HL Deb 28 June 1951 vol 172 cc464-82

4.47 p.m.

THE EARL OF DARNLEY rose to invite His Majesty's Government to make a declaration of their willingness to sponsor a call to men and women of all nations, irrespective of colour and creed, and, in particular, to the labouring classes, whom they claim specially to represent, to unite in friendliness to abolish for ever the barbarous practice of attempting to right human wrongs by recourse to war between peoples, with all the poverty and misery that this involves; and to move for Papers. The noble Earl said: My Lords, I make no apology for coming here to-day because I do not bother your Lordships overmuch. But I should like to ask two things of you. One is to acquit me of any desire to sermonise, as it is sometimes difficult to separate the ethical and temporal; and the other is to take it that what I am going to say is a possibility. Sometimes the minority is right. It has been known to be the case. It is not a frivolity that I am bringing to your Lordships to-day, but something which I believe is an actual possibility. Therefore I ask your Lordships to look upon it in a serious manner—in the same manner in which it is presented to you. I would ask you to afford me at least the same toleration as is given to Don Quixote. He only tilted at windmills, and he did it once.

I should like briefly to suggest to your Lordships that these outbreaks that occur in the world today—such as Communism, the happenings at Abadan, and all the other things that we have to endure —are all results and not causes, and if the causes were to be investigated and treated properly there would not be any such results. We have got to have some kind of treatment to put them right. The old failure methods must be abolished in favour of this treatment. If that is done they will gradually disappear and in their place can actually grow up a truer and better idea of the benefits of existence. The old methods which have been adopted for years and years have not made any improvement. Possibly everybody has been right; possibly everybody has been wrong. But these methods have always been adopted. There is no doubt that they are useless and old-fashioned, and if they are continued they may involve the whole globe and everybody on it in complete destruction. Of course, if we are going to find a supplementary plan it must be acceptable to, and understood by, the vast majority of humanity in general. Whilst it is the fact that there are lots of aggressors and dangers about, there is no satisfactory method of dealing with them without ruining the whole world and;he whole human fabric.

I think it was on June 20 of last year that I brought a similar Motion before your Lordships, asking for the founding of a basic plan for changing the processes that bring destruction to the world. Since that time, I have seen every day a greater need for one. The same old things go on from year to year. The same shibboleths, power politics, threats of force, threats of "serious consequences" and meetings of politicians in various numbers from one to thirty. These threats of serious consequences do not carry any weight at all; they do not affect the serenity of the Prime Minister or the dictator or whoever it may be who is threatened. He goes on eating his breakfast of cat sandwich, or whatever luxury the last war has left him, in complete happiness and utter disregard of these threats. It is the poor wretched cannon fodder on both sides who are called upon to implement these threats who really suffer. They will be the ones who will get the "serious consequences," and through them a much greater blow may be struck to the morale of the human race, through the mechanics of the various scientists who are engaged in research and development in connection with atomic energy. The whole matter has got to be seriously reconsidered.

There is at this moment a climacteric, and there is a definite turning point in human life that must be observed and taken for granted. Last year an excuse was offered against basic change—I think the noble Lord, Lord Blackford, put it forward—because of the extreme difficulty of getting would-be adversaries to listen or co-operate. Of course it is difficult—horribly, indecently d ifficult—but you cannot have hundreds of years of warfare and fighting without creating difficulties. The question is not whether it is difficult, but whether the effort is likely to lead to success, or whether it is likely to be the old processes which have failed.

I recently took down in the library at home a book entitled Battle Songs of the Nations. The book was produced in Victorian times, and it shows in various horrific collections of versified words exactly what the nations of the world are supposed to think of each other. I ought to have brought some of it to read to your Lordships, though I do not think you would have liked it very much. In that volume it is shown cluite clearly how much the nations of the world loathe each other. It is shown that the chief thing they think about is the colour of their neighbours' insides, and that they do not bother about whether his skin is reachable in the correct way or not. The only words of sense that I could find were those of little Peterkin in Southey's famous poem, when he says to his grandfather: But what good came of it at last? The grandfather replies: Why that I cannot tell,… But 'twas a famous victory. Does not that describe it all? "What good came of it at last?" That little boy had knowledge which was denied to grown up and educated elders. Can you wonder that nations brought up on such bloodthirsty verses as you can find in that book should still loathe each other and look upon, each other as suitable subjects for dismemberment? It seems to me that there has got to be a total volte-face against everything so far held allowable in war before the vista of peace can possibly be envisaged. That volte-face must be made, otherwise there will be a total loss of everything we hold dear.

It seems to me that this effort could much more easily be made if only people would candidly, truthfully and honestly acknowledge how bad the present existence is. You hear a lot of loose talk to the effect that: "It is not so bad after all," or, "It might be worse." Really it is a perfect inferno of misery and frustration for everyone. In fact, it is so bad that a man convinced that he would after death return to this world in a new guise might easily be excused for wishing to come back in the shape of an honest-to-goodness tapeworm or bed bug which, at any rate, do not burn, kill or murder their neighbour's children on the excuse that "The other side started it."

Take, as an example, the ridiculous and terrible Seoul see-saw, in which perhaps one can read a prophecy of humanity's fate. Let us hope to goodness that something which we read to-day means that the present effort to stop it will succeed. The worst thing about this conflagration is that it is viewed in the wrong way. It is looked at as being an outburst by naughty, heathen Communists against the wishes and orders of a lot of benign and benevolent benefactors who wish nothing better than a world at peace. But it is nothing of the kind. The world certainly considers itself to be composed of men of different beliefs and creeds and ethics, but all of these, aided by their spiritual and temporal leaders, have raped, pillaged and fought each other from time immemorial. Anyone could be excused for having doubt as to whether there has ever existed a really and truly ethical nation, although there have been plenty of ethically good individuals. The conquests, burnings of rivals at the stake, wars, getting rid of rivals by murder, by cutting off their heads, and the subjection of savage races, may be expeditious and gallant, but they are not ethical. History, it seems to me, ought to be read in comic form, such as the one on this country illustrated by John Leech, to see what it is really like. If there were one for every nation, which one could read, one would then perhaps get a truer idea of Korea than that which we now think we see. It is just a bubbling over of the international hotpot.

I am not, trying to make out that positions of extreme danger do not arise in present circumstances. Of course they do. But they need not and they certainly must not be exaggerated. There is one at Abadan at the moment. It comes as a result of the nationalisation of something that does not belong to you, which is certainly worse than nationalising something that does. But it cannot be cured until there is a reasonable working plan between the various units of the plan of existence. It is certainly a result and not a cause. Even the added danger of the Sabotage Bill does not help, because, to my way of thinking, all the oil in the world is not worth the death of one single tortured child.

Reading through the Report of the debate in your Lordships' House on May 2, one gets an impression that a collection of atrocities committed by various people; atrocities done by would-be opponents, in some way justify warlike counter action. I should not agree to that. I think these tales of atrocities constitute a crowning disgrace and the condemnation of all nations for having by their concerted actions brought them about. They are attributable to a thoroughly faulty international system. The also are results, not causes. They are results of concerted dangerous and pugnacious actions by all the nations in the world. Human nature, such as it is, carries decency in one hand and bestiality in the other, and if there is a good international system then the hand that carries decency in it is kept in use and the bestial hand is kept gloved. All the search for criminals and atrocity-mongers, such as is often carried on, is useless, misleading and superfluous. It is superfluous, also, to be frightened of the plans of foreign general staffs, which are usually divulged to the world through the medium of the Press by some renegade member who has got the sack. I believe these general staffs have plans for every kind of action that might be necessary all over the world, but they do not intend to use them unless they think their salvation is impossible in any other way. If it could be proved that it was, they would not do anything with them.

I am not, of course, trying to belittle in any way the courage and self-sacrifice of those who have given their lives, their limbs and their all for their country. Of course not; nothing can be finer or braver, and I applaud it just as the rest of your Lordships do. But I am trying to prove that these sacrifices are unnecessary and that the world would be a better place without them. There must be something wrong when all the nations, Christian and non-Christian, find in each other subjects for intense hatred and bitterness, solvable only by murder and destruction. I want to show the cause in its true light, the basic cause which from its name falls first to be altered, however difficult it may be to detail such an alteration. A correct basic cause requires that every nation in the world acknowledge their part in the dreadful state of affairs evident at the moment, and all equally try to make it their business to restore it.

Possibly the most difficult result to deal with is that of Communism. These centuries of fighting and squabbling, advancing in horror hand in hand with science, have created an unlooked-for bogy in the shape of Communism. However we regard Communism, we have in truth to acknowledge that it is the reaction and revolution against the habit of settling affairs by murder and warfare. It is not pretty—Communism in operation. In Russia, it involved the murder of the upper classes and the abolition of religion. It created the anti-body of Fascism, which is also to a certain extent subversive. Communism works through the cold reason rather than the hot arm, though it erupts occasionally, as it has in Korea. None the less, it is a genuine and dangerous stand and rebellion against power polii les and national polemics. It is a result—as much a result as the nasty bit of meat we have to eat every week here. It has to be understood to be this before it can be treated aright.

How are my suggestions to get to those outside? Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, will get up shortly and say that he does not like pacifism—he may call it that. He will do it very politely: the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, did it very politely year. But this is not pacifism: this is common sense, and possibly also the truth. Can we have a straight answer to this question? Is it possible to save the world from, at best, a relapse into savagery and, at worst, total destruction, by any other means than a total volte face in internationalism, brought about by the abandonment of the accumulated subversive results of the old-fashioned failure methods and the substitution for them of a method in which the human being can believe, trust and act on safely?

I have a suggestion. If you do not think much of it, I hope your Lordships will produce something better: but I would ask you to answer argument for argument, and not to take advantage of purposely misleading generalisations. What the human being at the moment requires to know is that he is part of a scheme for existence, and that this scheme is beneficial in its action and that in it all the hairs of his head are numbered. He has to have what Albert Schweitzer, the Austrian philospher, calls "Weltschauung" or the correct view of life. If he is properly instructed, he will know, without the proof that his limited brain can never give him, that he and this existence are part of an idea conceived in an inconceivable mind; that he has jurisdiction only over the items that surround him by its permission, a permission that is never withheld but without which he cannot even move. He is the exact analogy of an electric bulb attached to a power-house. But though he cannot understand it, he cannot deny its existence, if he regards with any intelligence its manifestations in the world around him or in the skies over him. Therefore, the least he can do towards it is to be grateful for it, keep it intact so far as he can, and combine with his fellow human creature, these fellow human creatures who share the use of these manifestations with him, to do the same. The whole of man's duty resides in these two instructions. I would suggest, with all respect and deference, that these instructions are guaranteed in the line: Sufficient is Thine arm alone, so often sung and so often completely disobeyed—as witness the hundreds of millions of pounds spent per day on the last war and the many thousands of millions now being collected for the next.

Of course, it is easy to talk; but it is intensely difficult to act in such a way as to create progress for an idea, especially if it is novel and untried. The human being of the world has to be taught to value existence and to share with his neighbours this valuation of existence. How?—especially now, when the world is in such a state of unrest and misery, when a man has little time to think of anything but his next meal and the safety of his family. It can be done by one nation setting an example: by putting into effect the Christian ethic, and expressing a genuine desire to co-operate with every nation, of every colour and creed, to improve the general world conditions, not as a piece of bigotry, but as a sign of appreciaticn of real wisdom when they hear it; and by not allowing this offer to be tarnished by any suggestion of carrying with it any possibility of self-advancement or conquest, or to be motivated by anything but the sincerity of the faith in which they believe.

If such a declaration were to be made in all sincerity and truthfulness by a great nation, it would have a reconciling effect upon Communism and any other submersive miseries which exist and cause danger at the moment. The danger would be by-passed into harmlessness, instead of flaring up into general destruction, now possibly envisaged on a scale large enough to destroy the globe on which the human being lives; and the resulting restoration of security would enable the human being to examine some kind of existence in decent security. If this is not true, let us be honest and tear up all ethics and have done with them for ever. Again, I say, a man's brain is very limited. It cannot envisage the great scheme of existence embracing the universe, but it can have confidence in the orders of its greatest known wisdom, and, by following them, can placate its self-preservation instinct—its chief bugbear—by faith, for a change, instead of by fear.

Such a declaration could well be made to the world by this country. It would be a wonderful innovation, and a wonderful chance. Will the Government, which now by its name professes an interest in the working man of the world, act accordingly? Such a declaration would be worth all the power politics, all alliances, and all the discussions, and would constitute a proper basis for nationalism. I say with all emphasis that if any man to-day can view the results of the last human conflagration and, having reviewed the 36,000,000 dead and missing, the 30,000,000 wounded and the 150,000,000 homeless, and the £100,000,000 spent per day for six years, now represented by heaps of rubble and corpses mixed, the piles of useless and rotting abandoned war material, headed perhaps by the 1,000 Fortresses on Biak Island, each costing many thousands and now abandoned as useless, and smashed by bulldozers to save the expense of removal—if anyone can review these facts and feel that this, and worse, is humanity's only destiny, then I ask him to think again; and, in spite of the apparently overwhelming difficulties, to join in with some scheme for making these things impossible ever again, and thereby give dignity and sapience to the human race. I beg to move for Papers.

5.16 p.m.

LORD BLACKFORD

My Lords, I am sure your Lordships, like myself, always look forward to the noble Earl's annual visit to this House, and listen with the utmost respect to the views which he puts forward, because it is quite clear that they are on the highest possible plane and informed by feelings of the greatest sincerity. But, unfortunately, as I ventured to say this time last year, in the present state of affairs they are totally impracticable. What I like especially about the noble Earl is that when he comes down amongst us he is in no mood for half-measures: he sets His Majesty's Government a task calculated to keep them fully occupied until he comes amongst us again in twelve months' time. Last year he called upon His Majesty's Government to take immediate steps to rescue humanity, which was in imminent danger of collapse. Well, the Government have done nothing noticeable about that meantime, so your Lordships may feel some surprise at finding yourselves here to-day. To-day the noble Earl exhorts the Government to take immediate and energetic steps to bring about universal friendship, and to get all the nations of the earth to shake hands one with the other. However, although I listened with the utmost care to every word which fell from the noble Earl, I was unable to detect any practical advice that he gave towards the attainment of that highly desirable end. Therefore, in default of practical help from him, we must bend our mundane minds, to the best of our ability, to see how His Majesty's Government can fulfil the noble Earl's exhortation.

Perhaps it would not be a bad thing to start with Persia. The Persians are now intent upon filching from Great Britain, under the name of nationalisation—which, of course, is the official term for filching other people's property against their will at an under-valuation—£500,000,000 of her most valuable foreign assets. The weakness of His Majesty's present advisers, of course, is that they themselves are adept at this particular practice, and they can hardly be surprised if the Persians copy them on an even larger scale. I would draw the noble Earl's attention to the fact that there are other similarities between the attitude of the Persians and that of His Majesty's Government. For example, from his heavily guarded bed in Teheran a week or two ago, Dr. Mossadeq, between one flood of tears and the next, broadcast to the Persian people that "this ends fifty years of British Imperialism." Almost at the same hour the British Foreign Minister thought fit to inform the House of Commons and the world that "the old Imperialism is dead." But neither of them went on to state that, if that is indeed the case, the new starvation is about to begin. For, on the one hand, if we scuttle out of Abadan, the oilfields will come to an end, at any rate, for a long time; the revenue drawn from them by the Persian people will cease; the poverty and starvation of the Persian people will thereby be greatly increased, and the Mtimate results of that are anybody's guess. My own guess is that after Dr. Mossadeq and his friends have been assassinated the Tudeh Party will come into power, and will thereby make Persia a satellite State of Russia. Moreover, even if the Russians do come down to the Southern oilfields and set them working, I do not see how they will be able to sell the oil without the aid of tankers, so that the starvation of Persia of which I speak will be none the less certain.

On the other hand, taking our own point of view, if we leave the oilfields and forsake this, our most valuable foreign asset, does anybody suppose that that is the last foreign asset that will be so treated? Surely we must all realise that the eyes of the world, from Hong Kong to the Falkland Islands, to say nothing of the great Continent of Africa, are closely watching us and our actions in this matter, and that if we do scuttle away, then one by one, in due course and in their turn, other foreign assets will follow. If anybody thinks that this nation can maintain 50,000,000 people on this island in any sort of standard of life without our foreign assets, then he lives in that "Cloud Cuckooland" from which the noble Earl always gives me the impression of annually emerging.

There is still another phrase which the Persians have copied from His Majesty's present advisers. Mr. Makki, the leading delegate of Abadan, in answer to a journalistic question a few days ago about his intentions with regard to that place, said with a sinister smile: "We are the masters now." When that phrase was declaimed from the Socialist platform two or three years ago, we were inclined to regard it, with tolerant amusement, as the effervescence of a bright young attorney, cock-sure that the Socialist millennium had come to stay and little dreaming that, within two or three years, he could be clinging to office literally by his political tail, and certain of defeat as soon as Mr. Aneurin Bevan decided that the time had come for the tail to unwind. How different that phrase sounds when softly sibilated by a sly Persian who is about to filch 30,000,000 annual tons of sterling oil! The right honourable gentleman Mr. Noel-Baker tells us that we need not worry too much about that; that we shall get the oil from elsewhere. But he does not tell us that that oil will be dollar oil, the purchase of which will increase our dependence on the United States. But is this British nation really willing to acknowledge that Mr. Makki is their master? I imagine that we should he quite willing to acknowledge him, or any other body of Persians representing the nation, as partners in this industry, but not that we should become hewers of wood and drawers of water for Persian owners.

It is thoughts of this sort which pass through my mind as I listen to the noble Earl. I wish that I could attain the high idealism that he does but I am afraid that in my mundane state I sigh for the great Foreign Secretaries of the past, one of whom was a hero of my early youth, Lord Salisbury. On July 18 in this House his grandson is to initiate a debate on Foreign Affairs. July 18 is a long way off. By that time I suppose the question of stand or scuttle, fight or flee, in Persia will be settled. However that may be, I pray that on July 18 we may hear a statement of foreign policy to show that there is still one Party in the State which is not afraid either of the Russian bogy or of its own tail; which is willing to stand up for the rights of Britons all over the world; and which is determined, whatever may be said of the old Imperialism, at any rate to try to revive the old spirit which throughout one hundred years of "peace and plenty" in the nineteenth century made the name of Great Britain the greatest and most respected in the world.

5.25 p.m.

THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (LORD HENDERscm)

My Lords, perhaps I may be allowed to refer to the last speech before I deal with the Motion or the Order Paper. I do not intend to follow the noble Lord in his references to Persia. He gave no notice that he proposed to raise the matter, and I do not think that some of his remarks have been entirely helpful. I do not consider this an appropriate occasion to discuss, that serious matter. It is not related to the terms of the Motion. There will be other occasions when it will be possible to deal with some of his references to the Government and their policy. I hope, therefore, that he writ not take it amiss if I do not reply to him to-day.

I listened with attention and respect to the noble Earl, Lord Darnley. He made an urgent and idealistic appeal, and I am sure that none of us will doubt his sincerity. I admire his constancy and pertinacity. In a similar debate a year ago he reminded us of the old adage: "If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again." The noble Earl himself appears to have taken the adage to heart, for his speech to-day is but the latest of several he has made which have been devoted to the theme of renouncing for ever recourse to war. I agreed with some of the sentiments expressed by the noble Earl but, with all respect to him, I did not feel that he faced up to the practical issues which are involved in trying to organise a peaceful world system which he and we desire to see. For reasons which I shall state, I am not able to accept the noble Earl's Motion.

I have a good deal of sympathy with the feelings which have inspired the Motion. It reflects a common aspiration of peoples everywhere—an aspiration which I believe was never stronger than it is today. The generations to which we belong have lived in a period in which two worldwide wars have occurred. A moral and philosophical approach may lead to a recognition of the folly of war, but I believe that it is the knowledge and experience of what war actually means that produces intense popular hatred of it. Present generations in most areas of the world are only too well aware of what is involved in modern warfare while it is being waged, and of the poverty and misery that ensue. It needs little imagination to realise, with the atomic bomb and other recent scientific inventions, how great a catastrophe another world war would be for the whole human race. I do not, therefore, believe that any people "irrespective of their colour and creed" (to quote the words of the Motion), would choose to start a war of aggression, with all its disastrous possibilities if they were free to decide for themselves.

Unfortunately, as we all know, for some of the countries, where political freedom has been largely suppressed and democratic rights are severely restricted, it is a handful of rulers who decide policy and action in international affairs. That is a serious factor which we cannot afford to ignore. His Majesty's Government and the British people have for their part repeatedly made it plain that the guiding principle of their policy is the preservation of peace. At the risk of emphasising the obvious, I stress that there is no taint of militarism in the British people. No political Party represented in this House regards war as a legitimate instrument of national policy. Aggression upon any country is not the purpose of any treaty to which we are a party, nor is it thinkable that we will ever become a party to anything that has such an object. We are a people who love peace, and love it on a just basis. And when, as at present, we engage in strengthening our defences, the motive is not hostility, not aggression; it is to safeguard peace, our own security and our own free way of life.

His Majesty's Government, and surely, indeed, all right-thinking, people, share the noble Earl's desire to see the barbarous practice of attempting to right human wrongs by recourse to war between peoples abolished for ever. It would be illusory, however, to believe that a declaration of willingness to sponsor a call to the men and women of all nations would in itself be enough to achieve this aim or even, in present circumstances, to remove the barriers in the road to its achievement. That might sound a harsh conclusion; but it is, I think, a true one. I am sure that His Majesty's Government would be the first to take the initiative for a peaceful solution of the world's problems if there seemed a reasonable prospect of genuine co-operation on the part of the Governments of the countries of the Communist Empire. But there would be no practical utility in His Majesty's Government's coming out with a vague and general call for peace. At the meeting of the Deputies of the Four Powers in Paris we tried very hard to agree on the holding of a conference of Ministers to deal with the existing tension in Europe, but the Soviet Government made it clear that they were interested in such a meeting only on their own terms. This, then, does not seem to give any grounds for supposing that a peace call would evoke an effective response. It is, however, our earnest hope that the Soviet Government will still agree to have a meeting: the offer is still open.

My Lords, I recognise the value of world public opinion making itself felt in support of efforts to break the present apparent deadlock between East and West. We know the strength of feeling behind the issue that East and West should come closer together. We are ready to consider any method of giving practical effect to that feeling. But we cannot, as I am sure noble Lords will agree, consider the particular method suggested by fie noble Earl without looking at the facts of the situation in which our action must be determined. Disagreeable realities are not removed by ignoring them; and I propose to deal with some of them.

The barriers erected and maintained by the deliberate action of Communist Governments against the free exchange of information, and against freedom of access, make it only too likely that the call would never reach those for whom it was primarily intended. The noble Earl suggests that this call should he directed in particular to the labouring classes of all nations. But, unhappily, the experience of the last few years shows that no appeal of this sort, sponsored by His Majesty's Government, would ever be allowed to reach the working masses of such States as the Soviet Union or China. Yet these are the countries to whom, in the first instance, such a call should be addressed, since they are kept in ignorance by their own Governments of the fact that it is the aggressive policies and actions of their rulers which are principally responsible for existing world-wide tensions and fears for the security of peace. Even if it were possible to penetrate the Iron Curtain, it would be self-deception to harbour any real hope that the working classes of the Communist-dominated countries would be able to exert upon their Governments any influence in the direction which the noble Earl desires. His Majesty's Government deplore as much as anyone the inability of the peoples of these countries to make their voices heard in favour of a true and lasting peace, but they cannot but recognise that inability.

It is of no use any of us closing his eyes to the fact that in Communist-controlled countries public opinion is not the potent force which it is in free countries. That this should be so is a great tragedy, but it is one of the disagreeable facts that have to be recognised and taken into account. In these circumstances, it seems to me that a peace call to the peoples of all nations is unlikely to be of any practical effect. The free peoples of the world require no such special appeal. None of them or their Governments, which they democratically control, seeks war; none of them is a potential aggressor; all of them are pledged to peace and the collective defence of peace. They know where the threat to peace lies. They know who have refused to respond to effort after effort to secure effective collective action in the international field. They are, therefore, rightly interested only in deeds for peace by the Communist East, and they are always on the watch for concrete evidence. But they are not to be misled by the highly-publicised world peace gathering which the Communists go to such pains and expense to organise and manipulate.

I need hardly remind your Lordships' House that in the 1930's most of the declarations and assertions of a desire for peace came from Hitler. Hitler's speeches used to abound in such assertions as: National Socialist Germany wants peace because of its fundamental convictions…Germany needs peace and desires peace. In fact, the Nazi Party Congress of 1939, which had to be abandoned because of the war, was actually to be called, on Hitler's express orders, the "Peace Congress." We are now becoming familiar with Communist declarations and manifestoes in a similar strain, and we are again witnessing popular desire for peace being exploited in propaganda and harnessed to serve Party aims and State foreign policy. As noble Lords are aware, there has recently been renewed activity in certain areas in support of a so-called World Peace Congress and a so-called World Peace Pact. We are told that millions of signatures have been collected; that peace conferences have been held and peace committees set up. These claims are less impressive when one knows something of the dubious methods by which the collection of these signatures is carried out. In China, for instance, over 258,000,000 signatures have been collected by the simple process of adding up the number of people attending meetings throughout the country. And wherever a Communist or Communist-sponsored meeting is held, for any purpose, that meeting automatically finds itself "voting"—noble Lords will note the word "voting"—for the Peace Pact. But if those who direct this movement really wanted genuine peace, they would not need to whip up support by such a variety of dubious means. They would not need to misrepresent all those with whom they disagree as warmongers. There would be no need to indulge in hostile propaganda against the West. It surely would be more convincing if they honestly tried to reach agreement with the other peoples of the world on whose response they could count, instead of incessantly branding them as their enemies.

How can we look upon these manœuvres otherwise than with suspicion and indignation, when the Governments and peoples of the free world have continually proclaimed their desire and given proof of their desire to live in peace and friendship with all nations, regardless of their political ideas and systems? They have taken a foremost part in setting up in the United Nations the machinery through which, given only good will, peace can be preserved. It therefore seems inconsistent, to say the least of it, that the promoters of the so-called "peace campaign" should ignore this clearly expressed desire for peace and neglect the machinery of the United Nations whilst at the same time organising an immense movement which professes exactly the same aim.

The underlying suggestion that desire and leadership for peace is the sole prerogative of the Communist States does not bear critical examination. It is indeed a piece of political humbug. In August, 1941, it was the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom who signed the Atlantic Charter in which they proclaimed their belief that all nations of the world, for realistic as well as spiritual reasons, must come to the abandonment of the use of force. As noble Lords will remember, the Atlantic Charter was subsequently endorsed by the principal Allied belligerents, including, among others, the Soviet Union. When peace was restored, it served as their guide in the great work of building the United Nations.

The prime purpose of the United Nations, as we are all aware, is the pre servation of peace, or to use the words of the Preamble of the Charter: to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind. The Charter does in fact constitute a declaration of willingness to work for the abolition of war and of all the poverty and misery that war involves. These are not misleading generalities. The real question is how to make that policy effective, to get away from what the noble Earl called "failure processes." I do not believe that the world is in danger because it needs new principles. What it needs is loyalty in practice to proclaimed and accepted principles. There are to be found in the Atlantic Pact and the Charter of the United Nations all the guiding principles that would enable the nations of the world, working in friendly co-operation, to build up an international order of peace and social justice.

If there were universal loyalty in practice to these principles, with their moral and spiritual values, the world by united action would make headway in removing the causes of war—economic causes as well as political. The noble Earl would, know, agree that poverty and misery, which he mentions as the inevitable results of war, are also among the most important of its causes. Remove these causes, and we shall at the same time be taking an essential step towards abolishing war by creating the conditions of economic stability and social contentment which are a prerequisite to lasting peace. That is indeed an important aspect of the policy which the Government are pursuing. The House is aware of the active and generous part which His Majesty's Government are playing, both within and outside of the United Nations, for the promotion of the economic advancement of all peoples, including, of course, those of the undeveloped areas.

What I should like to emphasise is that the Charter of the United Nations is a charter for the renunciation of war for national purposes and for the settlement of all disputes by peaceable means. It provides what the noble Earl asked for: a basic plan for changing the processes which bring on the destruction of the whole world. There can, in my opinion, be no higher treaty obligations than those which sixty nations have undertaken by their membership of the United Nations. If every nation loyally fulfils these obligations, there can, of course, be no further wars of aggression, nor should there be any need for the peoples of the world to fear a Third World War which, we all agree, Would destroy civilisation as we know it.

If there be that fear—unhappily it is there and it is deep-seated—it is not of our making. Neither we nor our democratic partners have such sinister motives in our minds. We are not warmongers. We intend to stand by our obligations for peace, both by deed and by word—our obligation to abstain from aggression ourselves and our obligation to prevent and, if necessary, to resist aggression. That is the firm basis upon which we stand, for it is the United Nations' basis for the collective maintenance of peace.

I repeat, we are ready as always to play our full part in any genuine effort to remove dm root causes of tension and to develop a real understanding between East and West. Such efforts, however, will not succeed if they are one-sided. There must be good will and good intentions on both sides, if hopes are to be fulfilled and if lasting results are to be achieved. That is the way to preserve and strengthen peace, and that is the way His Majesty's Government are always ready to go. For these reasons, I am unable to accept the Motion of the noble Earl and, while these reasons may not have convinced him—because he is, I recognise, moved by deep feelings—I hope, nevertheless, that he will not wish to press his Motion to a Division.

5.49 p.m.

THE EARL OF DARNLEY

My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, for the kindness with which he has received my Motion. I regret that he cannot see his way to accept it. This has not been a long debate. The noble Lord, Lord Blackford, said that I live in Cloud Cuckoo-land which is possibly not a bad place to live in. People who live there are sometimes more right than those who do not. Anyhow, I will go on believing in it, whatever anybody says about this or any other land. I will still go on believing, I think rightly, that there are no limitations; but that results are due to faulty causes, and that until there is a new system human beings will go on knocking each other on the head until eventually they perish. I shall go on saying that. Perhaps once a year I shall emerge from my Cloud Cuckooland and say it. But I hope that, before that time, Lord Blackford will perhaps come to see me, and I will try to persuade him to another view. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.