordships' time, but I only mention these as problems that may become urgent at any time. There is the need for an outlet to the Aegean Sea for Bulgaria, by arrangement, of course, with the Greeks. These are just a few of the European problems which will have to be dealt with if Article 19 is to be put into force with greater vigour and activity, as advocated by the noble Viscount. I have left out the troubles in Asia, I have left out the very difficult matters which have led to a great deal of fighting and bloodshed already in South America, and I have not dealt with admitted grievances in other parts of the world. I have only mentioned some of the European troubles which will have to be settled, and I think your Lordships will agree that they indicate the tremendous complexity of this task. I should be very sorry for the statesman who attempted to move too rapidly in the solution of these troubles.

The conclusion we reach therefore is that if only we can strengthen—and I make no apology for again stressing this —the feeling of security in Europe, which means building up the system of collective security, which does not mean punishing aggressors but showing that aggression is dangerous and victory improbable—if only we can do that and get people to settle down again and become more sensible, and get over their foolish fears and their old hatreds, most of these troubles will solve themselves. Indeed my own view—and here I am speaking for myself—is that the Continent of Europe to-day is, thanks to modern means of communication, ripe for federalism. It is too small to be divided up into this chequer-board of little States, and one of the reforms of the League of Nations which I personally would advocate would be to strengthen the federal side, beginning by linking up all civil aviation under the control of an international body sitting at Geneva. Most of the States of Europe to-day were created in the days when the means of transport was by horses and coaches and when you could conveniently administer a State the size of France or the old Austria from its capital. Much larger areas can be administered with modern means of communication. To-day with rapid means of communication these little frontiers get in the way the whole time. They get in the way of trade and ordinary movement, and when they become a source of strategical anxiety they are nothing but a nuisance.

In this matter of the federalisation of Europe I admit I may be speaking here for myself, but, generally speaking, the policy of the Labour Party on this great question raised by the noble Viscount is that the first thing to do is to increase the feeling of general security and, as things are in Europe, this can only be done by strengthening the system of collective security. When we have security and respect for law, and the threats and blackmail and other alarms are removed, then probably we can set about dealing with the more urgent and the more bitterly felt of these grievances. I go with the noble Viscount to this extent, that I think the sooner some of the real grievances, including the economic grievances, that exist in Europe are dealt with the better, and that is our view.

VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN

My Lords, the speech of the noble Viscount who introduced this Motion in a most interesting manner would have been very valuable if it had done no more than produce the speech of the noble Lord who has just spoken, because the noble Lord was speaking officially for his Party and presumably was giving us the advantage and the results of the examination of various foreign questions to which his Party have been devoting their attention. The noble Lord spoke of aviation. I cannot help feeling that these investigations must have taken place in the stratosphere, because they seem to me to be completely out of touch with any practical considerations whatever. Apparently it is desirable that somebody or other should go round and modify all the different frontiers in Europe where there are disagreements. Who is to do that? Is it our business, and is it suggested that the League of Nations can ever do that?

The only criticism I would venture to make of the noble Viscount's speech is that I think he might have gone even more deeply into the past history of the League. I think he dealt most fairly with its failures so far as he touched upon them, and I would suggest to the noble Lord opposite that so far from justifying the action of Japan in China or the situation in China to-day, so far as I understood my noble friend, he pointed out, what I think is absolutely true, that that situation is entirely due to the bungling of the League in the early days. The League allowed the situation to drift. The League was quite incapable of taking a decision and eventually it took, as I think, the very unfortunate one of sending the mission of Lord Lytton out there. I wish we had allowed some other nation to undertake the Leadership of that mission instead of putting ourselves forward as the enemies of Japan, for which we have suffered a great deal. But as to the suggestion that there is a question of defending the Chinese or the Japanese, so far as I understood the noble Viscount he pointed out merely that there are two sides to the question and that the League had mismanaged the question as it has mismanaged many questions from the start.

Perhaps your Lordships will forgive me for going in some little detail into the Covenant, which seems to me to be fundamental. Of the 26 Articles of the Covenant twelve are devoted to matters of machinery or procedure; there are the three Articles connected with humanitarian subjects; and of the remainder the six operative Articles have all proved to be unworkable. Where I would join issue with the noble Viscount is that, even supposing that it is desirable to make the League work—and I regret that he coupled the Liberal Party with the League of Nations, because I desire to see the revival of the Liberal Party, but I have quite different views with regard to the League—I would suggest that any modification of Article 19 alone is quite inadequate to bring about the change which he wishes to see. It is true Article 19 has failed, but it is not the only Article that has failed. The greatest failure was Article 8, the Article which was designed to bring about disarmament. After nine years of acrimonious discussion nothing resulted except a more colossal degree of armament than we have ever seen in the history of the world.

Article 10 and Article 11 provided for the intervention in disputes by Members of the League. No intervention of the slightest use has ever taken place. There was first of all the incursion of the Poles into Vilna. That could only be dealt with by Article ro. There was the incursion of Russia into Poland. Russia was not then a Member of the League, therefore that fell within the scope of Article Ir. I am speaking subject to correction, but it really does not matter. Then there was the question of Abyssinia and Italy, where Article 16 was attempted to be used with such disastrous and fatal results. The case of the invasion of Austria was dealt with very fully by the noble Viscount, and I think very fairly, but there again, even supposing that case had been dealt with as it ought to have been under Article 19, it should have been dealt with directly the situation arose under Article it—the attack on a State by a non-member. The noble Viscount shakes his head, but Article II says this: Any war or threat of war, whether immediately affecting any of the Members of the League or not, is hereby declared a matter of concern to the whole League, and the League shall take any action that may be deemed wise and effectual to safeguard the peace of nations. Surely that was not merely a threat of war, but a war. The League sat quiet at Geneva because it is incapable of doing anything else. That is the condition to which we are reduced. There were, to complete the list, the bombardment of Corfu by Italy, the Manchurian affair, the dispute between Bolivia and Paraguay and then finally the invasion of Austria by the German Reich.

It may be said that it is unfair to point only to the failures of the League and that reference should be made to the successful intervention to prevent war between Greece and Bulgaria, and again between Hungary and Yugoslavia; but it must be remembered that these interventions occurred in the early days of the League when it was still the agent of the victorious Powers and had behind it the prestige and the authority of those Powers. It is only since the world has begun to recover from the effects of the War that the complete futility of the League has become apparent. If that is so, surely it is a mistake on the part of the supporters of the League to boast about what the League has clone. When you think you have bred a Derby winner and boasted about it a good deal, there is not much point in keeping up your enthusiasm when you find that your paragon is only capable of winning a selling plate in very moderate company. And that is the position, I am afraid, of the League to-day.

Is it not worth white to inquire why an institution which was set up with so much hope by the world in general has failed? I think there are among many reasons a few which perhaps your Lordships will allow me to submit to your attention. First of all, the refusal of the United States to join and, secondly, the fact that the Covenant means something to us quite different from what it means to the rest of the world. The word "Covenant" conveys quite a different meaning, a sort of semi-religious meaning, to us which is not conveyed by the word if it is translated into other languages. The word "Covenant" conveys a totally different meaning to people of our race from the word "pacte" by which it is translated in the French text. To a lesser extent the same thing is true when you compare the "League of Nations" with the "Société des Nations" (the French Official translation). Few people realise that, French being the diplomatic language of the world, the French text carries far more weight throughout the world than the British text. It is not unnatural or surprising to find in ordinary intercourse with foreigners that nobody attaches the same degree of seriousness to the League of Nations as is commonly attached to it by its supporters in this country.

Then there are other reasons. The Covenant presupposes the existence and therefore the authority of what may be called world public opinion. It is unnecessary to refer to the painful proof that recent years have afforded that there is no such thing as world public opinion. It presupposes readiness on the part of sovereign States to subordinate part of their sovereignty in the general interests of peace. Is there any sign that this can accurately be described as anything but a pious hope which has completely failed to materialise? Is it not clear, on the contrary, that the supposed special interests of races and nations never held a more dominating position in world affairs than they do to-day?

Within the Empire itself we have had a striking example of the growth of the spirit of nationality in the Resolution of the Imperial Conference which resulted in the passage of the Statute of Westminster. No one would suggest that the Empire was weakened thereby, but that Statute was called into being by the legitimate and natural growth of the national spirit in each of the great Dominions overseas. It was a wise recognition of a natural development within the Empire and it seems to stand in direct contrast to the position assigned to the League of Nations by one of its chief sponsors, General Smuts, as "a steadying, controlling and regulating influence in the world." I do not think we claim as the metropolis of the Empire that degree of authority nowadays over the Empire. That a heterogeneous body of people at Geneva can exercise that authority over the world at large seems to indicate complete failure to recognise the situation as it is and to envisage an imaginary world. A fifth reason is surely the proved lack of power, the absence of any adequate force to impose the League's decisions, and, it is fair to add, the refusal of individual nations—and I think a very proper refusal—to consent to the sacrifice of a single life of their own nationals in support of a League, as distinct from a national, dispute.

My noble friend below me, Lord Halifax, in the admirable speech he made the other day at Chatham House, dealt with some pertinent matters in a very interesting way connected with this particular subject we are discussing. He enumerated some of our national characteristics, of which we are justly proud, respect for law as the only possible basis for social life, the need for the assent to the terms of the laws by those affected by them, and the practice and atmosphere of toleration. But I wonder whether my noble friend did not omit one further point, and that is the police. Even the most highly civilised and law-abiding community in the world is forced to recognise the fact that there must be backsliders among them and that, if the community as a whole is to enjoy the full benefit of laws which commend themselves to the majority, human nature being what it is, elementary physical force must be available in order to deal with law-breakers. It seems to me that that is a fundamental and irreparable weakness in the whole organisation of Geneva. I see that my noble friend Lord Davies can hardly remain seated because of his interest in this matter. I do not believe his cure will work. There is not time to go into it now, but I am quite prepared to argue it on some other occasion. I do not think his cure of an International Police would work.

It would not be difficult to prolong this list, but I will only deal with what is the best course to pursue now. It has been constantly suggested that we ought to rebuild the League. There does not appear to be any general desire to rebuild. The whole tendency is in the opposite direction. Germany and Japan have already left the League. Guatemala, Honduras, Italy, Nicaragua and Salvador have all given notice of their intention to withdraw. Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Norway and Sweden have pledged themselves to adopt common views of neutrality in the event of a war between other Powers. Switzerland has done the same, and I rather think Holland and Belgium, but I am not sure. Neutrality is incompatible with League principles. When you have an institution that is being abandoned or ignored to this extent, how can you expect to effect anything important or practical in Europe, with the defection of the nations I have mentioned, Italy, Germany and all the smaller nations; or in Asia, when Japan is not a member of it; or in America without the co-operation of the United States and when the Monroe doctrine has been admitted in the League Covenant itself as overriding everything else in America? And, of course, the recollection of Africa is sufficiently sad to make it unnecessary to recall it.

Therefore, looking all round, the League is in a thoroughly bad condition to-day. And we are asked to rebuild it! I think that noble Lords and others who suggest that ought to define what they mean, because I think it is very dangerous. While there seems no prospect that I can see of persuading nations to come back to the League, there is a danger of bribing them back into it, and I think that we may be led into paying too high a price to reconstitute something which is artificial and, in my judgment, not a practical consideration and really nothing but the lineal descendant of the Holy Alliance.

VISCOUNT SAMUEL

Does the noble Viscount think it should be abolished?

VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN

Certainly. What has the League done? It has produced a condition of affairs more uncomfortable than the world has ever known before. The League cannot claim to be the instrument of the new world without taking responsibility for the mess in which the new world finds itself. If you ask me, "Do you want to abolish the League?" I say, "By all means abolish it." Why should not the League suffer the same fate as befell its lineal predecessor, the Holy Alliance? The Holy Alliance started with just as high ideals. The Holy Alliance started with the idea that the sovereigns were to behave as brothers to one another, that their people were their children, and that their behaviour was to be governed by the rules of the Gospel. That is just as high an ideal as the ideal which has been connected with the League of Nations. It failed dismally, but its failure was no more dismal than that of the League of Nations, and I cannot for the life of me see what justification there is for claiming the retention of this instrument of discord which creates more friction than appeasement. What justification can anybody possibly claim for it merely because it is part of one of the worst Treaties ever negotiated, and I think the worst part of that Treaty?

Your Lordships will be entitled to ask what alternative I propose. Why not revert to the proved practice of diplomacy? And in that connection I hope the noble Viscount will forgive me if I suggest that, invaluable as his journeys abroad may be, because they give people the opportunity of contact with his delightful personality, it would be far better if he stayed at home and suggested that they should come and see him. There is this further point, if you are going to make proper use of the Foreign Office you must not have a Foreign Secretary dodging about, liable to be sent off at a moment's notice. It reduces our prestige in foreign countries.

More than that, I would suggest quite seriously to my noble friend this. I think it was a disastrous change in the rules of the Diplomatic Service that an Ambassador should have to leave his post when he reaches a certain age. Many of our best Generals in the War were "dugouts." Nobody suggested that when a General was doing well on active service he must be recalled. An Ambassador is always on active service, and when you find a high official and representative of the Crown carrying out his work well, and when you know how long it takes to establish the prestige which is inseparable from the proper discharge of the difficult functions of an Ambassador, it seems to me to be madness to shift a man simply because he happens to have reached a certain limit of age. Ambassadors are not supposed to engage in any very strenuous physical activities, and so long as a man is doing his work well I should revert to the old system and keep him there at his post. I apologise for having detained your Lordships so long, but I feel just as strongly about this subject as the noble Viscount opposite feels from his point of view. I think the League of Nations is a calamity, and nothing would give me greater satisfaction than to see its disappearance.

VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD

My Lords, the League of Nations Union —I do not apologise for mentioning it, because my noble friend, in his very interesting speech, made a great deal of it—is sometimes accused of allowing too much influence to the Liberal and Labour Parties and too little influence to the Conservative Party; of, in a word, not holding its hand quite impartially between the Parties. I can only say that we do our very utmost, but perhaps my noble friends on the Treasury Bench who have listened to the speech which has just been made will see some of our difficulties. The noble Viscount who has just addressed the House was, I understand, in charge of the Conservative organisation for many years. During those years the League of Nations was progressing. It was very surprising that we got so little assistance from official Conservatives during that period. I remember very well, when I was Conservative Member for Hitchin, being told by an emissary from the Conservative office that I must not talk about the League of Nations, "or any nonsense of that kind"—or words to that effect. That is the difficulty we are in as far as we are anxious to be—and we are very anxious to be—impartial between the Parties. We take every possible precaution we can in that direction, and the difficulty simply is that the Conservative Party—not the mass of it; the mass of it no more agree with Lord Stonehaven than I do, but a very large proportion of the officials of it do agree with him.

VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN

I believe it is perfectly correct, and I am very sorry for it: the mass of the Party do not agree with me.

VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD

They do not agree with you, but a very large part of the organisation does.

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (VISCOUNT HALIFAX)

I am bound to interject a word and say that, as far as I can form an opinion, that is incorrect.

VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD

We judge by what we find in the constituencies. We do sometimes get admirable help from leading Conservatives, and we are extremely grateful to them, but we also often find a very cold wind blowing from the Conservative organisation. If it were necessary—but I do not think it would be quite appropriate in this debate—I could give instances of what I mean. However, I am not going to deal with the speech of the noble Viscount—may I congratulate him on his recent honour?—because, if I may be allowed to say so, I do not think that is the question that is raised by this Motion. The question here is not whether we are going to have a League of Nations at all, but whether we are going to amend it in certain particulars. I am not suggesting that he was not perfectly in order in saying, "Do not amend it, because the right thing is to abolish it," but it is clear that I could not deal with that point and then, within any reasonable limits of time, deal with what seems to me the more reasonable argument.

I will only just mention to him that I wish he would study the history of the League a little more before he makes speeches in this House. He stated, for instance, that Articles 10 and II had never been used. A more fantastic account of the facts it would be impossible to imagine. Article it has constantly been used, over and over again, and Article to, although not so constantly, because it has not arisen so constantly, yet has been used. Article 11 has been more often used than any other Article of the peace-keeping clauses.

VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN

I said, used with any effect.

VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD

And very effectively used, too. It was used in almost all the disputes which the League settled in its earlier years, and it has been used during these latter years also. Article 16, it is true, was used only once in the earlier years, but it has also been used on more than one occasion since to prevent a dispute from degenerating into war. My noble friend was good enough to make an appeal to me at the end of his speech and to urge that I should advocate—he greatly exaggerated my power in the matter—the use of Article 19. May I very respectfully remind him of an autobiographical detail? At the Paris Conference, where I sat as representative of this country on the League of Nations Commission, I urged that not only Article 19 but all treaties should be brought up for reconsideration every five or ten years. It was only because I was convinced that this proposal would create such an atmosphere of uncertainty about what were treaties and what were not, and that it would do more harm than good, that I assented—I could not indeed have done otherwise—to the very much more important moderate provision of Article 19 which took the place of what I originally suggested.

To say that I or the Union have been indifferent to Article 19 is quite untrue. I do not mean to say anything uncivil to my noble friend, but that really has no basis of foundation in fact at all. They constantly urge, and one of their favourite topics is to urge, that Article 19 should be made more effective, that its machinery ought to be more clearly defined, and many other suggestions with which I will not trouble my noble friend now, but about which I will tell him privately if he wishes to know. In point of fact, as I shall have occasion to say later on, Article 19 ought to be used constantly. May I again say that it really is not true that advocates of the League of Nations Union have concentrated on Article 16? That really is not the fact. For ten or eleven years they scarcely mentioned it. I think I know what I am talking about, because I made a great number of speeches during those years advocating the League of Nations. We did not deal with it, and I remember—it does not arise at this moment—very well somebody urging that we should talk more about Article 16, so that when it did arise we should be able to urge its application. I personally think it would have been better to explain more clearly in the earlier stages what Article 16 really amounted to, because when it became the subject of acute interest there was a great deal of doubt as to what it did mean and what it did not mean which might have been dispelled earlier.

That is one general observation I wanted to make. The other general observation is that I a little regret that my noble friend, in his opening speech, should have said so often that the League ought to have done this, and the League did not do that. It is not possible for the League to take independent action of that kind. It does not exist as an independent entity at all; it is merely a means of meeting the States that belong to it, and it can only move when one of the States chooses to ask for its action —when one of the States makes a proposal asking for its action. I venture to say, and I think I can prove it to demonstration, that where such a motion has been made, and the League's influence has been asked for, it has always been given, although it does not always mean that they have accepted the view put before them by one or other of the parties.

Here the issue is not, as I have said, League or no League, but whether we should accept the views of the noble Viscount as to the amendments which ought to be made. Lord Strabolgi very properly said that "punishment" is not the proper word to use in this connection. The League does not exist to punish any body for anything. It has never tried to punish anybody for anything. Its business is, if possible, to prevent the outbreak of war or to put an end to it as soon as possible after the outbreak, and that is its sole business so far as coercion is concerned. No other coercive power is provided in the Covenant of the League. My noble friend says then that there should be no attempt at coercion until the grievances have been remedied. At least that is what I understood him to mean. I will not go into his rather strange doctrine about relative moralities, because that would make the suggested task of the League, or of the Members of the League, still more difficult. If they had to consider who was right as between two respective moralities it would be adding a complexity to the task which would render it quite impossible to fulfil.

If I understand my noble friend rightly he is really harping on the old doctrine that it is wrong to enforce the status quo, if that is unjust. I think the quotation from Herr Hitler was in the same sense. I want to know who is going to say whether the status quo is just or unjust. Is it to be an international authority, either such a body as Lord Davies has suggested, a Tribunal of Equity, or The Hague Court, or the Council of the League of Nations. I should be delighted to believe in the Tribunal of Equity if I could, but I have never been able to see how you could constitute such a tribunal with sufficient moral force, irrespective of any backing from any individual country, to get its views imposed upon the disputants. I am not sure that Lord Davies really advocates that. I understand him to suggest merely that they should report to the Council of the League, and that the Council of the League should take action, if they choose, upon it. That is one way of dealing with the matter. You might say that no action could be taken without a decision as to who is in the wrong. That is practically what has happened in every one of those cases to which my noble friend referred. There has been a decision, usually by the Council or the Assembly itself. In one particular case it was only after such a decision that any attempt was made to intervene in the dispute at all, much less to impose sanctions.

That is the practical way in which the system works. You go to the authority of the League and you say: "Here is a dispute which is going to lead to war. If the parties will not agree then we ask you to express an opinion as to who is right and who is wrong, so that we can intervene in the matter and take action to stop the party who is in the wrong." If that is not what my noble friend means I think he must mean that each country is to determine beforehand whether they think that the status quo is right or wrong, and whether there is any justification for any forcible intervention. I confess that I think it would be a bad plan in that form. Nobody would know what was going to happen. There would be complete doubt, and in my judgment the most essential thing is that everybody should know what is going to happen. That is the best preventative of war. It has been said, and I think truly said, that it was the German doubt as to what was going to happen in 1914 which made war certain, and that if Germany had known what countries were going to come into the war there would have been no war at all. I cannot help feeling, whatever my noble friend may intend himself, that what he really means is that we ought to abolish the coercive part of the Covenant of the League.

VISCOUNT ESHER

My noble friend will excuse my intervening. I did not say that at all. I said that you should not put Article 16 into operation unless you have already tried Article 19. I was certainly in favour of retaining Article 16, but not using it until you had got an effective Article 19.

VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD

I am very much obliged to the noble Viscount. If he had had the patience to wait until I had concluded my argument I think he would have seen that there was not much difference between us. I think it is important to ascertain quite clearly what it is that has caused the difficulties of the League. I do not think that it has been injustice in the position which has caused the difficulties in the disputes which have led to wars. Take Manchuria. I cannot conceive on what ground you should say it was wrong that Manchuria should be left under Chinese control, and that it would have been much better had it been under Japanese control. Indeed the Japanese were so fully aware that it was a difficult proposition to sustain that they pretended that an outrage had occurred on the railway for which the Chinese were responsible, and they were only going in to remedy that. The Lytton Commission disposed of that pretension, and I do not think you can say that the attack upon Manchuria was in connection with an injustice caused by the unfair provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, or any other treaty. Japan had just the same position as she had before, and I should have thought that the only reason was that she wanted to have Manchuria. She thought it would be of advantage to her. There was no question of injustice to her unless you say it is always injustice if you do not have all you want.

It is the same with Abyssinia. My noble friend said that it was justifiable aggression by Italy and that the League ought not to have interfered. Surely he has forgotten the history of the preceding month. There was a grievance about a clash at a place called Wal-Wal. It was investigated. The League offered every facility for its investigation, and it was found that there was no substance whatever in the Italian case on that point, nor was there in any other respect. My noble friend says that the Italians had long shown their interest in and desire to have Abyssinia. What they had done was to be one of the foremost advocates of the entry of Abyssinia into the League, and therefore one of the foremost advocates of the provision of the League being applied to Abyssinia which says that every Member of the League has to respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and political independence of every other Member of the League. That was deliberately what the Italians asked for. And then after that they chose, purely for national ambition and no other reason, to invade Abyssinia. Certainly it was not due to any kind of injustice; it was due to the ambition of the Italian Government.

My noble friend did not mention the Rhine Provinces, where he really had a stronger case. There is no doubt that the provision which demilitarised the Rhine Provinces without making any parallel demilitarisation on the French side of the Rhine was a difficult thing to defend. All I have ever said about that was that I thought that before taking the law into their own hands Germany ought at least to have utilised the international machinery that existed, and seen whether she could get relief by that machinery. No such attempt was made by the German Government. In the same way, Austria. My noble friend read an extract from a letter from a gentleman, who I dare say is very well informed, about the plebiscites which had been made in two or three districts in Austria which had shown a strong desire for the Anschluss. Until the advent of Herr Hitler and the very strange policy he pursued towards Austria, I should have thought it was common ground that a large majority of the people of Austria desired the Anschluss. And the Treaty of Versailles, which has many defects I admit, did foresee that that might be the case, and provided express machinery by which, if that should be the case, an application might be made to the Council of the League, and if the Council of the League permitted it the Anschluss might take place. No attempts of that kind were made; no application was ever made to the Council of the League.

The noble Viscount trotted out, if I may use such a colloquial expression, the old case of the refusal of a Customs union by the decision of the Court. I think that was a very doubtful decision, but I do not think my noble friend would say it was a decision for which there was no justification. In any case, the vote which finally determined that it was not in accordance with Treaty rights was the vote of the Italian delegate. There again, I cannot see that because the Court decided this thing in accordance with the Treaty, that was any justification for the subsequent action of Germany. If the Germans had gone to the League and had pleaded for the permission of the League to establish the Anschluss, which was the thing they had agreed to do in the Treaty, and they had been refused, they would have had a more plausible case.

I will not go into the other cases, they would take me too long. To my mind the present invasion of China by Japan is even more indefensible from every point of view than the invasion of Manchuria. I am afraid I can only call the invasion of Spain by Italy equally indefensible; and, as for Czechoslovakia, the suggestion that applications to the League for relief in minority questions had been made twenty-three times is really a very misleading account of what happened, though I am sure my noble friend did not so intend it. I believe there were twenty-three applications. The great majority of them were to deal with individual applications of people who said that they had a grievance against the Government of Czechoslovakia and that they had been ill-treated. In every case the application was most carefully examined by a special Committee of Three, chosen for their impartiality and freedom from any connection with the dispute. They examined it, and in each case arrived at the conclusion that there was no substantial ca se against the Czechoslovakian Government. It was for that reason that it was not referred to the Council. There was one case. I believe, in which the main issue of the annexation of Sudeten-Deutschland to Germany was raised. That was also examined and, as might perhaps be expected in the circumstances, was decided not to have any legal justification.

So that I venture to say that all of these cases of special injustice, which are used to explain the difficulties that the League has been in lately, when they come to be examined will be found to be far less substantial than is sometimes thought. But I am quite aware that that is not the only way in which it is put. It is said, "Well, but the attitude of the League was such that Germany "because it does not apply really to either Italy or Japan—" had to take the law into her own hands because she had no hope of obtaining justice from the League." I do think that is a most extravagantly exaggerated proposition. The League has had to deal with a great number of questions. I will not dwell too much on the social and humanitarian questions, though after all that work, which has been very laborious and, by almost universal consent, admirably carried out, has been of great value to the peace of the world. It has not been very sensational, but it has improved the possibility of the nations living together peacefully.

Let me remind my noble friend of such questions as Corfu. I do not know why the noble Viscount, Lord Stonehaven, whose business has called him elsewhere, said that that was an instance in which the League completely failed. What happened was that there was an attack on Corfu, in consequence of a very legitimate grievance I admit, and it was referred to the League. The League adopted a very strong attitude, and Corfu, very properly and rightly, was evacuated, and an arrangement as to compensation was made. There was also the dispute between Paraguay and Bolivia. Certainly it lasted much too long and I think, with a very vigorous application of the powers of the League, it might have been shortened, but ultimately it was in part due to the intervention of the League that the dispute was settled.

There were many other disputes in the earlier parts of the League's history and there were such things as the Greek repatriation, in order to pacify the anger of the Turkish Government. That terrific difficulty between Greece and Turkey was settled by a very elaborate scheme of repatriation, which has been a complete success. Then there was the Saar. Why should we not say that the Saar was a remarkable example of international justice carried out by the League with general applause? There was also the Silesian question, on which a great deal has been said. Undoubtedly that settlement—whether it was the best or not I do not know—has lasted, and has left no difficulties or disputes behind it. All these things have been done by the League, and many others. And yet your Lordships are told that the League has never used its power to remedy grievances. It is not true. It is the reverse of the truth. The League has done a great deal to remedy grievances, though I entirely agree that it also ought to do more.

I shall not deal with the question of Colonies, because that has not yet been raised; we shall see what ought to be done with it when it is formally raised. But there is one exception which, oddly, my noble friend did not mention. There is not the least doubt that the League, and the Powers in the League, were gravely to blame in their attitude to disarmament. There is no doubt that Germany had a very strong case for saying, "You promised expressly that when we disarmed you would disarm. We have disarmed, your own Commission has reported that we have disarmed, now we call upon you to disarm." For year after year that issue, most unfortunately, was postponed and avoided, partly by the French Government, partly by the British Government—they are not blameless in this matter; they made no effort really to get that issue settled; over and over again they threw difficulties in the way of the settlement of it. When at long last the International Conference was summoned in 1932, it cannot be questioned that the attitude taken up by France and Great Britain was not helpful to the success of that Conference, and I can only say—I may of course easily be wrong—that;f a different attitude had been taken up we should have reached a measure of disarmament, at any rate, as the consequence of that Conference. That I do think is true.

Germany had a great grievance. It was a grievance for which the League was in part responsible, because it was part of the duty of the League to deal with that question, and I have always thought that all the vast expenditure we are making and a great part of the unrest that exists in Europe are directly traceable to that very unfortunate error which was made, we say by the League, but really by the leading Powers, during the years up to 1932 and 1933. I am bound to add, because one must be fair, that though these errors were very grave and deplorable, Germany was also very much to blame herself. It was just at the moment when, looking at Germany as Germany, there really did appear to be a serious effort being made to meet the German case, that the German Government decided to abandon first the Conference, then the League, then the International Labour Office and the whole international machinery—in fact, to follow the advice of my noble friend Lord Stonehaven.

We must face the facts in this matter. It is not injustice in this or that case that is the real difficulty with which we are faced at this moment, nor is it objection to this or that provision of the Covenant. I shall say before I sit down, if your Lordships have the patience to listen to me, what might be done in the direction of amendment, but that is not the grievance. The question is, are you going to have an effort to have international control of nationalist power in Europe and in the world as far as one can, or are you going on with the Stonehaven policy of every country for itself and the devil take the hindmost? That is the real issue, and do not let us confuse our minds about it. It is a pure delusion to talk about getting back Germany to the League unless you abandon all hope of using the League as an international peace body. That is what she objects to. She wants to be able to use her power, the very great strength which she undoubtedly has, and her great powers of organisation and courage for national purposes irrespective of international advantage. That is the real issue which, in my judgment, do what we may, hope what we may hope, will have to be settled sooner or later before you can get anything like an advance in international affairs.

I must not go on longer with that, but I should like before I sit down to touch very briefly and rapidly on some changes which might be made with advantage though, as I say, I do not think even they touch the main point. There is of course the provision which deals with what may be called, without anything like a sneer, the sentimental difficulty. I think it would be very desirable to cut the Covenant completely free from the Treaty of Versailles. That could be done without any injury to the Covenant, and it would be rather a gratification to the Powers who were beaten in the Great War to have the Covenant entirely separated from the Treaty that closed that War. In the same way, and as part of that change, though it is not a part of the Covenant, undoubtedly the celebrated "war guilt" clause ought to be abolished. I shall not argue that, because the argument is so very well known.

I turn to the point at which I come closest to the noble Viscount who introduced this subject—what can you do to improve Article 19? I agree that that is a very desirable thing to do. It ought to be made effective. It is quite true it has never been used. There is only one serious case in which it was proposed. China proposed to use it for dealing with what were then called the unequal treaties in China. That has always seemed to me a perfectly admirable example of the kind of dispute which might well have been referred to the League without any disadvantage. But opposition was raised to that proposal by one of the Governments, and I am afraid our own Government was not very favourable to it, and the Chinese did not persist. I wish they had. If they had persisted I think they would have got their way, but they withdrew their application.

We ought to make it part of our national policy to make Article 19 a really effective Article. Its provisions are probably all that you can ask for. I do not think you can ask, in the present state of international feeling, for changes of territory to be made by the decision of a majority of any Committee however eminent; but it could be made clear that when any proposal of the kind was brought before the Assembly it should be referred to some special kind of Committee which should be as impartial and authoritative as possible. It should be considered by that Committee, and that Committee could come to a conclusion—and that might well be by a majority—recommending what ought to be done in the matter. That decision should be reported to the appropriate Committee of the Assembly, or perhaps even to the Assembly direct. It would then have done all it could do in exerting public opinion in favour of the change which this Committee decided was reasonable in the circumstances.

I do not think you need be afraid that such a Committee would go too far, though I do recognise, as my noble friend Lord Strabolgi evidently desired the House to realise, that if you were to set about trying to remedy all the possible injustices in the world you would create such a state of uncertainty that you would do much more harm than good. I do not think that is likely to happen from such a procedure as I have indicated. It would be a conservative procedure, and it would result in definite advice being given. You might possibly go further. I think this would have to be very carefully examined. You might say that any Power that voted for a change of that kind after proper examination would not be bound to use its strength to maintain the status quo if that change did not result from the vote which it gave.

I certainly think the procedure under Article 16—that is the Sanctions Article—ought to be made clearer than it is. I think that could be done without any alteration to the Govenant, and it should be done by Resolution of the Assembly as a recommendation. Subject to one single word which I will not bother the House with, I do not think there would be any difficulty in bringing it within the four corners of the Article. The first thing to remember when you are dealing with sanctions is what I ventured to say at the beginning of my observations, that the purpose of the League is to stop war, not to punish the aggressor; therefore no action by the League should be undertaken unless it is going to stop war—unless, that is, there is so much strength behind the movement to stop war that the great probability is (you cannot have certainty in this world) that the aggressor country will not resist the action of the League. Therefore I would like to see as soon as the aggression is threatened, if possible before it takes place, an examination by the Council, an examination carried on with as many guarantees for its judicial character as possible, as to who was right and who was wrong, broadly, not considering the technicalities so much.

Then, assuming one Power was the aggressor—and in most cases I do not think there would be any doubt at all which Power was the aggressor—we should ask: "Are we going to take action against it?" Any Power—I hope it would be this country—should say: "In our view action should be taken; we recognise that it is our duty under the Covenant to take action. If it will succeed, we think action should be taken to stop the aggressor. We believe the action should take this kind of form." You would sketch what the action should be, and say that you think it would succeed. Then you would ask how many of your colleagues were prepared to join in taking the action, saying that you did not propose to proceed unless a sufficient number of your colleagues joined with you to make it clear that intervention was going to be successful. It must be a joint international action, and it must be a joint international action with a good prospect of success. In my view, if that course were taken—I have sketched it very roughly and very hastily, because I am aware I have already occupied too much time—I believe it would be a real improvement in the procedure of the League and would remove a great deal of the difficulty which is at present felt.

VISCOUNT ELIBANK

May I ask the noble Viscount, does he think that Germany and Italy and those other nations would join the League again?

VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD

Not at first; but I am convinced, if you could get that procedure in operation, and effective operation, you would have far more chance of getting Germany and Italy back to the League than by any other procedure you can imagine. I believe that if you could get that machinery established and could explain it to the United States—I would not say it would bring the United States into the League, I do no think that, but you would get an immense amount of sympathy in the United States. That is my view. I am afraid I should be sanguine to expect my noble friend to agree with that, but I put it before him for his consideration.

I have practically finished, but there are two or three other words I must say before I sit down. I am convinced that the doctrine that the League machinery has failed is entirely wrong. I do not say it is perfect, heaven knows, but it is quite adequate if it is properly used. Any failure there has been, has been undoubtedly owing to a number of causes which I cannot possibly examine now. It has been due to the reluctance of Members to utilise the machinery, and the only way of bringing about a change in that attitude is by education, by propaganda, by continually saying all the things which my noble friend did not say and the exact opposite of what he did say. To advocate the League; to say that we believe in it, that we regard a return to the old system as reactionary nonsense and not to be brought about under any circumstances, that we believe we have now got a chance for the first time in the history of the world to put a stop to war, that that is the greatest object any statesman can put before him at the present day, and that we do not see any other method by which it can be done—I do wish the Government, because the Government more than anybody must do this if anybody is to do it, would preach in season and out of season that that is their view, that that is what they stand for, that that is what they care for.

My noble friend has said admirable things in this House about the importance of the supremacy of law. That is really at the root of the whole conception. Let them preach that vigorously, not only by words but by action, by demonstrating to the world that they are ready to use the machinery for that purpose, that they are prepared to run risks and take action, even if it may result in considerable dangers and difficulties, because this is the greatest object we can have. If we are to prepare to fight if necessary, though I think it would be rarely necessary, for any cause, surely we are right to fight for this, because it embraces the whole of our interests in the world. My noble friend Lord Stonehaven thinks himself, I believe, an Imperialist. He is really doing his best to destroy the Empire. That is my profound conviction.

LORD ARNOLD

My Lords, whatever differences of opinion there may be in regard to the Motion moved by the noble Viscount, Lord Esher, I am sure it will be generally agreed that the speech in which he moved it was one of great value, whether that speech be consented to and agreed with or not. The noble Viscount did something which I think is done far too seldom, and that was in certain parts of his speech he endeavoured to put before your Lordships the point of view of other countries. British statesmen have many great qualities, but I do not think it can be contended that seeing things through the eyes of other nations justly and fairly is their most prominent characteristic, and the noble Viscount, whether he be agreed with or not, did something this afternoon to supply that deficiency. In that part of his speech I think he was dealing with realities. In other parts of his speech, as I will proceed to try and show, he seemed to me, as is so often the case in these debates to do with the League of Nations, remote from reality.

But before I come to deal with his speech and Motion in a little detail I should like to say something about the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, who spoke second. The noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, was perturbed because the noble Viscount, Lord Esher, said that the Labour Party hated Fascism more than it hated war, and this statement was strongly rebutted by the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi. I am bound to say that my general impression is that the observation of the noble Viscount, Lord Esher, is not so baseless as the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, suggested. He went on to say that the policy of the Labour Party was that they would fight to prevent Fascism being imposed here. Unfortunately the policy of the Labour Party goes a great deal beyond that, just as the policy of the League goes a great deal beyond that. If the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, will refresh his memory by reading the manifesto which the Labour Party issued last autumn, and if he will read their manifesto published at the end of February, I think he will be obliged to agree that it was made quite clear that their policy was that they would strongly support war, with Great Britain and France and Russia on the one side, against Germany, Italy and, I suppose, possibly Japan on the other side, whether Great Britain was attacked or not, and whether or not there was any attempt to impose Fascism here.

If Germany should take military action in regard to the Sudeten Germans, the Labour Party have made it quite clear that they—at least the leaders of the Labour Party; as a matter of fact many of the rank and file do not agree, just as the majority of the country I am sure do not agree—would not only support war, but would press for war, whether this country was attacked or not, and whether there was the remotest danger of Fascism being imposed here or not.

LORD STRABOLGI

If the noble Lord will allow me to interrupt, may I say that we are really at cross purposes? We would fight to preserve Europe against aggression if that was the only way, but that is not the same thing as fighting against Fascism. If aggression came from a Socialist State we would be prepared to fight. It is not only against Fascism.

LORD ARNOLD

We are at cross purposes. The noble Lord says they would fight against aggression. What is meant by aggression? In fact, in the case of Czechoslovakia, if Germany took military action in connection with the Sudeten Germans, we should be fighting against the principle of self-determination, fighting in support of boundaries which never ought to have been made, to keep in being a country which never ought to have been created and which cannot permanently continue in its present form. The noble Viscount, Lord Cecil, in his speech again to-day wants the Government to threaten Germany on account of Czechoslovakia. That is what it comes to. He wants to go further. He says that if Germany takes any military action in regard to the Sudeten Germans he wants the Government to say that the Government will go in and fight against Germany. He says i f the Government will do that war will not come. How does he know that? How does anybody know that? The whole thing is a gigantic speculation and the noble Viscount wants the Government to gamble the British Empire.

I would like to remind the noble Viscount of some words written by his illustrious father, the late Lord Salisbury. He was not in favour of entangling Britain with Continental commitments, and in a historic memorandum he said he did not consider that we should invite other nations to rely upon our aid in a struggle when we did not know what might be the humour of our people in circumstances which could not be foreseen.

VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD

I did not mean to interrupt, because there are so many things that provoke me to interrupt that I made a bargain with myself that I would not: interrupt. As, however, the noble Lord has quoted my father, I would like to point out to him that on November 9, 1897, at the Guildhall, he made a speech in which he recommended in broad lines exactly the arrangement of a League of Nations which we now have.

LORD ARNOLD

I would like the noble Viscount to read in a book by Mr. J. A. Spender the passage in which, dealing with this very matter—it is a full and historic record—he quotes the late Lord Salisbury. This memorandum was subsequent to 1897. I would beg the Government not to go one inch further in regard to the matter of Czechoslovakia than they have done. To do so would take the prime issue of peace and war for Great Britain out of our hands and make it dependent upon some irresponsible incident in a country about which I feel it is true to say the majority of British people do not know either where it is or what it is. I have already indicated that in my view the Motion of the noble Viscount is utterly remote from the realities of the existing situation. The simple truth is that there is no prospect —this is the point I want to put to the noble Viscount—of the League having the power either to redress grievances or to punish aggression, or stop aggression if you prefer the word "stop."

I am not going to weary your Lordships by covering again ground which has been traversed so often, but I must in a sentence or two indicate—this is really my quarrel, if I may say so, with the Motion of the noble Viscount—that this Motion ignores completely the salient facts of the situation. So far as the great nations of the world are concerned, and they are the only nations which really matter, the present League of Nations is not entitled to the name. It is not really half a League. As has been pointed out in the course of this debate, the United States are not and never have been in the League. Germany has been in and has left the League and has said definitely she will not go back. Italy has left the League, and Japan has left. These four great Powers do not accept the League. They will not accept its rulings or indeed its intervention. That is the basic fact of the situation. In these circumstances it is no good talking about the League redressing grievances or to ask what it ought to do to punish aggression.

The League is not in a position to do one or the other. Of the three great nations which are in the League, Russia is an incalculable factor, and it has again and again been pointed out that for practical purposes the League of Nations consists of Great Britain and France. It has been proved that France does not really care a scrap about the League except as a means of keeping Great Britain tied to her. That is why some of us feel that, however good the intentions and ideals of the League may be and may have been, it is in practice a dangerous entanglement likely to drag us into an otherwise avoidable war. I say therefore that this Motion comes too late. If in the past the League had devoted a tenth-part of the energy to redressing grievances which it has given to talking about aggression and to safeguarding the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles the position of Europe would be vastly different from what it is to-day. If something had been done in regard to disarmament—this is very vital—if the League had implemented Article 8 of the Covenant, which was vital to the whole constitution of the League, then the history of Europe would have been very different from what it has been and the condition of Europe to-day would be very different from what it is. But it is too late now and we have to recognise that there are reasons why the League has become an object of distrust in the eyes of Germany. The noble Viscount, Lord Esher, gave a most telling quotation from a speech of Herr Hitler. It is not difficult to understand Germany's reasons for distrust of the League, and if we were in Germany's position I have not the slightest doubt that we should think about the League exactly what she thinks.

All of what I have been saying is quite apart from the question, very germane to the Motion of the noble Viscount, of whether it is possible to punish aggressors without at the same time punishing as much, or nearly as much, the nations who are seeking to administer this justice —if justice it be. It must be remembered that no small nation will be an aggressor, and any attempt to make war against a great nation would almost certainly precipitate a European war. This is where I think the League of Nations has been proved fundamentally wrong. Its guiding idea was that all the other nations would be banded together against an aggressor. That has proved to be a dangerous delusion. It has not happened; it will never happen. There will always be two sides to every quarrel, and it will never happen that all the other nations will be combined against one aggressor nation.

The attempt to punish an aggressor will divide Europe into two more or less equal camps. We have to-day unfortunately—and the League as at present constituted is largely responsible—a balance of power in Europe again, only in a worse form than in 1914. Any attempt to punish an aggressor would precipitate a European war, and a war which, we have been told again and again, on the highest authority, would mean the end of civilisation as we know it. That is what another war would mean, and yet people go on talking as if war to-day were just the same as it was thirty, forty or fifty years ago. There is not, I submit to your Lordships, sufficient realisation of the fundamental change which has come about in warfare and the almost inconceivable increase which has been made in its dangers and in the devastation which will come through it. Forty or fifty years ago it may have been possible to punish an aggressor. though even then great loss was occasioned to those who were trying to do so. Now it is not possible to punish an aggressor without at the same time bringing ruin to those who attempt to do so. Surely we have learnt that there are no winners in modern war; all are more or less losers.

I would urge, and particularly after the closing words of the speech of the noble Viscount, that something much more fundamental than this Motion is needed in regard to the League. I cannot discuss that in any detail to-day. But—and this is not merely pacifist doctrine; a great many people who have no sympathy with pacifism are coming to the same view—the League of Nations will never become a real League of the nations of the world until Article 16 is taken out of the Covenant. If that is done and the League becomes a world conciliation court, it will in time be joined by all the nations and will come to have great moral authority and will be able to do far more effective work for peace than it ever can do with Article 16 in the Covenant. Certainly this Motion raises expectations which cannot be fulfilled. Not only is the League not in a position to redress grievances, but it cannot attempt—I say it again—to punish aggression or to stop aggression without bringing down the whole structure of European civilisation in ruins.

LORD DAVIES

My Lords, I do not propose to intervene for very long between your Lordships and the Foreign Secretary, whose comments on this very interesting debate you will, I am sure, be anxious to hear. I think we owe a debt of gratitude to the noble Viscount who moved this Motion for giving your Lordships an opportunity of discussing what is, after all, a very vital subject at this moment. I found myself in sympathy with part, at any rate, of the Motion moved by my noble friend. I think, if he will allow me to say so, that it is like the curate's egg—good in parts. On the other hand, he made a number of what I believe to be very inaccurate statements, which have been answered by the noble Viscount, Lord Cecil, and I therefore do not propose to go into them again. I think, however, he said that Mr. Winston Churchill had in some speeches been endeavouring to encircle Germany. I have read many of the speeches which have been ascribed to Mr. Churchill, and in at least several of them he denied emphatically any intention of encircling Germany. He made it quite clear that what he wanted was to encircle the aggressor, whoever the aggressor might be, and to set up what he described as the rule of Jaw in Europe, of which he regarded the League as the foundation. I think it was rather unfair that my noble friend should not have quoted from other speeches which Mr. Churchill has made on this subject.

What I imagine my noble friend wants is what he has very briefly described as the inauguration of the rule of law. All the arguments which have been heard during this debate have demonstrated quite clearly two things. First of all, we cannot expect to inaugurate the rule of law until we have constituted the League as an international authority and not merely as a conciliating body and a debating society. In order to do that at least two things are essential. The first is, as my noble friend has pointed out, that there shall be some peaceful procedure for effecting changes from time to time in the public law; and the second is that the public law shall be upheld and supported by adequate sanctions which are organised in advance. That means, I suggest to your Lordships, that we must have at least two things which apparently we have not had during the last twenty years. The first is a strong determination to make the League work, a determination that the will to peace shall succeed and that the League shall become an instrument, not merely for preventing war, which after all is negative, but also for the administration of justice. Once we have succeeded in doing that, we shall have gone a very long way to abolishing and preventing war. I would venture to suggest to your Lordships that, as the noble Viscount told us a few moments ago, the League, of itself, means nothing; it all depends upon what the Members of the League want the League to do and what they are prepared to do in support of the League. After all, the League is merely a federation, or confederation, of nations who have come together in order to do certain things.

The most important thing to do is to endeavour to administer justice, and in order to administer justice, as I understand it, there must be at least two institutions. There must be one institution capable of changing the law from time to time, or of revising treaties from time to time, when such change and revision have become necessary. The second, as I have said, is to uphold the decisions of an Equity Tribunal, whose decisions have been endorsed by the Assembly, and which has become the recognised means of ensuring peaceful change. I venture to point out that until some adequate machinery has been introduced to assist the League in carrying out its very important functions it would be very difficult for it to function and work, for the reason that until some permanent body has been set up, call it Commission, Tribunal, or Equity Tribunal, as part of that machinery, it is impossible to determine unmistakably who is the aggressor.

We know from our own experience in the administration of law in our own country that the aggressor is the person or party or group who take the law into their own hands and refuse to submit to third-party judgment. That is the definition of an aggressor in our law, and I suggest that the same definition applies in international affairs. So, until the gap has been closed up, after the Council has failed through methods of conciliation to secure a settlement, the next step is automatically to take the dispute before an impartial body, where all the facts are investigated, all the evidence taken, and where a decision can be arrived at in a purely impartial way. We had that experience and procedure really put into operation during the first dispute between Japan and China, when there was a Commission, as the noble Viscount said, sent out to investigate on the spot the issues between China and Japan. Their report was unanimously accepted by the Assembly, and rejected, of course, by Japan, and that fact disclosed at once who was really the aggressor in that dispute. That is the first point I would like to make.

The second is the inter-dependence between these two ideas—the idea of securing justice by a peaceful procedure, and the necessity, of course, for sanctions: the necessity for upholding the decision, because law is not law unless it can be upheld and enforced. I think one example of that happened in 1914. There was a dispute between Austria and Serbia, and there were only two statesmen in Europe who were prepared to propose that that dispute should be taken to the only tribunal existing at that time—namely, The Hague Tribunal. They were the Czar and the then Serbian Prime Minister. They both suggested at that time that the dispute should be referred to The Hague Tribunal. What happened? It was ignored by every other Foreign Office in Europe, as to-day the League is being ignored and criticised, and proposals made that it should be abolished, as the noble Viscount opposite wants it to be abolished, and as I gathered from his remarks Lord Arnold would agree to its being abolished.

What is happening to-day is exactly what happened in 1914. I have already referred to the Lytton Commission. Then there is also the case of Abyssinia, which has been mentioned. There again the matter in dispute was referred to a Committee consisting of five persons, who investigated this dispute, but the trouble in that case was that three of the members of the Committee were interested parties. They were appointed by Governments who had very large interests in Africa. Therefore, however desirious they were of reaching some judicial decision and doing justice between the disputants, you could not really expect a body constituted in that particular way to arrive at a purely impartial verdict which would be accepted by everybody. Therefore I venture to suggest that the fact which emerges from this debate is the interdependence of the procedure which my noble friend wants to see carried out— peaceful procedure for redressing grievances, and the necessity for a proper system of sanctions, in order that the decisions may become effective.

Before I sit down I would like, if I may, to quote from a very wise and very experienced statesman, the late Count Apponyi, who was the representative of Hungary at Geneva for a great many years. In his speech to the Fifth Assembly in September, 1924., he said: I have the deepest respect for the Council as a body and also for all the individual members of the Council, but no institution can be expected to do work for which it is not adapted. The Council is first and foremost a political body, consisting of statesmen delegated by their respective Governments and having definite instructions. … (And) it is only natural that members of the Council should be unwilling or seldom willing to assume responsibility of opening up a question that is likely to prove embarrassing to a State with which they are anxious to maintain good relations. I venture to suggest that that statement is perfectly true, and it means that the Council is not the proper body to suggest what is a just and equitable arrangement as between two nations who are engaged in a dispute.

With regard to the other point which I mentioned, the inter-dependence of sanctions and a peaceful procedure, may venture once more to quote to the House from that great and distinguished historian, the late Sir John Seeley. This is what he wrote, and I think it is as true to-day as, or even truer than, it was when he actually wrote it: There has been found hitherto but one substitute for war. It has succeeded over and over again: it succeeds regularly in the long run wherever it can be introduced. This is to take the disputed question out of the hands of the disputants, to refer it td a third party whose intelligence, impartiality and diligence have been secured, and to impose his decision upon the parties with overwhelming force. The last step in this process, the power of enforcing the decisions by the federal union only, is just as essential as the earlier ones, and if you omit it you may just as well omit them too. So I hope that the Government will not allow this question of the reform of the League to be postponed to some remote future, but that they will take courage and redeem the promises which they have made to the people of this country at the earliest possible moment.

VISCOUNT HALIFAX

My Lords, whatever may have been our judgment upon the speech with which this debate opened I entirely associate myself with what fell from the noble Lord, Lord Arnold, in regard to the interest with which we have all listened to it, and I am sure that the noble Viscount who introduced the debate will have had no cause to complain about the quality or the interest of the discussion to which his Motion has given rise. Noble Lords will not think that it implies any lack of appreciation on my part of the speeches that have been made—in which I include the one that I am about to deliver—if I say that on the whole they have followed a course that is not unfamiliar to those who have attended the periodic debates on this matter in the House. The noble Lord who spoke last, and whom we are delighted to see back in the House after his illness, followed a line that we have come to associate more particularly with his name, and a line that he always prosecutes with great diligence and assiduity. There was also a certain familiarity in the sequence in debate of my noble friend Lord Arnold, immediately following the noble Viscount (Lord Cecil) who now sits as a regular inhabitant of the Benches opposite.

The speech of the noble Viscount who moved the Motion was, I suppose, one in advocacy of the amendment in some form of Article 19, so that it could be effectively used in the adjudication of international disputes before they reach the stage of crisis, and he explained to us that in his view Article 16 should not be invoked until an attempt had been made to do effective justice under the provisions of Article 19. I should suppose that we would all find ourselves in agreement with him, or rather with the principle underlying his argument, that no attempt should be made to employ coercion unless and until every effort had been made to consider grievances and remove grounds for disputes. But, as the noble Viscount opposite pointed out, provision was in fact made by those who drafted the Covenant for a very complete and careful consideration of all the elements in a potential dispute before any question of using coercive action in fact could arise.

At this stage of our debate I am not going to detain your Lordships by going in detail into precisely what that machinery was. Every one of you can read it for yourselves in the successive Articles of the Covenant. More particularly I have in mind Articles 11, 12 and 13. It was only in the case of resort to war in disregard of the provisions of Articles 12, 13, and I think 15, that Article 16, which provides for coercion, could in fact be applied. And I think it might fairly be argued by those who were concerned to make the full paper case that that set of Articles did in fact provide adequate machinery and opportunity for the examination of all relevant matters in connection with any hypothetical dispute. Therefore, on paper, action under Article 19 is not the only means by which justice could be done. It is, of course, an admitted and plain fact that Article 19 is the only Article in the Covenant which speaks expressly of the revision of treaties, but it certainly is not the only Article which provides for the reconciliation of conflicting claims.

Before I leave that point I think it is perhaps worth mentioning—it has often been mentioned in this House before and I am not sure whether the noble Viscount, or it may have been the noble Lord who spoke for the Opposition, mentioned it this afternoon, and in that field there would probably be general agreement—that there is one small improvement of procedure which would be held to be generally desirable, and that is in regard to the operation of the rule of unanimity arising under Article it, paragraph 2. It is the case that the operation of that rule may have the effect of preventing the early intervention of the Council in a dispute and, as your Lordships may be aware, His Majesty's Government have made proposals to the League for remedying that defect, to which I think the noble Viscount who introduced the Motion also made reference.

That brings me to what in part underlies the noble Viscount's Motion, and that is the question to which the noble Lord, Lord Davies, addressed himself at the conclusion of his observations, the question of the revision of the Covenant. There is a great deal of experience to show the difficulty of an attempt to amend the text of the Covenant. I need not, I think, again explain the difficulty that has been experienced. Everyone of us who has had to follow these things knows that it has been great. In fact, I think it is true to say that the only amendments of substance that have been made in the Covenant during its existence were amendments that were made in Articles 12, 13 and 15 as a result of the establishment of the Permanent Court of Justice at The Hague, and that those amendments might broadly be described as non-controversial. Therefore I think it is probably true to say that textual amendment of the Covenant is very likely to prove impossible. But it is not, as the noble Viscount pointed out, the sole method by which we can proceed. The Assembly in 1921 adopted certain Resolutions of an interpretative kind with regard to the application of Article i6, and these Resolutions had as their corollary certain consequential amendments of the Article. Although these amendments did not receive the requisite number of ratifications to bring them into force, the general effect of what was done has been to modify the practical application of Article 16. Therefore, if it is thought wise to modify the application of that or any other Article of the Covenant, there is no reason, as I see it, why the Assembly should not in its wisdom be moved to adopt a similar or somewhat similar procedure.

It is quite true, as has been said from more than one quarter—my noble friend Lord Stonehaven said it this afternoon, and it was one of the things he said with which even the noble Viscount, Lord Cecil, would have found it possible to agree—that the full application of the Covenant has in fact been prevented, and that the League is to-day suffering from the abstentions and defections to which Lord Arnold referred with familiar vigour and force. It is of course true to say that unless the League commands the unqualified allegiance and loyalty of its Members, and unless its membership is fully representative, it cannot have the complete authority which the peace of the world demands. The noble Viscount, Lord Cecil, was disposed to protest against any suggestion that the League of Nations Union had been only concerned to stress Article 16, and that it might indeed have been better if they had done more stressing of Article i6 in earlier years. I have no doubt he is completely correct in what he says, but the moral I draw from that is that even if to-day we have to admit that the full operation of Article 16 is impossible, there is no need on that account to despair of the future of the League or to underrate the value of the other work that the League in a great many fields is able and well-equipped to do.

VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Viscount, but it is only because he was good enough to quote me. I do not quarrel with anything he has said, but he must remember that I did not mean to suggest that we never advocated any coercive action at all. Of course, to take the examples of Albania and Serbia, and Greece and Bulgaria, these questions were undoubtedly settled by the knowledge that there was this power in the background.

VISCOUNT HALIFAX

I do not think there is any substantial difference on this point between the noble Viscount and myself, and I am grateful to him for his intervention. If one brings it down to a point, there are, I suppose, two principal objections that may be made against the League, and they Eave both found expression in the course of our debate this afternoon. I want to say a word about each of them. The one is that the Covenant does in fact impose obligations and commitments which all countries are not at present able or willing at any given moment to accept, and the other is that the League does stand, or is alleged to stand, for the maintenance of an order of things with which all Governments are not content.

As regards the first, we can, I hope, recognise, however we apportion the responsibility, that the present circumstances of the day do render virtually impossible in all casts the full application of the Covenant, and it was indeed the recognition of that fact that led the Assembly of 1936 to establish its Committee to examine the application of the principles of the Covenant. As your Lordships know, that Committee has done a great deal of work, and it has reported to the Assembly the declarations that were made in the Committee on behalf of several nations, and has asked for further instructions. That is the position with which the Assembly will be faced when it meets in September. It will have then, I think, to decide as a matter of practical choice between the various alternatives and the various methods that appear open of applying the Covenant. Let us have in our minds quite clearly what these alternative methods are. There is first of all the method of the full application of the existing Articles of the Covenant, with what I may colloquially call some tightening up of the coercive provisions of the Covenant. Under that plan the League would be fully coercive and would be organised not only for the promotion of international peace, but also in the most complete sense possible for its active enforcement by means of sanctions and the like. That is one way.

The second alternative would be the method that I fancy some of your Lordships, for example, Lord Arnold and Lord Stonehaven, would prefer—the method of completely excluding any conception of coercion. The provisions of the Covenant for peaceful settlement and all that kind of thing would remain, but there would be no obligation, and no capacity to accept an obligation on behalf of League members, to impose sanctions of any kind or in any circumstances. The only duty under that plan resting on any Member of the League in times of international crisis would be mutual consultation. Thirdly, there is an intermediate plan which I rather gather the noble Viscount, Lord Cecil, who speaks with unrivalled authority on this kind of matter, might be disposed to favour. That plan, if I understand it aright, would be based on the view that the circumstances in which occasion for international, action will arise, and the nature of the action to be taken, cannot be securely determined in advance and that each case must be dealt with on its merits ad hoc. Under that plan the Members of the League would not be automatically obliged to do more than consult with one another, but there would be a faculty, though no obligation, to resort to coercion against a Covenant-breaking State should they so desire.

VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD

If my noble friend will allow me, there is a rather important nuance there. In my conception there would be an obligation to do whatever was necessary to bring the war to an end, but what was necessary would depend on what support there was for any particular action proposed. I think it rather important that we should keep alive the conception that the League is there to stop war.

VISCOUNT HALIFAX

I was just going on to say that the noble Viscount had laid great stress, in the observations that he made, upon the prospect of success. He emphasized, I think more than once, that it was not either wise or profitable in his view for the League to attempt something that had little prospect of success. He said you could not achieve certainty, but that you ought to have a very substantial prospect of success. As I understood what he said, and as I have understood what has been said in other places in regard to this idea of what I have called the intermediate method, it was that those Members of the League who might in a given case decide to employ coercion, would then do so in accordance with the existing provisions of the Covenant and with full knowledge of the degree of support that they might or might not be able to expect in whatever action they might take. It is, as I have said, probable that the Assembly will deal with these matters at their next Session, and when that time comes I can assure the noble Lord who spoke last that His Majesty's Government will be fully prepared to make their views known and give such advice to the Assembly as they may feel able to give. I do not in any way underestimate the difficulty of this question. There is a sharp difference among the Members as between these three different courses which I have ventured to sketch. Almost every shade of opinion indeed is found. Therefore the solution is going to be extremely difficult, but will not, I hope, prove impossible.

Now may I say a word or two—and this brings me back rather more closely to some of the things that have been said in the debate—with regard to the second main objection levelled against the League —namely, that it is an institution designed for the maintenance of the status quo? I do not want to travel over Europe in company with the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, examining in all parts what may be the particular grievances under which different populations may suffer. I rather agree with his conclusion that any Foreign Secretary who approached the problem in such comprehensive fashion would have a time more uncomfortable than profitable. Of course the real thing that governs this side of the problem raised by the noble Viscount is that the League is a collection of independent sovereign States and is not a SuperState. Those who drafted the League Covenant, I think the noble Viscount will know, had to make up their minds between those two conceptions, and they quite deliberately came down on the side of the collection of independent sovereign States, and that obviously is of extreme relevance in considering the power and force and the opportunity of Article 19.

That is why I find it difficult to follow the noble Viscount who introduced the debate when he says, rather over-simply as I think, that Article 19 as it stands, if only used, is a sure remedy for the evils that he thinks exist. It is quite true that the Article does expressly recognise the impracticability of the rigid maintenance of the status quo, but the Article is only permissive, the functions of the Assembly in regard to it are purely advisory, and, owing to this governing conception of sovereign States, there is no question of compulsion. A difficulty has been expressed in this debate by the noble Viscount opposite (Viscount Cecil of Chelwood) with regard, for example, to the establishment of such a tribunal as the noble Lord, Lord Davies, has in mind and to which he has always pinned great faith. Those doubts I feel bound to share, even if they were not reinforced by the further doubts that I should feel about the practicability in present circumstances of that which must accompany them in his view—namely, the establishment of some effective sanction by way of international force. But when all that has been said, it is also true to say that Article 19 does provide an opportunity for discussing change and leading up to it by way of possible negotiation, and it is also I think true to say that if it were used the ventilation of grievances and the frank discussion of grievances at Geneva might help to remove certain misconceptions.

There has been, so far as I know, nothing to prevent the use of Article 19 for the consideration of possible causes of dispute except the reluctance of States to make use of it, and while it is impossible for the Assembly in this matter to dictate change, yet an expression of opinion even by a majority of the Assembly would—I agree here with the noble Viscount opposite—have a very valuable moral effect. The effect of it would be, I think, to show where the sympathies of the States taking part in the discussion lay, and it would demonstrate to the States concerned, as the noble Viscount said, the amount of support that they might or might not expect if, owing to their own failure, perhaps, to be willing to undertake or to examine the question of revision, matters moved to a crisis. I was particularly interested to hear what the noble Viscount said in that sense. If T. understood him correctly, he intimated that, in his view, it ought not perhaps to be excluded that any State that had in such a discussion as that expressed its opinion in one sense should be held to be absolved from obligation to take any part in coercive methods in another sense.

VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD

I think that would require an amendment. I do not think you could do that under the Covenant.

VISCOUNT HALIFAX

The noble Viscount knows much more about it than I do. I merely take note of his suggestion, which seems to me one of great interest. I would add that if the Article were employed in the way I suggested it would be, I think, quite wrong to underestimate its potential usefulness. May I before I sit down make a few observations of a rather more general kind in regard to what I conceive to be the purpose and value of the League as we examine it and watch it at this moment? I hope I shall not be misunderstood if I say that the League throughout its life has always seemed to me to suffer, through no fault of its own, from hostile critics and from over-zealous friends, and that that has been in part due to a misconception of its purposes and its functions. It has been on the one hand, I think, quite unjust to expect results from the League that by the very nature of the case, as I should be disposed to argue, it was impossible for it to produce, and on the other hand it has been equally unjust—and I think my noble friend this afternoon fell into something of that injustice—to belittle the services that the League has rendered and is rendering in more directions than one to the cause of humanity. I want to tell my noble friend in what directions I think that is happening.

First of all, I do not think we ought to underrate the value of the League, whether we like this form of its machinery or not, as an expression of a great purpose that has taken root in the minds and hearts of men and is, I think, going to remain there until they do find the right machinery to give it expression, if this be not the right machinery. Secondly, the accomplishment of the League, as I think one of your Lordships has said this afternoon, was the number of disputes that it has forestalled or prevented or settled. A dispute forestalled or prevented has very little news value. You do not read about it in the newspapers. But its reality is not less real on that account. Thirdly, the accomplishment of the League is to be judged by the whole range of its achievements in the humanitarian and social field. I will not weary your Lordships with examples because they may be familiar to you, but there is a great record of achievement to the League in terms of work done that has affected immediately and directly for good hundreds and hundreds of thousands of human lives for which human beings all over the world ought to be, if they knew the facts, grateful to the promoters and operators of the League machinery.

There are the refugees, thousands, and hundreds of thousands of them; there is improvement in the standards of public health; there is the fight against disease, and so on. If I may I would like to quote one example that came into my own work a little bit in India. It relates to the alleviation of a certain disease for which there was need for great supplies of quinine. It sounds a very small thing, but there were cases in which, owing to cost, the right amount of quinine required could not be made available. It was under League auspices that a substitute for quinine at a vastly cheaper price that enabled relief to be brought to innumerable human beings was found. If the League had done nothing else it would have justified itself over and over by such work as that. So one could go on. These examples, and others that one could give at random, taken cumulatively, I think, make a record that we ought not to have absent from our minds, for they are not small things. If there were those who failed to appreciate their value they would, I venture to think, be judging themselves, rather than the League, in so doing.

But if we rightly appreciate all that work, there is no reason at all why, under the influence of generous emotion, we should close the door to reason in the matter of the examination of the practical strength in the political field to be exerted by the League to-day. It is, of course, undeniable in a world of great Powers that it is a source of great weakness to the League that four of the greatest Powers should stand outside, some of whom are not only out of sympathy but are actively opposed, as the noble Viscount said, to the whole idea and method of international discussion for international purposes for which the League stands. It is not the machinery which is at fault, but it is the willingness of people to take advantage of it to adapt it and to make it work. The possibilities are there, but there is not, we must admit, a sufficiently general desire to see its possibilities exploited. If the League is ever itself to fulfil, or if it is ever to show the way by some other translation of its purpose to fulfil the idea of a better order for the world, it is necessary—and here I agree with my noble friend behind me—that all great nations should be brought to co-operate in the attempt. I do not delude myself by supposing that it is possible for us to hope for any such early immediate issue, but that must remain, I think, the objective to which a great part of our endeavours must be directed.

The difficulties which confront the League are of course, great indeed. It is quite true that the League is in rough water, and that difficult and testing times no doubt lie in front of it. But, none the less, our intention is to foster and sustain the League to the utmost of our power, doing our best to adapt its practice to circumstances, as prudence and wisdom may suggest to be most necessary, because we believe the League itself in fact enshrines principles which we think are vital to world society. It is because we believe that, that we look forward to the time when the League will, as we hope, emerge stronger from these times of test and stress and will once again be able to claim the allegiance of all men everywhere as a guarantee of international order and world peace.

VISCOUNT ESHER

My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount for his reply to what I consider a most important debate, and I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

House adjourned at twenty-seven minutes past seven o'clock.