FOUNDATIONS OF PEACE.

HL Deb 23 June 1943 vol 128 cc59-98

THE EARL OF DARNLEY had the following Notice on the Paper: To urge on His Majesty's Government that, if civilization is to be saved, a most vital necessity now exists for visualizing and promulgating a New Order for humanity on completely novel lines; without which all planning, and all schemes for social security and a better future are useless and a waste of time; and to move for Papers.

The noble Lord said: My Lords, I fear that my Motion has followed a somewhat erratic course on the Paper, but I would like to say in extenuation that the last time I postponed it I did so in deference to what I thought would be your Lordships' wishes to keep May 18 for the sole purpose of expressing gratitude and thanks to brave men; and to that sentiment, of course, then as now, I wholeheartedly subscribe. But one of the tragedies of this world seems to me to be that bravery alone cannot encompass lasting peace. If it could have done so, this country surely would have established it many times over. So we are forced to look at it in what in film parlance is called "a short," taken from a very long film of history which has extended very far back into the past and is going to extend into the dim future. Therefore as, on an occasion like this, the present is perhaps sub judice, one has to examine the past very carefully in order to try and ensure that the future does end, like any good film should do, on a happy note. As your Lordships have always welcomed discussion on the settlement of this future, I hope you will extend a welcome to yet another plan for its settlement, although it may sound somewhat cold-blooded in view of present events, and that it may form the subject of a useful and necessary debate. My one object in bringing forward the Motion is faithfully, truthfully and without prejudice, to explore and destroy the causes which have turned this year of grace into a hell upon earth and to prevent their recurrence.

I have been told that the words of my Motion sound vast and profound, and therefore possibly not profitable for discussion, but I did not mean them to be. I meant them to be rather more simple. But the world's sufferings are also profound and vast, and I venture to say are not going to be relieved on the basis of data of the last few years or the last generation. It wants something more far-reaching, something in the nature of a complete revolution and change in human procedure. It needs an earthquake for all, and not sticking plaster for a few. I hope that noble Lords like Viscount Cecil, who have worked so long and arduously for peace, will not think I am trying to supersede anything they have done or to do better. All I want to do is to dig deeper, much deeper. Although feeling as I imagine Daniel must have felt in the den of lions, nevertheless I submit with due respect and no vestige of hostility, that no plans I have heard so far are adequate to produce lasting peace, because they do not show evidence of sufficient guidance from the faulty processes which have existed through the long years of human strife, nor sufficient signs of dissociation from them.

In debates which have taken place in your Lordships' House on this subject, especially in the one initiated by the noble Viscount, Lord Cecil, the results arrived at seem to be embodied in that portion of the speech of the noble Viscount, Lord Cranborne, in reply, in which he said: There must be behind a peace system a backing of an overwhelmingly strong armed force. That is the final sanction of law and order in international as well as domestic spheres. With very great respect I believe that this statement has been entirely disproved by history. It has been tried for a thousand years to create a lasting peace by force and it has never succeeded. In fact the converse is the case. Every new out-break is much worse than those which have preceded it. And the reason is this. Nations are not like schoolboys. They will not admit the authority of the hand that smites them, and they will never adjust themselves to doing so. In fact they always react violently from it sooner or later. The nations that pose as judges to them always remain, not as judges but as rivals. So unless a deputation arrives from Mars it is probable that no human authority will ever convincingly establish an enforced judgment between nations.

Therefore, perhaps, the best solution is to start at the other end to attack the causes for a change instead of the results, and, with that purpose, to root out this old intolerant order that has obtained between nations for generations and put something new in its place. That is the way in which I believe that all future aggressors might be pre-natally killed, because the Old Order has been in the past their birthplace, their nursery and their school. So it is possible that way that the film of history might end, after all, on a peaceful fade-out. I believe that without something new, some kind of New Order, it is useless to hope, to make promises or even to pray for lasting peace.

In connexion with this matter I may say that I looked at the records of the debate for the corresponding period exactly twenty-five years ago. To be accurate it took place on June 26, 1918. The subject of the debate was the proposed League of Nations. The first thing that I noticed was that a noble speaker said this: The old diplomacy is doomed. The world is prepared to bring to an end its … bloody past. Well, although there has been such a long interval I think that the only suitable and possible response to that is a very whole-hearted "Amen". I do not think that anyone could deny that during the last century of what has been called the Christian era, civilization has been brought to the brink of disaster, and it is possible that another war in another generation could finish it. It is not because cause some have been right and some have been wrong that that always happens. It is because of the subversive methods that have been adopted to settle the disputes and the even more subversive after-effects.

Many nations have been victims during this period, but there has always been one victim and that is civilization. This has never been noticed sufficiently. If several men live in one house it does not much matter if they have an occasional fight with fists in the attics, or even throw a few stones at each other on the first floor; but when they start using pickaxes and gunpowder in the basement then there has got to be a change. Something has got to be done if civilization is to be saved. There has been caused a climacteric for civilization, and the choice now for the world is either to lose civilization or have a New Order without further destruction or losses. This destruction is now being increased every day by the aid of science. I think that even if this is thought to be idealistic, fantastic or impossible, it has got to be at least visualized now before it is too late. Moreover, the magnitude of the evils and horrors of to-day leave no excuse for a moment's delay or for proposing an extension of methods which have been a failure in the past. The worse the horrors are to-day the worse they will be in the future, and therefore the greater the need for a change.

If I could take your Lordships in a flight of fancy to the bull ring at Madrid, you would see horrors galore—the ground soaked with the blood of horses, and picadors and every kind of imaginable cruelty. But it. is no use blaming the bull or killing him, because there will be another one along in a few minutes; the only way to stop it is to get up an agitation to stop bull-fighting and go to the local government about it. I believe that such ghastly and awful attacks as we have seen made lately on the world by the aggressors are a proof that, if the world is supposed to be evolving, it is really going the wrong way, and possibly backwards. It is a counsel of despair to believe that such attacks have no basis in the facts of the past, or are unpreventable. The only hope is to believe that they are based on long-established evil precedent, that they are a link in the very long and old chain of intolerance, and that they are another swing of that blood-stained see-saw, all due to the Old Order. I suggest, therefore, that the world ought now for a change to stop blaming individuals — blameworthy though they are—and start to blame the primal culprit, the old wrong and faulty international system, and try at last to get something new to replace it.

What have we got so far? There is Hitler's New Order. That has got every possible fault that the Old Order ever had, magnified to the nth degree; in fact, it is the apotheosis of them all. He is seeking to make a new continent, a new world and a new order by the use of every variety of brutal force and compulsion, and all he can create, of course, is a multitude of resentful and revengeful serfs. There are other plans for the future which cannot be spoken of in the same breath as this; nevertheless they do, I venture to say with due respect to their originators, have a little suspicion of the Old Order about them. They say that they are going to provide a successful and peaceful world for half the world by disarming and educating the other half. But does anybody ever learn anything under compulsion, except the desire for revenge? These New Orders and new plans are based on the faulty idea that the world has so far been a kind of paradise, and that aggressions of the sort we are seeing are something new, whereas the aggressors, however pleased with themselves they may be, or however ashamed they ought to be of what they have done, must know at least that they are only the last at the end of a very long list. Moreover, surely these measures are going to assume some form of totalitarianism, and totalitarianism is the thing against which the United Nations are fighting.

Even if this plan is successful or possible, it is still only half the story. What about the rest of the world—the United Nations and the neutrals? I seem to remember somthing from my long-ago education which fits the case. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who is going to look after them? The noble Viscount said, in the speech that I quoted before, that if they stand together peace will be preserved, but that if, by an evil chance, a rift should come between them, the world would collapse into chaos. I must say that that does not sound very confident. Indeed, I do not see how anybody can be confident that there will not a rift one day; and, if there is, what possible precedent can they have for settling it except the Old Order, unless in the meantime it has been completely devalued? It is not necessary to tell your Lordships that our Allies in the last war included Italy and Japan. If anyone had got up at a similar period to this in the last war and said that we must have a peace treaty of a kind which would stop Italy and Japan making an aggression in the next generation, he would have been said to be mad. Yet it was necessary then, and it is equally necessary now.

The New Order has to be a world order, and it has to keep every nation secure and safe from every other one. I think that this New Order has to have axioms of this kind applied to it—that there will not be any peace as long as there is any possible casus belli in existence, and that there will not be any freedom until all are free. There will not be any peace as long as the see-saw is tilted at too steep an angle in any direction. You can render people impotent by taking their arms away; we all know that. If two men have a fight in a field, and one knocks the other down, takes his stick away, and stands proudly on his chest, the man on the ground cannot do anything; but the man who is standing on him cannot remain there all day and all night; he has to go home to tea at some time or other. Nations will wait fifty or a hundred years to arm if necessary, until the generation of those who disarmed them is dead, and until their successors are forgetful. I think it can be said, therefore, that aggressions will stop when they are completely purposeless and for that reason cannot command support; that arming will stop when it is superfluous; and therefore that a long-term survey has to be made of the world in order to get a long-term peace. When all nations have an equal level of well-being, this see-saw will be stabilized and aggressions will cease.

This has to come about one day; cannot we antedate it? This may not sound a very attractive programme just now, and possibly it is not. All that I am trying to do is to state the pre-requisite conditions for lasting peace. If a lasting peace is really wanted, pre-requisite conditions of this kind have to be secured; there is no getting out of it. The Old Order to which I keep referring is the practice of intolerant and forceful self-assertion, and it has failed so far for two reasons. The first is the reason that I have already given, that force has accomplished more in the way of destruction than in the way of advance. The second reason is that people have had such a great belief in this force at their elbow that they have neglected preventive pre-cautions. The time has perhaps come now when, if civilization is going to be saved, these preventive precautions have to be watertight. It is very difficult to make anything watertight; as the noble Viscount said the other day, we do not live in a perfect world. We all know that, and we know that the Old Adam exists in everybody, and is not to be driven out. But, if that is the case, and the Old Adam has to stay, then let us starve him; do not let him be given any of the sustenance which he requires for his outbreaks. It seems to me that the world has been very remiss in this, and the Old Order has been the most consistent caterer that the world has ever seen; but it must now be put out of business.

In case any noble Lord is inclined to think that it is possible for evil and aggression to have any justification, let me say at once and whole-heartedly that there is no possible justification for evil at any time. Everyone has free choice, and can do what he likes. But, as this Old Adam does exist and cannot be got rid of, and as human beings are subject to combative reactions, surely it is the duty of the world to see that there are no causes which are going to supply a basis for any damage to civilization in the future? This side of the question has so far, it must be acknowledged, suffered neglect. The American Ambassador to this country, Mr. Winant, said something in a speech on October 9 last which I think bears this out. He said: It is not enough to beat our enemies on the field of battle; we must discover and correct those conditions in our world which made their reactions possible. Is that not the crux of the matter? Are there conditions and causes or are there not? If there are not causes, we had better give the whole thing up, and never talk about lasting peace again; the future is hopeless by evil necessity. But if there are causes, and we do not investigate them, the future is equally hopeless, but for a very much worse reason—by evil neglect. I think that the world has now to take on a united responsibility for saying that these causes have existed in the past, and that they shall not exist in the future. That adoption of responsibility for these two double objects is perhaps the only barrier now left between civilization and barbarism.

I used the analogy of cancer before, and I should like to refer to it very briefly again. Nobody knows its cause, but I think the cause of it could be generally described as being a revolution in some part of the body against unrealized faulty processes. Surely that is a very good description of the causes of aggression and evil-doing. And yet cancer gets very much the best treatment. The doctors are all for restricting mutilation as far as they can and for going whole-heartedly into prevention. And yet in the case of nations they rush, sometimes blindly, into mutilation, and prevention remains unexplored. There is a lot of money being spent now on cancer prevention. I think I saw a figure something like £600,000 or £700,000 a year. The noble Lord, Lord Horder, said the other day that the cure for it was in sight. Possibly one day's expenditure on the war would bring it into full vision. I believe that a cure for aggression and these evils could be envisaged by accurate thought and investigation. Because it is a remarkable thing that under the Old Order, if you read the history books of the nations which fought in past wars—not our history books, but theirs—you will see that there are no initiators of aggression: nobody has ever done wrong, they have always been Crusaders and the other man has been the devil. If that proves anything it proves that they suppose they have been intolerantly treated; therefore it is the thought that has caused the war, and that thought has got to be treated as well as the actual truth. Doctors have proved this because they have made a great ally in their profession of psycho-analysis.

I would like to go with your Lordships, if you will bear with me, into some of the causes of these complexes and grievances among nations in the past, and to look at some of the damage that has been done to civilization by them. Take the last war alone. In Russia it caused two revolutions and the greatest famine in history. The first revolution was against the leading classes and the second was against the religious orders, and both, to put it briefly, disappeared. I am not saying anything against Russia, because it is impossible to blame people under those conditions and nobody would want to do so. They staged their first revolution against the leading classes who, they imagined, had driven them into war and into defeat and, as it was said, largely armed with sticks, possibly against the religious orders who had failed to rescue them. And the method they took was to destroy everything that was connected with that particular branch of the Old Order. That sort of thing is catching and, like a virulent disease, it flowed out all over the world. Like virulent germs, it created violent antibodies in different parts. In Spain it caused the civil war; in Italy it caused the Fascists and Mussolini who, like most people who get too much power in this life, got above himself. In the rest of the world it caused instabilities in Governments and in finance, general unrest, high taxes, strikes, unemployment, false booms, false depressions, lack of security, apathy and drift, and—perhaps worst of all—that ghastly rule of non-co-operation, everybody for himself, which spoilt the economic flow between the nations. Last of all, in Germany it caused the rise of Hitler and his particular attack on the Old Order which you can now see in full operation. That is pickaxes and gunpowder for you in the basement if you like, and that is the certain result on civilization.

Of course, there are many other causes of this complex. There are overcrowding, poverty, economics, dismemberment of countries in the past which is now forgotten, altered boundaries, segregated minorities, secret treaties, power politics and many other causes. These have got to go, however impossible of attainment this may seem to be. There are lots of pessimists about just now who say that wars have got to go on, though they tell us no way of getting rid of them—they just have to exist no more. I think William Pitt dealt with the idea of necessity when he said it was a plea for every infringement of human freedom; the argument of tyrants and the creed of slaves. We have got to set our face against it, we have got to abolish the Old Order.

My Motion has nothing to do with peace proposals. The present is sub judice and will not be mentioned. I know your Lordships do not like this little bird in your House just now. Although you are quite willing to discuss chickens and their eggs, the little bird of peace does not get much of a hearing. Possibly it is quite true that a proposal of peace on anything like the basis of the status quo which has existed for two thousand years is quite useless, but that appears to be no reason why this little bird should not have prepared for him when he does come back a proper, secure and established cage. And this time he should not be lied to by the world, which has either got to say to the bird this time, "We slam the door in your face, we do not want you any more, we are always going to have what we want, whether good, bad or indifferent, by force"; or else it has got to promise a proper aviary in the new world so often promised but never realized under the Old Order.

It is proposed to establish something else which I think is more important still, and that is hope. Hope is at a very low ebb in the world just now—not hope of victory, but a hope of something more important still—what is going to come afterwards, the possibility of survival in a tolerable form. It seems to me that the motives governing the world now are rather more of hopeless necessity than those of hopeful achievement, but that, all the same, there is at the back of everybody's mind—and I believe that this possibly applies to all the worst aggressors and evildoers as well —a feeling that these things should not be, and that everybody, these people included, is longing for a time when some-thing will be found that is superior to the Old Order of disappointment and misery, something which really does give some kind of promise that these things will not go on recurring into endless generations in the future for our children and grandchildren. I do not believe that anybody at this moment is convinced that such a panacea is in sight. If I may respectfully say so, I do not think that hope has been a very frequent speaker in some of the debates that I have heard here in your Lordships' House lately on the subject of the tortured nations—the Poles, the Jews, the Greeks. On the 17th December, the noble Lord, Lord Addison, said: The Declaration made between Great Britain, the United States, Russia and other countries will, save to those who are immediate and likely victims of their cruelties, bring infinite relief. And in a more recent debate it was sought to bring evacuee Jews to this country. Well, it is, is it not? a melancholy fact that these humane efforts can only reach a very small percentage of the victims, and that they cannot be rescued as long as the Old Order is in full swing. But it might be possible that tinder a New Order such melancholy debates would never be held again.

I suggest that the army of planners, of which there is an orgy going on all over the world now, need also a great deal of hope. The Governments to-day are in a very difficult position because they have, with the ordinary supply of money, to do three things: they have to pay for the war, they have to pay for the destruction caused by the war, and they have to pay for all these new plans which are quite supernumerary to anything that has ever been done before. The lack of confidence has been stressed in this House. I suggest it is due to the Old Order. There cannot be any confidence as long as the Old Order remains. Take social security. Everybody ought to have social security all over the world, but I suggest that the word "security" is like a play that has been written, put on the shelf and never performed. You cannot have security until the Old Order is done away with. It is no good giving a man or a woman £2 a week for his or her old age unless you can more or less guarantee them to have an old age. It is no good giving them £10 for a grand oak coffin if you are not going to be able to find enough of them to fill a matchbox.

I seem to remember, when I was very small, that the working man took an endless pride in telling you all he had achieved in the way of social security, that he had saved up money for his wife, educated his children, possibly bought a little bit of land or a house. He cannot do that now. He cannot save anything out of unemployment or part unemployment or the "dole." He has got to have security again, but I suggest he must not lose his freedom and initiative at the same time. He will not be content to live very long under bureaucratic control, just as everybody else united in fighting for freedom will not be content for very long to remain under the long list and chain of rules and regulations that may be necessary to pay for the war but afterwards will be a soul-killing indignity. Just to take one trade which I know something about—food production—if your Lordships find the tomatoes on your plate this season look a bit jaded, you will know it is because they have already had to jump through as many paper hoops as many a retired circus rider has had to do.

Then there is the housing question. Surely the Old Order is responsible for the fact that this country as well as many others—I have seen it in France too—is covered with hideous villas and bungalows put up all over the place without any kind of design or plan or even good materials and certainly without architectural control. At the end of the last war there was a large housing shortage, and these houses had to be rushed up in a hurry. There is no doubt also that the Old Order caused a delay in slum clearance because everybody was too busy, had too much else to do, and there was no time. A good housing system, I submit, wants time, security, and money. The first aim should be to see that anything that is built is not knocked down again within the same generation. Then there is agriculture and land management. Of course this has suffered during the last generation, and the Old Order is responsible for it, although the landlords usually get the blame.

It has to be remembered, nevertheless, that the landlord in the first place, during the somewhat long interval in the not so serious Old Order of the past, reclaimed the land, maintained it, put fences round it, built commodious farmhouses and, as the noble Marquess, Lord Crewe, said the other day, created that skilful and cooperative profession of land agents; built their own houses which are now the pride of this country and, incidentally, gave their time, money, and great skill to their tenants. I believe that these people, headed by such figureheads as Coke of Norfolk, could have dealt with the flood of cheap food which is supposed to have been one of the great causes of deterioration. There is a great outcry against the monopoly of land now. All the same I believe that land, like every other profession, is best administered by those who have given the most time to it and know the most about it. Possibly the best solution in the end, as John Bull has always worn country clothes, is to get him another suit of country clothes—not an office suit and a top hat—and let these clothes be made, not of utility cloth but of security cloth, with possibly in one of the pockets a little bit of paper, if not for the future, at any rate in memory of past services.

Then there is education. Everybody since the time of Aristotle has known that the world's future—I think Aristotle said "Empire's"—is in the minds of the children, but the Old Order has completely ruined this. In Germany and its allied countries it perverted their education to the necessity for revengeful force, and elsewhere, owing to the strenuous and unfair competition in life, to the rule of non-co-operation and everybody for himself. There are a hundred things you have to teach children, but possibly the most important one to re-establish is co-operation. Whatever you teach him has got to be confirmed later on by the security of future events, and thus solidified, or else will be discredited and disavowed. In conjuction with social security and education there is health. The noble Lord, Lord Geddes, in the debate he instituted in your Lordships' House the other day, made an excellent generalization which I should like to quote. He said: There is a real truth in spiritual healing. If a man or woman who is ill in soul recovers, his or her body recovers. There is a real truth that an absorbed and interested mind makes for health. Those who agree with this (and I am sure it must be the majority), will see that only by a New Order of real security can the ravages on health made by the sadness, worry, and difficulties caused by the Old Order be lifted and a basis given for the positive or medicineless health so ably advocated by the noble Lord. For the purposes of health the hospitals need security from blast and need to be assured that the funds of those who have so generously supported them will not be mulcted to pay for the Old Order. Similarly with the falling birth-rate which has also been discussed in your Lordship's House. This can best be maintained when security of employment, if not of existence itself, offers more inducement to potential parents, as the noble Lord, Lord Dawson of Penn, advanced.

Lastly there is economics. There is a new scheme for this by every post and in every column of every newspaper. It has been debated here and in another place with great skill. Whatever economic system you have, surely there is one thing necessary—as a non-economist I hope I may be permitted to suggest it— and that is that the world's capital funds have got to remain perfectly unimpaired and under co-operative control, and comply with the laws of supply and demand, and stop over-production in different areas. These united funds produce not only employment but also the producer and exchanger goods, which are the world's income and therefore the index of individual prosperity. The Old Order deals very rapidly with this question by boosting up wages to a position where they cannot possibly remain and mulcts the world's funds to the extent of several millions to pay for itself. So normal economy has to be shelved and a fake one takes its place based on tariffs, blocs, and enclosed systems which, in their turn, create sweated labour, price-cutting, and various forms of economic crises and grievances. Money cannot do two things at once. It cannot pay for fireworks and produce income. So, if economy is to be restored, it must be necessary for the capital funds to roll up again in security and for co-operation in administration to be established in order that the normal flow of income may re-assert itself. Then economics may obtain at least in part a semi-automatic regulation again, and if it is arm in arm with bancor or moneta, or whatever it is to be called, so much the better.

I know these are big questions. I am not trying to dictate in detail to those experts whose province it is to deal with them, but just to say that there must be this time a proper basis of security, so that their efforts may obtain the results they deserve and not be all washed away and useless. I would also say quite seriously that by proper security I mean one that is not based on the faulty processes from the past, which have failed. I know that your Lordships know all the things I have mentioned and know them better than I do. I have emphasized them only in order to show that this time there must not be, and there cannot be, another failure. Is it not possible for the world to admit these things now fairly and honestly; to admit that the Old Order of destruction has proved destructive of civilization and must be replaced; that the Old Order has always been a perfect breeding place for villains and if it remains it probably always will do so; that the Old Order is the primary culprit of all the horrors of to-day; that the Old Order cannot protect the small nations because it usually causes them to be made battle grounds; and that whoever starts a war in the future it will be a confession of failure and will not save civilization?

Planning is useless under the present insecurity. I believe that if these things can be admitted that there is some chance for a New Order to achieve birth. Obviously it has got to be exactly the opposite of the present one and so there has got to be complete co-operation in place of the old destructive competition. This is the only method that cannot and will never produce causes and complexes. Perhaps such a plan requires three stages: first, to be visualized as possible and trustworthy; then to be promulgated to the world; and afterwards to be maintained. Visualization is perhaps the easiest of all because of the terrible discontent with the present mess and muddle, and it must be easy at least to visualize something else taking their place. Proof as to its trustworthiness and power has surely also sufficient allies, and I would like to suggest later some proofs of this to your Lordships. Promulgating requires extensive preparation in teaching by every nurse, governess, teacher, schoolmaster, preacher, writer and, last but not least, every speaker who must set it forth to the world, and later on it must be promulgated to the world by some Government or group of Governments. Maintenance requires the complete abolition of all grievances that exist to-day and the creation of some machinery to keep them permanently in abeyance. All this should be after the shortest possible period following the conclusion of hostilities.

It may be said that such an order is a tall order as well as a new one, but there is the Old Order lying at your feet and perhaps a tall one will stand up better in the future. There is nothing tall or preposterous in the idea of producing prosperity for the whole by the prosperity of each part. General Eisenhower recently described the taking of Tunis and Bizerta as due to everyone being one hundred per cent. for everyone else. That motto would succeed also in peace, and it is a fine one for the New Order. There is nothing highfalutin or idealistic about this. No nations are asked to merge their ideologies or their personalities. They are only asked to do this, to combine for the very practical and simple purpose of paying the bill for the plumber and a few masons to come into the cellar and basement of the house of civilization and repair it in order that people may live there in the future and not be turned out into the cold to live in caves and sheepskins again.

As to maintenance, there has been a lot of discussion in your Lordships' House as to some kind of international body, and it has not been decided, I believe, what form it shall take exactly, or what its size shall be. If it is to take the form of an International Police Force I believe there will be a lot of difficulties. To start with, if it has to keep the peace between all peoples it has got to be at least as large as the army of any possible aggressor, that is to say, a million or two, and as it is to be in operation for several years those composing it may have to take their wives and children with them, a fact which will demand, as the Americans would say, "some barracks." It has also got to consist of every nation in the world or of very many nations. Therefore supposing that this rift that the noble Viscount spoke about did occur, they might take sides and have a sort of side war on their own. Also it has got to be an intensely mobile force because it may have to move about. If it remains in its own countries, by the time it gets a move on the war might have started. This I think applies whether it is on the ground or whether it is up in the air, in the noble Lord, Lord Davies's aerial police station.

I suggest that this international body ought to be a band of investigators, people selected by every country and supported by them, but not with sovereign powers. It should constitute a clearing house for disabilities, injustices and grievances with full authority to investigate at first hand, to propose remedies and send them to the respective Governments. I think such a plan might succeeed because everybody wants it, but if it resorted again to any form of sanctions, power politics or groupings it would be deserted as formerly. The Palace of the League of Nations is there at Geneva. This time it could be filled with a purpose that is obviously beneficent, that every nation would have to join it and adhere to it. If this were done there could be established a New Order by co-operation, and it would establish a process of what I am going to call absorbent toleration. I believe there is much good evidence for its possibility and power. There is first of all the law of cause and effect. The noble Lord, Lord Vansittart, denies this law to Germany. He says that they have always been spontaneous and unprovoked aggressors. But even if that is true it does not cover other aggressors in the past, Italy and Japan of the present and the unknown ones of the future. Surely if it is true about Ger-many all it proves is that for a very long time the world has been unable to deal with the problem of a recalcitrant member, and that is a sorry admission to have to make. Possibly, therefore, it is as useless to dilate upon it as it is to propose further methods of a similar kind to deal with them. Either the law is true or not. If it is true, then it must be treated as true, and it is also good evidence for the contrary, that where satisfactory causes are removed, aggressions must cease.

Then, my Lords, there is the evidence of the law of internal justice as practised in this country and other countries which aims at prevention rather than punishment and cure rather than embitterment. The noble Viscount referred to force in domestic spheres, but surely he does not call a policeman an emblem of force. The policeman is armed with a piece of stick and a whistle and gets his effect partly from his own tolerant and persuasive character and partly because, not being armed, he demonstrates the agreement of the people of the country that the laws made for them are good and are to be upheld and that breaking of them is disliked and repudiated. So he can claim relative immunity from attack by criminals, compared with some of his confrères abroad who fairly bristle with armour and swords and revolvers. Surely, if that is the case, bad laws can produce increased crime. I do not think that our friends in America would mind my saying that prohibition was a bad law. The people in the country did not want it; they thought it impinged too much on their moral choice, and it certainly created a great increase of gangsterism and racketeering. They very soon repealed it. Must it not be the same with the international system? And the converse must be equally true and good evidence that when the international system of justice is bettered, aggressions will be lessened.

Then, of course, there are the religions of the world. It is not necessary to say that all the principal religions of the world, Christian, Jew, Hindu and Mahomedan, have rules which, if obeyed literally, do produce peace and security and harmony and do support that policy of co-operation by absorbent tolerance. If you want something entirely secular, take water. The Chinese say that water is the strongest thing in the world because of its successful absorbent tolerance of any disturbance. If a rock or a stone falls into it the water by its complete elasticity absorbs it and the corpus of the water is uninjured. Yet in the form of a stream or a waterfall it can wear everything away, and it has been noticed, I think, in Germany lately what the power of a vast amount of water means. Of course, by absorbent toleration I do not mean that you should tolerate everybody who is an enemy or who has done wrong, but that you should tolerate him before he can become an enemy or can do wrong. It does not mean lying down before a charging enemy any more than a matador lies down before a charging bull. He must join in the agitation I mentioned before, and stop bullfighting. Conversely, I suggest that forceful threats and peace fronts and power politics have the effect of strengthening aggressors' influence with their supporters and inflame their mind. Even the policy of being well armed, which is always supposed to be a water-tight prevention, is not completely so, because history is full of accounts of very gallant attacks by inferior forces on those vastly superior. Nowadays, if you are the last to start you can always get level by the very simple process of putting every man and woman into the war effort.

I believe that the advancement of some such proposal by a qualified statesman or group of world statesmen to-day would be warranted, not as a unilateral concession but as a universal necessity. It would have much better results than any peace proposal for it would give universal hope of something really worthy of trust and likely of success for a future now carrying much doubt and distrust. Thus the difficult post-war period would be deprived of much of its distress and danger. Moreover, it would remove support from the aggressors, and possibly vastly shorten the war. Later it would have to be confirmed by the peace treaty, which though naturally not bearing this clause might well imply it, signed by every nation: "We, the undersigned, hereby bury the Old Order. As we have all contributed to it either in the past or present and either by commission or omission, we will co-operate in bearing the disabilities it has caused and preventing their recurrence. But not one iota of it shall be kept alive to murder the future. "Then the little bird of peace might find at last a worthy and guaranteed aviary.

I hope I have not detained your Lordships too long or been didactic, or given the impression of trying to usurp the privileges of skill and experience. I have not wittingly done so. I know every mind has exactly the same direction, although possibly not the same course as mine. What I do want to emphasize is the fact that there is now sweeping through the world a vast, if un-spoken, desire for an absolute new existence in a new form together with an equally vast discontent with the Old Order and its possible continuance. If you do not agree with me then take it from a boy killed in Africa who put it in a letter to his father read out by Captain Balfour. He wrote: There is, I feel, both in England and America, a tremendous surge of feeling which, for want of a better word, I call 'goodness' —the heartfelt longing of the middling folk for something better. I have heard it so often —that craving for a new life. This feeling is no less powerful or significant than the Renaissance was, and will, I hope and pray, surge over the whole world in a tidal wave. That is the ideal for which we are fighting.

So, my Lords, I dare to make what may seem a somewhat bold statement, but which nevertheless I believe to be a true one, that if His Majesty's Government together with the other great Powers now united for freedom and lasting peace could make in the face of all evil, doubt and difficulty a statement that universal co-operation will be entertained at the first possible moment after the war, coupled with a disavowal of the Old Order of the past, they would render the greatest service to humanity that history has ever known, and devise, moreover, a method of satisfying the world's needs which, though untried, could have more chance of success than the somewhat laborious methods now under contemplation. They would be taking the only means of educating those who require education and the only means of robbing murderers and aggressors of their present support. It may be possibly the only means or at any rate a very good means of shortening the war, and of ensuring that civilization, the world's most precious possession, could be re-established and indefinitely assured. I hope I may have your Lordships' support in this plea and I beg to move the Motion standing in my name.

LORD PONSONBY OF SHULE-BREDE

My Lords, I want to detach only one point on which to enlarge in the Motion which has been moved by my noble friend. I think his Motion is sufficiently comprehensive to allow me to speak on my one point without being called to order for irrelevance. He has covered a very large area of ground very eloquently, but I wish to go back to the debate of three months ago and to detach from it a point which I regard as extremely important. Your Lordships will remember that on April 14 my noble friend Viscount Cecil initiated a debate concerning the sort of international body that should take the place of the League of Nations. The debate was continued on April 15, and, when he was withdrawing his Motion, Viscount Cecil said: "My hope is that this will not be the last debate of this kind which we shall have in this House." And I hope so, too.

I do not think my noble friend will mind my referring to that debate now, because in the two days' discussion one important factor was omitted. The necessity of a powerful international force to prevent aggression was accepted by practically everybody as axiomatic. That is my particular point, for I regard this as completely fatal. I think that I can enlarge on this point for there can be no doubt that it would come under my noble friend Lord Darnley's "New Order for humanity on completely novel lines." To give up force to ensure peace would be something quite new. I think that your Lordships' House happens to be, in the world just now, particularly well qualified to discuss this matter, if only because of the presence in it of my noble friend Viscount Cecil, who, in years of strenuous work, has always examined, encouraged, promoted and, when he could, tried to correct the League of Nations, and of my noble friend the Earl of Perth, who was the first general secretary of the League, and, I suppose, knows more of the inner work- ings and inner difficulties and handicaps with which it has had to contend than any other living man. The presence of those two noble Lords really enables this House to put forward authoritatively proposals which would be listened to by any of the other countries.

I was not here for the whole two days over which the previous debate extended, being unfortunately prevented from being present for part of the time, but, in the speeches which I heard, I noticed that this question of international force was referred to as if it was not worth debating because everybody agreed that there must be an international force. Nowadays the doctrine of force has received tremendous strength and diabolical power. Nations are supposed to desire its aid in making other nations keep the peace. Strange! I will not go through all the expressions which were used in the course of the debate, but time after time there was reference to the overwhelming force that would, of course, be behind the League.

Now, alliances to achieve military victory are by no means the same thing as complete accord to prevent aggression and maintain peace. Schemes for conciliation can never be as popular as plans for war. My noble friend Lord Addison said: "It is easier to mobilize good will in time of danger than it is when the danger is past." It is no good waiting for a crisis; we have got to get on and make preparations when there is no crisis. We must make our plans in advance, and a great military victory should be regarded as clearing the way for a new order in international relations, not as just a short cut by which force can be established as an instrument of domination for the victors. The public men, the man in the street, the paragraph writer are all thoroughly impressed with the immense strides which have been made in the destructive power of weapons. So profound is the impression that it is thought that if only we can get enough weapons we can prevent anyone doing what they ought not to do. We are told that the bombs which are dropped to-day will be mere child's playthings compared with those which will be dropped in three or four years' time. Poor old Nobel thought that dynamite was going to stop war. It did not do anything of the kind, so he had to found a Peace Prize.

We are now reviving the exploitation of that futile failure which was called at the time, though one does not hear the expression used now, "collective security." It was not collective, nor was it security. We have had examples of it comparatively recently. I know that political memories are very short, but I think it is really worth bearing this in mind so that we do not make the same mistake again. It is really within comparatively recent times that there arose the question of Italy's aggression against Abyssinia. A great deal of indignation was aroused concerning it. That poor, undefended Abyssinia should be attacked by Italy was a monstrous thing; it was quite obviously an act of aggression that must be stopped. There was a desire shown to support Abyssinia. As a matter of fact Abyssinia does not occur in the list of conquests of the latter part of the nineteenth century. It only occurs incidentally. We never took Abyssinia, which we could have had at any time, because we did not want it. Economic sanctions were laid down. You cannot have economic sanctions without force, as we very soon found out, and even economic sanctions cannot be made watertight. In the case of Italy, the great sanction was against oil; nobody was sup posed to supply Italy with oil. But the commercial people made their plans and found where the leakage was. They saw quite well how they could supply Italy with just as much oil as she wanted.

In the meantime, the various Committees of the League said: ''This is monstrous aggression, and must be stopped." They all held their hands up with enthusiasm. But when it meant war, what happened? We were alone. We were the only nation that was really determined to carry out what was laid down in Article 16 of the Covenant of the League. Not a ship, not an aero plane, not a battalion was forthcoming from the others; not because they were breaking their word in a very diabolical way—nothing of the sort—but because nations have to think of self-interest. Some of these nations were very close to Italy. Some, like France, had just made an arrangement with Italy after a good deal of struggling, and did not want to break with Italy. Everybody had his own version of the good will which must be preserved with Italy, so that although they held up their hands none of them came forward when action was required. I think that the failure of collective security was a prelude to the war started by another aggressor later on, who saw that he had nothing at all to fear from collective security in a League of Nations.

I want to quote the remarks of a few people who have condemned this. My noble friend Lord Stanhope, who was, I think, Leader of the House at the time— at any rate he was in charge of foreign affairs—said this: … if the League is eventually to take its proper share in the affairs of the world, and to attempt to stop aggression and to bring forward conciliation, every nation must take its part. My noble friend Lord Cecil of Chelwood, in an article which he may have for gotten, used a sentence which struck me very much: The existing Covenant of the League may be neither perfect nor complete, but, unless a nation's word is its bond, the most perfect Covenant cannot conceivably work satisfactorily. That is perfectly true, and that is the trouble. A little earlier, Sir Samuel Hoare, then Foreign Secretary, said at Geneva: The obligations of the Covenant remain. Their burden on us has been increased manifoldly. But one thing is certain: if the burden is to be borne, it must be borne collectively. If risks for peace are to be run, they must be run by all. The security of the many cannot be ensured solely by the efforts of a few, however powerful they may be. That is perfectly true. Real collective security, with every nation's: word as its bond, would, of course, be magnificent. But nations are not of that disposition; unfortunately, they are on a rather lower level than human beings. The trouble is that you cannot depend on them. You must not, therefore, pin your faith too high, or think that you are, in the new world which Lord Darnley wants, going to construct a body which is going to be successful. It will not be successful if it aims too high or attempts to accomplish too much.

My noble friend the Leader of the House, as your Lordships will no doubt have noticed, has a way of listening with great attention to the arguments brought forward by almost every speaker, so that his summing up of a debate is really a most excellent epitome of all that has taken place. He did not have to deal, on the occasion of the last three debates, with the contention that force should not be accepted as the ultimate sanction of a new international authority; he made no reference to it, because nobody had suggested anything of the sort. But he did say this: If we are to create a more effective League, we must evidently examine not only what was good in the League but also what was bad. I think he was right there, and I want to bring to his notice that this idea of an international force is thoroughly bad. He also said that we must learn the lessons of our experience of the League of Nations, and hope to avoid some of the pitfalls next time. There is no doubt at all that this was an experience of dire failure and it certainly ought to be avoided next time. I do not want to deal with an international force at any length at this late hour. I have always thought it to be an entirely impracticable proposition, not on account of its cost, which would easily be collected, but for other reasons. What about its recruitment, its membership? Where is it to practise? Who is to arm it? That is going to be one of the most difficult questions. It has to have by far the most up-to-date, immense, and what is called "overwhelming" force that the world has ever seen. Who is going to have the privilege of making those aeroplanes and those tanks? I do not think people have thought out what an International Police Force means. At any rate it is not wanted. I am certain that the world is not going to be governed in that way.

I do believe very much in what my noble friend Lord Samuel just touched on in an extremely interesting speech—the International Labour Organization. How few people know about it, what it has done, how it is constituted, or even of its existence! All that is to the good. The best things are never done on the house top, but quietly, by people talking together and tackling the real difficulties of the world. This admirable Organization is described in a little threepenny pamphlet called The International Labour Organization, written by Mr. Harold Butler, the second Director, who was Director from 1932 to 1938. It is astonising to see what this Organization has accomplished and the good which it has done. I believe that 850 ratifications of Conventions have been registered. There has been no force about this. It has been a question of talking the matter over, and of the delegates talking matters over with their Governments, and gradually there being a consensus of opinion that there should be real reform with regard to wages, and hours, and pensions, and youth, and all the rest of it. As Mr. Harold Butler admits, it is very slow but we accomplish something that really counts and matters.

The public mind nowadays in all these affairs is so distracted by the headline and the photographic process. A very keen supporter of the League of Nations in former days, a very prominent man, Mr. C. B. Fry, told me the other day that he used to go about speaking for it. He said he remembered going to a very large meeting in London and saying: "Before I begin talking to you about the League of Nations, will those of you who have read the Covenant of the League of Nations just hold up your hands?" Out of 3,000 people three hands were put up. If things are dull and unspectacular and you cannot have photographs about them they are ignored nowadays. We have got vulgar minds creeping on us more and more. We cannot get people really to study things to see what matters and what does not matter.

I have ventured to bring this one point forward with the greatest emphasis that I could because I believe that if we are going to slip back into this bad mistake on the part of the League, and furbish it up in a new fashion with International Armies and Police Forces, we are simply going to make the future worse than the past. Very great attempts have been made during the centuries by peacemakers ever since that magnificent figure Grotius in the seventeenth century: they have all fallen to the ground one after another. Is ours, because our victory is going to be so great, going to follow the same track? I hope not, but I do have misgivings when I hear people thoughtlessly holding up their hands, or anyhow their voices, in favour of such a disastrous project as was accepted the other day in the debate.

VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD

My Lords, I am in a little difficulty in joining in this debate because the two speakers who have preceded me have talked about entirely different things. If my noble friend Lord Ponsonby will forgive me, I do not think there was a single word in his speech which had any bearing at all on the speech of my noble friend Lord Darnley, except that he might possibly have accepted—though he did not say he did—the central idea which I gather ran through Lord Darnley's speech. As I understand Lord Darnley, he conceives that there is a thing called the Old Order. He did not define exactly what the Old Order was, but I gather it was responsible for all the wickedness and all the injustice and everything that is wrong in the present world. That, he says, exists and you cannot do anything at all until you get rid of the Old Order. And, at the end of his speech, he contemplated a great international meeting at which all the representatives of all the States there should pass a solemn resolution declaring, "We hereby bury the Old Order." I hope my noble friend will not think I am disrespectful of him if I say that that was the only positive suggestion that I could trace in the whole of his speech. I am afraid that is not likely to produce any very great effect in the present position we are in.

He will no doubt remember the original Holy Alliance founded by the Emperor Alexander of Russia, and roughly speaking consisting in a general declaration of all the Powers—everybody practically except this country—to the effect that they would make the Sermon on the Mount the rule of their policy in the future. As far as I know, that undertaking had no kind or sort of effect in any international question after it was made, and the Holy Alliance, or its successor, ultimately drifted into an alliance of three or four of the despotically ruled States against any progress of democracy in their States, or indeed anywhere else. I venture very respectfully to appeal to my noble friend not to be satisfied with these vague, general remedies. They are really no use at all, and even less use in an international gathering than they are in the singularly tolerant atmosphere of your Lordships' House. It will be no use going to talk to a lot of hard-boiled foreign diplomats or foreign statesmen and saying "What I wish you to do is to bury the Old Order." They would think you were a dangerous lunatic. They would say, "Well, what on earth do you mean?" Then they would say, "The suggestion is no doubt extremely interesting, and we trust that we can refer it to a Commission," and you would never hear any more of it in that gathering. I am afraid that we really do not get forward at all by anything of that kind. My noble friend said that he wanted an earthquake, and a little later he wanted a tidal wave, which was to sweep away everything that belonged to the Old Order, and he said that was because he wanted to supply the great reed of the present day—he wanted hope in the world. I really do not see that that helps us at all.

THE EARL OF DARNLEY

Might I interrupt? The intention was not to sweep away all the Old Order, it was only to sweep away that which was wrong in the dealings between nations, the international mode of settling disputes—that is all.

VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD

I am still a little vague, but I certainly thought there was a considerable part of the noble Earl's speech which dealt with things like town planning, wage and economic questions and so on, which I understood all belonged to the Old Order which was to be swept away by the earthquake and the tidal wave.

THE EARL OF DARNLEY

All I meant to say was that those things were dominated by the Old Order, and that in future you ought to have a new one to keep them established—positive, not negative.

VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD

I want very much to come down to what I think is the bottom of my noble friend's thought—namely, that the cause of war is the existence of want of security, as he continually repeated, and social injustice. I entirely agree that it is one of the great functions of statesmanship to get rid of social insecurity and social injustice. In hard fact, it was not want of social justice or want of economic security that produced the last war nor, as far as I remember, was it the cause of any of the wars during the nineteenth century. I may be wrong about that, because if you commit yourself to such a big proposition you generally find you have overlooked something. But, broadly speaking, it was not social injustice, it was a political demand on the part of the Nazi, Fascist, and Japanese Governments that produced this war. This war was a purely political conception. No doubt they hoped that great social advantages would flow when they had established their new political order, but it was purely political in origin.

You will not find any suggestion that they would have been met in any way by an enlargement of what my noble friend Lord Ponsonby properly praised—the International Labour Office. As he knows very well, the Germans resigned from the International Labour Office at the same time as they resigned from the League of Nations. They certainly attributed no kind of importance to it from their point of view, because what they were out for— and it is really not a matter of dispute at all—was world domination. There is no doubt about it at all. You cannot get round it. Not only have they said so again and again, but their actions and the whole of their policy have been directed to that purpose. That was the great reason why this war created such intense excitement, because everybody felt that their liberty and everything they valued were at stake. Even now it seems incredible that any Government should demand such a thing. I am not going into the historical reasons why it was possible to find a German Government actuated by a conception of that kind. As Lord Vansit-tart, with perhaps over-emphasis, has pointed out, it goes back many years in German history, and it is based fundamentally on the conception of idolatry of the State, that the State can do no wrong, or rather that there is no wrong or right outside the decisions of the State. That is the basis of the whole of the German system at the present moment, without any question of doubt.

I saw in the last issue of a very useful and interesting publication which I hope your Lordships read as regularly as possible—a thing issued by the Ministry of Information called The Spiritual Issues of the War—a description of the German marriage service as set out in a German printed book at the present time. I shall not go through the strange and fantastic details of that service, but substantially wherever we put the Deity, they put the German State right through. That is the thing we are up against in this case. It is fatal to the whole conception of our civilization, and we are perfectly right to say that until that idea has been abandoned, with its attendant idea that the State is entitled to pursue by force all its desires, there really is no hope of peace or progress, of New Order or anything that is desirable. I do not propose to go further into that because I find myself fundamentally at issue with my noble friend Lord Darnley. It is no use going into details regarding his interesting arguments because of my preliminary objection to the whole.

I come now to my noble friend Lord Ponsonby. He was in a more fortunate position because he had not any positive proposal at all to make. That is always much more convenient. His suggestion really was that force never did any good, and collective force was worst of all. I do not quite know why collective force should be worse than any other kind of force, but I gather from his argument that that is so. I should have thought that collective force is not only a possible plan, but is the only possible plan. You have got to face the practical difficulty. What are you to do with a country like Germany with a Fascist policy? How are you going to stop it? What is your plan? Are you each going to fight? That is madness. Quite evidently we should have been in a most perilous and difficult position in this war if we had had to go on as we began without any other considerable Power assisting us. We should never have been able to stop the Germans in any circumstances by our own single strength, and it is evident you never can.

If you get a powerful country like Germany, or even Italy or Japan, setting out some such general policy as they have pursued in this war, it is quite clear that no single Power will have any chance of defeating them, still less of preventing them from attempting their dangerous policy. You must have collective security. There is no other plan. We are having that at this moment. We have now got the great advantage of the United Nations all fighting with us, and without that advantage we should have very little chance of victory. Perhaps that is putting it too high, but we should certainly be in great difficulty. Lord Ponsonby said that collective security was a complete failure, and therefore it is no use going back to it. There is no other plan. He certainly has not suggested one by which you can defend yourself in the last resort, except by collective action. My noble friend Lord Darnley indeed said he was in favour of universal co-operation. It may be he would include in that collective security if it became necessary, but my noble friend Lord Ponsonby is not in favour of any such action of any kind. I hesitate very much to go further into his argument, because it would involve my repeating what your Lordships were kind enough to listen to on the occasion to which Lord Ponsonby referred, but I will just say a word about Abyssinia since he mentioned that particular case.

Abyssinia is not a case where collective security failed—not at all—nor is it true to say, as he said, that when it came to any question of exerting military force we were left alone. Nothing that has been published would justify any such statement as that. On the contrary, in all the preliminary steps of coercion which we took, we had the support of a great many of the Powers—not carried very far, because if I were to go into it I should have to say that the whole policy was halfhearted and consequently ineffective. But as far as it went it is quite untrue, and very unjust to the smaller Powers, to say that they left us without any assistance. On the contrary, the great mass of them did everything we suggested should be done, only what we suggested was quite ineffective to stop the Italians. I believe still quite firmly that if we had carried out the whole policy contemplated by the Covenant of the League of Nations in such a case, and had exerted our immense power even then, particularly on the sea, we should have had the support of practically every country in Europe except Germany who, if she was not prepared to support us, was not at that time prepared to oppose us. If we had been able to speak with a united mind as we might have done, and if we had given the proper lead at the time, I am confident the Italians would have abandoned their expedition. They would never, for the sake of what was really valueless when they did actually conquer it, have risked a major war with the great Powers of Europe. I am sure they would have abandoned that plan, and if they had abandoned that plan the whole history of Europe subsequently would have been different. There is no question at all that it was the failure to stop the Italian invasion of Abyssinia that encouraged the Germans on the first steps of their path which ultimately led to the invasion of Poland and this world war.

I apologize to your Lordships for having said even so much as that, because I said it all once before and I know how impatient your Lordships are, and rightly so, with any repetition of previous arguments. To my mind there is only one thing that we can do as far as direct keeping of the peace is concerned after the war. I am quite sure that our whole policy must be designed to prevent aggression in the future. I do not agree with my noble friend that force has always failed. I think historically that is quite untrue, but whether it has failed or not this is not the case of one country against another country, it is the case of a great combination of countries acting not for their own particular interests but for the establishment and maintenance of peace. That is the fundamental idea. I see no reason to suppose that that has ever failed, and I have no reason to suppose that that would not succeed if it was tried. When you have established the proposition that aggression is to be ruled out altogether from international politics, then I have no doubt you can proceed to set up a new system and a better system, a New Order if you like to call it so, based on the great principles of freedom and truth and justice and things of that kind, which will gradually grow and gradually create a far happier and better state of things than we have seen so far. I know that it is going to take a long time and I am quite sure that you must have at the back of it a proper organization of the forces of the peaceful Powers to insist that aggression and attack shall not take place, to insist that whatever the grievances of countries may be they must be settled by discussion and ultimately by arbitration in some form or another.

Until you get that system established and accepted—and I believe it is very generally desired at the present time by the populations of Europe—I do not think there is any prospect of any considerable or widespread social or economic reform. I take a different view from a good many of my noble friends and others on that point. I do not believe that social and economic reform of a wide character is the kind of thing you merely have to suggest and all the countries of Europe will spring up and accept it. I do not think that is at all likely to be true. Conditions in each country are so different. History, prejudices and classes are so very diverse that it is most improbable that any considerable revolutionary reform such as my noble friend suggests would receive general agreement. On the contrary, my belief is the result would be exactly the opposite. If you start with that and have no system of keeping the peace behind it, you will merely occasion a whole number of new disputes which may easily lead you into war. Therefore my strong recommendation is that you should first establish your peace-keeping machinery, get that into working order, get that generally accepted so that you have behind it the immense majority of the popular feeling of the world, and then, when you have that established, build on that secure foundation your system of economic reform which undoubtedly will help, once you have got the system of peace established, to make it more secure in the future.

THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (VISCOUNT CRANBORNE) (Lord Cecil)

My Lords, I rise to reply to this debate, although, after the very moving and to my mind conclusive speech to which we have just listened from my noble relative Lord Cecil, there really seems very little that I can say which has not already been much better said by him. It is frequently said of your Lordships' debates that they cover a great deal of ground, and that I think is certainly true both of the Motion which has been tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Darnley, and by the speech with which he introduced it. That Motion, as your Lordships know, urges on His Majesty's Government "that, if civilization is to be saved, a most vital necessity now exists for visualizing and promulgating a New Order for humanity on completely novel lines."

As Lord Ponsonby said in his speech, two months ago, there was a debate in this House on the nature of the international authority which should be set up after this war. That debate, as your Lordships will remember, led to an extremely interesting and I think important discussion by noble Lords with long experience in international affairs. I would not say that those who took part in that debate were in agreement about everything, but I think there were certain broad principles on which it could be said there was practical unanimity, and one of those principles is relevant to our discussion this afternoon. It was this, that if law and order are to prevail, in the international as in the domestic spheres, there must be behind them the sanction of collective force. As Lord Ponsonby said just now, that proposition was, I think, universally accepted in the debate as being the lesson of recent years. The League of Nations failed, not because it was materially too strong, but because it was materially not strong enough, and not sufficiently united in the use of the strength which it had at its disposal. I think it was accepted, too, that after this war, if peace is to be preserved, we must construct a system so powerful that no one will have any incentive to break the law. That I had quite understood was the unanimous conclusion of those of your Lordships who had studied this question. It now appears to-day that that was not so. This afternoon, the noble Earl, Lord Darnley, has made it perfectly clear not only that he differs from those conclusions but that he rebuts the whole chain of reasoning by which those conclusions were reached.

He suggested and the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, supported his view, that force never has established peace and never will; indeed that force is the whole cause of our troubles. He said we must eradicate the idea of force, whether individual or collective, from our minds and remodel civilization on an entirely new basis which excludes force. I do not think anyone would complain that the noble Earl should have approached the most fundamental of our problems from an entirely new angle. After all, this is no time for limiting ourselves to stereotyped ideas. It was said by a British statesman of the last century: The commonest error in politics is clinging to the carcasses of dead policies. We cling to the shred of an old policy long after it has been torn to pieces, and to the shadow of the shred after the rag itself has been torn away. We do not want to fall into that error at a time like this. On the contrary, I think there has never been a time when there has been a more vital necessity for original thought in forming plans for the post-war world.

At the same time it is equally essential that we should not fall into the alternative error of disregarding all the experience of the past. There is a tendency nowadays—I thought I detected it in the speech of the noble Earl—to say that anything new must be good. That, my Lords, was, of course, the pretended appeal of Hitler's New Order—and look where it has brought Germany and the world—although I do not for a moment suggest that there is anything in common with Hitler's New Order in the New Order as suggested by the noble Earl. At any rate, if we are to be ready to examine Lord Darnley's proposition—as we must—the onus is surely on him to prove to our satisfaction that the reasons which led him to his conclusion are sound. He must make his case: and that, with all due deference to him, I do not think he succeeded in doing this afternoon. First of all, I do not think he proved—and I do not think the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, proved either— that it is the lesson of history that collective force rightly directed has always failed in its task of maintaining law and order. My noble relative, Viscount Cecil, has already dealt very powerfully with that point in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, and I only add a few words because I understood Lord Ponsonby to say that I had not made my views clear, in the recent debate, on the question of the use of force for the maintenance of law. I certainly thought I had done so.

I did say in the course of my speech that for a successful international peace system there must be behind it the backing of an overwhelmingly strong armed force. That is the final sanction of law and order in international as in domestic spheres. Further, if the noble Lord's point was that I did not make clear what sort of force it was to be, I would remind him that I quoted the words of the Prime Minister, in which he said the new League should be supported by armed forces, national or international, or both, held ready to enforce its decisions and present renewed aggression and the preparation of future wars. I should have thought that was perfectly clear. But, if my noble friend wants me to repeat it, I am very glad to do so, and I say here and now that I do not for one moment accept his contention that force has in the past failed to sustain law or that there should not be an overwhelming backing of collective force behind any new international organization. On the contrary, I think it absolutely essential that there should be that basis of force and I would maintain that that is the lesson not only of recent events, but of the whole course of history, however far you go back.

There was a time, in this country, when the King's Writ did not run, when the strong bullied the weak to their hearts' content and when cruelty and injustice were rampant. But gradually, with the passage of time, public opinion was marshalled and law and order established by collective action. Nowadays, though crimes and disorder do occasionally occur, they are extremely rare and when they do occur they are immediately punished. This happy situation, for it is a happy situation, is only assured by the existence of a code of laws and by the presence of a large efficient police force to ensure its enforcement. The noble Earl, Lord Darnley, seems to regard the policeman not as an emblem of force. I was extremely surprised to hear him say that and I believe every one of your Lordships here would take a very different view. He certainly is an emblem of force. If to-day he does not carry a weapon with him it is because law and order has been so firmly established that he does not need to have that weapon. But he is, by his very existence, the emblem of collective force, and even in this country, unless the police force were kept in being and the laws rigorously enforced, there is no doubt at all that we should soon relapse into the morass of misrule from which we so painfully rose. Evilly disposed persons would begin again almost at once to murder and rob their fellow citizens without fear of retribution. Indeed, my Lords in this and many other countries I should have thought it absolutely indisputable that it is force administered justly and efficiently by the officers of the community that has largely eradicated crime and disorder.

It is perfectly true, of course, that that desirable result has not yet been achieved in the international sphere.

LORD PONSONBY OF SHULBREDE

May I be allowed to interrupt for a moment to suggest that surely it is because the policeman does not burn down the house of the criminal or murder his wife and family but confines his attention to the criminal himself?

VISCOUNT CRANBORNE

That is no doubt a point, if the noble Lord likes to make it. But the fact remains that the criminal by some means or other is immediately punished. It is true that wives and families at the present time are suffering from the war, but that is because criminals cannot be got at without their being involved. None of us likes to think that wives and families are suffering. But if the alternative is the triumph of chaos and anarchy, this is a misfortune which I think, in the view of the great majority of us, must be endured. Of course, as your Lordships know, attempts have been made again and again to construct machinery to establish security on a basis of respect for law. But up to now, I am afraid, it is perfectly true that defects and weaknesses have rendered that machinery ineffective. Surely, however, that is not a reason for abandoning our efforts. On the contrary, I should have thought that what we need now is to profit by our experience, to educate public opinion, and to strengthen our international machinery until eventually it is powerful enough to do for the community of nations what it has done in our own and other countries.

Nor can I see, although I have tried very hard, that the noble Earl, Lord Darnley's New Order is like to produce any better result. He indicated that all that is necessary—if I understood him aright—is to remove the disabilities of nations and then, he said, they will not want to go to war. What does that in fact mean? In very simple words it means that every nation must be given what it wants and then everybody will be happy. That is really what it comes to. That assumes that the disabilities of any one nation can always be remedied without creating greater disabilities and hardships for another nation. But that assumption unfortunately is not true. It is not so easy as that to remove the casus belli. The desires, the ambitions and the needs of nations, as of individuals, constantly conflict and it is no use ignoring that fact. In this connexion I should like to recall to the noble Earl's mind the story of Naboth's vineyard which seems to me to be very much to the point. The House will remember how when King Ahab demanded. Naboth's vineyard on the ground that he needed a garden of herbs near his house, Naboth replied: "The Lord forbid it me, that I should give the inheritance of my fathers unto thee." Thereupon, on the ground that he was suffering under a disability, King Ahab arranged to have Naboth murdered, and this was done. King Ahab was, thereupon, immediately, and very severely and properly, rebuked by the prophet Elijah. That story is one example of conflicting needs.

If the noble Earl wants a more recent example, one which is a little bit nearer home, I would refer him to the German demand for Lebensraum. Germany claimed, as your Lordships know, in the years before the war, that she would be suffering under an almost unendurable disability unless she was allowed to absorb within her borders the territories of all her neighbours. Her neighbours, on the other hand, fairly claimed—and who shall question their claim—that they would be suffering under an unendurable disability unless they were allowed to retain their independence. The noble Earl, Lord Darnley, seems to assume that if they had all been able to get together round a table they could have come easily and happily to an agreed conclusion without injury to anybody. I do not see on what he bases that comfortable theory. It is certainly not based on the evidence of the experience of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Albania and Poland. It seems to me that the one inevitable result of his policy as expounded to-day would be to cause unending conflict throughout the world. First of all, the great nations would absorb the small nations, and, when that stage was completed, the great nations would fight each other, and each time the aggressor would justify his action on the grounds of some disability which must be removed.

The noble Earl may argue that that is the position at present. But, if he does, surely the answer is this; our recent disasters have occurred, not because international machinery existed, but because that machinery broke down. What we need to do now, as the noble Viscount, Lord Cecil of Chelwood, has said, is to re-establish it and strengthen it. That is the only hope of peace. If we cannot do that, if we fail, our present unhappy situation will be perpetuated, and will go on until our civilization is completely destroyed. If a man were to kidnap the child of the noble Earl, or the child of any other noble Lord, and were to plead in his defence that he was suffering from a disability in that that noble Lord had a child and he had not, surely the noble Lord, himself, would not regard that as a justification for setting up a new order legalizing kidnapping. On the contrary, he would, of course, point to the immediate necessary for strengthening the law and increasing the penalties against kidnapping. That would be the view of all of us I am sure, and it must surely be the lesson of recent events in the world.

No one, of course, would defend the proposition that no effort should be made to remove the cause of war. To adopt the attitude of Dr. Pangloss in Voltaire's Candide, that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, in a situation like the present, would clearly be quite absurd. We should all of us agree that we must seek to promote friendly co-operation and collaboration between nations. That has been fully recognized in the Atlantic Charter which states, among other things —I will only quote one article: After the final destruction of Nazi tyranny, they hope to see established a peace which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries, and which will afford assurance that all the men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want. That is the view of the signatories to the Atlantic Charter, and it is emphatically the view of His Majesty's Government.

The recent broadcast of my right honourable friend the Prime Minister, and recent speeches by the Foreign Secretary and other Ministers, show that constant thought is being given to the construction of machinery for solving international problems by peaceful means and so promoting human welfare. There are the plans for a new system for the regulation of international exchanges which have been put forward on both sides of the Atlantic, and are now under examination. There is the conference which has just been concluded in the United States of America, which was attended by delegates from all the United Nations, for the purpose of ensuring the future provision and distribution to the peoples of the world of food in larger quantities and of greater nutritional value than in the past. Examples in this connexion could be multiplied by your Lordships. I do not suppose that there has ever been a time when there was so much unprejudiced inquiry going on as to means of removing causes of war. But there is one essential element in all these schemes. All nations great and small must agree to solve their problems by peaceful and legal means. They must agree to do all in their power to restrain any nation that attempts to adopt methods of violence. The strong must not impose their will on the weak. There must be justice for all. If we once abandon that position, the world will inevitably, in my view at any rate, relapse into chaos.

There is, of course, as your Lordships know, another school of thought which is equally opposed to force but which takes a different view from the noble Earl, Lord Darnley, though I shrewdly suspect that Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede has some sympathy with it. This school does not delude itself into thinking that the abandonment of the sanction of force will lead to prosperity and security for all. Indeed, I think Lord Ponsonby has indicated that this afternoon. Adherents of this school think, quite simply, that it is wicked to fight, however good the cause may be, and they are fully prepared to accept all the consequences involved in that view. That is the Pacifist attitude. It is held, as we know, by many extremely high-minded and excellent people. But emphatically it is not the attitude of the British people as a whole. As your Lordships know, there are things for which the people of this country will always fight, for which they are fighting now. We in this country believe that liberty and justice are the foundation of all true civilization: we believe that without those two great principles life is not worth living: and, if they are threatened, we always fly to arms in their defence. We did so in the days of Philip of Spain, in the days of Napoleon, in the days of the Kaiser, and again now. The British people, perhaps above all other peoples, wisely distinguish between liberty and anarchy; and it is because the proposal of the noble Earl, Lord Darnley, however well meant, is bound to end in anarchy that it must, I am sure, be rejected both by His Majesty's Government and also by your Lordships' House.

THE EARL OF DARNLEY

My Lords, having detained you for Such a long time to-day I cannot possibly do more than spend a moment or two now in saying two things. First of all, I am very grateful for the courteous way in which my Motion has been received and answered by the noble Viscount. It would be much simpler if one could make one's speech and propose one's Motion at the end of the debate instead of at the beginning, because there is a great temptation to answer at some length all the things which have been said by the noble Viscount; but I cannot do that. The second thing I want to say arises from the fact that I am interested in gardening and know a little about it. If you pull a tree out, you pull some of the roots out with it, but some are left behind. The only thing I claim about my Motion is that I know something more about the roots which are left behind. When I go away from here, I shall dig them up and examine them and put them in a glass case, and I hope to re-present them to your Lordships in a more suitable and better explained form at a future date. All I can do to-day is to ask permission to withdraw my Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.