Lords Sitting of 22 April 1942

Preamble
The House met, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Charles Edward, Lord Bishop of Exeter—Was (in the usual manner) introduced.
BOMBAY, BARODA AND CENTRAL INDIA RAILWAY BILL.
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and referred to Examiners.
PRINCESS ELIZABETH OF YORK HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN AND QUEEN'S HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN (AMALGAMATION , ETC.) BILL. [H.L.]
Report from His Majesty's Attorney-General received and ordered to lie on the Table.
RAILWAY COMPANIES (THOMAS COOK & SON LIMITED. GUARANTEE) BILL. [H.L.]
Reported, with Amendments.
NEWCASTLE AND GATESHEAD WATERWORKS BILL. [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.
SUGAR INDUSTRY BILL.
Reported without amendment and recommitted to a Committee of the Whole House.

JERSEY AND GUERNSEY.
LORD PORTSEA LORD PORTSEA had the following Notice on the Paper: To ask His Majesty's Government, what steps arc being taken to assure the loyal islanders of Jersey and Guernsey of some interest in them and their well-being; whether any steps are being taken to feed or help to feed the few remaining people in these islands before it is too late, or to reassure
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and satisfy the thousands of islanders now serving in His Majesty's Forces that an effort is being made to save their parents and families from starvation, the cause of much misery and such a reduction of vitality (especially among the children) as to make further existence problematical; further to ask, whether help and food can be sent to aliens in conquered countries occupied by the Germans and whether His Majesty's Government will accept or assist in the offer made, and now made again, to send a small food ship or plane to the island if a crew can be found, risk accepted and food paid for; further to ask, if a home crew be not acceptable, whether His Majesty's Government will allot a small number of German prisoners of war unfit for war service to man the ship under the command of a retired officer of His Majesty's Island Royal Forces; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I am asking the questions which are contained in my Motion neither needlessly nor without earnest thought. I wish to endeavour to obtain your Lordships' generous help, and a satisfactory answer from the Government, knowing that that will follow if I enlist your help. The Government do not seem to be disposed to move, or even to try to move. Can they be gently pushed off the primrose path along which as a nation we have loitered for so long, and brought to realize that difficulties are made to be overcome? If I cannot succeed before your Lordships, the only alternative is to appeal to the public, and I do not wish to do that. I am terribly in earnest about this, in view of the sufferings which are being endured needlessly by a small people owing to what I consider to be the injustices inflicted upon them. Your Lordships well know the story. It is the story of a small people, a people of our own origins, of our own blood, of our own language, religion and history. They were abandoned during a panic, and they were worse than abandoned, because they were handed over to the Germans—after the Germans had bombed them—bound hand and foot. Their arms were taken from them; and they were not even allowed to defend themselves, their families and, above all, their children. For two long years not one note, not one word of sympathy or encouragement, no syllable of regret or

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remembrance or even of remorse, from any source whatsoever, has been sent to these poor, loyal, islanders. Loyalist to the core, abandoned and betrayed by us: this is a matter which touches the honour of every Englishman and of England herself.
I have received innumerable letters from friends and strangers, men and women, all offering help and service, not one counting any possible cost or probable danger. I have the offer of two ships, one a large ship, but in that case the offer is conditional on the Government undertaking to replace the ship or pay its value in the event of the ship being sunk. The other is from an old friend of mine, seventy-seven years of age, who possesses, unfortunately for him, only one eye. He offers me a small trawler, twenty feet long; she draws only two and half feet of water, and she has a good eight horsepower engine to help her along. This trawler would serve to carry an experimental cargo to Jersey, a small cargo which even the most timid Minister would not be afraid to risk. It is said by some—I have heard it more than once—that we have no right to send food to our own people if we do not send food to others. That is an amazing proposition to me; it is monstrous. To me it is our own people first, and if there is anything over the others can have it.
We can send food from neutral and non-belligerent countries with and by the permission of the Germans. We can send it from Turkey, or Egypt, or Portugal. Why should we not send it from Eire? I do not believe that there lives an Irishman who would refuse to succour the children of the Norman islanders abandoned by England—not one. The passage would of course be more adventurous and a little more dangerous, and certainly longer, than the passage from England, but that would be nothing in view of the health and the happiness produced thereby. There are some members of your Lordships' House who may remember what Gordon wrote from Khartoum when he was in desperate need. "Send me," he said, "one British soldier in uniform to inspirit my people, to let them know that they are not lost." That is what we ask. The ship I am thinking of would be loaded here; of course I do not suppose that Eire would give us food.
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She would be loaded here in this country, and get her bill of lading from an Irish port, a neutral port, a non-belligerent port. Then, with two or three unfit-for-war German prisoners of war—we have a few on this side—we might take that ship across. Two or three would be quite enough for such a Leviathan as a 20-foot trawler.
I have yet another suggestion, and perhaps it is the best of all. It is more difficult to set aside. The Bailiff of Jersey, who is the administrative chief; recently asked by cable for a supply of medical comforts, and these were sent. He asked for insulin because it was necessary for the life of some of his people, for some of the sufferers in the island. I ask the Government to sanction and give me official help to send a cable to that Bailiff, asking him to obtain German authority to allow a small ship or plane—a plane will do perfectly well, and perhaps be more effective, as it will be certainly quicker—carrying things necessary for life, with a German unfit-for-war prisoner-of-war crew, to enter an island harbour, or a beach, or an aerodrome. There is no lack of those in the island now. This may be the quickest way, and we must be quick if we are going to save the children of those islands.
The islands still retain their own administrative powers; they are admirable in their simplicity and in their efficiency. There are in Jersey, which is a very small island, as your Lordships know, some forty-five square miles all told. I have been in an enclosed park in New England of exactly the same size—a park kept for wild animals of North America. In that little island there are twelve parishes, and at the head of each parish there is a Chief Constable, one Centenier—one who looks after each hundred—and a Vingtenier for each division of that one hundred, certain officers of the Constable, and twenty plain-clothes policemen. All these are unpaid, every one of them, all elected by their parishioners, all serving for love of King and country, working together like a good team. These gentlemen have, as I say, administrative control. They would see to it that any food landed was fairly and properly allotted, and they would not annoy the Germans.
There is an idea that sending food would annoy the Germans. We have bombed the Germans in the island—I do

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not know whether we did that to please them. Who can doubt that the Germans would gladly allow this food to be landed from plane or ship, and indeed give all facilities? If they did "pinch"—which is, I believe, the new word used—any of the food, and I do not believe they would—not for a moment—they would know that future supplies in larger quantities would be cut off. Many dislike the Germans. I am not sure that I love them myself, but no one questions that the German is a brave man—no one certainly who saw him in the last war. By "brave" I mean all that that implies, and he is an honourable man according to his standards. A man whose works we have all read has told us that "the crimes of Clapham are chaste at Martaban," so you have a wide range of interpretation in the word "honourable." Most assuredly the German is not a fool. It would be a good thing, perhaps, for us if he were. When I say he would not "pinch" the food, I recall a paragraph, written by a special correspondent of a great newspaper who is at the front, which I came across a few days ago. He wrote that the matron, two nurses, and the cook of a hospital for children in Prussia had been sentenced to be hanged because they had stolen the food belonging to these children. That enforces what I say that the Germans would not "pinch" the food.
The few islanders who are left in the islands are starving. All young islanders, as your Lordships know—and there are thousands of them—are serving His Majesty on this side of the water, while their parents, their families, and their children are starving. It is for these children more especially that I plead. I have looked at the Oxford Dictionary for the interpretation of the word "starvation" so that I should not put a gloze on my reading of it. The Oxford Dictionary says that "starvation" means "a deprivation or insufficient supply of something necessary to life," or, alternatively, of "something necessary to health," which is perhaps more important. Your Lordships will remember reading stories of the old days of men with scurvy. There you had young, strong, healthy men sent to sea or elsewhere with enough food, but lacking the proportions of necessary food, and in consequence they died like flies because they had not the proper
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quantities of food necessary for health—what we now call vitamins. It is so in this island. The good island milk and butter are sent—every drop of it—to Germany, and the wretched Frenchman on the coast is forced at the pistol point to send some of his very inferior stuff—taken mostly from the cow with the iron tail—to Jersey.
We could feed all these children from the crumbs that fall from our tables—every one of them. The children need fats, sugar, cocoa, jam, flour, and oils. In Jersey, as your Lordships know, there is no meat, no fat cattle, no game, no sheep. All these were imported even before the war. Fishing is practically impossible, and if by extraordinary good fortune any fish is taken, the fish is commandeered. The Prime Minister, in his very stirring address from the White House, said, "Let us resolve that by our sacrifice and our daring the children shall not be robbed of their inheritance and so denied the right to live." Brave words "Our sacrifice and our daring." I am not attacking the Prime Minister, your Lordships will understand. He is, of all men, in my estimation, the most necessary at the moment, but these were his words and these were his wishes. They were repeated again very shortly after in Bermuda, but notwithstanding these words these children are starving. Recently we set aside a day for prayer and supplication for ourselves. We prayed to Him to Whom all hearts are open, from Whom no secrets are hid. At that moment hundreds of little children, our own blood, deserted by us, and deserted no longer in the panic which ensued two years ago after the betrayal, but ever since and even now, were praying for help in their undeserved misery and despair, caused and continued by us, the greatest nation in the world. They were praying, and praying with clean hearts and clean hands. Those little ones must perish, or worse, they must linger out their miserable lives stunted in mind and body—cretins, degenerates—unless we help them. They cry in their despair for help. For them existence means slow torture, starvation or lifelong wretchedness, and it will be our work, my Lords, unless we help them. The blood of those children will be on our heads. Will any man accept that charge? I am sure there is no one who would do so. And we have

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it in His own words: "He who shall offend against one of these little ones which believe in Me …" Do we realize what is being done in our name. These little mites pray. Do you think their voices will be unheard and unheeded? No; believe it not. I am a very old man, and the task of this pleading is almost too much for me, is almost beyond me, but I only plead, as was pleaded before, that "I love much."
I believe that no prayers are unheeded or unheard, but I think those prayers would be heard before ours. I say that no prayers sent with a clean heart are unheeded or unheard, but that in the ful-ness of time, and in His own way, those prayers are answered and will come back. Are we prepared for those answers? We are not Pharisees. Do we remember, can we forget, the acceptance of the wrath to come? "On us and on our children!" We have all read it, and many of us believe it. Those were the words: "on us and on our children." Render unto God the things that arc His and unto Caesar (a Christian Caesar remember) or even a good Samaritan, the earthly things which are entrusted to him. I would call, in the language used by a great Christian people—they were great in those days—in the language which is" still heard in this House when Acts receive His Majesty's sanction, words from the wonderful provision of the law of our common ancestors, the most powerful injunction made to restrain and prevent all manner of exactions, cruelties, villainies, words which have never failed to straighten out justice, to help the poor and the friendless: Haro! Haro! A l'aide mon Prince on me fait tort. I beg to move.
LORD SNELL: My Lords, you will no doubt remember that my noble friend the Duke of Devonshire gave a very full reply to the noble Lord's Motions on January 27 which covered substantially the same ground as his present Motion. I am afraid, therefore, that I have very little to add to what was said on that occasion. I need hardly say that the Government are as anxious as ever they were to do anything that can be done to help our fellow countrymen in the Channel Islands, but in regard to the particular proposal to send a food ship to them, they do not think that it would be right to hold out any hope that the proposal would be practicable in present circumstances.
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I am sure that we all share the noble Lord's deep sympathy for those who have remained in the Channel Islands in the hardships which they are enduring, but no purpose would be served by exaggerating the extent of such hardships, and I am bound to say that the conditions described in the noble Lord's Motion do not correspond with the information available to His Majesty's Government. The Government are confident that their fellow-countrymen in the islands realize that the Government, although they have been unable to address them, have not forgotten them.
LORD PORTSEA: My Lords, I am very much obliged to the noble Lord for his answer. I should like to ask him one or two questions on what he has said. He speaks of his information from the islands. I also have information from the islands for I have many relatives there, and I prefer my own authority and the date of my authority until I hear the authority of the noble Lord. As to Government words and Government authority I have spoken of General Gordon. He was at Khartoum, as your Lordships know, and the then Prime Minister in this country said that he was not surrounded; his information was that he was not surrounded, he was only hemmed in. But it came to the same thing in the end; he was killed and his garrison followed him.
I do not say that the island grown-ups, the middle-aged and the old, are in a sense hungry—there is always rabbit food for them—but the children are starving. It is the children I am pleading for. It is my information—and as an islander and having represented the supreme port of the kingdom for twenty-five years I have some friends at sea still—that these children are starving. Yet the only answer we can get from the Government is that there is no hope of their getting food. That is terrible and we are given no reason for it. I have been given, now and again, a dozen excuses, but an excuse, unless it is a very good excuse, only annoys, only embitters. I have as yet heard no reason why the Government should not allow me to take a small boat across the Channel with a few necessaries of life for the children of these islands. We know that Germans have allowed medical comforts to reach the islands when they were asked for. I must be

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very stupid indeed, but I do not see how the two things agree in any way.
We are told that the Government are anxious and that my noble friend is afraid. I am sure he is not afraid, whatever the Government may be—it would not become him to be afraid. We here can get tmee meals a day, not so plentiful as they were, and with not so much variety, but still there is no man or woman or child who cannot get food. Yet the noble Lord said there is no hope of the necessaries of life being sent to these children of our own blood whom we have deserted and betrayed. I do not want to use harsh words but we have deserted them without rhyme or reason. I have been told here that Guernsey could not be defended because it was right under the coast of France. Guernsey is thirty miles away from the coast of France. It has wonderful aerodromes and wonderful harbours, now full of German ships, and if we had held out—and local military opinion said we could hold out—we should still be holding the Channel and the "Scharnhorst" and her friends could not have slunk up the Channel inside Guernsey without our knowing it. What that act has cost us, will only be known years after this war has ended, but it remains, and will remain. The people of these islands will be witnesses if we permit this state of affairs to go on without saying anything to force the Government to assist them and to save these little children from their awful fate; but evidently it is no use appealing to the Government. They say there is no hope, not even hope of food being sent. We can only send bombs. We can bomb the islands, although that, I suppose, does not please the Germans, but we cannot ask that these little children be allowed to receive some of the necessities of infantile life.
I can say no more but only this in justification for myself, if your Lordships will allow me. This is the third time I have brought the matter before your Lordships. Let no one say that an officer in His Majesty's Service is seeking to push himself forward if he sets out in a 20-foot trawler with two German naval prisoners of war. My only reason for volunteering is that I am an islander and proud of that fact and that every islander would recognize me. There would be no question of bona fides on landing; there would be no question of identity. Every islander would know me and, as an officer who
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would be in His Majesty's uniform—for I have the honour and the right to wear that uniform—my presence and my word would be accepted by the Germans. If I thought there was the remotest chance I would ask for a Division but, having had many years' experience in another place, I know that if the Government arc set nothing can be done. I might not even find a Teller. If I could find a Teller I would divide now. Will any noble Lord tell with me against the Government? There is no reply. Oh your heads be it! I beg leave to withdraw.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

STRATEGY OF THE ALLIES.
LORD STRABOLGI LORD STRABOLGI rose to ask His Majesty's Government, what steps have been taken or are proposed for creating the necessary machinery and organization to co-ordinate the strategy (including not only military, naval and air operations but economic and political warfare) of the British Empire and her Allies and co-belligerents in the war against Germany, Italy and Japan; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, the Motion which my noble friends have asked me to bring before your Lordships this afternoon was originally put down on December 14 last, a week after the entry of the United States into the war, and its terms arc therefore familiar to the Government. I do not intend to touch on the question of Staff organization in this country, but I shall confine my remarks to the Inter-Allied side of the direction and control of our strategy in the war. Many noble Lords and other eminent persons have been advocating better Staff organization in this country and particularly the creation of a Great General Staff. This morning we have had issued a White Paper on the subject, which shows that this combined organization does exist on a low level though there is still a lack at the higher level. The object of my question to-day is to find out from the Government whether anything of the same kind exists for the co-ordination of the tremendous effort that can be put forward by the Allied and Associated Powers in this war.
There is, I believe, some anxiety on this subject. It is recognized that the resources and strength of what I may call the Grand Alliance are overwhelming if they are marshalled and deployed. Is

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this being done, and how? I would suggest that liaison, which we know exists, and attempts at co-ordination are not enough. In the last war it was very late before unity of command was attained, but when it was attained the results were excellent. I believe it is now recognized that if we had had unity of command earlier in the last war the course of the war would have been shortened. Is there the same lack at the present time? I am sure all your Lordships have seen with great pleasure the news of the appointment of General MacArthur as supreme commander in the South-West Pacific area; and the public are informed, by the American Secretary of State for War, Colonel Stimson, that his powers and functions in what is called the Anzac area are similar to those which were exercised by Marshal Foch in the last war. But that is only one theatre of war. Important as it is the Australasian theatre of war is only one quarter, so to speak, of the whole sphere of the war which is now world-wide. I venture to ask the Government if they can state anything with regard to any similar organization, if such exists, elsewhere, and in particular for the Western European theatre.
In Washington, as your Lordships are aware, there is, and has been for some considerable time, a Combined Chiefs of Staff Committee, with senior British officers of all the three Services, including General Sir John Dill, serving upon it, and I believe I am right in saying that all the other principal Allied and Associated Powers are also represented. I presume that this Staff Committee in Washington is concerned particularly with the Pacific war, or does it advise on the whole campaign, in both hemispheres? We do not know this. Perhaps the noble Earl, who I understand is going to reply to my Motion on behalf of the Government, will give us some information. If I am right in my presumption that the Combined Chiefs of Staff Committee in Washington deals with the Pacific war, the Eastern war, so to speak, is there a corresponding body—I do not know if there is or not—planning a European battle front? I presume that such a body would, for convenience sake, work in London, though where it works, I suggest, is less important than that it should exist.
Now I can see many reasons why such an Inter-Allied Chiefs of Staff Committee might be situated in Moscow. I can see many advantages for such an arrangement. But that there is some lack here is, I think, shown by an interview which was given by General Sikorski, the Polish Commander-in-Chief, who obviously must be very well informed on all these matters, to a well-known British journalist on the strategy of the war. This interview was published last Sunday. Amongst other things General Sikorski made this statement: "I think it advisable to create an Allied General Staff to direct operations on the European Front." If there is such a Staff I am ignorant of its existence—and I would be very glad to know that I am ignorant in that respect. The Polish Commander-in-Chief is also unaware of it. Your Lordships will agree, I am sure, that the Poles in arms, in the air, on land, and, as a few of them are, at sea, are Allies with whom we can be very proud to serve.
Again there is a body known as the Pacific War Council which meets in Washington. I understand it held its third sitting yesterday. There is, or was—I believe it is still in existence—a Pacific War Council also in London. I dare say that is a very proper arrangement. After all, the Netherlands Government sit in London, and I can see that there are reasons why there should be a Pacific War Council. But there are two of these Pacific War Councils, and I would ask the Government what are the respective functions of these two bodies and what are the means of relating or co-ordinating or integrating their activities. I am going to suggest—and I hope it will not be taken amiss by any member of the Government for it is not meant as criticism at all—that it is shown that there is something lacking by the mere fact that it was necessary recently for a very important visitor to pay a welcome visit to this country. I refer to the Chief of Staff of the American Army, General Marshall. If there was working machinery for co-ordinating or integrating the higher strategy of the war I would have thought it was not necessary for General Marshall to come here for a fortnight and engage in conversations with persons of importance in London.
I do not wish to be misunderstood. The visit undoubtedly was a good thing

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from many points of view, and the General was, of course, most welcome here. But that a man of such importance should have to leave his own post to come here shows, I think, that there is still some lack of the required machinery. And more than that, I must say that I am a little uneasy that it should be necessary for the most important executive in the Empire, our First Sea Lord, to have to go back to Washington with General Marshall accompanied by several very important Staff officers. There is something lacking if this visit and these counter-visits are necessary. I know the advantages of personal contact and so on, and I am sure that the visit of the First Sea Lord to Washington will be productive only of great good, but to have to send him away at this time shows, I suggest, that there is something still required. And this is after the United States has been a full belligerent with us in the war for four and a half months!
So much for the liaison, the working together of the two great English-speaking Democracies. It is easier, of course, for the British and the Americans to work together in the war than for probably any other two Allies—for reasons of language apart from anything else. When we come to the other great Allies working together on joint strategy and so on, we must realize that this is not so easy. The other two greatest Allies—and I am not in any way overlooking any of the twenty-six important nations fighting with us in this war—are Russia and China. I do not overlook the very important visit made some three months ago by Mr. Anthony Eden and General Nye to Moscow. Surely that did a great deal of good. But I think that there is strong evidence that there could be closer co-operation in the higher field of strategy with the Russian leaders. I realize that there arc difficulties, geographical difficulties of course apart from anything else, but one eminent member of your Lordships' House was an admitted success in Moscow. I refer to Lord Beaverbrook. I wish that Lord Beaverbrook, instead of going West, as he has now done, had gone East. I wish he was in Moscow now at the head of a really powerful section of British Staff officers who would be working out the immediate future strategy with the Russian leaders.
That this is necessary is, I think, shown by one fact, the only one which I propose
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to bring to your Lordships' notice. Quite recently, on April 10, the Russian Ambassador to Washington, M. Litvinov, made a very important speech, and in doing so he only followed similar speeches by General Sikorski, the Polish Commander-in-Chief, and the Russian Ambassador at the Court of St. James. All these three great Slav leaders advocated an invasion of Europe from the West this year. Let me say at once that I do not propose to ask the Government anything whatever on that subject. I have no right to know what their plans are, and I do not propose to inquire; but, whoever else has a right to know what their plans are, the Russian General Staff and M. Stalin have a right to know, and must know. I suggest, however, that if they knew either that we were going to invade or that we were not going to invade—it does not matter which—it would be impossible for their representative in Washington to make such a speech as M. Litvinov did on April 10, and a speech which, incidentally, was praised by the American Secretary of State. It looks very much as if we had left both the Russians and the Poles guessing; and, if that is so, it is very bad. I have to say that. I hope that I am misinformed, or that I read the sense of this wrongly; but, if we have left them guessing, that is very bad indeed.
Our Government and our Allies are not, apparently, averse from the principle of the unity of command in actual operations. We had it immediately we sent an Expeditionary Force to France in 1939; we had learnt that lesson, and that unity of command undoubtedly saved the situation from being worse than it was. In the Pacific campaign, up to a point, General Wavell was given unity of command in that area over the British, American, Dutch, Australian and other Forces. He never had any reserves, or even any margin; but he had the titular position of Supreme Commander-in-Chief. As I have reminded your Lord-ships, after some weeks of delay, on which I do not wish to dwell, General MacArthur now has a similar position in Australia, and I dare say that there are other cases about which we do not know. The principle of unity of command for actual operations is therefore, I am glad to say, recognized and accepted by the Government, and that is a very great step forward from the position in the last war;

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but I do suggest that, unless certain facts arc hidden from us—and there is no reason why they should be hidden from us—there is some gap, something lacking, in the higher direction of our strategy in conjunction with our Allies. I hope that this is more apparent than real. There is no reason why we should not be told about this. To begin with, it is not the sort of thing which ought to be kept secret; moreover, you cannot keep it secret. There should be some machinery, known and recognized and accepted, for co-ordinating the higher strategy of the Grand Alliance.
So much for strategy. On the economic side, I and my noble friends are glad to know that since this Motion was put on the Paper—not because it was put on the Paper, of course—very great progress has been made on the economic side. Committees have been set up between the Allies and are functioning on such matters as shipping, the allocation of raw materials, food and the assignment of munitions. I now see—and I am very glad to see—that it is proposed to bring together the responsible officials for the production of munitions, so that there shall be no overlapping there. I am sure that that will be of very great service to our cause, once it is in operation. On the economic side, therefore, I think that great and satisfactory progress has been made, but on the side of political warfare, which is recognized as of great importance at the present time, I do not think that the position is quite so good.
I should like to quote Mr. Casey, the latest member of the War Cabinet, who made a most interesting broadcast last Sunday, to which I expect your Lord-ships listened. Mr. Casey has just returned from the United States of America, after two years as Australian Minister at Washington, and he said that the British war effort is not fully appreciated in America. That is a terrible state of affairs. It shows that there is need for a joint Anglo-American campaign for the enlightenment of the American people. If Mr. Casey can say that, then obviously the American people need educating, and their education should be a joint effort by Britain and America.
Let me give some other examples. In France, as I know from a relative of mine who has just returned after living there
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for the whole period of the war, there is a good deal of hostility towards us because of the food shortage in France, which the French are told is due to the British blockade. The facts, of course, are entirely contrary to that. France was self-supporting in food, but has been stripped of her food by the Germans. However, our propaganda does not seem to get home to the French people. When I use the word "propaganda" I do not use it in the old sense of telling a pack of lies; in the long run propaganda is effective only if it deals solely and strictly with the truth. The need to tell the truth to the French people, however, is, I suggest, self-evident at the present time. We do our best, but we are not believed in France as the Americans would be believed in France. I believe that if the Americans backed up our efforts to tell the truth in France about the food situation their propaganda would be more readily accepted, for obvious reasons.
Turning now to the East, in many countries of great importance at the present time Soviet Russia has a great deal of influence. That is true of India; the Russians have a great deal of influence in India. Indian leaders have been interested in the great Russian revolution and its results, and Russian prestige is high. The Russians have great and powerful broadcasting stations scattered over Asia. What liaison, what team-work, is there between the Russian propagandists and the British propagandists? Let me put the matter quite bluntly to the noble Earl. To use the customary jargon, do we "plug" the same themes and policies on the wireless as the Russians do in Asia? We ought to do so. There is no reason why we should not do so; we are fighting in the same war and for the same ends.
Again, take political warfare aimed at disintegrating the German Home Front. I do not want to revive the most interesting debate which we had a short time ago in your Lordships' House, and I do not come down on either side for the purpose of this Motion; but do we and the Russions and the Americans and the Free French, to take four examples, sing the same tune? Do we "plug" the same policies? Is there an agreed policy between the Allies, apart from the necessarily vague Atlantic Charter—it had to be vague; I do not complain of that—

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with regard to the political and economic future of Europe? Have we an agreed policy as a counterblast to Hitler's so-called New Order, and in regard to the future of the German people after their military defeat and the destruction of the Nazi régime? If the tremendously powerful Russian propaganda machine, the growingly powerful American machine, and the Free French, who are most efficient and admirable in this field, if I may say so, and we ourselves are not all in step or in tune or in harmony, that may be harmful. A famous Conservative statesman once said, "Gentlemen, it docs not matter what we say, so long as we all say the same thing." I am not quite so cynical as that, but I do say that in propaganda, in political warfare, it is most necessary that the great Allies should be in harmony. Obviously, otherwise you make a present of the situation to Dr. Goebbels, who will be very quick to point out any difference.
I had no intention of allowing any note of criticism to creep into my presentation of this question. I do not intend to criticize at all, and I hope I have not given that impression. If there are faults I will not lay the blame on the British Government any more than on the other Governments. Inter-Allied co-operation is like marriage: it takes more than one party to bring it about and more than one party to make it a success; and if there are faults, the faults may lie with our other great Allies. Therefore, I have not proposed this Motion with the intention of attacking the Government at all—not that I ever do attack the Government. But I do suggest that it is highly important that your Lordships and the people should be satisfied that the best is being done to mobilize and marshal the great resources of this Alliance.
We have this advantage, that though our enemies, Germany and Italy, are contiguous, they are both physically separated from Japan by oceans which we continue to control and by hostile land spaces. There is no way except by most devious and underground and dangerous routes to get, for example, a Japanese Staff officer to Germany and vice versa. The only way they can really communicate is by radio, and I hope we break their codes. We have the advantage of being able to fly the First Sea Lord, and the Americans to fly General Marshall, across the Atlantic within twenty-four hours. That is a great
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advantage, and I hope it will be used to the utmost. It is really much easier for ourselves and the Russians and the United States and China and the other great Allies to work together as a team for that reason alone, than it is for the Axis Powers and Japan to do so. I hope that fact is appreciated, and I hope we shall take advantage of it. I beg to move.
THE MINISTER OF ECONOMIC WARFARE (THE EARL OF SELBOKNE): My Lords, I must thank the noble Lord for the notice that he gave of this very important but also very big subject that he has raised. The field covered by the terms of his Motion is truly immense. It stretches literally from China to Peru, and it concerns the organization of the twenty-six United Nations who are every one of them free and independent nations engaged in total war—a colossal problem, and it is impossible, I am afraid, to answer the noble Lord in a very short space of time or without going into a certain amount of detail. I will, however, try to be as short as I can. It is also impossible to give a simple picture, because the problem is so complicated that a certain amount of complication is necessary to the machinery. The noble Lord said just now that Inter-Allied co-operation was like a marriage, that it required two to make it and to make it a success. But whatever the problems of marriage are, I think the problems of polygamy must be even more serious, and this is a case of a marriage of twenty-six free nations scattered in every part of the world.
The noble Lord dealt first with strategical issues. I do not propose to go into our own strategical organization, because your Lordships have debated that on several occasions already, and there has been published to-day as a White Paper, which is no doubt in your Lordships' hands, a chart of the Chiefs of Staffs organization and the Planning Organization. The noble Lord asked me particularly about the machinery at Washington. He asked particularly whether he was right in supposing that the Combined Staffs in Washington dealt with the war in the Far East, and he wanted to know what the corresponding organization to deal with the war in the West was. The noble Lord is entirely in error in that supposition. The Combined Staffs in Washington deal with the whole war. You

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cannot consider or plan or arrange for the war in watertight compartments. This is a world war. It can only be considered as a world war and dealt with as a world war, and it is the Combined Staffs in Washington who have the primary task of co-ordinating the efforts of the twenty-six United Nations in the world war.
The organization of the Combined Staffs in Washington is very similar to that of the Staffs in London as shown in the chart in the White Paper that was published to-day; that is to say, that you have the Chiefs of Staffs Committee, the Vice-Chiefs of Staffs Committee, the Joint Planning Staff with its Strategical Planning Section, its Executive Planning Section, its Future Operational Planning Section and its Intelligence Section. All that is to be found in Washington and, sitting alongside their American colleagues are representatives of all the three Services from this country. As the noble Lord knows, Field-Marshal Sir John Dill is there; there are Admirals of the highest rank in Washington, there are Air-Marshals, and there is the whole hierarchy of planners and intelligence officers. All that is reflected in British as well as in American personnel, in Washington as well as in London. That liaison is as close as the facts of geography make it possible.
The noble Lord then asks why, if your liaison is really efficient, is it necessary for General Marshall to come over to London for a visit or for the First Sea Lord to go to Washington. These visits are constantly taking place, and the more often they take place in one sense the better. We must recognize that a planning organization in Washington cannot be in as close touch with the situation in England as an organization in London. In the same way the organization in London cannot be equally close to the situation in America as the organization in Washington. When you are dealing with a total war you are not merely planning the movements of Armies and Navies and Air Forces, but the whole of the sinews of war, the whole of the production problems, the whole of the man-power problems, the whole of the transport problems—every one of these has to be dealt with by the Government concerned. Therefore the Home Front in America or the Home Front in England is, in a sense, as important as, and sometimes even more important
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than, the fronts where the enemy is fighting. Therefore it is impossible to transport any Government completely from England to America, just as it would be impossible to pick up Great Britain and dump it alongside Maryland.
The whole machinery of government is integrated with the country it governs. If you take it away from that country, it at once loses a certain amount of its efficiency. The only way you can remedy that is by personal touch between the really key-men at the top. If the noble Lord has had to do any business I am sure he has found that he saves correspondence and time by taking a car and going to see the person with whom he is doing the business. So you cannot get away—and there is no reason why you should get away—from these personal visits. They are highly desirable in every sense of the term. The noble Lord will remember that in the last war, when we had a very close association with our French Allies, personal visits by French Ministers and officers to London, and by English Ministers and officers to Paris, were frequent. Owing to the advance of science Washington is to-day very little farther off from London than Paris was in the last war. We might almost say, with the French King who said, "There are now no Pyrenees," "There is now no Atlantic Ocean." It is therefore not only desirable but feasible that these visits should take place.
LORD STRABOLGI: Before the noble Earl leaves this very important matter of the Staffs at Washington, he has only mentioned the American and the British, but he says they deal with the affairs of twenty-six nations. Are the other nations represented?
THE EARL OF SELBORNE: If the noble Lord will allow me to take the countries in the order of my speech, it will tend towards its clarity. He also touched on the Pacific War Council, which sits in Washington and in London, and he asked some interesting questions about that body. The Pacific War Council is not an executive body. The people who take the decisions in regard to the war are the twenty-six United Nations. Ultimately the decision must be taken by each nation, because they are all free nations. No nation coerces another nation in the sense that Germany is coercing Hungary or, let us say, Italy.

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The advice is given by the Chiefs of Staff Committee, which it is for the Governments to follow. The Pacific War Council does not decide strategy. It does not give advice to Governments, it is rather an organ, and only one organ, of the Governments concerned in the Pacific war for making known their wishes, their suggestions, their ideas, and their offers to the Chiefs of Staff Committee. The co-ordination of the Governments is the function of the Pacific War Council rather than the function of the Chiefs of Staff, who decide strategical questions on purely strategical considerations.
The Pacific War Council consists of Great Britain, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, India, China, and the Netherlands and it sits both in Washington and in London. The reason for that is that, although it is the Combined Staff in Washington which is primarily responsible for co-ordinating the Allied effort, a part of the Allied effort may have to be carried out in England, part of it may have to be carried out in America, dependent entirely on the nature of the particular decision. Therefore it is desirable that the Pacific War Council should be duplicated in the same way as the Chiefs of Staff Committee is duplicated, because, although we have twenty-six United Nations in the war effort, as far as sea war is concerned, and as far as a very large part of the earth is concerned, England and America are like the two wheels of a vehicle. Allied strategy rests principally on these two wheels.
When I come to Russia, to which the noble Lord alluded particularly, your Lordships will observe that the situation in regard to Russia is totally different from that of England and America. The Russian Army is fighting with immense gallantry the greatest battle of history, but the Russian Navy is playing a comparatively minor part. There is no need for a Combined Staff in Moscow because the Russians do not require either British or American advice as to how to conduct their own campaign. What we have got, however, is a Three-Service British Mission in Russia, where there is also an American Mission, and there are Russian Missions in London and in Washington. By this means the closest liaison is kept between the Governments concerned, and there is a complete interchange of views
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and conversations on all strategical questions which it is necessary for the countries to discuss. But the Russian campaign by itself is quite different from the sort of campaigns in which England and America have to collaborate so freely. The noble Lord mentioned the question of an invasion of Europe by Great Britain and America. That is certainly the sort of project that would be discussed between the respective Governments because that would be a strategic move that would affect the Eastern Front. The machinery that exists is perfectly adequate for the discussion of great questions like that.
When we turn to China, there again we have a Front which was a Front long before England or America were involved in the war. The Chinese have been fighting the Japanese for over four years, and the whole machinery for conducting that war from the Chinese side exists in China. But China is a member of the Pacific War Council, and through that channel, as well as through other channels, she can make representations as to the assistance that she requires from Great Britain and America. We have, again, a British Mission at Chungking, and there is a United States Mission also there, so that the closest liaison is possible.
The situation, therefore, is really this, that there is a collaboration between England and America such as, I suppose, has never been seen between two countries before. England and America strategically are working as Great Britain and the rest of the British Empire are working together. They are working almost as if they were of the same country and belonged to the same Commonwealth of Nations. But Russia and China are countries which, strategically, are somewhat separate, though this is a world war, and you cannot put any field into a watertight compartment. In respect to Russia and China, so far the liaison machinery that exists has been found to be adequate. If events prove that it is inadequate, or if there are signs that it requires development, the statesmen concerned will not be slow to make modifications. These things grow as the situation develops and it is the part of statesmanship to try to anticipate situations that arc likely to occur, and to provide the machinery before instead of afterwards. It is the fault of geography that the machinery may well be complicated. The idea which some people apparently

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have that the way to co-ordinate this war is for Mr. Churchill, President Roosevelt, Stalin and General Chiang Kai-shek to sit around a table at some central place (which would presumably be the North Pole) and conduct the war from that spot, is not a feasible one.
The noble Lord also touched on the question of production. I need not go into that in any great detail, because it was dealt with exhaustively by the Minister of Production in another place as recently as March 24. He then explained how a General Staff on Production had been set up—the Joint War Staff on Production and the Joint War Production Planning Section—and how that Staff was in touch with the Services at every point so that there was harmony in planning and production of the weapons that the Armies required. In America a most elaborate machinery has been set up very much on the same model as the military organization that I described a few moments ago—that is to say, there are the opposite numbers on each side of the Atlantic of the corresponding bodies, and they all have their representatives in the other country, so that there is a complete duplication of machinery. This must necessarily exist in both countries, because the factories are both in America and Great Britain. The production organization has to be in both countries but it is clamped together, in the Prime Minister's phrase, as far as it is humanly possible to do so. So far the machinery is working well.
Your Lordships will recognize that the whole problem of war production has been revolutionized by the entry of America into the war. Previous to that event it was possible for the Allied Nations in the first place to obtain anything that they could not produce themselves and which they could afford to pay for from America, and later to get it through the Lease and Lend Act of the American people. Now America herself has entered as a great competitor into the field, and the demands for all the raw materials and the finished products that are required for waging war are vastly greater than they were. Therefore the most complete co-ordination, and the most careful adjustment between the planning and production on both sides of the Atlantic—and indeed in Australasia,
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where very considerable productive power exists—is, as your Lordships will realize, absolutely necessary.
I apologize for the length of time for which I am speaking, but I now come to the economic sphere of which the noble Lord spoke, and which is included in his Motion. I am thankful to say that I am here able to speak about my own Department. I have come fresh to the Department and have no responsibility for the good work which has been done there in the past; therefore I am able to say how enormously impressed I am with the thoroughness and efficiency which I find there, and with the way in which the very difficult task allotted to the Ministry of Economic Warfare has been carried out by the great staff assembled there. I remember when I went to the Post Office in a political capacity some fifteen years ago I was not at all impressed with its efficiency. I know it has all been changed now, owing to the good work of my right honourable friend the present Chancellor of the Exchequer when he was Postmaster-General. I can assure your Lordships that I was immensely impressed by the machinery there is at the Ministry of Economic Warfare for collecting information about the enemy and for applying the blockade.
The functions of the Ministry of Economic Warfare are to advise other Departments on a whole multitude of subjects, such as bombing targets for the Chiefs of Staff Committee, and to apply the blockade in all its rigours, to engage in pre-emption—that is to say, to buy all materials which we may not necessarily require ourselves but which might possibly be of use to the enemy—to arrange quotas for neutrals, to prevent not only enemy imports but enemy exports, to apply financial pressure to the enemy, and to control the entire shipping of the world through ship warrants. All that is the work of the Ministry of Economic Warfare, and in all that work we have the closest collaboration with the American Government. American officers are sitting in my Department here, and British officers are sitting on the United States Board of Economic Warfare in Washington. We have our Black List Committee in London on which there is a United States representative. We have our Pre-emption Committee on which there are United States representatives. The Blockade Committee sits in three sections,

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every one of those sections has an American representative, and there is an Allied Trade Section in which all our other Allies have opportunities of consulting us or making representations to us.
As I think your Lordships are aware, one of the chief instruments of the blockade has been the navicert system under which no ship was allowed to sail without a certificate from a British consul that there was no objection to that ship sailing. Navicerts have been abolished in America, since America came into the war, and are now replaced by export licences. That I think is an index of the way in which the blockade is being worked by America from her end in exactly the same way as we are working it at our end. I do not think it would be possible to have more complete collaboration between two Departments than that which exists between the British Ministry of Economic Warfare and the American Board of Economic Warfare. In regard to pre-emption, for instance—the buying of materials to prevent the enemy getting them—America is coming very much to our help in the task we have shouldered in the past, and pre-emption arrangements are carried out in the closest collaboration between the two nations by the machinery of these two departments.
The noble Lord also asked for information about political warfare and propaganda and as to the liaison and co-ordinating machinery between the Allies in that respect. He asked me pointedly whether the propaganda from Russia, for instance, in regard to Asiatic affairs, or let us say Indian affairs, was in line with British propaganda. I can assure him that it is. Of course nobody will expect to get exactly the same type of propaganda from Great Britain as from Russia. Propaganda in our view consists in telling the enemy the facts as one sees them. Naturally we see certain facts from a certain angle; other countries would see them from a different angle. Propaganda, if it is to be effective at all, must be absolutely genuine. If propaganda was identical I think it would be just about as effective as the sort of circular letter which Members of Parliament frequently get when they receive fifty or sixty letters all couched in identical terms. That is the sort of propaganda that cuts very little ice indeed, and I think if a German listened to a British broadcast and found
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it was merely a translation of a Russian broadcast he had been listening to half an hour previously it would produce the same sort of effect on him as a circular letter produces on a Member of Parliament. The essential thing, as the noble Lord said in his speech, is to tell the truth; to tell the facts as we see them. If you stick to that rule the task of propaganda is very greatly simplified.
There is as close liaison as we can have between the various countries. The Ministry of Information has a Mission in Russia; there is a Russian Mission here. The American Director-General of the Ministry of Information is, at the present moment, in Washington—another of those visits to which I was alluding just now. Of course, the propaganda Great Britain is conducting is all within the four corners of the Atlantic Charter. It consists, as I have said, in telling the truth and in explaining British policy within the four corners of the Atlantic Charter. And I can tell your Lordships this, that if the enemy have a high-powered station free at any moment which they can use for jamming they invariably select British stations to jam. We regard that as a very high compliment. There is, I repeat, as close a liaison with regard to propaganda as it is possible to have. We relay a great deal of American propaganda to France and to Germany. The noble Lord seemed to think that the French did not listen to our broadcasts, or if they did listen that they did not believe them. We have reason to know that they do listen, and we hope that they believe us; but we also relay American broadcasts to France and to Germany as well. Any new suggestion for collaboration is considered at once, and we are always glad to do anything we can to make the existing machinery more effective. I cannot give an answer this afternoon to the noble Lord's question about British propaganda in America, but I will convey his recommendation to the Minister of Information. I quite agree that there should be no possibility of misunderstanding between the Democracies of Great Britain and of America in regard to our policy or our war effort.
I have made, I am afraid, a very long and rather disjointed speech, but the noble Lord's questions covered a wide field. While the organization that we have at the present moment is elaborate and intricate, it is, I believe, as simple as I could be made and on the whole it works

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well. I have no doubt that as circumstances require it will be modified. A living organization is always capable of modification and is always growing. So soon as any improvement is seen to be necessary in any part of the machinery, we shall not hesitate to make it.
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, I wish to ask the Minister of Economic Warfare a question and, if your Lordships will permit a personal reference to my association with him in former times in another place, I should like to be allowed to say that it is with great pleasure I have listened to him this afternoon. If he will permit me, I should like to felicitate him on the very complete way in which he replied to the questions that have been asked. We are indebted to the noble Lord who brought forward the subject and therefore provided the occasion for the speech we have just heard which covered the field so well. It is my intention merely to draw attention to one passage in my noble friend's speech which I think might be amplified. If I correctly understood him, my noble friend, when dealing with the point regarding combined action between the united nations replied, very properly of course, that the Governments of those countries, being free countries, were necessarily the bodies who ultimately would take decisions. I do not think my noble friend's intention in putting the question was to draw that type of reply. Therefore I suggest that my noble friend might take the opportunity, in winding up, of clarifying the matter, if that be necessary. But he gave the impression that action by Commanders would be subject to ratification by Governments. It was only very recently that we saw a report in the Press of an announcement by the Prime Minister of Australia, speaking with the full authority of the Government, that all decisions on strategy and operations were expressly delegated to General MacArthur who was to command the operations in the South-West Pacific area.
THE EARL OF SELBORNE: That was an announcement by the Australian Government.
LORD BARNBY: I emphasize that the Prime Minister of Australia, speaking for himself and the whole Government, delegated to the Commander in the field complete and, as I understand it, final authority.
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My intention was merely to be helpful. I did not know whether the noble Earl might care to revise words which, if I have understood them correctly, might cause uneasiness. I mean the suggestion that decisions were going to be impaired and slowed down by reference to Governments. In the field over which we are operating that would be extremely difficult. The noble Earl, in passing from the subject of combined strategy to the Department over which he particularly presides, spoke with confidence and fluency. He covered the ground very rapidly, and, with a broad brush, sketched a full picture. It was very helpful. While indebted to him for what he told us, I was a little disappointed that he did not include some reference to the activities of the recently appointed Minister of Production. Those of your Lordships who have listened to his statement, or have read it, will know that the Minister of Production expressly defined his activities as dovetailing into the combined operational scheme. Inasmuch as my noble friend has so recently taken over the Ministry of Economic Warfare, and Sir Frederick Leith-Ross has been transferred to the Board of Trade, it would seem that a renewed delimitation of functions is going on.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, I am very much obliged to the noble Earl for his reply, and to my noble friend Lord Barnby for his comments. I think that the noble Earl painted a very good picture altogether. I am only going to make one suggestion to him, and that is in connexion with economic warfare, if I may be allowed to do so. When he dealt with his own Department I thought—if he will forgive me for saying so—that he dwelt too much on Anglo-American co-operation and not enough on co-operation with other countries. Take the case of Russia—I am speaking of the working of the noble Earl's Department, of the blockade, of rationing neutrals, of pre-emption and so on. Russia has trading contact with Japan and also with Persia and Turkey. That means that unless there is close collaboration between my noble friend's Department, and of course the Americans, and the corresponding Department in Russia—I presume that there is a Commissar for Economic Warfare in Moscow corresponding to my noble friend in London—there would be a danger, I suppose, quite unwittingly, of goods we are

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intercepting at sea going to Turkey and Persia, and then to Italy or Germany. It would be very desirable that this should be stopped. I do not know how close the collaboration is, but I got the impression from the noble Earl's speech that it was mostly Anglo-American collaboration. I suggest that this is a matter that should be looked into.
I am grateful to the noble Earl for giving that information about the Combined Chiefs of Staff Committee in Washington. They are advising, I understand, on the whole war all over the world. I did not know that, and it is rather surprising to me. I feel a doubt, and I am going to consult my noble friends on this matter. As a result of the change of Government in Vichy you may have all sorts of happenings in Europe. Now the expression of opinion by General Sikorski, the Polish Commander-in-Chief—I am sure the noble Earl must have seen that reference—as to the need for the creation of an Allied General Staff to direct operations on the European Front suggests a course that may be very necessary. I am not sure that you could run two or three European Fronts from Washington. I do not know, of course; it is a matter for those with more experience than I have. But I want to put in a caveat at once. If the European Front blows up, if I may use that expression, as I hope it will, in the near future, I do not think the campaign can be properly managed from Washington. But, as I say, I do not know; it is a matter for other and more experienced heads than mine. My noble friends may have to return to that question later. I am very grateful to the noble Earl for the very careful attention which he gave to the questions which I ventured to put to put to him. I am sure your Lordships will agree that he made a most interesting statement on a most complicated and difficult subject.

ARMY AND AIR FORCE (ANNUAL) BILL.
House in Committee (according to Order): Bill reported without amendment.
NATIONAL LOANS BILL.
Brought from the Commons; and read 1a.
PUBLIC ACCOUNTS.
Message from the Commons for leave for the Earl of Drogheda to attend to be examined as a witness before the Committee of that House. Leave given for his Lordship to attend, if he think fit; and a Message ordered to be sent to the Commons to acquaint them therewith.