HL Deb 30 May 1945 vol 136 cc276-94

2.46 p.m.

LORD BRABAZON OF TARA rose to call the attention of His Majesty's Government to the future of "directed missiles"; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, the other day, on a Motion by my noble friend Viscount Trenchard, I was, I think, not in order but daring enough to raise a point about V1's and V2's, and the Lord Chancellor refused to reply for the curious reason that he said he did not know anything about them. If this sort of thing spreads, I do not know what is going to happen from the point of view of speeches from those on the Front Bench or from any other member of Parliament, and I hope that this dangerous precedent, which might tend to undermine politics in general on a broad front, will not be taken too seriously. I have brought this Motion forward because, of course, the two directed missiles with which we are most familiar are the V1 and the V2, and I wanted to trace a little of the history of arms from the beginning and to go a little into the future to see where we stand to-day.

There is no doubt about it that in the early days wars were comparatively enjoyable. You started out surrounded by your friends, armed with swords and shields, disliking the enemy personally— whom, do not forget, you could see—and you tried to inflict as much damage upon them as you could. Of course, as things happened, new devices were brought in, and the enemies of the Romans thought it was not at all cricket for the second rank of men to have long spears with which, while the first rank was engaged with the first rank of the enemy, they prodded the enemy in the stomach. That was looked upon as most irregular and not cricket. Then Hannibal replied with the living tank in the form of the elephant, which was the early tank, and which also was looked upon, by the Romans this time, as not quite the summer game. You must remember that many of your Lordships owe your presence in this House to-day to the prowess of your ancestors with a double-handed sword or with a battle axe. Things went on fairly evenly, except that it was early realized that if you could inflict damage upon the enemy without getting any damage yourself, that would be an advantage. So we see the introduction of hurling stones, the bow and arrow and also Greek fire, which was a very early and most successful attempt in those days to introduce the flame-thrower. Then the scientists came along and really perpetrated the most dirty trick of all, and that was to invent gunpowder.

From that time all things changed and wars became most impersonal. I will not go into the development of gunpowder, except to say that it culminated, probably, in the war of 1914–18 being by far the most impersonal war that ever took place. I suppose more people were killed by, and killed, other people without seeing them than in any other war that ever took place. The casualties in that war were exceedingly high. Now there is one very curious thing to which we must draw attention. It is a lovable and a characteristic thing about the professional soldier or sailor that he always thinks that the next war is going to be like the last one. It is a simple faith which is quite charming, but of course it is not at all true. I was interested and very much touched when Lord Addison, speaking from this box on Victory Day, paid a well-earned tribute to my noble friend Lord Trenchard for having seen ahead in his day and having preached the gospel of the heavy bomber, which brought us such success in the war. The soldier faced this war with the idea that emplacements and barbed wire, a sort of Maginot line, would be perfectly satisfactory. He neglected entirely the great development of the tank, which indeed was our own invention. And the sailor also thought that we were safe from attack providing we had enough battleships.

THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY

They never thought anything of the sort.

LORD BRABAZON OF TARA

He was under the impression that they were immune from torpedo and air attack. Of course, we all know better now. Although we can laugh at those professional ideas; now, it is of interest for us to realize that, although they were all wrong, they were the highest authorities of opinion on their particular subject at that particular time.

THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY

They were not all wrong, of course.

LORD BRABAZON OF TARA

I do not say everything was wrong, but most of the big points were wrong. The carriage of bombs by the aeroplane is a form of directed missile. We cannot get away from that. As I have said, Lord Trenchard advocated that at the time when it was not popular and against the advice of many professional people. The new power of Radar to detect and for the sighting of batteries, and the power of the night fighter, made that particular technique: of bombing very expensive in life, especially against an adversary of equal power. That is the peculiarity of air power—whoever gets the first superiority increases it until he has got complete control. But against an equal enemy it would indeed be a very expensive form of warfare. In all missiles up to now which have been propelled from a gun the velocity is at its greatest at the barrel and the whole time it is diminishing in speed, except of course in the case of those missiles which have a trajectory of the howitzer type. But generally speaking we take it that the shell and every thing diminishes in speed the whole time. With the advent of the rocket, however, something different is occurring. There acceleration takes place after the launching until you get to a predetermined velocity and it is in that that the new power really resides. We have done some work on the cordite rocket and we have done work on other reactive effects, but the Germans with their alcohol and oxygen have made rockets which far transcend anything that we thought of at the time of the war.

It is worth while thinking and seeing how the reactive effect of jets has spread. The first one which we produced ourselves, which Whittle invented, was a power-jet effect upon an aeroplane and we flew that aeroplane in 1941 at nearly 400 miles an hour. That was a British triumph. Another jet effect of the Germans was the more interesting one—namely, the V1. There the jet effect was got from pulsating engine. The technique of direction, curiously enough, had been worked out at a Royal Aircraft Factory. They had the same technique as the Germans but they had not got an engine which they could use in quantity and which was cheap enough for that particular type of warfare. Nor was it any good to us. It was a type for attack against a big straggling town like London. In such a case it was quite worth doing but it would not have been worth doing for ourselves. Really the interesting thing about V1 was the construction of the engine, which developed no less than 350 horse-power and which could not possibly have cost more than £15 to complete. It was fully worn out after one and a half hours flight, but it had done its job in that time. It was a very remarkable piece of work. There was no need of course for us to have made a similar weapon because we could not have used it efficiently.

The V2 was a very different machine altogether, and I want to draw attention to some of the possibilities of the V2 before we forget it altogether. Your Lordships must remember that this propelling power is entirely in its infancy. This projectile goes up forty or fifty miles in its flight. There is no limit at all to the range it can go to because the resistance is so small at those heights. I want your Lordships to remember that although the charge was only about a ton in the case of the V2, in the future the effect of the power of explosives is going to be very much bigger than that which we have to-day. The noble Lord who is to reply is a physicist and I should like him to tell us, if lie can, what are the possibilities of explosives of an atomic type, because there are absolutely frightening possibilities. Consequently this weapon is one which is bound to be developed. It is the physicist's dream or nightmare that he can produce these terrible explosives.

In the past I have advocated that there should be only one Service, that the Army, Navy and Air Force should all be together, because I believe to-day they merge into one single Service. But that idea has always been looked upon as revolutionary and I suppose it will be a long time before it is agreed to. I would like to ask the Minister who is to reply whose job it is to develop this particular form of warfare, because your Lordships will appreciate that from the points of view of ships alone, if you could have a projectile which could go much farther than the ordinary straight gun-site projector you would have an immense advantage there. From the point of view of the Army their guns would be more efficient, and from the point of view of the Air we know to-day that the rocket of the night fighter had a most powerful effect upon the enemy and at a time completely broke up their attacks—a very remarkable thing to do.

I do not know much about it, but I understand the Ministry of Supply are the people who are responsible for this development. That may be all right, but we are not going to have a Ministry of Supply, I suppose, for ever. We shall go back to the three Services, and then what is going to occur? We shall have the usual water-tight departmental approach to this situation, and what is everybody's job will be nobody's job. I should like to be told by the Minister what the present organization is and what he anticipates will be the organization to deal with this type of warfare when we get back to normal times.

To go back to what I said at the beginning, that a new war was never like the last one, I want to say some other words about the V2. At present we ate concerned with the policing of Germany. We talk a lot about it and frankly I do net think it is going to be a difficult thing for some years, but after, say, ten years, or a little more perhaps, the recollection of the horrors will have disappeared. This nation of ours is a very forgiving nation, a very forgetful nation. We do not bear grudges against anybody and we are always prepared to think good of others. That is a most admirable Christian principle, but sometimes it does give us some needlessly difficult tasks to overcome in order to survive. Consequently, although as I say the next ten years are not going to be difficult, after that, when nobody wants to keep an Army of Occupation, when people are tired, troubles, are going to occur. The technique of rocket propulsion will go on. That will be chased by the scientists of the different nations, and some will chase the subject with revenge and hatred in their hearts.

I can well imagine some people, with mischief in their hearts, planning what they can do. And what can they do: They can rope off a few miles of their own hilly country, they can sink shafts, nominally mining shafts, they can make the pars of this instrument all over their country, assemble them in the mine, and be all ready for a really efficient V2 attack upon their selected enemy. I want you Lordships to remember this, that you will see no apparent Army, you will see no apparent Air Force, you will see no apparent Navy, but they will have the power [...]atent to launch an attack on the great cities of their enemies and the power to devastate them the moment they declare war. Before Armies can possibly assembled, let alone march, the great cities of the enemy will be destroyed. I hope you will not think for a moment that I am wrong when I say that these weapons, with the new power of the explosives which are possible and with the new accuracy of direction, are not only things which can be directed against this county. They can be directed against America and if the resources in manufacturing power of a great country like America are destroyed, as they could be in twenty years' time, we must look upon the fact that we are tied up to America and if she goes we go. Consequently this power of attack, which might be developed quietly in any part of the world, is a danger we must face.

We think of peace by collective security, but that will be quite useless unless this new technique is watched. It is almost a platitude to say that the power of science combined with the skill of the technician makes what I have envisaged a real possibility which may destroy the world. I most earnestly plead that in the organization for peace there should be given to some international committee power which will allow them to enter anywhere in the world at any time to see what people are up to. If their purpose is innocent there can be no objection to inspection. If, on the other hand, we find that the international committee is not allowed to see what is going on, we can be sure that there is building up somewhere a new technique to start this devastating attack about which I have spoken. Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. What is the machinery of vigilance which we are planning to set up in this international field? That is what I want the Minister to let us know. There are only two ways of dealing with this awful position. One is that in combination with America we should pursue the technical problems with vigour and get ahead of the world steadily. The other way is to invent machinery of inspection to stop the possibility. These are the two lines we can take. Either one or the other. I would like to ask the Minister who is to reply what is the policy of the Government. I beg to move for Papers.

3.8 p.m.

THE EARL OF DARNLEY

My Lords, I only want to make a very short intervention. First I would like to congratulate the noble Lord who has just spoken on the clear and also the humorous way in which he has raised this subject, which must indeed be the major problem for the future of humanity in this world. I would like to go a little further even than he has gone in the flight of imagination and then, at the end, suggest an alternative solution. This method of warfare may possibly in the future not only destroy humanity but also destroy the globe on which humanity resides. That sounds fantastic but from the information I have been able to get I believe it is not as fantastic as it sounds. The atomic bomb, so the Press tells us, was in a state of three-quarters preparation at the end of the war and may possibly in a generation accomplish even this.

But before discussing what must be the final fatuity of mankind, it is necessary to look a little, as the noble Lord has done, into the future of the flying bomb and the rocket. As he told us so ably and humorously, it only needs a little imagination to see what might happen from the enlargement and perfection of these two missiles. He has told us that the war of the future may last only a few minutes, and as it is now the fashion to make war without any warning the whole thing would be over before anybody is even aware that it has taken place. The first man to touch the trigger will achieve possibly the complete paralysis of his adversary by methods against which there can be no possible defence. Navies and Armies and Air Forces will be completely useless and even the other defences of Press and propaganda will be similarly completely useless. The fighters of the future will be a band of troglodytic alchemists living in catacombs in hidden valleys who will deal out inhuman death to millions and destruction to a world whose beauties and whose interests they have long since given up the art of appreciating. The machinations of these people will remove the last vestige of the so-called romance and chivalry from the original war which the noble Lord so amusingly described.

And then as to the atomic bomb. I am not speaking as an expert, I am merely passing on what I have seen described in the Press, as others of your Lordships have seen it, and perhaps the noble Lord who is going to answer will be able to give me some further information upon it. It was stated in the Press that a bomb as big as a man's hand was ready, or almost ready, for use at the end of the war, and that it could have destroyed the whole of a city as large as London. When this atomic bomb is added to these brainless horrors of metal and explosives, which we have heard about to-day, I believe—and again I ask for information from the noble Lord who is going to reply—that it may possibly be a fact that the release of the cohesive particles of the atom, which at present can only be released through intensive bombardment by great electric force, may cause such a violent reaction that the force engendered may be sufficient to release the coherence in the atoms contiguous to the explosion. If this is the case, every atom in the world might disintegrate and the whole globe disappear. Is this, then, the frightful possibility envisaged by the marriage of force and science and their use as a method of settling human disputes?

Of course, this does not apply only to war but also to the methods which will have to be employed for the prevention of aggression by those who attempt to stop it. The noble Lord, Lord Vansittart, yesterday advocated that Germany should be prevented by force from carrying out such scientific experiments. Well, he is perfectly right; the Germans should be under such restraint. But what about all the other nations in the world? What about other contemporary aggressors? What about the nations who have been aggressors in the past and those who may possibly, aggress in the future? How is it going to be possible to have a band of spies in every country, spying on the scientific workshops everywhere? It could not be done. It would not be possible to do this successfully because, as the noble Lord has said, one factory in a mine in some remote valley is always a possibility, and that may be all that is needed to destroy a nation and possibly the world. It is, therefore, a possibility that a point in existence has now arrived when the next war, or even the putting down by force of an attempted aggression, may lead to the crowning act of human ingratitude for the many possibilities of existence—that is, its self-destruction together with the world it inhabits.

From now onwards the chemists of the world in every country will be occupied in a mad race to improve these hellish machines which, as the noble Lord has said, have advanced to their present state from nothing in a few years. It is possible, with a little imagination, to foresee the end of this mad race coinciding with the end of another race—the human one. I would propose that there is another solution to the problem relating to this terrible future in addition to the two which have been proposed by the noble Lord. I think that if the world were to realize its peril and form a gentleman's agreement of all nations, a complete and comprehensive agreement, this would have a great effect in avoiding the peril. And the basis of such an agreement would be the elimination of all the international stresses and strains, the removal of want and disabilities from those in need, and last, but by no means least, the bringing into line of the backward and the aggressive. It is by these means only that the causes of war and aggression can be abolished, the continuance in the improvement of human conditions assured, this race of the chemists stopped and the peril of extermination avoided.

I trust that this aspect of humanity's peril is being studied at San Francisco as well as the matter of seating accommodation, which seems to be the principal topic at the moment, and that those concerned have some requisite action in view. Such action, I suggest, is now absolutely imperative not only because of fear of future annihilation but because the world wants now a glimmer of hope, of hope of some kind of a new era founded on ethical and rational Foundations. The ordinary man must have some glimmer of hope of this kind to give him a speedier emergence from the state of hopeless misery, muddle and subversive reaction in which this recent world tragedy has landed him. Until he can be so lifted the hotbed of hate and fear and unrest will, persist in which the seeds of future wars will germinate, bringing perhaps with them dissolution and extermination.

3.17 p.m.

THE PAYMASTER-GENERAL (LORD CHERWELL)

My Lords, I am much encouraged by what Lord Brabazon of Tara said—namely, that there is no need to know about a subject in order to speak about it. It is a view that, I confess, I had not formed myself, as a result of listening to speeches in this House, but it is a view with which I am sure your Lordships, after hearing me, will agree. I will not follow the noble Lord in his interesting, historical résumé. I will only say that I agree very largely with what he said. I would remind the noble Lord of the example of the Chevalier Bayard, the Chevalier sans peur et sans reproche, who treated all enemies who fell into his hands with the most distinguished courtesy, making an exception only in the case of anyone who was found in possession a. gunpowder. Such a person was instantly put to death. I think that that sort of attitude is by no means rare amongst people who have spent their lives with one type of weapon and who do not very much appreciate attack with another.

We always expect, of course, a very interesting speech from the noble Lord, and we have not been disappointed. As to the terms of his Motion, I am of course aware that it is the proper formula "to call the attention of His Majesty's Government" to whatever it may be, but I hope that the House will accept my assurance that on this occasion at any rate it is something more than a mere formula when I say that His Majesty's Government's attention has long been directed to these matters. Nevertheless, I am glad of the opportunity to reassure some of the all-too-numerous people who imagine that our technicians are always limping along behind those of the enemy.

Before going into detail, I think it may be of assistance to some noble Lords who are interested in these matters if I make one or two general observations. Naturally, as the noble Lord said, the object of using missiles in war is to damage the enemy from a distance. But range is not everything. No one will dispute that in total war, where a country's resources are stretched to the uttermost, it is necessary to inflict the maximum of damage with the minimum of effort, and in order to do any good or harm (according to your point of view) you must hit the enemy where it hurts; and the vulnerable spots are very small indeed. Take, for instance, the Ruhr, probably the most densely-populated area on the Continent of Europe. Only one part in twenty of the Ruhr is built up, and I believe that less than half of this is actually covered with bricks and mortar. It is clearly no use, therefore, just peppering a country side in the hope of hitting something worth while. In assessing the value of any missile, we must take into account not only the damage which it can do if it hits, and its range, but also its chance of hitting a worth-while objective, and the effort in man-power required to produce and project the missile. In other words, the usefulness of a missile is proportional not only to the damage which it can do but also to its accuracy and to its cheapness. It may be worth while to have an inaccurate weapon if you can fire hundreds of thousands of rounds; conversely, it may be worth while to have a very high-class expensive weapon if it is very accurate, so that you can pick out the key points. We must, however, avoid an expensive missile of which only a minute proportion hit the target.

Another general proposition which will scarcely be denied is that it is much easier to hit the target from a short distance than from a great distance. A priori, therefore, the air bomber, who releases his bombs within less than ten miles of the target, will have a great advantage over the artilleryman (in the widest sense) who fires at a distance of a hundred miles or more. The factor of advantage in that case—ten miles to one hundred miles—is 100. This is an absolutely general proposition, and is bound to be true as long as Euclid's axioms are valid. I know that the noble Lord, in his studies in the theory of relativity, has dealt exhaustively with non-Euclidean forms of geometry, but I think that he will agree with me that the deviations from Euclid would have to be millions of times bigger than they are on this planet in order to make any difference. Any one pleading the cause of long-range missiles, therefore, must take this handicap into account.

Finally, any increase in range implies a decrease in useful load; in other words, in the war-head. This is particularly noticeable with weapons of the rocket type, where the oxygen has to be carried as well as the fuel. The operational range of the V1 was about 140 miles, and the fuel weighed about half as much as the one-ton war-head. In order to put the range up to 280 miles, you would have to double the weight of the fuel, or in other words halve the weight of the war-head. The V2 had an operational range of about 200 miles, and the fuel plus oxygen weighed about three-quarters of the whole, or ten times as much as the one-ton war-head. In order to bring this range up to 280 miles, the fuel plus the oxygen would have to be increased by 1600 lb. Since this would certainly not reduce the carcass weight of the rocket proper, there would only be about 500 lb. left for the war-head.

From that point of view I was a little surprised when the noble Lord said that there was no limit of range to the rocket. He will no doubt remember that the equation of the motion of a rocket is a very simple one. The acceleration is simply proportional to the momentum of the ejected gases, and the velocity with which the gases can be ejected from the rear of the rocket is determined entirely by their temperature and their molecular weight, and consequently, without raising the temperature to abnormal levels, which no material could stand, it is impossible to get the gases out at a very much greater rate than at present—something like 7,000 ft. a second. If that is so, then it is a perfectly simple calculation to show that the maximum velocity which the rocket can reach is equal to the velocity of the ejected gases mulitplied by the logarithm of the total weight of the rocket over the carcass weight and the war-head; and therefore, as the range is proportional at best to the square of the initial velocity, you will not be able to put up the range very much without reducing the carcass weight and the war-head to negligible dimensions. To bring a rocket as far as New York would mean—I did a rough calculation in my head as the noble Lord was speaking—that you would have to have a total weight of fuel amounting to something well over 95 per cent. of the total weight of the rocket; and, as the carcass weight of the rocket must be something, precious little is going to be left for the war-head.

I will now come to the point about calling His Majesty's Government's attention to these matters. As the noble Lord knows, thirty years ago we had a small aircraft which was directed—or, as we preferred to call it, guided; I suppose all missiles are directed, in the sense that you do not send them off without aiming at some target—by radio from the ground, and as long as twenty years ago the Royal Air Force had developed a pilotless aircraft called the Larynx, which was very similar to the V1, and in calm air was at least as accurate as the V1 at about the same range. But the reason, as the noble Lord said, why these experiments were discontinued was very simple: it was not accurate enough to hit targets of the sort with which we were concerned. Noble Lords will realize that London is a unique target. Its built-up area is something like 700 square miles, and it is within a hundred miles of foreign shores. If you are content merely to blast other people's houses, it is clearly no great feat to hit an area thirty miles each way at a range of a hundred miles. It is like lobbing stones into a pool 30 feet in diameter from a distance of 30 yards. But there are no targets of this type within reach of our shores, even if we were content to go in for this sort of random destruction. I am satisfied, therefore, that the Air Ministry was well advised to put the main emphasis of its effort upon developing bombers, rather than upon long-range missiles of this type.

The only guided missile, in the true sense of the word, which has been described in this war is the German wireless-controlled glider bomb, which was launched from aircraft in attacks upon our shipping. Like any novelty, this caused a considerable sensation. Naturally, I cannot disclose the nature of the counter-measures which we used against this type of missile but I can say that the enemy must have been very dissatisfied with the result of his attacks. The V1 and the V2 which were used against us were not guided missiles in the usual sense; only in a few cases was the trajectory of the V2 modified from the ground after it had been fired. As your Lordships know, the V1 was a small aircraft with a very cheap engine of most ingenious design which few on a pre-set course on which it was maintained by a gyroscopic automatic pilot. Since there was no radio control, it was immune to jamming. But it is a very doubtful question whether it was an economic proposition compared with the bomber. On Goebbels's own showing—and he was certainly concerned to pretend it was cheap—you could at most get a hundred V1's for the cost of one bomber. It may have been less, but he said he was going to get a hundred. Its war-head only weighed one ton, so that even if every single V1 had reached its target it would have been more extravagant in man-hours per ton delivered than the bomber, which drops hundreds of tons in a lifetime. Its range was only 150 miles against the many hundreds of miles at which a long-range bomber can deliver its load and its accuracy was not one-tenth that of a bomber even bombing through cloud. Finally, barely one-third of those launched reached the target, so that—unpleasant as it was—it certainly cost the Germans a great deal of effort compared with what could have been achieved if they had been able to bomb us in a more orthodox way.

The V2 was an even more absurd proposition from the economic point of view. It is, as your Lordships know, a very elaborate rocket made with the utmost refinement and of an almost inconceivable complication even to make it as accurate as it was. It must have cost at least ten times, and perhaps twenty times, as many man-hours to make as the cheap, coarse V1. It carried only a one-ton war-head and was not notably More accurate. Its only merit compared with the V1 was that it could not be shot down en route. To devote effort to the V1 could be justified if ordinary bombing, for some reason or other, had to be ruled out. Even on this premiss, it is difficult to understand how the Germans were persuaded to waste all the man-power they used on V2. If they had devoted the same effort to making the right sort of aircraft, instead of making these V weapons, our Air Force might have had much greater difficulty in achieving the supremacy which contributed so much to final victory.

I should be the last to underrate the suffering and misery caused, especially to the people of London, by the V1 and V2 attacks. But we must keep a sense of proportion. In the three months' campaign until the V1 sites were overrun, the warheads of all the flying bombs crossing the coast weighed less than 6,000 tons, and only about half of these reached London. The war-heads of all the V2's which reached this country over a period of seven months only amounted to 1,000 tons, and again only about half of these reached London. When we remember that in one single raid the R.A.F. dropped nearly 5,000 tons and that in many such raids half of the bombs fell well within one mile of the aiming point, and when we remember that practically every city in Germany lay open to their attacks, whereas the V1 and V2 were useless except against London, it is perhaps going a little far to say, as we were told yesterday, that had these campaigns started one or two years earlier, it would have meant the end of civilization.

The day may come when such good answers to the bomber are discovered that they really cannot venture over enemy territory. In that case these long-range missiles may yet come into their own. But, as I pointed out, the very fact that they are fired at long-range handicaps them as regards accuracy. If they are to be directed from afar, it must be done by radio, so that elaborate anti-jamming devices will be required. This is bound to be difficult over enemy territory. When the missile is halfway between the firing point and the target the jammer and the transmitter will be on equal terms. The distance being equal, the power required to actuate the mechanism is equal. But when the missile has gone three-quarters of the way, that is when it is three times nearer the target than the transmitter, the jammer has a ninefold advantage; when it is ten times nearer, a hundredfold. To wards the end of its flight therefore when guidance is most necessary, jamming is most easy for the enemy. Moreover, if the missile is to be guided its exact position in relation to the target must be known, otherwise we should not know what guidance to apply. It is not very easy to ascertain this at long-range if the enemy is trying to upset the observations. Control at distances of the order of magnitude mentioned, is difficult in any event; when the enemy is putting up all sorts of misleading signals it becomes harder than ever.

Though I have related all these difficulties I have done so rather in order to allay hopes—or fears as the case may be—of immediate spectacular results than to decry the study of these matters in general. Unfortunately, revelations about weapons have to be postponed until the enemy knows all about them, that is to say, until they have actually been used in operations. Even then some time must elapse if we are to avoid giving useful information. If the weapon is successful the enemy very often does not know what has hit him; it is then only the blinds and duds that give the game away. In these circumstances I am sure the House will not expect me even to say whether such weapons are in use by us, still less to launch out into any technical details. But this does not mean that we have neglected all these novel devices. True we have never had a target like London, at which to aim long-range rockets. But no one can accuse our Departments of having inhibitions against what Colonel Blimp might call "new-fangled gadgets." Indeed, there is little doubt that this country was first in the field in the use of rockets as accurate military weapons. At the shorter ranges they cannot, of course, vie with the gun in accuracy at present, but where weight of fire rather than extreme precision is required, as in barrage fire, the rocket with its cheap, light projectors is a far more economical weapon than the gun. Enormous quantities have been fired in actual operations. I do not know exactly how many rounds have been used on land, at sea and in the air, but the number must run into millions.

The most variegated applications of these novel weapons to all three Services have been developed, mainly by a Ministry of Supply Establishment under Sir Alwyn Crow, and, far from having reached finality, projects are still sprouting forth in all directions. For a year or so the requirements of the three Services have been co-ordinated by a fully representative Inter-Service Committee. No facilities have been withheld for any development which could possibly come into operational use during the war. Intensive work has now started on longer-term projects and this is being co ordinated by a special organization in which all those interested besides the users, technicians and scientists from both within and outside the Ministries, are represented. What will happen in future, of course, if and when the Ministry of Supply vanishes, it is impossible for me to say. All that must depend upon the organization of the Services, the continuation of the Ministry of Defence and matters like that, which have not yet been decided.

I do not think I could profitably enter into any detail in regard to the questions put by the noble Earl, Lord Darnley. He was certainly concerned to make our flesh creep, I think, and I personally am not in such an anxiety as he is as to the dangers ahead. A great deal has been published in the scientific journals about the possibilities of using atomic energy, and even more has been published in the non-scientific journals. I would suggest, if I might do so respectfully, that anyone who wishes to get the facts should confine himself to what has appeared in the scientific journals. The question about the sympathetic disintegration of atoms is, of course, one that cannot be answered, because there has never been any instance in all our observations of its happening without a definite collision between one of the particles projected and the nucleus. A great deal of work has been done on that, as can be found in the scientific journals, but there has never been any instance which leads us to fear that it will extend to all ordinary matter and that this globe may ultimately explode and someone on a distant star, in a few hundred years, may observe a nova and wonder what caused it.

It is quite true, of course, that unless the nations can agree upon some self-denying ordinance such as was adumbrated yesterday by Lord Vansittart and to-day by the noble Lord, it is certain that the range and, for that matter, the lethality of weapons will continue to increase. Unfortunately this country has the most to lose by this. For hundreds of years we have been able to live our lives In peace under the shield of the Royal Navy. While every nation on the Continent maintained a large standing Army to protect its frontiers, we, in the United Kingdom, thanks to the twenty miles of salt water between us and the Continent, could dispense with conscription and devote our man-power to building up industries and raising the standard of life of the people. These geographical advantages are rapidly dwindling. No capital in the world is nowadays so exposed to attack as London. Unless and until, therefore, our safety can be absolutely guaranteed by some international organization, we must insist that we keep not only abreast of but ahead of any nation which might conceivably attack us in every scientific and technical device. No effort is too great to ensure this, and no effort will be spared. The noble Lord will, I trust, be content with these assurances and will, I hope, not press his Motion for Papers which, at best, could only be exiguous and would certainly have to be out of date.

3.44 p.m.

LORD BRABAZON OF TARA

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord very much for his scientific talk. I hope he did not think I was criticizing the Government for what they did—not at all. I did not feel that in my mind. I think they have done extremely well in all their scientific approaches. My Motion was thinking only about the future, and in thinking about the future even my scientific friend must not conclude that alcohol and oxygen are the last form of propellant for a V2. Other things may come along, and I am perfectly certain the range can be increased much further than he thinks at present. I find myself in this difficulty: when I ask the Lord Chancellor for information he cannot give it because he does not know it, and when I ask the noble Lord for it, he knows so much that he cannot give it to me either. But we must thank the noble Lord very much for this very interesting contribution to the debate this afternoon, and, in the circumstances, I ask the leave of the House to withdraw my Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

3.45 P.m.

LORD CHERWELL

My Lords, there is to be a Royal Commission at four o'clock, and I suggest that your Lordships should now adjourn during pleasure.

House adjourned during pleasure.

House resumed.