INTERNATIONAL CO-OPERATION.

HL Deb 14 December 1943 vol 130 cc293-316

THE EARL OF DARNLEY had the following Notice on the Paper: To call the attention of His Majesty's Government to the fact that the idea of preventing a repetition of the present world calamity by a system of universal co-operation instead of power politics, is rapidly gaining ground in the Press and Parliaments of various countries including America, and to urge them to take a lead in the formation of world-wide machinery for this end; and to move for Papers.

The noble Earl said: My Lords, wartime is a time when the finding of scapegoats becomes a prevalent pastime. Your Lordships will have seen the culpability for the war ascribed to many sources all over the world, by different minds in different parts of the world. It has been ascribed to Germany, to Japan, to Italy, to ourselves, to France, to Russia, to the United States of America, to the plutocrats, to the haves, to the have-nots, possibly to Fascists, to Jews, to vested interests, and even the wretched and impoverished landlords have been, I believe, landed with the responsibility. If one starts on a new line, as I try to do, one runs the risk of having the burden put on one's own shoulders. But nevertheless I come before you again, as I said I would, in order to try to dig deeper than is usually done into the causes of this war, in the endeavour to find some scapegoat that is consistent and that is maintainable, and therefore properly punishable. I believe, as I said before, that this accusation can only be truthfully directed against one culprit only, that is the use of intolerant force over long ages of the past in international problems and in using it as a threat, and this idea is rapidly gaining ground in the voices and opinions of the world. If this culprit and scapegoat can be properly caged, and therefore punished, there is really a chance of achieving at last real peace and real freedom. And if it is going to be punished then it has got to have punishment in exact ratio to the horrors and excesses now practised by the current aggressors.

I must confess that the first time I brought this Motion to your notice it got badly stuck in what I might politely but truthfully call the Cecilian Channel, but I still believe that my ship is seaworthy. Although I am afraid I detained your Lordships over long last time, I am going to have another try to put it through, at less length but with equal lack of hostility and equal respect. The first obstacle I met with was the noble Viscount, Lord Cecil, who I am sorry to say is not here to-day, although I have given him notice of what I am going to say. He said I should not be content with vague and general remedies; but if you are going to propose some new process you have first of all to have a principle behind it, and the principle has to have some general form. But I venture to say all the same that possibly the greatest truth lies in the simple things rather than in the voluminous tomes that are now written in order to try to prove various aspects of it.

The principle that I tried to produce to your Lordships was that men's actions are best controlled by getting at their minds, and that you can cause them to act rightly when you can get them to think rightly, and without revenge and without resentment. I believe you can see the truth of this in the long ages of history. History consists largely of wars, but it also consists largely of excuses and justifications. Everybody was always right in everything he did, pages were written and spoken about it. The result is that there has been a long saga of wars and excuses, and this has got now to such a scale that the whole of civilization is threatened. The new method I propose is to remove these causes by the joint action of all possible combatants and competitors, and there is nothing vague or general about that. It is only the law of cause and effect in operation, and, if I may say so, of all religions and philosophies, and if they are untrue it is no good our talking further. The noble Viscount was content apparently to call the aggressions of Germany, Italy and Japan political conceptions. Surely that is vague and general to a degree, and it completely denies the law of cause and effect. Just as there has never been a case of a physical conception without at least two causes, so there cannot possibly be a political conception without any cause, as he suggests.

Although the noble Viscount may deny the truth in the excuses and justifications he has heard blared out at him for the last twenty years from the various reactionaries, he must at any rate agree that the people themselves believe in these causes to a man. It is no good considering, for purposes of getting at the truth, that the inhabitants of other countries, if they number one hundred millions or two hundred millions, are all criminals and liars. I suggest that these causes are the same usual old strain. There is first of all defeat, then destitution, then there is the precedent of force for recovery, power politics, political jugglery, secret treaties, and unknown, therefore unsolved, disabilities. Last, but by no means least, there is the Phoenix-like rise of dictators and Fascists from the ashes of revolutions and disruptions. These are the same old causes that have continued in dreary and desolate procession ever since history began. It is a certainty that, bad as they have been in the past, they will get worse unless they are annulled. Therefore, however deep the roots, and however long-planted, they have to be dug out this time if real peace and freedom are to be obtained.

The positive idea of the noble Viscount was a new force group composed of the nations that are now in alliance with this country. I suggest that that is only another variety of power politics, and power politics will not do two things. It will not keep upstarts down, and it will not keep allies together. I suggest for your Lordships' consideration that there are two fallacies about power politics. The first is that in any group of independent units like nations the independent forces will not acknowledge the jurisdiction or rule of any other group. It may be that some of them are better— possibly they are; we believe they are— but no power on earth is ever going to make the others believe it. I wrote to an illustrious member of your Lordships' House and asked him to support me in this debate, but he said he could not do so because he believed there should be law between nations and force to support it. Is it not true that you cannot have law between nations—that is to say, you can have it, but you cannot enforce it. In war-time there is International Law, but it can only be supported by your adversary if he has the will to do it. In the same way, in peace-time, you cannot depend on any other nation agreeing to International Law because nations tear it up in the same way as they do treaties. There is no law between them because they acknowledge no judge, they acknowledge no jury, they acknowledge no executive. So what it amounts to is that there are two alternatives. You have either to get agreement with everyone concerned in these questions, or you must have war. As the standard set for every nation is its own pre-eminence, its own existence and survival at any cost, so they will break these regulations from the usual argument of necessity as they have done in this war between allies, between enemies, and also over and above neutrals. All that happens in the end is that by trying to impose laws you merely create hatred and rebellion and other claustrophobian symptoms. There is no possibility of by-passing that argument. If you get peace, it is the peace of the caged tiger, and that is useless.

The other fallacy is that it will keep allies together. Allies are also inflicted with this supreme independence, and they will not stand this forced fusion. They have not got any natural affection for each other, and they only make alliances for opportunist reasons. If they keep force in the one hand to deal with their enemies, they will also keep it in the other hand to deal with their friends, if they find some occasion when their national integrity is violated or threatened, or possibly if they find that the liabilities they have incurred through their alliances are unfulfillable. So they will leave these groups just as Japan and Italy left this group at the end of the last war, and in the same way as other nations filtered out of the League of Nations. Their peace and prosperity depend on similar conditions obtaining in their neighbours, and if they can get that into their heads, nations may combine to this extent. Until this is done, war will continue and will get worse, so it is imperative that there should be some combination of this kind.

Force is not everything in this sense. You cannot measure the power of nations by men, guns, tanks and ships. There are also other factors to be taken into consideration such as science and malicious invention. It may be that that is under consideration now. Only at lunch today I heard about some ghastly rocket with enormous power that is going to be used for destruction. If this continues you are going to have science coming in and creating something which, with a small amount of expenditure, will destroy a whole nation before the answer can be found. Even in this war and the last war, I am assured on the highest authority, this country has been in great danger on at least two occasions from submarines, and these represent only a few ships and a few men. So in future, un- less these hostile feelings are annulled, this is the kind of thing that may happen. Force cannot be in the numbers of men alone. You have to argue backwards in this question. It is always supposed you have to protect the weak from the strong, and so you have, but you have also to protect, sometimes, the strong from the weak. At the end of the war the people that have to be defended are the winners or the strong from the future aggressions and attacks of those who are then weak and defeated. Similarly your Lordships will doubtless have seen in the German communiqués, when they have suffered a defeat or have been pushed back, that they often describe it as a success or victory, and you have probably derided these accounts accordingly. But they are not so false as they seem, and, if false, it is only in question of time because any defeat or retreat produces predilections and desire for greater aggression in the future. In that way it is true to say that the German victories over the Russians in 1916 and 1942 were much more in the nature of defeats than they appeared at the time.

The last reason why force is useless Is that you cannot chain nations. After a few years, peaceful conditions are apparently restored and the restrictions are relaxed by new Governments who did not take part in the original chaining or who have forgotten. But even under a smiling exterior the desire for revenge will persist, and it will break out one day even if it takes one hundred years. I believe that the only possibility of having real peace and freedom is to dig right down to the source, and remove by the last hidden and hardly discovered roots any possible cause which could make any nation aggressive. You cannot do it by punishment, dismemberment, or disarmament. That is a hard saying in these times with our view fixed on the horrible things that have been done by the current aggressors, but it is true all the same. The noble Lord, Lord Vansittart, may write hundreds of books to prove the permanent aggressiveness of the Germans, but that does not bring permanent peace any nearer.

We all heard his speech in your Lordships' House the other day and we all sympathized with the victims. We all condemn, with him, the horrible deeds we heard of, but there was nothing in the nature of preventive cure about what he said, nothing about the original and true problem. Of course criminals have got to be punished but what wants bringing to trial is the original cause—the use of intolerant forces for generations past; and the worse the horrors it produces the more need there is for exterminating it, and the more hope for a more solid world to be erected. I wish the noble Lord and, if I may say so, the most reverend Prelate who succeeded him, had given more of their eloquence to that aspect of the matter.

In talking of treatment for guilt, the following letter taken from The Times might suggest something, so I will read it without comment. It is called "The Rehabilitated Burglar":

"Sir,—As reported in The Times to-day, Mr. Tomlinson, in his speech moving the Second Reading of the Disabled Prisoners (Employment) Bill, gave as 'a humorous illustration' the story of a rehabilitated burglar. Mr. Turton subsequently used the same illustration to criticize the universal application of the provisions of the Bill. In view of these facts, it may be of some interest to your readers to hear the subsequent history of this burglar. 'When alternative employment was suggested to him by the surgeon, he said that if he had a capital of £10 he could start up in business. The surgeon lent him the £10, and for some months heard no more of his patient. One Monday morning a dirty pound note arrived at his house without any covering letter; the following Monday morning a second note, and on the third Monday eight pound notes arrived. No more was heard for eighteen months, when the man arrived at the surgeon's house in Harley Street, and insisted upon seeing him; he had come to offer his thanks in the best possible way by showing the surgeon the final results of his handiwork. Both were affected at the interview, and when the surgeon waved good-bye to his friend, the successful business man and ex-burglar, he watched him driven away by his own chauffeur in his own limousine, fully rehabilitated both physically and morally.

I am, yours, etc.,

THE BURGLAR'S SURGEON."

I think the responsibilities of the Governments of the future towards criminals and towards nations should be on similar preventive lines.

I believe that the only way of fulfilling that obligation is to do away with the old order of intolerance and found a new order of complete and comprehensive co-operation between all nations with the kind of mechanism on which the noble Viscount, Lord Cecil, who I am glad to see in his place, is such an expert, and, which may in time produce security in the future. Then, if any upstart again arises and tries to make trouble, he will be laughed at and strangled at birth, not by the rest of the world but by his own nationals. The noble Viscount said last time, he will remember, that nobody would know what was meant if you talked about burying the Old Order. I believe everybody in this wretched tormented world would know what was meant and most of them would rush up with their spades at the ready if only someone would give them a lead. The only place where one might be misunderstood would be in the fishmonger's shop.

Having made what I hope is a respectful and polite attempt to get past Scylla, may I now try an equally respectful push to get past Charybdis, if the noble Viscount, Lord Cranborne, will allow me to refer to him in that way? His chief objection to my speech last time was that if you had co-operation without force it would lead to anarchy, to the strong grabbing from the rich. I suppose he will not mind my saying so, but it could not lead to greater anarchy than exists at the present moment, anarchy not only of deed but also of thought. He quoted the story of Ahab and Naboth's vineyard as an example. I have looked up this story again and I see that Ahab anyhow was much more polite in his demands on Naboth than a modern requisition form, for he offered to exchange the land and he offered to buy it. It was not he who had arranged for Naboth's death but Jezebel, his wife. Of course it is wrong to kill a man in order to get his land, but I believe the noble Viscount has hit the nail on the head in quoting this affair. If a modern ruler wanted a piece of land near his house surely the owner of the land would sell it to him. I venture to suggest it would have been a good gesture on Naboth's part if he had done so too. As nations are notoriously bad distributors of their surpluses in land, materials and food, other nations will take murderous steps, or what is politely called go to war, to get them. If every nation had sufficient land on which to grow their food, to work in peace and plenty, and to grow wine to make glad the heart of man, there would be fewer wars of aggression.

There was a debate recently in your Lordships' House on densities of population, but I think it only referred to the British Empire, so I had a look at my atlas in order to find out the densities of population in the world. What I found is interesting reading. Those countries which are over 250 to the square mile, including India, Japan, part of China, Italy and a very small corner in the north-west part of England and most of Belgium, Holland and Germany, include all the aggressors. On the other side those that live at the ratio of between one and ten to the square mile include Africa, the whole of the western side of the United States of America, East Russia, the whole of Australia and the East Indies and those are all on the other side. I must say that the noble Viscount, Lord Cranborne, does not give me much credit as an anarchist. If anyone wanted to act anarchistically, he is not likely to do it in the full publicity of your Lordships' House, although someone, a good many years ago on the 5th November, was trying so to act beneath it.

Of course it is not possible to abolish force altogether or to reduce the world's armaments to a few kites, punts or popguns. What has to be got rid of is the belief that force can be used efficiently to stop aggression or be used as a threat to stop it. I believe that it has failed now for so long that it can be honestly acknowledged that you want to form the opposite of competition—namely, cooperation; that you want to form some co-operative body so honestly formed and so honestly supported that everybody would, perforce, have to use it. You would not expect me, an ordinary labourer, to give an opinion on the machinery either to form or maintain this body in a House so full of skilled mechanics, but it seems to me that, as there is a building by the side of a lake which is now empty, that could be used now, and there is plenty of machinery available seeing that every day some new machinery is formed to deal with the various kinds of debris now being scattered about. The noble Viscount was afraid such an organization would be abused, that it would be used for the strong grabbing from the weak, and for exploiting fancied grievances. In the old days it was the fashion to grab land from savages, but that is now out of date. Most of the claims nations have upon each other are in the nature of reversals of previous thefts and war plunderings or possibly harsh terms enforced through defeat in war. Whether they deserved them or did not, the claimants, to a man, believe them to be fully justified. Of course national claims must conflict, but surely claims which arose peacefully could be settled in peace once this international organization acquired stability and credit for the fact that it functioned honestly and wholeheartedly.

There is another matter. Nobody is going to go to war to get a thing if he believes he can get it through some organization that is far cheaper, because it is not in human nature to spend a shilling when a penny will do. It is still the fact that all effects must equal their causes. I believe that the assumption of superiority by any group of nations for the purpose of imposing peace by force on another group does not contain any germ of peace any more than the demand for unconditional surrender or the threat to reduce empires as a punishment will do, although that may be necessary for the purpose of winning a war. I submit to your Lordships' judgment that all nations ought to be treated like counters on a board, one side black and the other side white, and the game of peace is won when the united action of the players enables them to lay all the counters on the table white side upwards. Your Lordships may consider it fanciful but I think there is an analogy in music. In war-time the music of all nations, whether friends or enemies, is broadcast all over the world and equally enjoyed, but for some reason which seems to me to be slightly tinged with hypocrisy if the music is vocal the words are altered to the hearers' own language. Does not that show that the harmony is all there and that it could be made to sound all through the world again, but on one condition, that it must have the author's and composer's own words?

Such conditions as I am speaking of can only be obtained if there is some organization which will apportion land and guarantee trade space, and all the things that nations really need much in the same way as the Government are doing now by control, organization and planning, and have done for many ages in the past by taxation. Even if there were in existence a group of nations superior over the others, is not its working in international affairs a matter of grave doubt? I wonder if the noble Viscount has ever envisaged the working of such an international force. Let us say that fifty years hence when most of the actors now on the stage will have made their exit, the Governor of Northern Ireland pays a visit to Eire, and in Dublin he is assassinated and demands for redress are made and refused. If an armed force goes in to exact retribution and the international force does its duty, I suppose the cities of England and Eire and Northern Ireland will be laid waste because the modern way of stopping war is to destroy the other country's supplies. No expedition to distant countries or to neighbouring countries to put down revolution would be possible because those expeditionary forces would be all sunk en route. There could not be another Boer War. No nation is going to stand such interference with what it thinks its legal rights by an international force. What is more likely is that the international force would split up into parts. I submit that this international force is a farce. It is of course a difficult problem, and if I seem to have suggested otherwise you must put it down to lack of forensic ability. But the problem is a straight one.

Is not this a true picture of how all wars have originated through history? I put it forward for your Lordships' consideration. In the beginning all nations started by playing the primitive and childish games of "animal-grab" and "king of the castle." Thus they divided the world into kingdoms and empires and carved out mottoes and composed anthems to sanctify and isolate them. Later on they thought they would go a bit higher and so they began to talk about perfect peace and freedom. But although they were so minded, they still kept force in one hand fortified and protected by fear and jealousy. So we see at different times throughout history that villains have arrived on the scene, and things have now got to such a pitch that the whole world has to be upset to get rid of them. Not only that but misery and destitution have to invade every human home because of them. That is putting it mildly. There are two ways of looking at these villains. One is that they are spontaneously and naturally evil together with their nationals. The other is that they are driven by some cause unseen and unrealized by their adversaries. They cannot be both. It is impossible for both to be true. They cannot be both good and bad. How are you to reconcile the Germany of Luther and the Germany of Hitler, the Italy of Garibaldi and the Italy of Mussolini, the Spain of Franco and the Spain of the plundering Philips, or the Japan which was guarding the Pacific for us thirty years ago and the Japan of to-day? You cannot. They cannot both be good and bad.

The only conclusion you can rightly come to is that all these nations are victims of some system, that they take their cues and become violent according to its directions. In every war since history began there has been, according to the records made by the nations concerned, two villains comparable to Hitler, two sets of atrocities and two Lord Vansittarts to tell the nations about them. This is not to say that the Nazis and their allies have not behaved villainously. Of course they have. There is no Parliamentary word to describe that. The only answer is that intolerant force and villainy will continue until there is universal co-operation. Once more I repeat that the new international force is only a variety of the old power politics and can only lead to what power politics did in 1914. In that year Europe was divided into two groups supposed to be strong enough to hold each other down, but they only proved to be two heaps of gunpowder which the small spark at Serajevo set alight, and the thirty years of muddle, misery, and death that have happened since all trace back to that faulty idea, and its faulty predecessors. And I believe that a new force group will eventually turn out a vicious and true descendant.

There must be something new, and guaranteed and water-tight this time. There cannot and must not be another world war. There must be no repetition of the wholesale massacres of gallant fighting men and civilians, and destruction of art treasures; no subsequent results in despair, bitterness, revenge, poverty and famine, anarchy and disease, and last, but by no means least, in aggressive dictators. There must be improvements in the conditions of the ordinary common or garden men, women and children. I have listened to many debates in your Lordships' House on planning for this purpose, but you cannot make bricks without straw—perhaps a more appropriate adage would be that you cannot put new wine into old bottles. I say that if the ex-Servicemen are now to have a guarantee that they are going to get homes, food and work, there has got to be some undertaking that there will be a reasonable method of ensuring that funds will be gradually accumulated to pay for their construction and maintenance, and that those homes will not be destroyed again in a generation.

In a debate in your Lordships' House the other day, Lord Snell, who was replying for the Government, described the difficulties of initiating great reforms at the present moment. He said that those who start out on a journey in a fog very frequently return to the place from which they started. I think, that we can quite accurately describe the present state of affairs as fog, the darkest, wettest, most miserable and heaviest fog that has ever strangled humanity. Unfortunately, Lord Woolton who comes to the task of reconstruction fresh from his triumphs as champion caterer of the world has got to start in this fog. If he is going to emerge into the sunlight and see his homes good, and work buildings shining in the light of reestablished human security, then he has got to have some guarantee that there is going to be something better than the old failure methods, for then and only then will he make to come as a boon and a blessing to men, the Uthwatt, Scott and Beveridge plans. But before this can be done there has got to be, I think, two realizations. The first is that force and betterment cannot and never will be allied. The second is that the force method, however good its object, cannot now protect the innocent citizens and the small nations of the world. You cannot put a line of pikes now between the aggressor and his victims. They only become embroiled in the maelstrom, and they suffer hideously from destruction, famine and torture, before their remnants can be reinstated. So if we know this now, it is clear that what is needed is an acknowledgment that if there is another war on a similar scale to this in the future, and aggressive dictator; do pop up again and spread their terrors, it will be a matter of universal culpability and not a subject for Pharasaism or self-approval by any unit.

This play of the Crusader and the devil is finished. I believe that audience and actors alike are both literally sick to death of it. The modern interpolated scenes such as the competitive destruction of capital cities and the disorganization in food supplies, which cause the deaths of thousands of civilians, have revealed it as a stark expression of primitive struggle for survival. So, I think it is now the duty of everyman, who is the audience and the actor, to consider once again honestly the causes of his misery and destitution and by his opinions, so formed and followed, to influence his Governments at last to write a new straight play. There is no difficulty in finding a plot for this because it is already written in many books and in every human imagination. The noble Leader of the House, Viscount Cranborne, said on the last occasion that I failed to prove my case. Well, this may be due to oratorical inability. But after all it is not my case, and I submit that it is already proved in the writings of the great and the converse is proved in every page of every daily paper to-day.

In conclusion, I would like to give some evidence of what other people are thinking all over the world and to try to prove that other nations are gradually turning towards this idea of universal co-operation. They are turning away from institutions of force, and there is a disinclination for and anxiety about proposed hegemonies of the future which are now beginning to loom rather threateningly in the air. First of all I would quote a recent statement of Mr. Wendell Willkie. He said: I am opposed to alliances for offensive or defensive between any two of the principal Allies, if they are on an exclusive basis. Such alliances would divide, not unite, the world. They would in the end originate wars on such a scale that no organizations of nations could possibly stop them. I think there is much on these lines coming from America now.

Here is a piece of evidence from Spain. I think that your Lordships would like to hear all sides of this question. Senor Salvador de Madariaga, formerly Spanish delegate to the League of Nations, stated: We must do all possible to discourage the renewal of German aggression, but the reeducation of Germany by outside schoolmasters is nonsense. The German can only be educated by Germans, except in so far as others induce them to see the light by their own example. The Christian Mission on World Order in New York on October 29 proposed the establishment of "an advisory international political organization, the economic and financial collaboration of national Governments." Here is one from Italy. I know that Italy was lately an enemy country. It is a statement by Professor Benedetto Croce, who is universally esteemed and I believe is now collaborating with the Allies. He said: The failure of the Versailles peace and punishment is a lesson to us. The answer is not to inflict vengeance and punishment nor to chain entire peoples. Our aim must be to create for vanquished as well as conquerors conditions that will make it possible for them to thrive peacefully. For this task great courage and understanding will be necessary.

Then there is one from the noble Viscount, Lord Halifax. Speaking in America on November 10, he said: Edith Cavell has said that patriotism is not enough. We had to have another war before we discovered the whole truth of those words, and we are going to fail again, as we failed in 1918, if as citizens of a tormented and war-wracked world we do not bring to these problems a new mind, a new eye, and a new heart—an eye to see, a mind to understand, and a heart to claim kinship with all men in all lands. Then General Smuts on December 8 said: The human family continues its long and arduous march, but takes a new turn. And the Pope in a broadcast said: We ask for peace, but let it be a peace that is not founded on fears, or force, or hate, but on truth and justice. And I think the debate in your Lordships' House on U.N.R.R.A. is significant in that it expressed the hope that this dawning and partial co-operation would be the forerunner of a great change in the future.

As to the coming peace arrangements, I believe most people have some kind of doubts about these things in the future. Here is what The Times said is taking place in Turkey: The general tone of Turkish Press comment on General Smuts's speech is one of rather acid criticism. Turks have never concealed their opposition to the establishment of a directory of the Great Powers, and as General Smuts's suggestions for the organization of a system of security in Western Europe under British leadership imply that Eastern Europe should be placed under Russian tutelage it is not surprising that this prospect does not appeal to Turkish opinion. I believe that the world is now come to the parting of the ways. If we look with the new eye of the noble Viscount in America, we shall see these things as follows: The one road leads to a battlefield with new and greater horrors and worse results than to-day, and the other leads possibly to a building at the lakeside at Geneva, where there have been roped in all the competitors and all the nations of the world, in order to co-operate for their mutual protection.

I do not think there is anything airy or idealistic about this. It is just ordinary common sense for common people. Even the edict of Teheran is working round. At first edicts were mostly recriminations against the guilty. In later edicts wonderful things were promised for the Allied Nations. Now these great things are promised for anyone who will join in a complete peace system. So, it is possibly true that this world, which has been so often pushed up the hill by a countless host of gallant Sisyphuses for many centuries, is now near the top again on a safe ledge, where it can be rested, and it just wants a last determined push to land it. But somebody has got to start. So I would appeal to your Lordships to try and direct the strong arms of His Majesty's Government to give now this final push by making the next edict for world peace universally and comprehensively available to all nations. I believe that if such a declaration could be made it would undermine and disarm savagery, aggression and repression, and by so doing shorten the duration of this world shambles, and it would also plant the seed of real peace and freedom. I also very humbly suggest that such an edict would be lighting a candle on the world's coming Christmas tree, perhaps the saddest ever known, and shed a hopeful radiance in every home of this sorry and lamenting world. I beg to move.

VISCOUNT CRANBORNE

My Lords, on June 23 last the noble Earl, Lord Darnley, introduced a Motion into your Lordships' House. The aim of this Motion was to prove to your Lordships that the use of force in the maintenance of peace is wrong under all circumstances and that for the future we must entirely rely on sweet reasonableness in the restraint of international aggression. That Motion, as your Lordships will remember, led to a full debate. The noble Lord made a long speech and I made a long speech in reply and the House had also the benefit, if the noble Earl will forgive me for using so bellicose a metaphor, of a devastating broadside from the noble Viscount, Lord Cecil of Chelwood, which I think, in the opinion of most of us who were present, blew the noble Lord's case completely out of the water. And indeed I thought that we had heard the last of this proposition which, however desirable in theory, has evidently no relation to realities at all. But he has, under cover of a broadly, worded Motion, returned to the attack, and we must give him full credit both for courage and for sincerity, if not for entire realism, in again approaching this question.

On this particular occasion, if your Lordships will allow me, I propose to reply briefly. For though the noble Earl in his speech has dealt with a number of points which were raised in the last debate, he has said nothing this afternoon which has added anything essentially new to the arguments he then used. The hard facts which were enumerated by my noble relative Viscount Cecil of Chelwood remained, to my mind, completely unanswerable. Indeed, in listening to the noble Earl, Lord Darnley, this afternoon, I must confess that I was conscious of a feeling of utter bewilderment. With the very best will in the world—and I hope he will give me credit for that—I simply could not understand the workings of the noble Earl's mind. He started with the story of Naboth's vineyard, and he produced an explanation of that unhappy event which would certainly stagger any student of the Bible, and which was in direct contravention of every fact produced by the writer of the Book of Kings. He said that Ahab had, on the whole, behaved extremely well, he had offered Naboth another vineyard. That seems to be a complete answer to the noble Earl's contention that Ahab needed Naboth's vineyard for the production of food. Indeed, the noble Earl made it perfectly clear that that was not the reason for the request, if it can be called a request. He said he wanted it for garden herbs near his house; in fact, he really wanted it to improve the amenities of his estate. Well, whatever the advantages which were to accrue to him, it does not seem to me that they justified, or could possibly justify, him in having Naboth stoned to death. If the noble Earl replies that it was not Ahab but only his wife who was responsible, he certainly took advantage of a very convenient circumstance and assumed possession of the estate.

I feel grateful to the noble Earl for raising this distant incident of history because it seemed to me, on re-examination, an even more exact analogy of the behaviour of Hitler before the present war than I had remembered. Having started away back with the story of Naboth, the noble Earl proceeded to twist and torture all the lessons of subsequent history including those of the last twenty years to suit his case. The whole purpose of his very elaborate argument seemed to me to be to prove that black is white—that we and nations like us, nations who had collaborated to maintain peace, were responsible for the present catastrophe; that it was our attachment to power politics— because that is what I understood him to imply—our unwillingness to consider the legitimate grievances of the Axis Powers, our refusal to sit round a table and find a solution satisfactory to all parties—these were the things that had led to the present position. He recognized that the Germans and Italians behaved very badly in taking the law into their own hands, but he implied, though he did not actually say so, that no attempt had been made to remove any casus belli, and that they were therefore not to be held entirely to blame. That is a very powerful argument if you shut your eyes to every fact, but there is not a single fact which supports his case.

I would ask the noble Earl to recall the actual events of the last two decades. Has he forgotten the League of Nations? None of us would say that the League of Nations was perfect, but it was a positive attempt to get the nations round a table, to enable them to solve their problems by peaceful means. It was an attempt to abolish war by just those means which the noble Earl has in mind. It is perfectly true that, in theory, the League had behind it the sanction of force, but it was not in any case to be used until all other means had failed and, in fact, force was never used except in one case—the case of Abyssinia—and in that case only in the very modified form of economic sanctions. Why did the League of Nations fail? It failed for the precise reason that, like the noble Earl, it relied too much on the assumption that every nation would be willing and ready to subordinate its own individual interests to the good of the world as a whole. When Japan invaded Manchuria, did the League of Nations immediately threaten force? On the contrary, it made every effort to try and obtain a peaceful solution satisfactory both to China and Japan. What was the Japanese reaction? Japan refused to accept any compromise, it left the League, it built up armaments to defend its ill-gotten gains, it repudiated all idea of a peaceful settlement except on its own terms. The only chance, as is now clear, of achieving a peaceful settlement in the Manchurian dispute would have been if the material force behind the League had been so strong that Japan would have realized that the methods of the buccaneer did not pay. Then she might have accepted a compromise. In fact, as your Lordships know, force was not available.

The nations of the League had relied too much on their moral strength, and had neglected the necessity of material strength to support it. Exactly the same thing happened with regard to the German claim for Lebensraum. If she had a genuine grievance, she could easily have brought it to the League, and the League could have discussed it to see whether some agreed solution was possible. In fact, Germany made no attempt to find a peaceful settlement. She rearmed, left the League, and took unilateral steps to occupy the territories of her peaceful neighbours. Finally, to give one more example, the same thing happened in the case of Fascist Italy and Abyssinia. In each and all of these cases the machinery was available for the nation concerned to puts its grievances before its sister nations, and try and obtain some peaceful settlement by a compromise satisfactory to all concerned. But they never attempted to get an agreed settlement. They did not want to avoid a casus belli. The noble Lord talked all the time as if it would have been easy to avoid a casus belli. They did not want to avoid it. They felt strong, and they had made up their minds to impose their will on the weak. That was the only thing they were thinking of.

To my mind that is the inescapable lesson of the last twenty years. That is the lesson of Manchuria, Abyssinia, Albania, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and finally Poland—all of them peaceful nations who were no danger to anyone, and whose only fault was that they had something a more powerful neighbour wanted. During that unhappy period His Majesty's Government went to every length to avoid war. They submitted to continued snubs and humiliations. If the British Government of that period were open to criticism, it was that they went too far in the direction that the noble Earl himself has advocated. No one disputes the devotion of the pre-war British Government to peace. But that policy, as Mr. Chamberlain himself pointed out at the outbreak of war, utterly failed, and the reason was that the Hitlers of this world cannot be dealt with in that way. They are only amenable to superior force. Nor is there any evidence to-day, so far as I know, that their spirit has changed. On the contrary, all the evidence is the other way round. It is clear that the powers that be in Germany to-day, in the event of their defeat, would certainly, if they were allowed, renew the struggle for world domination as soon as they possibly could. In such circumstances as that, what use is it for the noble Earl to put forward the kind of proposal he has placed before your Lordships to-day? It simply does not make sense.

What use is it for him to say that we must have agreement between nations when he does not say how that agreement is to be obtained? As the noble Earl himself knows, the only reason why he is able to make his speech this afternoon in this House is because his fellow countrymen are fighting to defend our liberties. That is the only reason. So little sense does the proposition make that I come to the conclusion that the only logical explanation of the noble Earl's speech is that he, although he does not know it, belongs to that school of thought which favours peace at any price. That is the only logical explanation that I see: he is like many other high-minded and excellent people who hate war so much that they will submit to any sacrifice and humiliation in order to avoid it. That is an arguable thesis: indeed, it is much more arguable than the one he has put before us this afternoon. But that is not a thesis which is acceptable to your Lordships or acceptable to the British people. The British people have never deluded themselves as to the issues involved in this struggle. They have never concealed from themselves where their duty lay; and even if His Majesty's Government approved of the noble Earl's proposition, which they emphatically do not, it would be futile for them to recommend it to the British people, still less to those unhappy Allied people who have suffered so dreadfully. It would be regarded as a counsel of defeatism, as a betrayal of all those principles for which we are fighting and for which we have made such terrible sacrifices.

All of us, like the noble Earl himself, look forward to the time when force will not be necessary, when selfishness and ambition shall have disappeared from the world; but it is madness to suggest that that time has come yet. It is still far, far away, hidden in the mists of the future. By all means let us take all steps in our power to build up a code of International Law which allows for the redressal of genuine grievances and ensures that the strong shall not dominate the weak by brute force; but let us also provide that code with the necessary force to make certain that it prevails. The noble Earl, deriding this view which I have just expressed, said it was futile to put the tiger in a cage. I would much rather have the tiger in a cage than outside!

The task, which I have indicated just now, is that on which the United Nations are at present engaged. That is the purpose of the Atlantic Charter. That is the aim of the Anglo-American Mutual Aid Agreement. Indeed, yet further steps have been taken since the noble Lord's Motion last June to prepare the future. There have been the conferences at Moscow, Cairo and Teheran. There has been the Four-Power Pact. There has been the session at Atlantic City of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. All those are the foundation stones of our new order, which I believe will be far stronger and far more durable than that advocated by the noble Earl. Let us build on these sure foundations. Let us give them the material strength that is necessary to enable them to stand up against the storms and stresses of the future. Let us learn wisdom from bitter experience. Let us recognize that mankind is not perfect. There will always be bad men and ambitious men in this world and we must take all steps necessary 1o restrain their ambition. That is not power politics. Power politics is the domination of the weak by the strong. This that we propose is the protection of the weak from the strong, and its object is justice to all alike. It is the preservation of all those things which are comprehended in what we mean by the word "civilization."

The noble Lord's plan, on the contrary, however well-meant it is—and it is well-meant—means the surrender of all that makes life worth living. It means a return of the world to barbarism. It means stripping the weak and law-abiding of all means of protection and handing them over to the tender mercies of the strong and the lawless. I know very well that is not the noble Earl's intention. He hopes that by his plan he will achieve peace and justice. But as the great French thinker, Pascal, said a great many years ago, "Justice without force may indeed produce as great evils as force without justice." That is the simple, complete answer to all the elaborate arguments which the noble Earl has put before your Lordships this afternoon. Therefore while fully accepting the purity of his intentions we are, I submit, bound to reject his scheme, which ignores all the lessons of history and can only plunge the world into yet further misery and woe.

VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD

My Lords, I do not desire to prolong the debate more than a few moments. My noble friend Lord Darnley was good enough to tell me he was going to bring this matter forward and was so very kind as to ask me to be present. I told him I could not be present at the beginning because I had an engagement I could not put off, but that I would come as soon as I could. It is entirely out of deference to his great courtesy to myself that I desire to say a few words to explain why I must remain, unfortunately, of the opinion that I expressed on the previous occasion when we discussed this matter. I agree entirely with what has just been said by the Leader of the House. He has expressed admirably, if I may be allowed to say so, exactly the opinion which I hold. The only criticism that I wish to make is one which he will no doubt expect and with which he may even agree. I do not think it was really that the League failed; it was really that the Governments would not act on the principles of the League. That is an old controversy which I need not go into any more.

Certainly I entirely agree that the League did try, and with a sanguineness which I wish I could imitate in the ordinary affairs of life, to work a system of universal co-operation, in the words of the Motion before us, without force. That is exactly what they did try. They tried by successive concessions and by perhaps undue subservience to those who were evidently bent on a war-like policy to avoid the consequences of that policy by inducing them to be reasonable and to accept the general idea of co-operation. That experiment, whether we regard it as unjustifiable or not, has been tried and has failed disastrously. We cannot go on and do it again. Therefore I am entirely of opinion that, though universal co-operation is essential ultimately and as soon as possible, nevertheless it cannot be secured unless you begin by securing the world against interference with peace. It is the same in every department of life— in private concerns, in a club, a nation, a university, a Church, or whatever it may be. You cannot get on, as far as I can see, without some force in the background to maintain even the most admirable system that is designed to be set up. For those reasons, I am afraid, I could not agree with the noble Earl's proposals to-day.

I feel myself that we have had a very great lead in the Moscow Conference, that what is there laid down is exactly right, that people should really care for peace, and that they should do their utmost to support that policy with all their strength. That is my own feeling. The only addition I would make to it—and I would ask the Government to consider it at their leisure—is whether they cannot say a little more in detail on the fourth paragraph of the Moscow Declaration which is admirable as far as it goes. I feel that we have a kind of obligation— I am not so much thinking of Germany— to the unhappy people who are suffering untold hardships at this moment. We have an obligation to say to them: "Hold on, do not give way, a better time is coming. We have a definite scheme for preventing in the future these things occurring again. Therefore you have every inducement to hold on to the utmost so that in the end the world may become a better place for peaceful people to live in."

THE EARL OF DARNLEY

My Lords, listening to the noble Viscount who answered for the Government what struck me was that we were talking about completely different things. The noble Viscount upbraided the modern aggressors, deplored the misery that their victims suffer. He has planned the future on one basis and I am planning it on another basis. It is no good abusing these men. They are possessed by the devil and you have to stop the devil from existing, not in the form commonly spoken of but in the form of misery. You have to get right down into the roots of the old tree and root them out. It is no good grumbling at Hitler as the aggressor. It is no good resorting to similar methods to produce in the future what has happened in the past. What has to be done is to root out all those germs from your path and stop them from entering upon it in the future. Then you will not get any Hitlers, you will not get any aggressors. It is impossible. That is what I am aiming at. I do not think the noble Viscount and I are really talking about the same things. Nevertheless, I have very much enjoyed my duet with the noble Viscount this afternoon in a new song called "Naboth," though his tenor did seem somewhat stronger than my bass. My hope is that we may one day find it possible to have it again, perhaps with a fuller chorus. All I can do now is to ask leave to withdraw my Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.