THE LATE EARL WAVELL

HL Deb 13 June 1950 vol 167 cc561-6

2.35 p.m.

THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (VISCOUNT ADDISON)

My Lords, I am sure it will be in accordance with the wishes of the House that before we proceed to our ordinary Business we should pay tribute to the distinguished soldier and member of this House who has died since we last met. Many of us were associated last week in the tributes to Lord Wavell, and in the significant service in Westminster Abbey, whence he was taken to Winchester. That was most appropriate, because we all know that in the City and School of Winchester the name of Wavell, of one or another member of the family, has been distinguished, and certainly greatly respected, for many generations past. It is particularly right that Winchester should be the noble Earl's final resting place. It is not for me to comment on Lord Wavell as a soldier; that must be for others more experienced. However, it is impossible to refrain from saying to-day how great a debt we owe to Lord Wavell for his victories in North Africa in the last six months of 1940 and early in 1941, when by wonderful generalship he practically annihilated the Italian Army and relieved for a considerable time the great peril to Egypt and the Suez Canal. We know that afterwards Lord Wavell took a great part in planning the campaign which was so successful ultimately in driving the Japanese out of Burma. He clearly was a great General, and a master of the art of war.

Later, in exceedingly arduous and critical times, Lord Wavell had to fill perhaps one of the most difficult posts that our history presents, that of Viceroy of India. When he retired it was well known to many of us that, apart from his writings, his interest in and sympathy with the men who had been in India were as alive as ever. In that connection, I should like to remind the House of an exceptional event. Your Lordships will remember that, in common with others, Lord Wavell was of the opinion that certain men who had retired from service in India between August, 1917, and November, 1918, had suffered unnecessary hardship, and that their cases had not been adequately covered by the agreements between the two Governments. Notwithstanding Lord Wavell's silent exterior, I can say that in negotiation in the interests of these men there could not have been a more warm-hearted champion. In the end this was the arrangement arrived at—and I feel that it should be put on record. I stated on behalf of the Government that: …if a case has been reasonably made out His Majesty's Government will be prepared to pay from United Kingdom revenues a lump sum as a contribution towards their loss of pension. I went on to say: For this purpose we should wish to avail ourselves of the help of the noble Earl, and of the other noble Lords who have been associated with him in taking an interest in this matter. We will consult them upon each case, in whatever manner is round mutually convenient; and I am prepared now … to give an assurance that we will accept their recommendation as to whether a grant is justified. It was entirely without precedent that His Majesty's Government should accept a decision in those circumstances, and it was an abundant tribute to our complete trust in Lord Wavell.

In other directions, as your Lordships know, he wrote on military matters and, as a biographer, books that are full of interest. I myself read only those on Lord Allenby, which I should say will be classed as remarkable works of biography. Every one of us who had personal association with Lord Wavell will, I am sure, agree that notwithstanding his reserved exterior there was not and could not have been a kinder-hearted friend. In conclusion, as they are so exceedingly apt, I should like to quote the words of the last sentence in the leading article of The Times on May 25, which were these: Those who did not know him in the flesh will find in his writings the portrait of a wise soldier, a ripe scholar, and an English gentleman.

2.45 p.m.

VISCOUNT SWINTON

My Lords, my noble friend and Leader, Lord Salisbury, has asked me to say how deeply he regrets that, owing to illness, he is unable to be here to-day. In his regrettable absence, it falls to me to associate my noble friends and myself with the tribute which the Leader of the House has so gracefully paid to a great man and a great friend of many of us here.

When a great man passes it is easy to recall the deeds which made him great. They have become part of history. But the picture is incomplete unless we try to appreciate not only what he did but what he was. With a reticent man—and Wavell was a man of few words, particularly about himself—to know the character of the man you have, as it were, to penetrate his defences. Though he had a remarkable capacity for clear exposition, as witness his military lectures, he seldom, if ever, used that talent to justify himself. There were, indeed, obvious qualities which were evident in action—clarity of mind; thoroughness in everything he did, whether it was work or play; and, born of these things and of his moral and physical courage, decisiveness in action. Those qualities were apparent to all. But there were others, without which he would not have been as great a man or as lovable a character. Behind his reticence Lord Wavell was very human. There is a revealing passage in Other Men's Flowers where he quotes a doggerel soldier-song of the Boer War. Wavell goes on to say: For some reason it used to drive my commanding officer to fury, and he finally issued an order forbidding it. As a very young officer I thought he was wrong; as a Commander-in-Chief I am sure he was. His humanity included a sense of humour, though he usually kept it on a rather tight leash.

There were other qualities. He loved beauty in literature and in life—in his own words, Colour and light and all warm lovely things. And among the "lovely things" of which the memory and the spirit were ever with him was Winchester, where he came home to rest. Finally, I think it may be truly said of him that always throughout his life he was "valiant for truth."

2.48 p.m.

VISCOUNT SAMUEL

My Lords, we on these Benches desire to join in the tributes paid to the memory of Lord Wavell. It has often been said that this age is over-specialised; that we are a generation of one-track minds. But occasionally we do produce men of varied, many-sided talents, and such a man was Lord Wavell. He had made a thorough study of the theory and practice of his profession. He had trained himself from his childhood to follow in the footsteps of his forbears, who had been Generals in command of campaigns in the field. It may be said that the Black Watch was his nursery, and that he was never more at home than when he was with his Regiment. Also, he was an administrator and rose to the illustrious office of Viceroy of India. And beyond all that he was a scholar and a man of letters.

This wider mind made him all the better soldier and servant of the State. He was a man simple and direct, of few words and of swift action; and the proceedings of a Legislative Assembly such as this House did not greatly attract him. But when there was an injustice to be remedied, as in the incident mentioned by the noble Viscount the Leader of the House, then he was to the fore. Several of those who have served under him have recorded that his success as a leader in the field was mainly due to the fact that his character inspired confidence and that he had the qualities most necessary in a soldier: fortitude and tenacity. He was a kind-hearted man, with a great capacity for comradeship; and he was humble-minded. Great men are often proud of their greatness, but those who are most truly great are humble, as he was. Such, my Lords, were the qualities of character and intellect of the man for whose services we are grateful and to whose memory we pay tribute, and we would offer to Lady Wavell our respectful sympathies in her sorrow.

2.52 p.m.

LORD WILSON

My Lords, as one who served under Lord Wavell in the Middle East I should like to add to the tributes paid to his memory by the noble Lords who have already spoken. In his death the Army mourns one of its outstanding Commanders of the century, and one upon whose shoulders lay no greater responsibility than that when he was Commander-in-Chief in the Middle East in those fateful years from 1939 to 1941. Only a man with his intellect and moral courage and his knowledge, both of strategy and of logistics, could have conducted with so few troops and such limited resources the numerous campaigns fought in that part of the world. Having gone through all those campaigns, serving immediately under his command, I can assure your Lordships that one could not have served under a better leader. Your task was clearly defined; your orders were clear; and you were never interfered with. If things did not go right, Wavell would appear in an aeroplane to help and advise. The knowledge of his arrival on any front acted as a stimulus to all ranks. Very few men could have stood up to the strain placed upon him during those fateful years—not only by enemy action but also by pressure from Whitehall. It was his intellectual and moral stature that carried him through. The troops had the greatest confidence in his leadership, and I shall never forget the gloom caused in June, 1941, by the news that he was leaving the Middle East for India. As the Carthaginians wrote of Hannibal: We vehemently desired him in the day of battle. To future generations of soldiers his campaigns and his writings will carry on his memory. In assessing past commanders Lord Wavell always considered Bellisarius as the one whose example should he followed. When his record comes to be studied in history it may well be found that he runs Bellisarius very close.

2.55 p.m.

LORD HAILEY

My Lords, I venture to add on word to the tributes to Lord Wavell which have been paid so well and so feelingly by the noble Viscount the Leader of the House and other noble Lords who have spoken this afternoon. I address your Lordships on behalf of several of the officers who served in India and whose cause was supported in this House by Lord Wavell in the manner in which the noble Viscount has explained. These were not men of high standing—and, perhaps for that reason, their case was all the harder. It was rendered all the more difficult because without formal commitments and in the light of official precedents theirs was a claim that it was difficult to establish. I think that nothing but Lord Wavell's sense of justice, which cut aside all other considerations, and that resolution which he always showed, would have enabled him to gain for the cause of these men the sympathy and consideration of the Leader of the House and, through him, of the Government.

I should like to add one more word to indicate Lord Wavell's intense personal interest in every case which he considered involved injustice. I have in my hand a letter from Lord Addison which shows that Lord Wavell, only two days before he underwent the operation which, unhappily, failed to save his life, addressed a long letter to the noble Viscount asking him to review the cases of four men. These men were sergeants in the police. Those were the men whom Wavell had befriended, and it is in the names of such men that I venture to add this simple tribute.