Lords Sitting of 5 March 1947

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers.
The Viscount Younger of Leckie—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.
Prayers.
  CITY OF LONDON (TITHES) BILL, [H.L.]
  Read 2a.
POLISH RESETTLEMENT BILL.
Brought from the Commons; read 1a; and to be printed.
SUMMER TIME BILL.
Brought from the Commons; read 1a; and to be printed.

SUNDAY ENTERTAINMENTS ACT, 1932 (RURAL DISTRICT OF DORKING AND HORLEY ORDER).
LORD WALKDEN: My Lords, I beg to move that this Order be approved.
Moved, That the Order made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department under the Act, for extending Section 1 of the Act to the Urban District of Dorking and Horley, and laid before the House on Monday last, be approved.—(Lord Walkden.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

SUNDAY ENTERTAINMENTS ACT, 1932 (CITY OF LINCOLN ORDER).
LORD WALKDEN: My Lords, I beg to move that this Order be approved.
Moved, That the Order made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department under the Act, for extending Section 1 of the Act to the City of Lincoln,
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and laid before the House on Tuesday last, be approved.—(Lord Walkden.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

SUNDAY ENTERTAINMENTS ACT, 1932 (BOROUGH OF CHELMSFORD ORDER).
LORD WALKDEN: My Lords, I beg to move that this Order be approved.
Moved, That the Order made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department under the Act, for extending Section 1 of the Act to the Borough of Chelmsford, and laid before the House on Tuesday last, be approved.—(Lord Walkden.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

PENICILLIN BILL, [H.L.]
THE POSTMASTER GENERAL (THE EARL OF LISTOWEL): My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to control the sale and supply of penicillin and certain other substances, and to move that the Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read ia.—(The Earl of Listowel.)
On Question, Bill read ia; and to be printed.

POLLUTION OF RIVERS.
2.40 p.m.
LORD SALTOUN LORD SALTOUN rose to call the attention of His Majesty's Government to the persistent pollution of our streams and rivers by local authorities and others; to ask whether they will consider legislation to reinforce existing laws before it is too late; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, no other country—at least no other country with which I am acquainted—possesses such a wealth and variety of pleasant streams as does Britain, and I think that the quickest way in which I can expose to your Lordships the condition of affairs to which I desire to draw your attention to-day is by reminding you of the famous panorama of England in Spenser's Faerie Queene, where he depicts all the rivers of England, each with its own character, and over all an air of enchantment which really exists and which has won for our country from all strangers the title of "a Garden."

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That was in the time of Queen Elizabeth. Less than a hundred years ago, in a book that I think is probably known to many of your Lordships—a classic on fishing, by Mr. Francis Francis—the author showed that although the pollution of streams had made some progress, the situation was at that time not beyond remedy. I do not believe it is beyond remedy to-day, but yet if another Milton were seeking for undrinkable waters to embellish his Hell he could do no better than choose the rivers of England, which are stolen at their birth, from the cradle, to afford a scanty urban supply lest a thirsty people should stoop to drink from their feet and perish. That is not an exaggerated picture of the present state of affairs. It is a fair picture of large and important parts of England. I expect that many of your Lordships share my view.
I should hesitate to drink readily of a stream to which I was a stranger, unless it was in very high country. In some districts, English rivers have practically disappeared and have become little more than seasonal ditches. Your Lordships will find a very moving account of one such in the January issue of Blackwood's Magazine. Not long ago, your Lordships ordered me to serve on a Committee to examine the Leicester Water Bill, and I will give you a picture of Derbyshire, North Staffordshire and Leicestershire as it was brought before us in evidence. In Leicestershire all the rivers but one—I will not name them—were too polluted to be considered. The one exception is only moderately polluted at present, but there exists upon its banks a thriving and populous town which is expecting shortly to complete the task; and when that time arrives, none of the rivers of Leicestershire will be fit for human use but only the springs at their sources—and that in a county which is famous for dairying.
The people in that part of the country are hoping to get a share of the supply that it is expected will be brought to the City of Leicester. Although these rivers run through all their land they know they cannot use them. To the north we have Derbyshire and the Peak District whose waters, for the most part, are already laid under contribution for the supply to Derbyshire, Nottingham, Leicestershire, Sheffield and the other great towns. The only source that remains untapped is the Manifold, which all the neighbouring
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water authorities, including North Staffordshire in whose areas it lies, regard with longing eyes. Through the centre of this district runs the River Trent, in which, above the Harrington Bridge, only a few diseased fish can manage to live. We are told there is a population of 2,500,000, all busily engaged in polluting the River Trent, and that there is no possible means by which the resulting fluid can be made available for any human purpose.
The need for fresh supplies of pure water for these towns is so great that every authority has its eyes on the Manifold source. Leicester happened to be the first in the field with a Bill, and the other authorities, although not ready with a Bill, have been proceeding in accordance with the recent Water Act and making water surveys. The other day I said something with regard to that matter, and I hope the noble Lords who are to reply to this debate will give us some information on that point this afternoon. It seems to me a strange thing that a Committee of your Lordships' House should be asked to accept an assertion that an Act, passed by Parliament on the motion of the Government, and on the lines suggested by the Ministry of Health, is unworkable and a dead letter.
It may be of some assistance to your Lordships if I say a word or two on the nature of the problem and the demand we have to meet. The condition that I have described, although perhaps more pronounced in the case of the Trent, obtains, as I know very well, through a very large part of the country. In fact, I do not know a single river which I could say was not polluted in a greater or lesser degree. The water we receive from rainfall is either absorbed by the surface, or runs off the surface, or percolates through the surface to form underground reservoirs. I have not been able to get any figures of any kind to guide me on this question of absorption. As your Lordships know, it depends very largely on the vegetation and on 1he seasons of the year, and I can find no expert who is able to give me any idea of the proportion of the rainfall that is likely to be absorbed. The proportion which penetrates to the underground sources varies, of course, with the nature of the subsoil, and must also depend upon the efficiency of the surface draining.
We had evidence that in North Staffordshire the needs of the district for notable

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water were lowering the water table there. The water table is the level of the underground supplies. That, of course, may be due to exceptionally dry seasons, but I do not think we have had exceptionally dry seasons. It may also be due, in some respects, to a lessened rainfall caused by the denudation of forest areas, but the general opinion seems to be that it is chiefly due to the increased demands of the populations for water. This is borne out by the fact that the other day your Lordships had evidence in the discussion on the Tendring Hundred Water and Gas Bill that the water table there was being lowered. If your Lordships will consult Blackwood's Magazine for January—the reference to which I have given you—you will see clearly that the underground water supply in what is obviously quite a different district of England is also being reduced.
I would like to say a word or two about the demand. We had a mass of expert evidence given to us about the increasing demand for water in the future by the population of this country. In fact, a very large proportion of the evidence was devoted to that point. We all know that even in large towns a very considerable proportion of the houses are without big baths, and, in some cases, even without a water closet. The provision 'of these things is going to lead in the future to a very greatly increased demand for pure water by our population. I could not get any reliable figures as to the order of this demand, but at the same time figures were given from which it was possible to make some tentative deductions. In the case of one large town there were periodic figures, ranging over a period of years, of the proportion of the houses in the town with water closets and with baths. From those figures I was able to obtain results which seem to me to indicate that for every water closet installed in a house the demand for water increases by fourteen gallons per head of the people who use it, and for every bath thirty-six gallons a head. That is a very large increase, and at first sight one is tempted to think that the figure is too high, but observations I have been able to make rather convince me that it is about the right figure.
While I am on this matter I would like to make the point that as a large bath for a twenty-gallon man takes about
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twenty-five gallons, the installation of this convenience leads to a considerable amount of waste of water which it must be very difficult to check. These figures, and the knowledge we all have, are sufficient to indicate that, in the near future, provision must be made for a great increase in the consumption of water in both town and country. Where that water is to come from, when in a great district like the Trent Valley, where the only clean water available on the south side of the Peak district—which, as your Lordships know, is the most prolific water-bearing district in the country—is the poor little Manifold, I leave your Lordships to guess.
I have long been impressed by this problem of the consumption and the supply of pure water. Many years ago in my own home I took out a big bath which I had and installed a shower, in the hope that my own example might induce other people to do the same, and lead to an economy in the use of water. But I have not the smallest illusion on the point: I am perfectly certain that the example of the whole of the United States of America and myself is not going to change present fashions. Therefore, we have this problem in front of us: that we must provide water. The great proportion of the water which is available on the surface for the population of this country is made quite useless by pollution. Nearly nine-tenths of the water is destroyed by pollution. If it were not for that, there would be ample for all our requirements.
Pollution normally occurs in two ways. It occurs by the discharge of untreated domestic sewage into streams and rivers, and it also occurs by the failure of industrial undertakings to render their effluent harmless. When the two are combined the worst kind of pollution and the worst conditions arise, because each type of effluent has a very bad effect upon the other. It is true that a river has some power of rendering domestic sewage innocuous, but, as your Lordships know, that depends to a great extent on the fall of the river, or, rather, on its power of aeration—how speedily it can aerate its water. But no river can deal with the enormous quantities which it receives from a large town. On the Continent, before the war, as we know, great steps had been taken in regard to this matter, and domestic sewage from large towns was treated and used in cultivation near

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those towns. As many of your Lordships also know, almost the whole of the enormous crops of pre-war Poland were grown by practically the same means on a soil that was little more than sand.
But where a population depends to any extent upon underground water supplies, those methods cannot be used too intensively, because there is always the danger of contaminating the underground water supplies. Therefore there must be a very careful examination of the means used, and possibly some elaborate method of previous treatment must be adopted. None the less, it is a fact that even to-day, with our present knowledge, a great deal can be done in this way which is not being done. There is a very great waste of what, after all, is a valuable fertilizing material, and I suggest to your Lordships that steps ought to be taken to check that waste so far as possible and to relieve our rivers of as great a part as possible of their rather unpleasant task. I suggest, too, that the scientific resources of the country should be employed to discover improved methods of treating domestic sewage, to make it profitable to be used as nature intended it to be used. Many of us know of such instances and I myself certainly have known a Borough Surveyor who was so proud of his plant that he would take a glass of water at the discharge of his plant, when he was showing it to you, and offer you one, too, to show the purity of that discharge.
I am sure your Lordships will agree that that kind of pride is a great asset to the country, when a man does a job like that. Industrial pollution is a much more serious matter, and tin even greater crime against humanity. After all, when a manufacturer, in order to save trouble or expense, fails to sterilize the effluent from his factory, he is making part of his profit by inflicting a wrong upon the public. The injury is doubled if he uses the ordinary drainage system to convey it, as this makes the treatment of domestic sewage extremely difficult and perhaps impossible. For example, if you have industrial effluent discharging into the same river as you have domestic sewage discharging, you cannot purify the domestic sewage or assist the processes by chlorination, because the industrial effluents very often have cyanides in them. Cyanides themselves are poisons, but the poisons are re-doubled in their
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effect if they are brought into contact with chlorine. Therefore a small amount of industrial effluent discharging into a river makes the task of purifying that river very much more difficult.
I do not want, and I am sure your Lordships would not want me—and I am not able—to discuss this very wide subject of industrial effluent, but I am perfectly certain that a great deal of the noxious character of such effluent is very often due to parsimony. I will give your Lordships an example which must have been under all our eyes. Whenever I pass a sugar factory, I always look, and look with great care, to the area that: is devoted to the settling tanks, because having at one time studied the sugar industry, I know very well that the effluent from a sugar factory can tic discharged into streams perfectly harmlessly, provided there is a sufficient area and a sufficient number of settling tanks. So far as I can observe, in this country the amount of land devoted to settling tanks from a sugar factory is about one-third of what I have always seen devoted to that purpose under the usual practice in Holland. That suggests to me that parsimony is at the root of a great deal of our trouble.
One thing is perfectly clear—namely, that there is great need for research. But in this case no effective research is really possible unless it is enjoined by authority, because there is an obvious advantage to the manufacturer in not having any research and not troubling about it. He has no direct incentive to spend time or money on purifying the effluent of his factory. Therefore, research will have to be instituted from above. The same question arises, of course, with regard to domestic sewage, but there is more incentive in that case. Even in research on manufacturing effluents, there is always a possibility of great profit from by-products, as we know from the story of the chlorine industry.
But there is another side to this question—the lenity with which all these offences are regarded and treated, I think the lenity is due to the Acts. The Act of 1876 makes it an offence to discharge sewage into a stream unless it has been subjected to the best known means of rendering it harmless. It makes a similar provision against the discharge of industrial effluent, but it adds, oddly enough, that "the Board"—which I

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suppose to-day means the Department of Health—
"shall not permit proceedings by the local authority unless it is satisfied the proceedings will not injure the industry."
I imagine it could always be argued that any process that involved trouble and expense would be an injury to the industry concerned. I do not know what the effect of that is, but I should imagine that the Act was very largely a dead letter. The Act of 1936 went a great deal further, and it provides for separate sewers for industrial effluent. If both discharge into the same river, as I have already pointed out, that might not make much difference, but it is a great advantage if any treatment is to be introduced.
The main thing, it seems to me, is that these two powers are in the wrong hands. The local authority are paid for taking industrial effluent. The success of the local factories is part of the prosperity of the town, and the injury caused by neglect is not an injury to the town but an injury to those who live lower down the stream and who may even be trade rivals. The powers are in hands which, of all others, have the biggest incentive not to use them. No town wants to put its rates up to benefit a town lower down the stream. Experience shows, as many of your Lordships know, that actions taken against those who pollute streams are often unsuccessful, and even when they are successful they are ineffective. For those reasons it seems to me that the state of the law should be examined, aod it should be very carefully considered into whose hands the powers should be put.
I submit that I have shown to your Lordships (I have gone as quickly as I could through the case) that the increased demand for water is likely to be great; that our water resources are likely to prove inadequate; that there is great waste; that the pollution of our streams everywhere is dangerous and a disgrace to our title of civilization; that the question is urgent; that more knowledge is required; and that the existing laws are inefficient and insufficient. As I have said, I think the law on the subject needs examination, and it is a matter for careful consideration into whose hands these powers should be put. And this should be accompanied by close and continuing scientific examination and research into the whole problem as a guide for the future. I have only one word to
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add, and it is this. The present Government are very busily engaged on a great scheme for planning all the land of Britain. That may or may not be a good thing; it certainly is very difficult. But it; is quite futile and foolish to have a plan for all the land of Britain unless you have a plan for its water supplies and unless you are determined to make those water supplies pure. That is a task which is not difficult. It is a task which requires only firmness and knowledge, and I very humbly submit to His Majesty's Government that it is at least as urgent and at least as important as the planning of land. I beg to move for Papers.
3.14 p.m.
LORD STRABOLGIhad given notice that he would ask His Majesty's Government whether they are aware of the continued pollution of certain rivers; whether they have under consideration the granting of powers to prevent pollution to the appropriate Minister during the preparation of the forthcoming Water Boards Bill; and would move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I have a Motion on the Paper dealing with the same subject which I put down for this day in collusion with the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun. I do not think it will be necessary for me to move my Motion, but I can bring out its points, of which I have given due warning to the Government through my noble friend, the Earl of Huntingdon, in speaking on the Motion so ably moved by the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun. My task is made easier, because the noble Lord has covered the ground so admirably and brought out all the salient facts of a very serious situation indeed.
The main point I want to make is this. On May 29, 1945, during the short-lived career of the Caretaker Government, as we call it, a Bill called the Water Bill, which had been prepared by the Coalition Government of the war, was brought before your Lordships' House. My noble friend, Viscount Addison, then leading the Opposition, made these comments on Second Reading, on the question of pollution:
"In some areas the extent of pollution that has been allowed to arise during the war period is very excessive, and although the authorities here have certain powers against pollution I certainly think the adequacy of those powers requires investigation."
On the Committee stage, encouraged and supported by the noble Viscount, Lord

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Addison, I put down an Amendment. The Bill, now an Act, lays it down that:
"It shall be the duty of the Minister of Health … to promote the conservation and proper use of water resources, and the provision of water supplies in England and Wales and to secure the effective execution by water undertakers, under his control …"
and so on. I proposed and moved, after the word "Wales," to put in "to prevent the pollution of water supplies."
Your Lordships will observe that under the Water Act the Minister of Health is responsible for the conservation and proper use of water supplies, and for the provision of water supplies; but there is not one word about the purity of water supplies. That I hoped to remedy. I discussed it with the proper authorities, and was supported by my noble friend the Leader of the House, who was then the Leader of the Opposition. The Water Bill was in charge of the noble Earl, Lord Munster, and he made a very satisfactory and sympathetic reply. He said:
"I do not disagree with the views he has expressed."—
referring to myself—
"As the noble Lord pointed out, the purpose of the Amendment is to add to the Minister's functions under this Bill the general duty of preventing the pollution of water supplies."
The noble Earl went on to describe the various Acts, some of which have been referred to this afternoon by the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun. Then he said:
"There is also a projected Bill,"—
this was in June, 1945,—
"as my noble friend is probably aware, to set up river boards. I think that Bill will be the place at which to raise the Minister's position as regards the pollution of water supplies. The occasion for such a thing to be done will be when the general question of pollution is before Parliament. …"
The noble Earl went on to say:
"It would in fact be proper that these words, or words to a similar effect, should be inserted in the River Boards Bill, which I hope will come along in the new Session. For these reasons I hope my noble friend will see his way to withdraw his Amendment."
After thanking the noble Earl, I did withdraw my Amendment. Now I understand the Water Bill has been drafted; it is on the stocks, but is awaiting a place in our legislative programme.
The question of which I have given notice through the noble Earl, Lord Huntingdon, that I would ask my noble
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friend the Earl of Listowel, is whether in the drafting of that Bill the Minister concerned is to be made responsible for the prevention of pollution. If we can do that we shall have gone a very long way, and for this reason. At the present time there are a multitude of authorities, some efficient some inefficient, some strong, some weak, some wealthy, some poor. Take, for example, the case of the Thames Conservancy Board. That Board does an excellent job of work, because it has to provide pure water for the people of the greatest city in the world, and there would be trouble if they did not get it. The Thames Conservancy Board is strong and enforces the law against pollution or contamination of the waters of the Thames watershed. But other water authorities are not so efficient, or not so strong, and when they have to fight a pollution case they have to fight either a local authority, as cited by the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, or some powerful firm of manufacturers.
Three years ago, for example, some six miles of the beautiful River Kennet was denuded of all life—fish, vegetable and insect life—through the negligence of Messrs. Vickers-Armstrong. There was the local Conservancy Board fighting Vickers-Armstrong, which has a gigantic capital, but it was such a flagrant business that actually Vickers-Armstrong had to pay. That is only one example of many disgraceful cases of pollution. You cannot always rely upon these comparatively poor local authorities, but if the Minister, the Government, or the Crown is responsible for preventing pollution, then it is a very different story. It may be Vickers-Armstrong, I.C.I., the Co-operative Wholesale Society, 01 somebody even more powerful in the country, but if the Crown are interested, and if the Crown, through the Minister, are carrying out their duty of preventing pollution, that is a very different story. If we can have the responsibility for providing pure water or for preventing pollution and contamination placed on the appropriate Minister in this Water Bill, I think we shall have gone a considerable way towards restoring the purity of the rivers of Britain. That is my main case, and I feel confident that I shall receive a sympathetic and satisfactory reply from my noble friend.
May I say one word about the interests concerned? There are a great many people interested in this Bill and I am not ashamed to speak for them. The case

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for agriculture has been put by the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun. The farmers are concerned about having pure water for their flocks and herds. The case for the general population has also been referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun. I am going to claim that there should also be some consideration for the fishermen of England. There are many of us—at least 2,000,000. That may seem a very high figure, but I think I can prove it to your Lordships. In 1945, during the war years, when a great many men were away serving, 490,000 licences were issued in England alone—nearly half a million. That left out the whole of the Thames Valley, the whole of Hampshire and the whole of Scotland, those being districts where no licences are required.
Leaving out those, there were 500,000 regular fishermen. To the regular ones we can add the casual fishermen—the men who like to fish on their holidays, and that sort of thing. They have, after all, a right to their sport. In the Trent district—which was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun—a great effort was made a few years ago to stem the continual poisoning of the streams of the district, which had reached a terrible state of affairs. Out of 700 miles of streams and rivers in the Trent district, one-third had been denuded of all natural and plant life. As the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, knows, some little progress has been made in checking and retarding the pollution of the Trent watershed. Some of the rivers in that immense district have been purified, and that was done largely because the Trent Fishery Board were entitled to levy a small fee of a shilling a year on fishermen.
One in every ten of the insured population of the whole district took out a licence. Those people acted as unofficial bailiffs, they created a body of public opinion, and something useful has been done in that district. In 1938, 87,000 licences were issued in the Trent district, mostly to working men. In the war years the figure was of the order of 73,000. That shows the immense number of people who are interested in angling, and I think they have a right to have their interests safeguarded. The idea that angling is the sport only of a wealthy few is just nonsense; the majority of these fishermen are working men. As a matter of fact, the few wealthy anglers can go away to the
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North of Scotland, to the West of Ireland, or somewhere else where there is no contamination and get their sport, but the ordinary working man who looks forward to his week-end angling must do his fishing somewhere near his home. If the rivers are contaminated and polluted, then he suffers, and the food supplies of the country also suffer. In our rivers we have a great potential source of food supply. If the British housewife could be taught, as I am sure she could be, to dress coarse fish, as we call them, as the Continental housewife does, we should then have a very great and useful source of supply to help out our food in the difficult times which are ahead.
It is really not a matter for joking any more, and I am sure my noble friend the Postmaster-General understands that. By the way, I have not heard that his Department has offended at all in the matter. The old cry of "Trade versus Trout" is really nonsense to-day. Under modern engineering practice, as the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, has already remarked, it is possible, by the installation of suitable purification plant, to prevent any effluent of an obnoxious character entering the drainage system or nearby water supplies. Under modern engineering practice in nearly all cases, it is quite unnecessary to allow the harmful poisons to go into the waters of our country and to affect the happiness and health of people miles downstream. I think this is a matter which is worthy of the attention of your Lordships, and I am sure the Government will be sympathetic to it. I look forward with interest and hope to the reply of my noble friend.
3.17 p.m.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, I do not know whether you will allow me to say a word or two on this subject. My right to speak is that I am a resident in one of those parts of England which suffer from the mischiefs to which the two noble Lords who have addressed us this afternoon have called attention. May I say how grateful I am to my noble friend Lord Saltoun for having introduced this subject? Believe me, the water supply of this country is far more important than a good many of the vast subjects which engage the attention of His Majesty's Government. It is quite true, as my noble friend says, that the water supply of the country is of the greatest importance. It is also true that it has

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suffered very much from misuse. I take it that there is not a single member of your Lordships' House who would not agree that the more water that can be used by the people of this country, the better it will be. No doubt there can be extravagance in the matter of water, as with everything else, but, being interested in the management of land, I know the difficulties in regard to water supplies and I also know of the great demand that is being made)—it is, I am glad to say, a growing demand—by the people for improved water supplies. I am obliged to the noble Lord who has just sat down for having told us in detail of the legislative attempts which have been made up to now. They have not quite succeeded, and another Water Bill is promised. What I think my noble friend wants, and what I hope we all want, is for that Bill to be introduced and passed.
This is not a recent difficulty, although no doubt the mischief has been greatly increased by the exigencies of the war. One ought to be perfectly fair and candid about that. Nevertheless, as far back as the early 1930's, the trouble was felt very much in the part of the country in which I live—the Valley of the Lea. That river has suffered from increasing pollution. I am not going to say anything to your Lordships about who is responsible for the pollution, for that is a matter which must be considered elsewhere; the fact is the important thing. By the middle of the war the condition of the valley of the Lea was deplorable. In the part of the river with which I am most acquainted all the coarse fish, or a very large number of them, died. They lay in heaps upon the banks. That water was being used for the supply of a swimming bath—a swimming bath which, I am glad to say, it was thought would be desirable for the troops quartered in my part at that time. The water was examined, and the analysis was absolutely conclusive. As a result, my swimming bath had to be put out of bounds.
That is the kind of individual case—not the very interesting, admirable and wide survey which two other noble Lords have suggested to your Lordships—which comes to each of us who are interested in the land. I need hardly say that in such a case you cannot have drinking water; you cannot even have bathing. All those amenities for the people, and indeed their health, have to be sacrificed. I am sure
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noble Lords have said enough already to show the Government how much this is felt. We earnestly hope that something may be done. Representations are made, and representations are repeated. We get civil answers—very civil answers—but nothing else. I hope the noble Earl who is going to reply for the Government will not think that I wish to find fault with his fellow Ministers—I am not quite sure which Minister is concerned but I think it is the Minister of Health. No doubt he has had great difficulties in consequence of the war; but the war has been over many months, and we want to be assured to-night that something effective will be done.
I trust I have said nothing in the least political, but I hope that what may perhaps be called, without offence, the dilatoriness of public Departments will not be allowed to interfere. I noticed that the noble Lord who has just sat down put great stress and reliance upon the fact that we might have to deal, not only with the local authorities, but with the Crown, and he thought that if you had the Crown on your side all was well. Well, "the Crown" is a very fine phrase, but it means a public Department; and although public Departments have the best intentions they are very slow, and one's heart gets broken. I notice that there is an answering feeling about that observation of mine. My heart gets broken as letter after letter is written and nothing happens. I hope I have said enough. I earnestly trust that the excellent example which my noble friend has set this afternoon may bear fruit, and that the Bill which we believe is more or less in draft will be finished, introduced and passed.
3.25 p.m.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, I would like for a few moments to add my support to the plea which has been made by the noble Lord who moved this Motion, and the other two noble Lords who have just spoken. This is entirely a non-political subject, and I believe we are all at one, on all sides of the House, in our wish to see an adequate and pure water supply in this country. It seams to me that the tremendous changes of population which are now taking place from one district to another, coupled with the growth of industrialism, have outstripped all the measures which have hitherto been taken to offset pollution in our rivers. The

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noble Marquess mentioned the Lea Valley. There are many noble Lords on all sides of the House who could quote specific instances of lovely rivers being polluted, of fish life being killed, of rateable value being lost to local authorities, of taxable value being lost to the Exchequer, and of many tens of thousands of men in all walks of life who go to seek their pleasure, amusement and sport in fishing, being denied those opportunities. The noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, mentioned the Kennet. Indeed there was a works at Thatcham, as he will know, which some years ago denuded the Kennet of all fish life for some miles below Thatcham. It took a good many years to recover, and in fact it has never fully recovered.
This week-end, knowing that this debate was going to take place, I went to the Wye valley, that lovely spot which is probably known to many noble Lords. The tragedy is that from Hereford and for some miles below, that river has been virtually ruined for freshwater salmon fishing. As the noble Lord said, fishing is not a rich man's sport, and probably the best fisherman on the Wye is a man who has been employed on the railway there for many years. All anglers go to him when they want to gain knowledge on how to catch fish in that river. The population of Hereford has very nearly doubled. Military camps, and two factories were built. As a result, the Hereford local authority allowed practically open sewage to go straight into the river. One cannot blame the local authority, because their sewage plant was quite incapable of coping with the great increase of population. Dr. Rushton, however, who is probably well-known to noble Lords, has reported on that river, and states that for something like three to four miles below Hereford the river bed is covered with a deep scum and is quite hopeless for fish life. Indeed, so bad is it that Dr. Rushton actually doubted whether cattle would be safe in drinking the water at the worst point of pollution. Factories in Hereford have contributed to that bad position.
I hope that we are going to see this Bill which has been promised, and that the Government will make sure that a reasonable degree of priority is given to the authorities responsible for installing sewage plants. It is no good passing
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Acts of Parliament and giving a local authority powers unless the responsible Government Departments ensure that the necessary engineering plant priorities are given to local authorities, or to whatever other authority may be given the task. The only other point I would like to j make is this. I believe that in the I majority of cases, industrialists are men of good will, who do not wish to see the rivers polluted when they are putting up factories. I believe that local authorities do not want to see pollution, but at the present time, when industrialists and the local authority consult together and decide on certain measures, I do not believe they have the benefit of the experience of experts on the scene who nave Studied this particular problem for years, such as the Salmon and Trout Association and the authorities at Fishmonger Hall.
There are more ways of killing fish than by catching them. It can be done by funiculus, and starvation and killing the fly and vegetable life in the river. It is not enough for the Government to say that the effluent is not going to kill the fish; we want them to say that it is not going to do harm to the natural life and weed life of the river. I hope that when we have the new measure we shall see that the machinery of administration ensures that the expert knowledge at the centre is placed at the disposal of those who are responsible for the prevention of pollution. I do not want to delay your Lordships any longer, except to say that this is a subject of intense importance and one on which the Government will have support on all sides of the House.
3.31 p.m.
LORD QUIBELL: My Lords, I think we are indebted to the noble Lord who raised this subject to-day. It is one that is regarded as of great importance throughout the country. I believe that the noble Lord who has just resumed his seat has put his finger on the spot. One or two Acts have already been passed on the subject, the last in 1937, for the purpose of remedying the shortcomings of previous Acts, but still the nuisance persists; and, indeed, it has increased. I remember the beautiful little streams of the Trent where we used to bathe when I was a boy. One of them was six feet deep and had a red sand bottom, and I thought I would still be able to swim there to-day. I went to one stream which used to operate a water

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mill; in I dived—and there I stuck until someone fetched me out! It contained six feet of raw sewage, and as I dived in my arms went into it. Whose duty was it to prevent pollution of that stream? It was the duty of the local authority. Heaven knows, I was a member of that local authority, and I would be the last man in this House to suggest that we should have an addition of officials to see that the present officials enforce the Act that it is their duty to carry out.
The fact is that, so far as the Local Authorities are concerned, to be honest and frank, they have failed to carry out their duties under the existing Acts. What is the position as regards the great grazing lands? In some cases these streams afford the only water at which the cattle can drink, and often the water there is polluted. They are without a pure water supply, and though huge sums of money have been spent in cleaning up these streams, many of them are still polluted and there is only poisoned water from which the animals can drink. In rural England matters are going to get worse instead of better if we do not insist, that, in addition to water supplies being taken to the villages, preparations are at the same time made to carry out sewage schemes. In my own village on the River Trent raw sewage is going into the river and the Government have no preparations for dealing with it.
All I can say is that if the authorities allow that kind of thing to be perpetuated they are not doing their duty, and in some cases they seem to have no intention of doing it. How can it be enforced? They could not enforce it at some of the great works in my district, where nothing whatever was done. I hope that in the new Bill we shall do something, and that we shall be able to see to the bottom of the little streams in which the fish live; and that those little streams will be purified, cleansed and rehabilitated. I trust that the necessary provisions will be made in the new Act. A promise was given to get a sewage scheme working in the village where we are building new houses. No houses have any water supplies and there will not be any unless and until we also provide for proper sewage disposal and for dealing with effluent.
3.36 p.m.
LORD ROCHESTER: My Lords, I delight to follow my noble friend, the Marquess of Salisbury, as I followed him
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in the representation of the City of Rochester in another place. He has put his finger on the spot, and his words need emphasis. We get civility from Government Departments, but precious little else, when we take our grievances to them. I want also to support the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, in his statement that the matter is primarily one of priorities. I want to call attention to a very serious aspect of this question, with especial reference to a particular instance of which I have given notice to my noble friend, the Earl of Listowel, who is going to reply for the Government in this debate. In the former of the two Motions on the Order Paper to-day, the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun frankly states who the offenders are, for he calls attention "to the persistent pollution of our streams and rivers by local authorities." But it does not necessarily follow that responsibility is thus placed on the right shoulders.
In the other Motion, Lord Strabolgi, asks for powers to be given to the appropriate Minister. In my submission it is not more powers that are needed but that existing powers should be implemented. It is not much use giving additional powers without provision being made to enable the nuisance to be abated. Again, it is of little avail to give powers to local authorities if they themselves are the culprits. I cannot divest myself, for purposes of this debate, from my connexion with the Port of London Authority, of which I have been a member for the past fifteen years, and I confess to I feeling of grave anxiety about the position in which we find ourselves here in London. I have no desire to be an alarmist, but, speaking with a full sense of responsibility, I would not disguise from your Lordships that in my judgment there is an element of very real danger to the health of the people of London, especially to those who work on or about the river, by the pollution of the tidal waters that flow past your Lordships' House right through the very heart of the capital. Worse than that, it is a continuing and a cumulative menace. This is a tidal river as far up as Teddington, and it is common knowledge that much flotsam and jetsam does in fact, for some considerable time, flow to and fro with the tide. That is also equally true of any effluent which is discharged into the river.

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Since the Act of 1908, which inaugurated the Port of London Authority, with which I had some little part in another place, we have had a number of Acts culminating in the Port of London (Consolidation) Act of 1920. As I was in the House of Commons before I was thirty, and I am now over seventy, I am in a position to bear my testimony that in those days of forty years ago the time of Parliament was not needlessly wasted, but jealously guarded for essential and pressing legislation. The point I wish to make is that in the Port of London Authority Act, under which we are at present operating, no fewer than seventeen sections—some of them quite long ones—are devoted to the avoidance of pollution of the river, and the statutory duty is laid upon the Port of London Authority "to preserve and maintain at all times as far as may be the flow and purity, of the water of the Thames." Either Parliament must have considered this a serious matter of real import, or the time of Parliament was needlessly wasted. For myself, I am convinced that the former is the correct explanation. That being so, it behoves us to take note of the seriousness of the present state of affairs and of the potential danger to public health in its continuance.
When the present statutory duty to preserve and maintain the purity of the water of the River Thames was laid on the Port of London Authority, by a saving section in the Act the London County Council were exempted from the Authority's jurisdiction. My noble friend, the Marquess of Salisbury, said that he was not going to apportion blame for the condition of the Lea. I want to be quite frank as regards the Thames, and to point out that the London County Council, as successors to the Metropolitan Board of Works, are responsible "for preventing as far as may be practicable, the sewage of the Metropolis from passing into the River Thames within the Metropolis." For years past, however, sewage effluent, insufficiently treated, has been poured into the Thames from London County Council's sewers.
I have no desire to be unduly critical of another public authority, the more so because the relations between the London County Council and the Port of London Authority are most cordial, and no one has done more to cement that feeling of cordiality than the present Chairman, Mr. John Cliff. Nor must I be thought to be
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criticizing, even by inference, in what I am about to say, the new Clerk of the Council, Mr. Howard Roberts from Hull, or the present Chief Engineer, Mr. Rawlinson, for in both cases they have only recently been appointed—in fact, I think that Mr. Roberts is actually taking office at the end of this month—nor Sir Allen Daley, the County Medical Officer of Health, who was appointed only on the outbreak of the war. Their records are such as to make us hopeful of better things in the future than we have experienced in the past, always provided that they are supported by the Ministry of Health. In fact, if I may, and if it will not be thought presumptuous on my part to do so, I would congratulate the Council upon securing the services of three men of such eminence and such outstanding ability in their respective professions, and I hope that with such a team we shall see an improvement in the immediate future.
My criticism of the Council is rather of omissions in the past, when both labour and material were in abundant supply for all necessary work. There is, of necessity, much sewage and injurious matter falling into the Thames from the immense amount of shipping carried upon its waters. If, however, in addition, effluent insufficiently treated, and in vast quantities, is suffered to pass into the Thames from the great sewers, a state of affairs may arise not only prejudicial but positively dangerous to public health, a menace which Parliament has recognized and sought by legislation most carefully to prevent. The position is the more serious because the Port of London Authority's powers are, in fact, complete over only one-fifth of the discharges into the Thames, while the remaining four-fifths of the total discharges are from the London County Council outfalls, and over such four-fifths the Port of London Authority have no powers at all. And I would add that, when the outfalls were constructed, it was understood that the effluent would be discharged only on the ebb tide, but that is not the case now.
The flow of fresh water from the upper reaches of the river over Teddington Weir into the tidal Thames is subject to statutory regulation, and the statutory minimum is 170,000,000 gallons daily, and even that is inadequate. And yet it is now suggested to reduce that minimum by nearly one half to 90,000,000 gallons a day—I agree, only as a temporary ex-

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pedient. Think what that will mean in lack of cleansing of the lower tidal reaches, where such vast quantities of sewage and sewage effluent are poured into the river. The Ministry of Health are vitally concerned in the health aspect of this matter, and certainly cannot be exonerated from their meed of responsibility. In fact, the Port of London Authority's contact with the Ministry of Health, I think I am correct in saying, is solely on this account; OUT other dealings are with the Ministry of Transport. But I submit that the way the Ministry of Health have exercised their jurisdiction in this matter, to put it mildly, leaves a. great deal to be desired. The Metropolitan Water Board proposed, long ago, to ease the position by constructing four new storage reservoirs, and now only one is contemplated—another case of powers obtained from Parliament but not fully implemented. We may toe devoutly thankful for the melting snow and the earlier heavy rainfall, for in periods of drought the position would be greatly aggravated.
From the economic standpoint, too, the heavy discharges of untreated sewage has a. serious effect on the siltation of the river, involving immense expenditure for dredging. We are spending now over £500,000 a year in the Port of London for dredging, and so heavy has been this expenditure that the Port of London Authority have had to embark upon a comprehensive survey of the river channel, as it seems likely that the solid matter carried into the fairway from the London County Council's outfalls largely contributes to this siltation. The effluent from the London County Council's outfalls at Barking and Crossness, on average, has been for a long time, and continues to be, far below the standard of purity which] the Port of London Authority, after consultation with the Ministry of Health, have adopted for that section of the river, and that is caused by inadequate treatment.
The London County Council have, I know, taken steps to improve this effluent, but the plant is at present working at only one-fifth of its capacity and has never functioned fully. At best, however, the plant now available could only deal with about one-sixth of the total effluent, even when working to full capacity. Provision, therefore, should be made, as an urgent matter of public
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health, for the installation of the necessary additional plant at the earliest possible date. Is it necessary to have an epidemic in London before the trouble is remedied? If so, it will not be through lack of public attention being drawn to the matter in your Lordships' House.
Now I want to deal with the point to which the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, made reference. At the present time the priority for labour and materials for the purpose of improvement or working of sewage disposal works is apparently very low, and thus even in cases where the authorities concerned are prepared to take steps to improve their disposal works, in order the better to treat their effluent before discharge into the river, they are unable to do so. The Port Authority, by the exercise of their powers, have enforced a not unreasonably high standard of purity for sewage discharge into the tidal reaches, of the Thames, other than from the London County Council outfalls, over which they have no control. I can give your Lordships the respective standards, if you so desire. It does not make it any easier to insist on satisfactory industrial effluents when the London County Council effluents are not being dealt with. Speaking generally, effluents which do not at present conform to the Authority's standards are those from sewage disposal plants which are recognized to be inefficient and in respect of which plans for improvements have been prepared, although they have not been put in hand owing to the lack of money, labour or materials, as the case may be.
The London County Council are by no means the only offenders; other authorities are also involved from time to time, including the Barnes Borough Council, Dagenham Borough Council, West Kent Main Sewerage Board, the Wandle Valley Joint Sewerage 'Board, and others. Let me take this opportunity, at tire same time, to pay tribute to one Authority for their good work. The Middlesex County Council are, in this matter, as in education, exemplary. Their Mogden Sewage Disposal Works at Isleworth are exceptionally satisfactory. And if they can do it, why not others? The Government. I believe, have accepted in principle the recommendation of the Central Advisory Water Committee as to the establishment of river boards, and they intend to introduce legislation for this purpose when

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opportunity offers. In fact, the Ministry of Health have advised the interested authorities that, with this in mind, a subcommittee of the Central Advisory Water Committee has been set up "to investigate measures for strengthening the law regarding the prevention of the pollution of rivers and streams."
It is not the law that wants strengthening, nor is it full powers that are wanted; it is the implementation of the present powers for which we ask. The Central Advisory Water Committee, however, have excluded the River Thames from their recommendation for the setting up of river boards, on the grounds that the matters proposed to be placed under the jurisdiction of the boards are already adequately provided for so far as the Thames is concerned. It is unlikely, therefore, that the proposed legislation will affect the position of the Port of London Authority. Reference was made by my noble friend Lord Strabolgi to the j Thames Conservancy. They, of course, are responsible, under their Acts, for the prevention of pollution of the non-tidal reaches of the Thames.
As the labour supply position will probably remain extremely difficult for some considerable time, it is of paramount importance that something very much more should be done than simply to give particular authorities, such as the pro- j posed river boards, certain statutory i powers for the prevention of pollution, j If such powers are to be exercised effectively, the physical work involved in dealing with sewage must be given high priority, and not relegated for ever to the low position which it appears to occupy at the present time. In the case of the River Thames, in particular, the statutory powers for the prevention of pollution are in general sufficient; the trouble is the inability of the various authorities concerned with the disposal of sewage to improve their plant, or, in some cases, even to maintain the existing plant. It is this which causes such grave concern at the present time to those responsible for keeping the river free from pollution.
The gravity of the problem cannot be over-estimated. To continue in the old way of low priority, and to adhere to the methods and policy of the past, is to be out of touch with reality and, if persisted in, will be as ineffective as the use of
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weapons of the Boer War in this atomic age. It is not difficult, in favourable circumstances, to produce for a time the appearance of effectiveness, but that can only be superficial. I am convinced, however, that if the problem be adequately and fearlessly faced, it can be effectively dealt with. A policy of drift is bad in anything, but worst of all in a matter of this gravity. In view of its urgency, and the fact that it brooks no delay, I appeal to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, to give us some assurance that the Government are seized of the importance of this matter, and that they will take all requisite steps to ensure, first, that the London County Council are enabled to carry out their statutory obligations as regards the River Thames and, second, that all others concerned will also be given the necessary priorities, so that the present serious position may be speedily remedied and the public health of London safeguarded without further delay.
I would add only this. What is the good of town and country planning if no effort is made in this regard? It is strange that neither in the London County Council County of London Plan, nor in the Greater London Plan, is any direct reference made to the avoidance of pollution. What will be the avail of the riverside amenities under these town planning schemes if we are going to have the waters of the rivers fouled with the effluent as they flow up and down? I know one of the replies of the County Council is that the danger may be exaggerated. It is said that the London County Council men who work on the outfall work are the healthiest of their employees. If that is so, I can only say they chose the strongest and the sturdiest. This subject is so serious that I urge the Government to give it the priority that it undoubtedly deserves.
3–57 P.m.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, I am sure you would wish me first of all to express our mutual gratitude to the two noble Lords who started this debate for raising a subject of considerable importance, touching as it does so closely the interests of the fishermen and the farmers, and for their forbearance in repeatedly postponing their Motion in order to suit the convenience of the House. There is only one feature of this debate which has surprised and disappointed me—namely, that there has

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been no speaker from the Liberal Benches, although we often see sitting on those Benches a "Mersey," a "Derwent" and a "Trent."
My reply to the first question of the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, whether we are conscious of the problem, is that the Government are acutely and, indeed, painfully aware that many of our rivers are badly polluted at the present time. We are just as anxious as the noble Lord, and other noble Lords who have spoken, to improve the purity of all these waters as quickly and as effectively as we can. Indeed, this is not the first Government to be alive to the seriousness of this problem or to desire to take appropriate action. The Milne Committee reported to the war-time Coalition Government as far back as 1943, and the recommendations in their Report, which are also accepted by the present Government and have been taken as the basis for future legislation, were accepted at that time. This bears out what the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, said about the matter not being in any sense a Party matter, and I was particularly grateful to the noble Lord opposite for saying that his Party would support the action that we might take to remedy this problem, because it means that the Bill which we hope to introduce will be uncontroversial, and, as noble Lords know, an uncontroversial Bill takes a shorter time to pass through Parliament than a controversial Bill, and has therefore a much better chance of being introduced at an early stage.
The Report of the Milne Committee—which is the classic on this subject, and so I hope your Lordships will forgive me if I refer to it—said that the worst consequence of the present inadequate administrative machinery for dealing with our rivers is that it makes it impossible to take effective action against the growing evil of pollution. We also agree with what several noble Lords have said about the marked and rapid increase of deterioration which has taken place during the war. It was, of course, quite inevitable. There were new war industries springing up in many places where industry had never been before. There were other industries which had to be dispersed, to present a smaller target to air attack. To make matters even worse, the Services planted their camps, their gun sites and other establishments all over the country. Naturally, this would not have made
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nearly as much difference to the rivers in normal times, but during the war there was neither the labour nor the materials to spare from work immediately connected with national defence, which otherwise would have been used, to extend or improve existing methods for disposing of domestic or industrial effluent.
The main difficulties that we are up against at the moment are twofold. The first of these is not, as I think some noble Lords have suggested, that the Minister or anyone else lacks the necessary powers to deal with pollution, but that these powers have been conferred on too many different authorities—and authorities that are not really of the right type. This point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, at the beginning of his speech. I think it is the reply to the first point that was raised by my noble friend Lord Strabolgi. What we want is not an in crease in existing powers, but the right use of these powers by the authorities in whom they are vested. I hope that your Lordships will allow—
LORD STRABOLGI: May I point out to my noble friend that it is not only a matter of the powers or the responsibility of the Minister, and that what we want is not only the responsibility to see that there is water but to see that the water is pure.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: The immediate responsibility falls on the people who have been given powers by Statute, but the Minister naturally exercises a general responsibility in the interests of public health. I hope that your Lordships will allow me to describe briefly, giving a very short historical background, how this system has grown up; because it will show the haphazard and piecemeal growth of those authorities which accounts for the present confusion. The original public bodies to be made responsible for enforcing the law against pollution were the sanitary authorities. Under the Act of 1876 the borough councils and the urban and rural district councils were given power to start proceedings against anyone discharging untreated sewage or poisonous effluents into streams and rivers flowing through their areas. That is how it all began. Then under the Local Government Act of 1888, the same powers were given to county councils, and the Minister of Health was allowed to set up joint committees representing

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all the county authorities through whose area a particular river might run. So here we have the county councils and the joint committees added to the borough councils and the urban and rural district councils who came in under the first of these Acts. Finally, in 1923 another Act of Parliament gave the same powers to fishery boards for the purpose of protecting fish at all stages of their lives.
The net result of this haphazard, piecemeal growth over a period that has lasted about seventy, years is that we have for dealing with pollution a whole multitude of separate agencies whose responsibility it is to prevent and arrest pollution. There are now in England and Wales as many as 1,600 local authorities who are collectively responsible for seeing that the law is carried out. It is obvious that such a mosaic, such a system—or rather lack of system—cannot work satisfactorily. I will not weary your Lordships with further illustrations of the difficulties that this administrative machinery encounters. If ever there was an instance of too many cooks spoiling a liquid, I think it can be seen in the treatment of our native streams and rivers by those responsible for their cleanliness. Since the First World War, Committee after Committee have reported in favour of placing local control of pollution in the hands of new bodies with a much larger administrative area. The most recent of these Reports is the one to which I have already referred—namely, the Report of the Milne Committee.
Noble Lords will remember that this Report recommended the appointment of twenty-nine river boards—an enormous reduction in the number 'of authorities at present exercising these powers—for England and Wales, each of which would be responsible for an area covering the watershed of one or more rivers. These boards, a development along the lines of the Thames and Lea Conservancy Boards, which are nothing new or experimental, would take over the duties of the local authorities for the prevention of pollution and those of the catchment and fishery boards for land drainage and fisheries respectively. The Government agree entirely and unreservedly with the Milne Committee that this simple and logical administrative structure, which would make one authority responsible for the maximum number of functions in relation to the whole area drained by a river
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and its tributaries, would give us the sort of public body that we need to replace the present patchwork of controls. A Bill giving effect to this and other recommendations—perhaps of less importance—made by the Milne Committee has now been drafted and will be introduced into Parliament at the earliest practical moment.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: Will it be introduced this Session?
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: No; it will not be introduced this Session.
There is a second difficulty in dealing with pollution, and I think this throws a light on the time factor. The second difficulty is entirely different. It has nothing whatever to do with the inadequacy of the administrative machinery for keeping our rivers in a reasonably good condition; it is the difficulty, which is widely and commonly experienced at the present time, of obtaining the labour and materials which are required for fresh plant and constructional work. I should like to emphasize, here, that in this competition for priorities the authorities who want labour and material for sewage works, or for the treatment of effluent, are not necessarily competing with people who ought to have a lower degree of priority than they. It should not be forgotten that with the best will in the world many local authorities and factory owners—and I am sure your Lordships would not wish to under-estimate the fact that most of these people want to behave in a decent and public spirited way—find it impossible at the present time to proceed with their plans for neutralizing industrial effluence, or for building fresh sewage works. These bodies often find themselves competing with the building industry for labour and materials. I am sure your Lordships will agree that there can be no doubt that for the time being, at any rate, the first call upon unskilled building labour, and upon cement, bricks, and other things that are required for putting up or putting into houses and flats, must be given to those responsible for carrying out the building programme.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: May I interrupt the noble Earl to ask him this question? Are we to understand that the construction of sewage works for public health reasons, and the purity of rivers, must take a lower priority than materials

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or labour required for building? It is not much good building the houses unless you think also of things like sewages. Should not they have a section of such available resources?
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: Of course, every case will have to be dealt with on its merits. What I was thinking of was the achieving of a much higher general degree of purity, after what has happened during the war. I am not talking about the pollution of a water supply that may be needed for a new town, or a new building development in connexion with an existing town. That, of course, would come in a top category.
I am sure your Lordships wall not consider that I am unduly protracting my speech if I deal for a few moments with the question of fishing. A special difficulty concerning the fishery boards, whose responsibility it is to protect the life of fish, is that so few of them have the necessary funds to provide the expert help they need in technical matters. This makes it hard for them to obtain the evidence required for undertaking a prosecution when an offence has been committed, when it is obvious that fish are dying, or fish have been killed. For example, it may be impossible to prove, in cases where there are several potential sources from which it might come, that an effluent which is killing fish comes from a particular source. Some of the larger boards, like the Trent Fishery Board, have been able to use their powers, and have used them, most successfully. But it must be admitted that most boards are smaller and have insufficient funds to do their job effectively. This difficulty, like the other difficulty in connexion with water for humans, would be overcome if the river boards recommended in the Milne Report were set up, because they would be in a position to raise money by precept on the rates of the larger local authorities, and this would give them the necessary funds to provide for adequate administrative staff.
The noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, asked a question about research, and suggested that another Committee should be set up to sit on this subject permanently. I would assure the noble Lord that research is going on at the present time, under the auspices of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. Its work has already resulted in marked improvements
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in existing methods for the treatment of domestic and industrial waste, and there is reason to expect that further improvements will be found as time goes on. When the scientific advances are applied by local authorities and by industry, the effect, of course, will be to reduce very considerably the present degree of pollution. I should like to impress on the noble Lord that the work that is being done under the auspices of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research is not confined to laboratory experiment for application in the long term. Field work is also being done, and I understand that teams of chemists and engineers arc being sent to factories that are discharging poisonous effluent, and are treating the effluent in order to neutralize it on the spot. Thus, the evil is being combated actively from day to day. I would have dealt with Scotland, 'but I do not think I will, because no noble Lord has mentioned Scotland in the course of the discussion, and I might be lengthening my speech without giving your Lordships information which you might require.
LORD SALTOUN: If the noble Earl will excuse me for interrupting, I should like to tell him that my pocket is full of letters from people in Scotland.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: If the noble Lord requires it, I will refer to Scotland, but his is the responsibility for inflicting an addition which might not be so interesting to other members of the House. The position in Scotland is less bad than it is here, because county councils and town councils in large burghs—of which there are only fifty-five in all, compared with the very large number of authorities in England and Wales—-are charged with this duty of preventing pollution. This has eliminated all the smaller authorities in Scotland. Nevertheless, the Scottish Advisory Committee on the Pollution of Rivers, perceiving the advantage of concentrating in one body responsibility for the purity of a particular river, recommended in 1936 the establishment of river boards in Scotland. Separate legislation would, of course, be required for Scotland because the system of river administration differs in many respects from the system in England and Wales. But the Government are anxious that a Bill should be introduced at the I earliest practicable moment to give Scot-

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land all the advantages that will accrue to England and Wales under the English Bill.
The noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, said something about the amending of the law and he wanted it strengthened and reinforced. The Government also recognize that it may be necessary to alter and tighten up the law. They therefore decided that a Committee should be appointed to go into this question. During last Summer a sub-Committee of the Central Advisory Water Committee was, therefore appointed to consider—and this is a brief extract from its terms of reference—
"whether it is necessary, and, if so, what measures are required, to strengthen the existing law in regard to the prevention of pollution of rivers and streams."
This Committee will consult the views of the interests concerned, and will report to the Minister as soon as their inquiry has been completed. The sub-Committee held its first meeting on July 16, and they are still engaged in taking evidence from the interests likely to be affected by legislation, which are, of course, extremely numerous.
The noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, also referred to the Water Act. I should like to reassure him immediately on this point. The Water Act has been working quite satisfactorily, and is still working quite satisfactorily at the present moment. The Ministry of Health are now considering some ninety orders from applicants for powers of various kinds ranging from the formation of joint boards, the amalgamation of water undertakings, and the construction of the reservoirs, and a number of rather less important matters. There is, of course, nothing in the Act that takes away the rights of undertakers to promote Bills—Local Authorities and private companies—and when an authority are asking for a fresh power not covered by the Act, this is the proper and only procedure they can take. For example, in the case of the Tendring Hundred Water and Gas Bill, which came before the House only a week or two ago, the powers for new works could be obtained under the Act. But the Company also wish to raise joint capital for water and gas, which is not possible under an Act which deals solely with water. It is the practice of the Ministry of Health, when reporting on Water Bills to Committees of either Houses of Parliament, to draw their
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attention to any cases where the powers asked for by the undertaker are easily obtainable under the provisions of the Act. But surely it is for the Committee to decide whether or not Bills should proceed in such circumstances. It would undoubtedly be high-handed and wrong for a Government Department to attempt to override the discretion of the water undertaker as to which procedure he should adopt, whether by an order under the Act or by the promotion of a Private Bill. I am sure your Lordships would be the first to complain if the executive tried to interfere in this way with the rights of the subject.
In conclusion, let me say one word about the Thames, as that was a subject raised by the noble Lord, Lord Rochester. If I may say so, I do not think he quite did justice to the difficulties that face the London County Council. Just before the war the London County Council completed, at a cost of £600,000, a sewage treatment plant designed to give full treatment to 40,000,000 gallons of sewage a day, which would have accounted for about one-quarter of the average dry weather flow. Most unfortunately—and this point has not emerged in the course of the discussion—this plant was severely damaged by enemy action during the air attacks on London, and it has not yet been fully repaired or put into effective use. The damage is being repaired and the work is proceeding, but, even so, lack of fuel has made it impossible to put the repaired plant into full employment. The London County Council are acutely conscious of this problem. I should like to make it abundantly plain that neither the authorities in the London area—the London County Council, or any other authorities—nor the Government Departments concerned are at all satisfied with the present position, and that they will do their utmost to remedy it as speedily as possible. I can also tell your Lordships that discussions are in progress at this moment between the Port of London Authority, the London County Council and the Government.
LORD ROCHESTER: Will the noble Lord forgive me? That conference took place on Monday of last week, but I regret to say that, in my judgment, it was abortive.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: I hope the noble Lord's judgment is incorrect. In our view it is only the beginning of a

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series of conferences or talks which we hope will result in an agreement leading to a marked improvement in the position.
We have had an extremely interesting and instructive debate, in which a number of proposals have been put forward by noble Lords which will be of the utmost assistance to the Government in deciding what should be done to remedy this evil. On behalf of His Majesty's Government, 1 should like to say how grateful we are to noble Lords for the views they have expressed, and to assure them that everything that has been said will receive immediate consideration.
4.23 p.m.
THE EARL OF PERTH: My Lords, the noble Earl began his speech by regretting that there was no speaker from these Benches. May I now repair that omission very shortly? There happens to be one question which I should like to put to him. I am very glad to hear that it is the intention of the Government to produce—I hope at an early date—a River Boards Bill, because it is a very important Bill. I think the noble Earl said that it was founded on the work done by the Thames Conservancy Board. Under the Bill—I think we all know what it contains—the river boards are given certain powers to deal with pollution, but those powers really are not sufficient. I would ask the noble Earl to see whether the same powers cannot be given to the river board as are given to the Thames Conservancy Board itself. If the river board had those powers, then I feel sure that they could do almost as good work, if not quite as good work, as the Thames Conservancy Board has done for the upper and non-tidal reaches of the Thames. The point is one of considerable importance.
4.25 p.m.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, and myself, I should like very sincerely to thank all your Lordships for the support which you have given us this afternoon. I should like particularly to thank those noble Lords who have spoken, and especially my noble friend the Postmaster-General for his extremely sympathetic and complete reply. There are just one or two points arising out of the debate upon which I will touch very briefly. There is one point on which I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi. He said that under modern
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engineering conditions one can always prevent industrial effluent from getting into rivers, but I think that is possibly not quite true. One has to consider the enormous number of quite small industrial plants hidden away in the great cities, and one also has to consider modern chemical industries, the possible effects of radio-active radiation and so on. For that reason I am particularly grateful to His Majesty's Government for the promise that they will promote more research. My own opinion, after hearing a good deal of expert opinion on this, is that at the moment research is possibly more important even than the new Bill which we have been promised.
With regard to tire new Bill, there are one or two points arising from the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, to which I would like to call attention. In the first place, he said it is very difficult to bring home pollution to people because it is necessary to prove that a particular fish was killed by a particular source of contamination. I submit that in the new Bill it should be sufficient to show that there is a source of contamination, and that it should not be necessary to wait until it is possible to prove that a particular fish was killed by that source. I think that is the point which could be dealt with in the Bill.
In his reply, the noble Earl said that now we were going to get river boards armed with authority, "hat was sufficient. I humbly suggest that from his own speech it appears that that may not be sufficient, and I think the question should be carefully and sympathetically examined anew. The example he quoted of Scotland, where we do have larger authorities, shows quite conclusively that larger authorities are not in themselves the answer to this. If the noble Earl doubts me, let him go and cast a fly, not with a new line, but with an old line that does no: matter, in some of the pools at the mouth of the Don. The dressing will come off the line, and after a few casts he will find it looks like the tail of a kite, with every sort and kind of contamination hanging on to it. There is one other point. I suggest that when we are nominating Committees to sit on Water Bills and other similar Bills, we should instruct them to pay particular attention to the possible effects of private legislation on river pollution With those few words, I should like to thank the noble Earl, the Postmaster-General for his sym-

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pathetic reply, and wish him success. With your Lordships' leave, I will withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

GIFTS FROM AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND.
4.29 p.m.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR DOMINION AFFAIRS (VISCOUNT ADDISON): My Lords, it may be convenient if I interpose at this moment in order to make an important statement. I have to inform the House that His Majesty's Governments in Australia and New Zealand have announced their intention to make gifts to His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom for the reduction of the heavy burdens which the people of the United Kingdom are carrying as a consequence of financial arrangements entered into during the war. The Australian Government are making a gift of 25 million Australian pounds, and the New Zealand Government a gift of 12½ million New Zealand pounds.
The Australian Prime Minister states that his Cabinet have been considering various forms of assistance which Australia might be able to render to Britain at this time, and have decided to make this gift as a contribution to the war costs incurred by Britain in and around the Pacific. The New Zealand Prime Minister states that the gift from the Government and people of New Zealand is in recognition of the magnificent and unprecedented effort of the United Kingdom in maintaining freedom and making possible its expansion in the years to come, and of the enormous burden that the United Kingdom have carried and are bearing during the post-war period.
I am sure that this House, and the people of Britain, will most warmly appreciate these generous gifts and the spirit which has prompted our kinsmen in the two great Dominions in the South Pacific. This is yet one more proof, for all the world to see and ponder, that we of the British Commonwealth are members of one family, no less closely united in peace than in war. A message of thanks and deep appreciation is being sent to both Dominion Governments to-day.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: My Lords, the whole House will have heard with deep
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appreciation the important statement which the noble Viscount, the Leader of the House, has just made. The gratitude of both Houses of Parliament and of everyone in the homeland will go out to our brothers in these two great Dominions. It is characteristic of the generosity of the people of Australia and New Zealand, as it is typical of the solidarity of our free Commonwealth.
VISCOUNT SAMUEL: My Lords, noble Lords on these Benches desire to associate themselves with the expressions which have fallen from the noble Viscount, the Leader of the House, and the noble Viscount, the Leader of the Opposition. These gifts from Australia and New Zealand are indeed most deeply appreciated. We remember that they have followed upon financial assistance rendered previously by the Dominion of Canada, and also the generous gift from South Africa. Taken together, they show a spirit in the Dominions which is indeed warmly welcomed in this country. This country does not regard herself as an aged and decrepit parent, dependent upon the weekly contributions from more prosperous sons and daughters; but nevertheless the burdens upon us are very, very heavy and, after all, one-third of the white population of the Commonwealth does live in the Dominions. For every two Britons here there is one in those Dominions. These gifts are not, of course, in the same category, but they are a very pleasant supplement to the most gallant services rendered in two great wars by the soldiers, sailors and airmen of Australia and New Zealand.

DISREGARD OF INTERNATIONAL OBLIGATIONS.
4.34 p.m.
LORD VANSITTART LORD VANSITTART rose to call attention to the growing practice of disregarding international obligation and good faith; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I have put down this Motion after much searching of heart. It has been on my conscience for the last two years, and it seems to me now to be a plain and unpalatable duty. It is fitting perhaps that I should say what I have to say on the eve of the first attempt to find a solution for the abiding German problem, for if any resulting agreement were not to be better observed than some of those which I shall enumerate to-day, we

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shall be steering for fresh disaster. I will try to speak with dispassion upon a subject on which I feel very deeply and sincerely, as I hope indeed your Lordships do too. I will confine myself to the factual record and the inescapable conclusions. If the conclusions arc alarming at all, so also are the facts. Indeed, I believe that everyone would be alarmed if he had ever seen those facts drawn together in an ensemble as I propose to do to-day. There is no immediate danger, but I think there is an ultimate doom if these facts are not amended.
There is nothing new in international bad faith—it was practised long before Frederick II. Rut from his Prussia it grew to a doctrine dignified by a Latin name rebus stantibus which, in plain English, means you may break your word when you please. That doctrine came into official being on January 3, 1741, when Frederick made his Convention of Neutrality with the City of Breslau. But into the text he slipped the following", Then on August 10 of the same year he seized the city. I think that was the birth certificate of the children of darkness. It is no good delving into the past, and I will come straight to this calamitous century. The creed that solemn engagements may be violated began in 1914 with the "scrap of paper." That expression has become so hackneyed that its main point is usually overlooked to-day. The expression was used not by one of the worst of Germans but by one of the best of them. Even to him that was all that international agreements meant.
Those words stuck and shocked, but not for long. Hitler eclipsed all previous records—but again there is no need to elaborate. Not only was no undertaking ever honoured, but every engagement, or almost every one, came to mean the exact opposite, so that by weaker States his guarantee was looked upon as a sentence of death. Witness the guarantees inflicted—I can use no other word for it—on Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark almost on the eve of war. Again the world was somewhat shocked, but only somewhat and at first. There was no profundity in the feeling, and soon morality was almost normal. When Hitler offered to us a far reaching guarantee, I was instrumental in having sent to him a notorious questionnaire which made it
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very difficult for him to answer if he was going to break his word, so of course he did not answer it at all. But Hitler was not blamed for that—the Foreign Office was and that was a sign of the times.
Those were the times when people were signing documents like the Kellogg Pact with their tongues more or less in their cheeks. No one: seriously believed that war was going to be outlawed in that way. Indeed, if you could have looked into the minds of some of the signatories you would have seen that subconsciously they were signing to please Kellogg and dear old Briand. Nobody took it really seriously; and so, when Mr. Chamberlain returned from Munich with another scrap of paper which he thought meant peace in our time, Hitler was saying to his friends, "Well, of course, I did not sign that seriously—he seemed to want it."
Now there followed the inevitable sequel of perpetual ill-faith—a holocaust greater than ever. Then we awoke again and some of us perhaps remembered Pistol's words to Mrs. Quickly in Henry V:
"Trust none;
For oaths are straws, men's faiths are wafer-cakes. And hold-fast is the only dog, my duck."
We did hold fast, and at what a cost! Then we said that we must be rid of the Pistol mind for, in the light of Hiroshima, if we do not hold fast and together there will soon be nothing left to hold. We had formed all those good resolutions when the League of Nations was founded, but because so many of its members were not really disposed to hold fast or keep faith the League failed. All too justified lack of confidence wrecked the Disarmament Conference of 1932, and when it came to its protracted and distracted end in 1934 it was never more than a question of a few easily predictable years to 1939. Many of the vacillations of the intervening years were essentially due to everybody's secret that his neighbours were not really going to honour their signatures, and many of them, had already physically disabled themselves from doing so.
After the German world war we all began saying again: "This time we have learned our lesson. Never again shall ill-faith be our undoing!" But it is undoing us now, continually and increasingly. We are still in the era of nationalism and duplicity. The last time I spoke in this

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House I asked: "Has anybody heard more than to-day of nationalism and national sovereignty?" To-day I answer that question: Never, and never more insanely!
Moreover we live in an age of unparalleled, because organized, xenophobia. For some time past I have done my best to support the foreign policy of Mr. Bevin, but since last Thursday I find myself in disagreement with him on one point. I would like to see advantage taken of the resumption of negotiations for re-modelling the Anglo-Russian Treaty and to try at least to abate the flow of venom. That seems to be the test of sincerity in any treaty.
I now come to a record of modern ill-faith. In 1941 we all subscribed to the Atlantic Charter. That document has been torn to shreds, particularly the first three clauses; and because its principles are most explicitly reaffirmed in the Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1942, that Treaty has also been violated, though not by us. Only last week I was talking to a young man fresh from the Forces and from the age of innocence, who hopes to join the foreign service. He said to me: "I suppose the Atlantic Charter is the sort of thing people do sign when they want to win a war." I said to him: "Is not that a little bit cynical?" He replied: "Well, what are we to think?" My Lords, that is a warning from the country to come. What are we to think now? It is true that most of the breaches of that instrument have been committed by the Soviet Government, but there have been other cases where all the other Allies have got together to break it. For instance there was the decision regarding the South Tyrol and there are other instances of the same kind. It seems that nowadays people set about making one treaty by breaking another.
I shall say little about the Four Freedoms. What is left of them in a good many parts of the world? But what is left anyway of the Moscow Declaration of 1943, solemnly affirming the principle of the equality of all peace-loving States? Who takes that seriously now? It is daily derided. What easy acquiescence has there been echoed in Professor Carr's dictum in his book, The Twenty Years of Crisis. He says: "The rule Pacta sunt servanda is not a moral principle." Again cut out the Latin. What Professor Carr is saying,
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like Frederick, is that you can break your word with whom you please. We have now watched that doctrine at work. Is it really compatible with the sovereign equality of all peace-loving States that throughout the preparation of the five treaties with the satellite States last month there should have been a prolonged effort to see that the immediate States concerned should not have their fair share in the matter? Is it really consonant with that principle that the same tactics should have been applied in the endeavour to prepare the Germany Treaty recently, or that proposals were made last month which would virtually have excluded Canada and Australia from any real participation? There were sharp words about that in the Canadian Parliament, and who shall say they were not entirely justified? For, after all, Canada and Australia were at war with Germany before Russia was.
It is notorious, I think, that the small and medium sized States are in a condition of high and a legitimate dissatisfaction—all, of course, except the Russian Protectorates. But are Protectorates anywhere really compatible with the Moscow Declaration? If it comes to that, is the institution of the Big Three, Four or Five as at present worked out really consonant with that Declaration? From the very end of the shooting war, I have never ceased to protest that unless that institution was worked with the utmost self-restraint and abnegation it would become the new aristocracy of avoirdupoid, pregnant with multiple injustice. It seems to me an ironical paradox that the most insistent advocate of the new class distinction should be the country that professes to be class-less. I submit that one self-reminder of the terms of the Moscow Declaration would have ended all that nonsense in five minutes. The Foreign Ministers' deputies would not have broken up after four weeks' discussion without settling either who would be consulted or how.
I know a great many people will say, "Oh, the Big Four must be masters," or, "Oh, the Russians must have Protectorates." I happen to dissent from both those proposals, but in any case arguments like that are no excuse whatsoever for people going on making treaties which they do not intend to enforce or observe. Now the breaches come thick and fast. The Yalta Agreement has been

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partly flouted, and the Potsdam Agreement has been bodily violated. Opinions may differ as to the merit of this instrument, but one thing is sure: that it never had a chance because it was never observed from the start. Again, last year we were confronted with the simultaneous breach of several treaties in Iran. Happily, they were subsequently rectified, but only because the Iranian Government promised concessions to the Soviet Government, and not because treaties are sacred. It would indeed be to the interest of the whole world if treaties were.
Now we come to a positive spate of breaches of faith and obligation. I enumerate these things in no spirit of recrimination but simply because I think it is vital to see the way we are going, deceived and deceivers alike. It is the road to the abyss. All these agreements were concluded in the very spirit of Frederick's phrase; there was never any seriousness of intention of endowing them with duration. A little while ago I was talking to one of the most prominent of foreign diplomatists and he said: "We have already reached a stage where signatures are worth less and less, but most people are either too timid or too indifferent to say so." That is the hard truth, though weaker vessels recoil from it. We now come to the terms with Tito which were made on the faith of the inclusion in his administration of some moderate man like Grol or Subascic. Where are they now? Has anybody asked of late: has anybody cared? Ill faith has triumphed amid silence.
I pass next to the case of Bulgaria. What of the true Bulgarian Socialists, men of the type of Pastakhov? They have been persecuted, imprisoned and suppressed. I had hoped to hear something of that from my noble friends on the Left, but they have left it to me. This is the second time that I have raised this matter in this House. Coming to Rumania, after laborious negotiations it was agreed that two—only two—Liberal ministers should be grafted into the Communist-controlled front. Surely that was a moderate enough proportion. What has been the fate of those men and their adherents? It has been the same as that of all who have trusted to modern agreements—they have been persecuted, treated almost as criminals,
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deprived of all influence. And, again, hardly a word has been said.
I now come to the case of Hungary. In November 1945, there was the nearest approach to free and unfettered elections in Central Europe. It resulted in a considerable non-Communist majority—the Smallholders polled 54 per cent, of the votes. Since that day there has been an unbroken process of intimidation to destroy that majority, and to transfer virtual power to a Communist minority of under 20 per cent. In that process, the occupying Power has taken an active part. We have now signed a treaty of peace with Hungary, and that activity, therefore, becomes a clear breach of Article 3 of the Atlantic Charter. But has anybody heard any mention of the Atlantic Charter in that respect? Nobody. Is it because they think the Atlantic Charter to be so dead as not even to be worth mentioning? But it is not even now too late to revive the fluttering pulses. So shall we speak out, or will it still be silence—the silence of the tomb?
I come now to the case of Poland. Her obligations are clear, repeated and incontestable. We could split hairs, if we wished, as to whether those obligations were actually subscribed to by the Lublin Committee, which is what the present Polish Government consists of, or by its Russian patrons. But there are the obligations, in black and white. Each time we ask for their fulfilment we are greeted with nothing but abuse, and Russia has supported the defaulter; so much so that the British Foreign Secretary is reduced to saying that it is no good appealing to Moscow over instruments that we all signed together. So here we are again. Scarcely has Nemesis left the lectern, after man's Second Lesson, than we are again in an era where good faith is the exception rather than the rule. To such eras, if unchecked, there can only be one end—the same as before. Why? Because if people continually break their words in the present, there is no reason why they can or should be trusted in the future.
After all that has happened, what intrinsic value is attachable to the signature of the present Provisional Government let us say, on an instrument to authorize effective international inspection of disarmament? If to claim fulfilment of a promise for free elections is interference,

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how much more so would be the imposition of effective international inspection? I say "effective," because, on present form, the door is wide open to chicanery. I noticed last Saturday that there was a great meeting in the Albert Hall addressed by Mr. Attlee, Mr. Eden and Mr. Jan Masaryk. Their theme song was international inter-dependence. Amen to that. But how, in God's name, are we to be inter-dependent unless we are all dependable? Unless you answer that question the ghost of Frederick will haunt every formula. It always comes to the same thing: if men cannot trust each other altogether and together, then the circle of mistrust must widen and become vicious. Failing confidence—the one thing this unhappy world has never had—everyone can only play for safety, and must keep something in reserve. So the madness continues, until at last the original sinner thinks himself sinned against, then encircled, and then, next—we have met it twice—he gets persecution mania, as in the case of Germany.
Why must these idiotic and damnable things continually recur, however often we swear they shall not? The causes may be complex, but there is one fairly clear one. Each doctrine in turn has conceived itself to be the eternal verity. Even Hitler gave himself a thousand years.
"Shadow to shadow well persuaded saith,
"'See how our works endure'."
Each in turn holds itself to be the sole possessor and dispenser of salvation and therefore entitled to brush aside any trammelling vows. Always the end justifies the means, be the technique the scrap of paper, the liquidation of opponents, or a device like the Polish and Balkan elections.
All those modes are dangerously akin to something that you have heard before: "Right is what suits the German people." We know where that landed us all—and, above all, the Germans. With that sort of conviction you cannot reason. It may be perfectly sincere, but nowadays it is certainly fatal. So I am not here to appeal to reason or principle; we know already that that is far too precarious—a grim thought at the threshold of the Atomic Age. I appeal simply to our instincts of self-preservation. I ask whether, seeing and foreseeing the perfection of the new annihilations, any ill-faith anywhere on
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any pretext is worth anybody's while. The answer is clearly "No." Willy-nilly, nowadays, we are all in the same boat, and any course bound to run us all alike on the rocks is not only murder but suicide while of unsound mind. Here, at least, is something of which it can at least be said without cynicism—"It is worse than a crime; it is a mistake."
What, after all, is the ultimate gain of policies of force and fraud? That question was answered long ago, and for all time, by Fortinbras' Captain, in the Fourth Act of Hamlel. His forces are marching on Poland (how prophetic of the Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries) and Fortinbras detaches his Captain to ask for right of passage through Denmark. Hamlet says to the Captain:
"Goes it against the main of Poland, Sir,
"Or for some frontier?"
And the Captain replies:
"Truly to speak, Sir, and with no addition We go to gain a little patch of ground That hath in it no profit but the name."
That is the epitaph of the whole school of statecraft that culminated in Germany, and it has never yet declined. Since Fortinbras' day we have reached the fifth partition of Poland' to the shame of our kind, and it may not be the last. There will be other ugly chapters written there and elsewhere, unless we make up our minds that there must be a crusade against the double cross. I would like to see world opinion so roused that it would treat the next breaker of the faith with organized execration as his own worst enemy. Ten days ago, the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, was talking to us on the air of the need for moral leadership. Here is the opportunity. I do not believe we shall get a better one, because if this issue be not joined we have no future; and the century which set out with so much assurance will never reach its end. Already it is half gone, and gone backwards, muttering that man must ever be more faithful or extinct.
It is no good uttering warnings without suggesting remedies—I have never done that—and, therefore, in the universal interest I propose that we should take the moral lead in trying to call a halt before we go still further back. Even that would be a gain. Pope wrote 200 years ago "Not to go back, is somewhat to advance." Therefore, I should refer this Polish issue to the United Nations, not in any spirit of bickering or dickering,

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but simply because it is the latest link in a lengthening chain of infidelity which will end up by hanging us all. Do not get bogged in the details of the electoral travesty; keep to the broadest grounds: "Are international obligations to be honoured? Yes or no?" Make the club worth while. If you do not bar sharp practice from its tables in the end honest men will not play; they cannot play.
I know that the course which I commend bristles with difficulties. I know there will always be an immense following for Lord Melbourne's maxim: "When you do not know what to do, do nothing." Less than a fortnight ago the Prime Minister said in the House of Commons: "We are against drift." In this grave matter, we and all the world are drifting like dinghies towards Niagara. The steps I urge are small indeed compared with the consequences of inaction. I beg of you not to dismiss me as a pessimist. People called me a croaker about Germany before 1939, and now I say: If the old ill-faith is to prevail again in the name of no matter what "ism" or appetite, then the new dervishes are fully equipped for self-extermination and the Pistol mind has the means to shatter this sorry scheme of things beyond all hope of remodelling by the simple practice of its own devastating standard. Is that worth while? I beg to move for Papers.
5.5 p.m.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: My Lords, in the unavoidable absence of the noble Viscount, Lord Cranborne, because of what is, I hope, a temporary indisposition, I should like to support, briefly but very sincerely, the best speech that I have ever heard the noble Lord make; and that is saying a good deal. He certainty need make no apology for the time or the place of his Motion. Always and everywhere it is in order to stress the vital importance of a high standard of good faith in international affairs, and surely we of all generations ought to recognize this. In the period betwen the two wars we saw international obligations fall into progressive contempt. We saw first Japan, then Italy and then Germany, repudiate obligations as soon as they became inconvenient. As the noble Lord said, we finally saw Germany, under Hitler, sublimate breaches of faith into a definite policy. We saw Hitler evolve a new philosophy, under which everything he did became right merely because he did
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it. We have seen the catastrophic results of that policy to those who professed it and to those who suffered from it, for the professors and the others were all equally victims. We have seen the utter degradation of human standards which led to the ultimate collapse of the whole machinery of international peace. That machinery, admirable in itself, depended on the maintenance of common standards of virtue, decency and good faith—standards to which all had. subscribed.
Many years ago Gresham enunciated the great principle in the realm of finance that bad currency drives out good. That principle is equally true in international relations. Nothing is more easily debased than the currency of good faith, and I think all expansionists and contractionists would support that in this, anyway, a gold standard should be maintained. In no sphere are the results more disastrous if the standard of good faith is not maintained; the whole confidence of man in man, which is, after all, the basis of civilization, is destroyed. One would have hoped and expected that after the last six years every nation, however cynical, would have learned that such a policy does not pay. I agree with the noble Lord that, from sheer self-preservation, if for no other motive, the general community of nations will have to deal with the evil-doer. But must it really come to that? Is not the remedy, as the noble Lord has said, that in the meantime we must be vigilant and resolute to stop the process before irreparable damage is done? The leak in the dam can be stopped early, but if it widens and the pressure behind increases, then the flood comes.
To-day, as the noble Lord has pointed out, there are signs that the whole miserable business is starting up again. Surely it is essential that the law-abiding nations should make their attitude abundantly clear. They must indicate that nations which treat obligations as "scraps of paper" will do so to their own detriment. I agree with him that this is a subject which it is very proper to raise and discuss in the United Nations. After all, the United Nations have now been established for some time. It may be that it was wise, in order to get it going, not to put the most difficult things to it too soon. May it not die of inanition if after a time we who believe in it—and what else have we to believe in?—have

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not the courage to put the difficult things to it?
Surely if the United Nations exist for anything they exist to maintain the gold standard of international good faith. And that standard can only be maintained if two basic principles inspire and inform international relation: first, that nations must be willing to subordinate their own interests, to a reasonable extent at any rate, to the interests of the whole world. I think that if we all recognize our interdependence as we profess it, and really believe what is such an obvious truth today, that we are all members one of another, particular interests will be more reconcilable with the common interest which is the supreme interest of us all. The second principle is that nations must stand by their pledged word, even if it be to their own hindrance. These two principles were the basis of the League of Nations. They are the basis of the United Nations. If the second is not to go the way of the first, these principles must be affirmed, constantly affirmed, and affirmed both in faith and works.
That indeed was the whole thesis which the noble Lord put before us this afternoon. That is why, as I understand it, he has urged His Majesty's Government to bring these matters to the United Nations and, if I may say so, to raise not only the matter of general principles—that is well enough and would be very easy for all the delegates, who would gladly support in well-chosen words any general resolution of that kind and do little more about it. Faith without works is worth nothing; it is the application of the principle that counts, and that is why this aspect of good faith should be stressed by His Majesty's Government with the greatest frankness, not just as a general principle but as a principle to be applied in every concrete case as it arises. I am sure that we are knocking at an open door, that that is the faith of the Government and it is their intention; but if this afternoon they can give the reassurance in no uncertain terms that they will carry it out in faith and works, then the noble Lord's Motion has been well worth-while.
5.15 p.m.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Vansittart (as I have known happen to his Motions once or twice before, and as I think I
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heard him admit in his speech) may well seem, if we are to assume that in spite of time marching on it still matters what is said in your Lordships' House, unluckily timed. Our good wishes and, I think, our sympathy go out to the Foreign Secretary in the uphill task with which he is confronted at this latest Moscow Conference, and I am sure we should do nothing definite, in any case, to put grit into wheels that already seem to experience great difficulty in turning.
At the same time, I think your Lordships will agree with me that it is the business of Parliament, while it is still in existence, to continue to dot as many "is" as possible, since the average citizen is unfortunately increasingly occupied with daily material problems and has increasingly little time to devote to the study of international affairs, except to their broad outlines. To that extent I trust I may be allowed, in supporting the noble Lord's Motion, as I most gladly do, to make one or two comments on the point which we have reached in international relationships.
As the noble Lord himself said, disregard of obligation and good faith, of course, is far from being a new thing in the history of humanity, and if you hold, as I do, the Christian belief in original sin, your Lordships may agree with me that, men being constantly impelled by their worst instincts, they are only now beginning to realize the real folly of dishonesty in their bargainings with each other because of the immense danger of war that overhangs such actions—war which is no longer an elegant sport indulged in by mercenaries, but a hurricane in which we are all involved. And so we had the League of Nations and now we have the United Nations Organization. As has already been mentioned, and as we all know, the first was sabotaged by Japan, Italy and Germany, and no less, I think, in a sense, by our own pusillanimity. These countries have been made to pay a terrible price for their gamble; though at what a cost to the victors!
And now here is U.N.O. What is to be U.N.O.'s fate? I should like to draw your Lordships' attention in this connexion to two recent manifestations in print. One is Mr. William Bullitt's book The Great Globe Itself. The other is an article summing up the result of the Paris Peace Conference, appearing in the January number of the American review Foreign

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Affairs by that eternally readable writer, Mr. Harold Nicolson. An appendix in Mr. Bullitt's book, the accuracy of which 1 have no reason to doubt, for it is Appendix C of the Nuremberg Indictment and was issued in October, 1945, by the United States War Department, compiles in two parallel columns particulars of violations by two major Powers of international treaties, agreements and assurances. Those two Powers were Germany and Russia. Germany has twenty-six laid at her door; Russia has twenty-eight. What I should like to stress is that these breaches of faith are of a really sinister recentness. They do not belong to a remote and barbarian epoch; they belong to one which we are accustomed to consider as civilized; they belong to now. They belong to the years, in point of fact, between 1920 and 1945.
Mr. Nicolson's article on the Paris Conference, which on October 23 Mr. Churchill commented on as having been "bad diplomacy but valuable education," is a significant summary of the type of thing which may well await us at the U.N.O. meetings. "Was it a failure?" rhetorically asks Mr. Nicolson. "No, it was not entirely a failure. Was it a farce? Only if the lessons which it taught us are in future disregarded." The Anglo-Saxon group, Mr. Nicolson reminds us, felt that it "would not be in accordance with Western democratic theory for the 'Big Four' to draw up the final terms of these treaties without the smaller Powers being at least permitted to state their opinion.
The Soviet delegation interpreted the votes which were so constantly given against them as "evidence of an organized opposition bloc; for them the conscience of the heretic world was nothing more impressive than bourgeois inhibitions and diplomatic manoeuvre. So far from shaking the faith of the West in the Liberal Democratic theory, or the faith of the East in the Marxist dialectic, the ten weeks of discussion and oratory merely emphasized the gulf between them." "We came," says Mr. Nicolson, "to understand that the Russians not only spoke a different language, but possessed dissimilar minds." Two other remarks of his will bring to a head the point I want to make. "The Russians," he says, "certainly sought to use the Conference to convey the impression that they could be a formidable enemy and a potent friend. The Americans and the British,
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being mild men on the whole, conveyed no such impression. No statesmen from the Western Group displayed the same burning conviction in Liberal theory as the Russians and their associates displayed in the Communist theory."
That is all I want to venture to recommend this afternoon. We ought, it seems to me, to realize once and for all that dealing with the Russians in the 'forties is more difficult than dealing with the Germans in the 'thirties. It is, in a sense, useless to accuse the Russians of past irregularities against international conventions any more than of those they may appear to commit in the future, for the simple reason that to arrive at a serious agreement with another party you have to have not only the same vocabulary but the same ideology is he has. You have not only to mean the same sort of things; you have to want the same sort of things. So when the Russians get a stranglehold over Rou-mania, or vilify the Greeks because they are neither Communist nor Slav, or when they advance into Azerbaijan, or show themselves indifferent to the faked elections in Poland or to anybody that protests against them, it is really quite useless to accuse them, because you are not really talking the same language. You arc after something quite different. It is like playing a game of cards with two different kinds of packs.
Incidentally, I find it curiously significant, apropos of this situation, that in a recent issue of The Times their theatrical reviewer, in commenting on a play now running in London, called Caviare to the General (I should explain that in this case Shakespeare's words have been twisted out of their meaning, for the General is a Russian one, and a woman at that) says of the play, where it is a question of a conflict between Russian communism and American capitalism in terms of love, that the author seems to consider "that even when the disputed business contract is signed as a kind of wedding contract, the motives of the signatories are difficult and probably irreconcilable."
I think we must face up to it that at the moment communism and Russian nationalism are as completely allied as, and far better organized than, the spirit of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic forces in the early years of

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the Napoleonic wars. But communism is far more powerful as a myth and as a religion than the sentiments expressed by Rousseau and put into action by the promoters of the "bourgeois" revolution, because it seems to offer not only relief to the so-called oppressed classes, but power. In any case the Russian rulers appear to believe in it as hotly as St. Ignatius did in the Inquisition; and you cannot argue with a political fanatic any more than with a woman in love. Elements, therefore, that may appear to us in their actions as a disregard of international obligation, cannot really be judged from that angle; it is really a waste of time.
What we must do is to get well into our heads what we are up against. Even more must we believe in our own cause, and, while remaining absolutely fair to our Russian friends, refuse to let ourselves be hypnotized, as I fear all too many are beginning to do, by their dynamism, their persistence and their ingenuity. We must, I feel, walk together with America along the path we have chosen, while remaining reasonably cautious about our commitments, and trying to persuade America to be more aware of her responsibilities than she appears to be to-day.
Our only way to lead back those who stray from the fold of international law is, I think, set forth in Mr. Nicholson's exordium. It is, first of all, to realize that there is no sudden panacea to be found for all this, and that we must exercise patience; and secondly, to believe that if we are clear, consistent, firm and united, we can lead them to comprehend that there are certain rights and principles on which we will always make a stand, and to see that in his words, "the liberal world can offer a way of life which is infinitely more humane and agreeable, while no less certain, than the way of life which communism preaches." If it be pointed out that I have contradicted my own original argument, which was that it is unwise to try and prejudice the results of the conference at this juncture, I can only answer that for forty-eight hours before the conference the Russian radio has been pouring out continuous criticisms of our policy in Germany. All I am trying to do this afternoon is to express my faith that in this instance, as
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in previous instances, appeasement does not pay and never will.
4.27 p.m.
THE EARL OF PERTH: My Lords, the Motion which the noble Lord, Lord Vansittart, has on the Paper is: "To call attention to the growing practice of disregarding obligation and good faith." If a thing is growing, I suppose the idea is that at its present stage it has reached a height to which it has never before attained. I frankly disagree with the word "growing," and I will try in a minute to explain why. In a matter of this kind we have to draw a distinction between nations or statesmen who undertake international obligations with the idea and the intention that they will do their best to fulfil them, and those who, solely for the purpose of gaining a purely temporary advantage, make treaties which they have not the slightest intention of executing. I think all your Lordships agree that the greatest example of that was Hitler. He entered into various agreements and treaties with different nations, and he had not the slightest intention of carrying a single one into effect, once he had lulled a nation into a sense of security so that that nation was not raised against him.
I have often felt that one of the chief crimes of Hitler and his regime was that he completely undermined the faith of mankind in agreements and in treaties. He shook the whole fundamental structure of international relations, because it is quite clear that international relations can exist only as a result of good faith. If you have not good faith, and if you cannot rely on treaties, what have you? You have nothing left but chaos. Therefore, I feel that you cannot help but rely on treaties freely undertaken by both sides, excepting, of course, where Hitler is concerned on one side—that is a different situation.
It is rather curious to note that nearly all the agreements that have been broken have been political agreements, made very often to meet this violent feeling of nationalism that has grown up and sometimes also for self-interest. But, curiously enough, the economic agreements have usually been more or less kept. I feel, with the noble Lord, that it is very sad that countries put their signature to great documents such as the Atlantic Charter, and even to the preamble of the Charter of the United Nations, without any

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definite determination to try to fulfil the very high principles which those two great documents set out. As the noble Lord pointed out, this is by no means a new story.
He referred to the Kellogg Pact. There, frankly, I think he did exaggerate. I do not think the great majority of the nations who signed the Kellogg Pact did so with their tongues in their cheeks. I remember the rejoicing that went round the world as a whole, because it was said that the Covenant of the League of Nations had left a loophole for war, and war under the Kellogg Pact was now banned. There were certain nations—and we have found out who they were since—that never intended to observe the Kellogg Pact, but, as I say, the great bulk of them did. Therefore, I do not like to hear it said that the vast majority who signed did so with their tongues in their cheeks. I would say the same about the Covenant of the League of Nations. As the noble Lord has said, had the obligations under that Covenant been fully carried out by each of the members, then the last war could have been avoided. But it is not easy; you risk war in order, probably, to stop a universal war. I imagine that had the League of Nations stood up against Japan we should probably have had to fight Japan—and to right her alone to start with, because America was not a member of the League. I think it was wrong. In the end we should have beaten her, but it would have meant taking a very great risk, and I do not know that public opinion here would have stood for it. Therefore I think you have to educate public opinion.
What is really the position? In the ultimate resort you can impose a treaty, if some country wishes to break it, only by definitely saying: "If you break that treaty we shall go to war with you"—and that is a thing which most people are most unlikely to do. In private life, if you have dealings with a man and he breaks his word over and over again, you stop having dealings with him; but you cannot apply that principle altogether in the international sphere. There arc a small number of nations commercially inter-dependent for every kind of thing. Therefore, unhappily, what is good in private life will not apply in international affairs. I do agree, however, that the United Nations may provide the solution and may make for righteousness on all
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sides. At least, as the noble Lord suggested, the treaty-breaking nations can be brought before the United Nations and therefore before the bar of world public opinion. If we can get public opinion to realize that treaty-breaking is a real crime, then, as the noble Lord said, that nation will be execrated by its fellow nations, and no nation likes to be considered as a pariah. I think that is the only hope for the future. There is now a tribunal to which an aggrieved nation can appeal, and if the appeal is dealt with in accordance with justice and right, progress will have been made.
Incidentally, I am very doubtful whether the suggestion that the Polish problem should be referred to the United Nations is a particularly good one. It is in some ways a very difficult problem. I agree that the Poles have broken certain pledges, but if you read the Charter of the United Nations you will see that there are very many and serious difficulties in the way of bringing that question before—I imagine it would be—the Security Council. I hope that a. better way can be found if this treaty-breaking goes on. I doubt whether any nation, including our own, is without guilt in this matter. I have in mind, for instance, the entry of Hitler into the Rhineland. We were pledged, but we did nothing; and public opinion, probably, would not have allowed us to do anything. I have in mind the lack of action against Japan when she broke the Covenant of the League of Nations. We were a member of the League. Ought we to have acted? I do not know. At any rate, we did not act. Therefore, what I feel is feat we ought really not to cast too many stones. We ought, if we can, to make a fresh start, to preach the sanctity of treaties, to try to make people realize that without that sanctity nations cannot live together; and, above all, to rely on the United Nations if this treaty-breaking goes on. It is for that reason, among others, that I am so thankful and so glad that His Majesty's Government have made the United Nations a cardinal principle of their foreign policy.
5.36 p.m.
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (LORD PAKENHAM): My Lords, we have certainly listened to some notable speeches this afternoon. I suppose the whole House, like myself, was profoundly

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moved by the appeal of the noble Viscount, who is acting Leader of the Opposition and deeply impressed by the wise and solid contribution from the noble Earl, Lord Perth, who has such vast experience in these matters. We also ought to benefit, I expect, from the instruction of the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, regarding the best manner in which to treat a woman in love. Some of us who have been married for some time, and who flatter ourselves that we have known a lady in that condition for a number of years, may doubt the wisdom of his policy of never arguing in those circumstances. It seems to smack of that policy of appeasement which he denounced in no uncertain terms at the end of his speech.
As regards the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Vansittart, I am somewhat at a loss. I cannot remember, among the many eloquent speeches to which I have listened in this House, one that was more eloquent or which had behind it more genuine feeling and genuine knowledge. At the same time he seemed to me to paint a picture which, taken by itself, would mislead those who read his speeches in other places. I should say that the general implication of his speech would seem to most people to be a suggestion that we were within sight of war. He will correct me when he rises to speak again, but I am bound to say that I feel there will be those upon whom that impression will be made. I myself, the Government, and, I should say, most members of your Lordships' House, are confident that there is no question of another war being in sight.
I would also ask the noble Lord, when he comes to reply, to accept a proposition on which he expressed neither a favourable nor an adverse opinion during his speech, but which is certainly a basic proposition in the policy of His Majesty's Government. I refer to the proposition that lasting peace is impossible without friendship between this country and Soviet Russia. I hope that when the noble Lord comes to reply he will be able to underline that general statement. As to the particular accusations which he levelled against a number of countries, including our own, he will perhaps forgive me if, on the eve of the Moscow Conference, I do not follow him in detail. It is a field in which the margin between the Scylla of indiscretion and the
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Charybdis of platitude is very hard to draw. This afternoon perhaps the House will not be surprised if I tend to veer in the latter direction rather than towards the former. At the same time, there are a number of general observations on the fringe of this subject, and, indeed, which go to the heart of the subject philosophically considered, which I am gratified at being able to discuss with the House.
There has been for some years, in this country and in other countries, as the noble Lord implied (he mentioned the name of Professor Carr, who is one of the writers I have in mind, but in what I wish to say I do not want to single out one particular publicist) men of high repute, honourable men, and men of democratic outlook whose general influence, it seems to me, has been to undermine the sanctity of treaties. They have pointed out—or at any rate they have claimed—that the treaty system existing at any one time is nothing but the embodiment of the power relations existing at that time. They have pointed out that whereas at domestic law a contract is void if it is concluded under duress, there has been no such provision under International Law, and many treaties have been signed in the past—and will no doubt go on being signed—where the vanquished accept the provisions of a treaty simply because they are too weak to do anything else. They have told us that no treaty is eternal and, therefore, there must be provision for change.
Whatever one may make of particular features of that argument, there is no doubt that the drift of it has been highly unsatisfactory. Abroad, it has been carried, of course, much further, in countries which do not accept the democratic and Christian ethic in the way it is accepted here. I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Vansittart, that all of us who take the opposite view should say-so in no uncertain terms. I am very pleased, therefore, to respond to the appeal from the noble Viscount the acting Leader of the Opposition to make plain, once again, how utterly His Majesty's Government reject any such approach. We realize, of course, that there must be opportunity for the revision of treaties. We realize that circumstances change and that treaties may, in time, require to be modified. But we do say that one of the outstanding marks of a civilized

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country throughout history has been its attitude to its own pledged word, and once again we are re-affirming the view of the British Government that to treat one's pledged word lightly is the beginning of the path to the abyss.
I would remind the House, if I may be forgiven a few words of historical disquisition, that the attitude which I have just re-affirmed has been that of the greatest statesmen who have conducted our foreign policy in the past, whether you take so-called nationalists like Canning, Palmerston and Disraeli or statesmen who are placed in the international category and who are credited with a more internationalist outlook, such as Castlereagh, Gladstone, Grey, or a statesman such as the great Lord Salisbury, who reconciled many features of both outlooks, or in more recent years a statesman in whom we on these Benches, and I believe, the whole country, have always taken a special pride, Mr. Arthur Henderson. If you take any of those statesmen, they were all distinguished by the firm conviction with which they upheld the sanctity of treaties, and we have no intention of falling behind them in any way.
Still clinging to the historical, may I bring out another fact which may not have occurred to every member of your Lordships' House? It is sometimes said that it is not unnatural to find that the British Government support the sanctity of treaties because we are now what is called a "have" instead of a "have not" nation. When we look around we are not always so certain that our possessions and our comforts are as great as those with which we are sometimes credited. But that distinction as very frequently drawn, and we are sometimes accused of belonging to the category of the "haves." Be that as it may, it is quite certain that there are times in our history when it was not so. Whether or not one remembers every step by which our Empire expanded, there is no doubt that even in our expanionist days we clung to the sacredness of the pledged word. That is a point, I feel, which other countries who may regard themselves as in a different stage of their development may attend to with advantage.
May I come a little closer to the Motion of the noble Lord? I am not concerned to resist his account or interpretation of
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events between the two wars. There is no doubt that first of all the Fascisms and then, with still more devilish forms of cunning, the Nazis, developed and applied the simple philosophy propounded by Lucifer in Paradise Lost: "Evil be thou imy good." That was their doctrine, and the world has paid a very heavy price for its application. It was implied by the noble Earl—although I do not know quite what conclusions he was seeking to draw in his argument—that we did not always maintain our own pledged word during those years, and that we did not always spring to the assistance of the victim. If we erred in that respect we erred in the company of the: whole world; there was no question of our erring alone.
When the crisis arose we took the initiative in coming to the assistance of Poland in withstanding the tyrant, and whatever errors of delay and neglect were committed before the war, they have surely been wiped out between 1939 and 1945. I suppose that no great country, under conditions of strain, storm and stress, ever had a clearer conscience than we did on the day when unconditional surrender was received. I recognize that since that Mme the Coalition Government have been broken up and the present administration have been in power. But I vigorously resist the suggestion that our conscience is any less clear, or that our honour is in any way more tarnished to-day than when the war came to an end.
The noble Lord, Lord Vansittart, was somewhat ambiguous on that point. I am not sure whether he was criticizing us or not. He mentioned the South Tyrol, which I have discussed with your Lordships before, when I said it was not a matter of rejoicing to any of us but a matter of necessity, where the countries concerned, with our encouragement, were making the best of a bad job. Apart from mentioning the South Tyrol, he picked out no other instances of our failure in the last two years. At any rate, he did not make it plain to me whether he was criticizing us for any positive violations of faith, or only for an inabilty on our part to prevent other people breakng their word. I feel the point is of some importance, and I do not think that anybody, even the bitterest critics of this Government or of our country, would claim that during the last two years Great Britain had sought to advantage herself by any violation of

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faith, or by any breach of covenants. The only question that may arise is whether we have been effective enough in stopping other people breaking their word—which is a very different thing, and very different from the kind of charge which would be rightly levelled against us if we had sought to do the kind of things the noble Lord was attributing to certain unnamed Powers.
I am quite ready to agree with the noble Lord that the whole story of Poland during these last few years is a major tragedy. I do not suppose that anybody with any sense of responsibility can think of it with feelings of anything except profound horror. Yet it would be a great mistake and an historical mistake—and I am sure it is not one into which the noble Lord, Lord Vansittart, would be likely to fall—to suppose that in the past Great Britain has been able to decide the fate of Poland. If we throw our minds back, for example, to the (Nineteenth Century, when it is so often implied, nowadays, that we were all-powerful, it should be remembered that our direct physical influence extended only to the periphery of the Continent, and all through that century the Powers that dominated Eastern Europe were Germany, Austria and Russia, three autocratic States with internal systems quite uncongenial to ours.
During those years, no doubt, we were mistress of the waves, but that did not allow us to decide what would happen in Warsaw. May I recall the Polish Insurrection of 1863? In spite of our strong language, the Russians were able to do exactly what they chose. Therefore, we need not regard our failure to save Poland in our latter days as an example of degeneracy in the middle of the Twentieth Century. We must remember that there is a limit to our power, and I hope the noble Lord, when he comes to reply, will relieve the Government of any implied suggestion that they could have exercised more power single-handed, in some more enforceable manner, than they have been able to do.
The noble Lord suggests that the question should be referred to the United' Nations, and the noble Viscount showed sympathy for that idea. I am bound to pause for a few minutes to look at this whole problem of the United Nations. The old universality, which, in part at least,
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was dependent upon dynastic ties between the great nations, has disappeared for good. Somehow, the nations of to-day must be grouped towards a new kind of universality. One attempt was made under the League of Nations. I am still one of those who refuse to accept the old slogan that the League failed; I should say that the countries of the world proved themselves unworthy of the League ideal. International thought had not reached a sufficiently high level for the larger sagacity. I shall suggest to the House quite seriously that the new ideal, the ideal of the United Nations, contains certain virtues which were lacking in the old League. We are told that it will be able to bring in the nations of the world more extensively, and more intensely, than the League of Nations was ever able to do. We are told that it represents the highest common denominator of international morality and international conduct in the middle of our century. Therefore, we must somehow make the United Nations work.
I threatened the House with one or two platitudes, and it is a platitude to say that the United Nations Organization is the hope of the world. That does not prevent it from being the beginning of wisdom about the whole matter, and expressing a profound truth. Somehow' or other we must make the United Nations work. Lord Vansittart suggested we should take the Polish question to the United Nations. I will not repeat the detailed statement that was made by the right honourable gentleman the Secretary for Foreign Affairs in another place. He pointed out that we had made representations in Moscow, and to the Polish Government, expressing our grave concern at what had happened. He pointed out that in our view no further action would have served any useful purpose in view of the attitude assumed by Soviet Russia. It may be said, "Take the matter to the United Nations; have a row; make your protests heard; show them where we stand; have a show-down." It is possible to say a great many things of that kind, but, in fairness, I am bound to say that the whole matter was not approached in that spirit this afternoon in this House. No speaker adopted a tone of that kind, but I cannot help feeling that whether or not that was the intention, that would be the result of taking a matter of this kind to the United Nations. Whereas all agree we would like to see the United

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Nations working, we would, in fact, be breaking up the organization just as it is beginning to be useful.
There are, I appreciate, many objections to the veto, and to the way in which the veto is used. The Government have never concealed their views about the way in which certain Powers have sought to use the veto. We have attempted, and shall go on until we achieve success, to ensure that the veto is used in a more helpful spirit in times to come than it has been in the past—a point to which we attach enormous importance. But I can make no promise here as to whether we will be successful. I can only go on praying to ensure that the veto is used in a more neighbourly and more constructive spirit. We shall not cease our endeavours, and we must pray that in time they will be successful. The world we look out upon to-day has many problems, but it would surely be very strange if it were not so, after the greatest and most destructive war in history.
I do not, for a moment, wish to leave the impression on the House to-day that the Foreign Secretary has gone to Moscow in any spirit of pessimism. 1 offer the opinion, for what it is worth, and I hope noble Lords will accept it, that the international sky to-day, for all its clouds, is a good deal brighter than seemed possible a year ago. The conclusion of the treaties with the Axis satellites, the intimacy of our friendship with America, the hope of placing the Anglo-Soviet Alliance on a more solid basis—surely these are all features from which we can draw solid encouragement.
I am not forgetting for a moment that yesterday was a day through which all our lives we may be proud to have lived—a day that brought together finally and, I hope for all time (the treaty, I know, is for a period of years, but I believe it will last for all time), our own great people and the people of France. They have been brought together by a Treaty which is formal and rigid, and inescapable, a Treaty which embodies also a deep-felt friendship and, may I say, devotion and passion. Here, at any rate, is a Treaty about whose violation there need be no fears. Here is a Treaty which will bind us utterly, completely, and willingly. 1 hope that the noble Lord, when he comes to reply, in view of his own great services to the cause of Anglo-French friendship, will agree with me in saying that a
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new, cheerful chapter opened yesterday, a chapter to which we need never expect an end. I am grateful to the noble Lord and I hope he will now be able to withdraw his Motion.
6.0 p.m.
LORD VANSITTART: My Lords, I shall not long detain you. I have had my say and I thank the House for having let me say it. I thank, also, the noble Viscount the Acting Leader cf the Opposition for the support that he gave me. I understood him to say—and I heartily agree—that we should not only enunciate principles but apply them to cases, because if we only go on enunciating principles into the blue, and never applying them to any case, the look-out will be a pretty bad one. From that point of view, I confess that I differ as strongly from my noble friend the Earl of Perth as he differs from me. He says that it is time to make a fresh start. But you cannot start up in the air. You must start on the ground. You must have a specific case. The noble Earl, Lord Perth, says that the Polish case is not good enough. All right, if it is not good enough let us take another; but if you are going to wait for an absolutely perfect case you may well wait till the cows come home.
The noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, said that he was rather at a loss in replying to my speech. I confess that I am very greatly at a loss in replying to his, for he began by saying something which conveyed the exact contrary to what I said. He said that ray speech was that of an alarmist and that it might lead some people to believe that we were on the eve of war. Now I most specifically said, almost at the beginning of my re marks, that there was no immediate danger. I do not know if I did not say it loudly enough, but I could not have said it more clearly. I said it, and it is what I believe. The noble Lord went on to interpret some part of my speech as an attack on the Government. Such a thing was never in my mind. I never said anything of the kind for I think that the Government has an excellent record in the observance of its faith—
LORD PAKENHAM: If the noble Lord will forgive my interrupting him, I understood him to say that the Government were drifting. I was unable to take that as a compliment to the Government.
LORD VANSITTART: The noble Lord was quite right in not taking it as a compliment. I merely said that in this matter of treaty observances we and all the world are drifting because we have failed to put our foot down about anything particular. I think it is incontestable that it is a world drift, and, in saying that, I was not making any particular reflection on the Government. I think their record is admirable in that respect. No one could possibly allege that they had in any way failed in keeping their word for their personal advantage. That was why I said in my speech that there was most undeserved anti-British propaganda being carried on abroad. I think that the noble Lord really has got hold of the wrong stick twice, if I may say so, though possibly the fault may be mine. As to the case of Poland I quite agree that what has happened is not our fault. What I did say was that five partitions of a country were discreditable to our kind as a whole—I was talking of the human species—and I went on to elaborate what I was saying with a quotation from Hamlet. That is not the sort of thing on which we ought to spend our desires and substance as a species. I was not criticizing the noble Lord or his colleagues.
Again, take the case of the South Tyrol. I was not criticizing the Government for not being able to do better than they did in that respect. But neither the noble Lord nor any of his colleagues will be able to deny to me that what was settled was, and is, a breach of the Atlantic Charter. But it is not their fault that it took place. My criticism was addressed to the world at large for wanting those things that are not worth while and involve breaches of faith. The noble Lord said he hoped that I would tell the House that I was one of those who agreed that peace could be maintained only by friendship with Russia. I do certainly agree that that is so. We all do. But we are much less likely to misunderstand each other if, when we put our signatures to a document, we try to make it clear in the future that we all mean every word we say. That would tend to minimize the risk of infringements of the principle which the noble Lord has enunciated. I hope the noble Lord will not think I am criticizing him personally for the remarks which he has addressed to me. I am only trying to dissipate some of the misunderstandings which I think crept into his speech.
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As to this question of alarmism, I want to make it clear that I am trying to look beyond to-morrow, beyond my own lifetime, very likely beyond the lifetime of many members of this House. I hope that the noble Lord has not forgotten those lines from Housman's More Poems:
"This is for all ill-treated fellows,
Unborn and unbegot,
For them to read when they're in trouble
And I am not."
I am not more alarmist than that. If there is any other point which the noble Lord thinks I have made insufficiently clear I shall be most happy to try and elucidate it. Everything which I have said to-day has a general tendency; I believe that most utterly to be true. If I could remember what I said I would say it all over again, if it were the last speech which I were to make in this House or indeed in this world. Having said that, I now most gladly meet the noble Lord's suggestion and do what I was going to do in any case—that is, ask leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

PRIVATE LEGISLATION PROCEDURE (SCOTLAND) ACT, 1936.
Report from the Committee of Selection, That the Lords following be proposed to the House as Members of the panel of Lords to act as Commissioners under the Act during the present Session, namely:

E. Mansfield,

L. Wolverton;

agreed to; and the said Lords appointed accordingly.

SOUTHEND-ON-SEA CORPORATION BILL, [H.L.]
Report from the Committee of Selection that the following Lords be proposed to the House to form the Select Committee for the consideration of the said Bill—namely:

L. Ampthill.

L. Hindlip.

L. Amherst of Hackney.

L. Terrington (Chairman).

L. Kershaw.

Agreed to, and the said Lords appointed accordingly.
House adjourned at six minutes past six o'clock.