HL Deb 08 April 1954 vol 186 cc1137-50
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD SIMONDS)

My Lords, I have to inform you that I have to-day received a telegram from the President of the Conseil de la République: in these terms. I have ventured, my Lords, to translate it, thinking that you would prefer it to my rendering of the French. The message is as follows:

"On this day when Great Britain and France celebrate with the same fervour the 50th anniversary of the Entente Cordiale, I beg you to be so kind as to offer to the House of Lords in the name of the Conseil de la République, together with our sincere good wishes for the prosperity of the British people, the assurance of our lively friendship. The bonds which unite our two countries are all the stronger because they express a common belief and sympathy in matters of great importance.

"The Convention of the 8th April, 1904, embodied the agreement of our two peoples on the necessity of safeguarding the spiritual values of which we are the common trustees. The Entente Cordiale made sure, on two occasions, the defence of these values and the triumph of freedom, without which they are nothing. Sacrifices agreed to in common, the feeling that neither of us could bear a life which was not marked by freedom, are for us a guarantee that far beyond any divergences of interest, the ideal of our two nations remains—respect for individual human life and constant struggle for the achievement of prosperity and peace in the world."

4.9 p.m.

THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH rose to move, That this House, in recognition of the fact that this year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Entente Cordiale, and that for the past half century the close and friendly relations thus established between France and Great Britain have been loyally maintained and of great mutual value both in war and peace; that Franco-British friendship—of which the Dunkirk Treaty of Alliance and Mutual Assistance is a recent manifestation—is one of the foundation stones on which the post-war policies of France and Great Britain have been built, and is essential for the security and prosperity of Western civilisation; and that it is the common desire of the peoples of our two countries that this close understanding, which has so well withstood the test of time, should be preserved and diligently developed, resolves, That a message of greeting and goodwill be conveyed to the Conseil de la République to mark the first fifty years of the Entente Cordiale and. to give an assurance that the tradition of Anglo-French solidarity which has grown up during this period will continue to be a constant and guiding principle of our foreign policy over future decades.

The noble Earl said: My Lords, I have the honour to follow up the message which the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack has just read from the President of the Conseil de la République by the Resolution which stands in my name upon the Paper. One cannot, I think, readily recall the making of the Entente Cordiale without thinking first of King Edward VII. The distinguished French delegation that will be coming to London at the end of May, under the leadership of the Foreign Minister, M. Bidault, to join with us in celebrating the Jubilee of the Entente, have, I understand, very much in their minds a tribute to King Edward VII's memory, for like us they think of him as "The Peacemaker." That title seems very remote when contemplated from the horror of this atomic age, but it was in fact King Edward's understanding of the French people and the great sympathy that he felt for them which enabled him to prepare the way when statesmen proposed the reversal of British foreign policy involved in making a Pact with France.

King Edward's liking for France and the French went back to his visits to Paris as a boy during the Crimean war; and this year of 1954 is not only the fiftieth anniversary of the Entente: it is also the centenary of Franco-British co-operation in the Crimea. Nearly fifty years later the King's official visit to Paris was described by that great diplomat M. Paul Cambon, the then French Ambassador in London, as a political event of great significance; that, and afterwards in the autumn the very successful visit paid in return by President Loubet and M. Delcassé, the French Foreign Minister, considerably smoothed the course of diplomacy and brought about a marked change in public opinion in both countries. A well-known French author wrote soon afterwards that the journey to France of one single man had the power to transmute in less than a week the sentiments of a whole people. So eventually the agreement concluded on that day, April 8, 1904, brought about the settlement of all the existing disputes between us, the most important, as your Lordships will recall, being those with regard to Morocco and Egypt. So ended the long story of rivalry between our two countries, and the balance of power was restored.

To-day, fifty years later, the Entente still stands, in spite of all the storms that have rocked the world in the interval, a foundation of the foreign policy of both our countries. There is indeed a serious storm that faces the French now in Indo-China; and if, with your Lordships permission, I may digress for one moment, I should like to say that, as Allies, as old comrades in arms and as friends of the French people, we should, I feel sure, desire to express our profound admiration of the gallantry of the French troops fighting a very difficult campaign in Indo-China, which, as we all know, has culminated in the defence of Dien Bien Phu under the heroic command of Colonel de Castries. We earnestly hope for a satisfactory outcome of this difficult struggle.

To return again to the story of the Entente, the names of two Ambassadors, great friends of France, who made of that title a title of honour and who were Members of your Lordships' House, will perhaps be in the thoughts of noble Lords in connection with the Motion before the House this afternoon. The late Lord Derby, who was Ambassador to Paris in the last years of the First World War, was beloved by the French people. On his return home and for the rest of his life, he constantly exerted all his great personal influence in the cause of friendship with France. He founded the Association which, since the last war, has become known as the Franco-British Society, with which I am associated and with which I am glad to think the Leaders of the three Parties in this House, the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, and the noble and learned Earl, Lord Jowitt, are also personally associated. It seems quite natural that the President of the Society to-day should be the Englishman who is dearest to the hearts of all the French people, the present Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill.

The other Ambassador and great friend of France, who will no doubt be in your Lordships' thoughts and whose recent untimely death is still fresh in our minds, was Lord Norwich. It was only the other day that we recalled how Sir Alfred Duff Cooper rendered great service to the State by the part he played in Franco-British relations at the end of the last war and during the post-war years, when he was Ambassador in Paris. The present French Ambassador in London, M. Massigli, in a broadcast message on Lord Norwich's sudden death, said he gave away no secret in saying that Sir Alfred Duff Cooper was one of the chief architects of the Franco-British Alliance signed at Dunkirk in 1947 by Mr. Ernest Bevin. There is no doubt of that. Lord Norwich was profoundly convinced that, whether they like it or not, the destinies of Britain and France are indissolubly bound.

The fact that now we are both members of a much larger organisation, of the vitally indispensable, all-important N.A.T.O., does not weaken, I suggest, but rather strengthens, the very special links that bind our two countries together. If we look back, we can say that we have suffered together and we have rejoiced together. We will continue to march forward together. The links that bind us are indeed indissoluble. Some such thoughts as these, I suppose, were in the minds of the founders of the Entente. We recall particularly, on this side of the Channel, the great part played by Lord Lansdowne as Foreign Secretary, which was described at the time by Lord Spencer, speaking on behalf of the Opposition Peers, as a great achievement. The importance of the Entente remains, I believe, the conviction of your Lordships to-day, and it is in that belief that I have placed the Resolution standing in my name on the Order Paper. I beg to move.

Moved, That this House, in recognition of the fact that this year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Entente Cordiale and that for the past half century the dose and friendly relations thus established between France and Great Britain have been loyally maintained and of great mutual value both in war and peace:

Resolves, That a Message of Greeting and Goodwill be conveyed to the Counseil de la République to mark the first fifty years of the Entente Cordiale and to give an assurance that the tradition of Anglo-French solidarity which has grown up during this period will continue to be a constant and guiding principle of our foreign policy over future decades.—(The Earl of Bessborough.)

4.20 p.m.

THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (THE MARQUESS OF SALIS-BURY)

My Lords, I rise on behalf of Her Majesty's Government to support most warmly the Resolution which has been so happily moved by the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough. This year, 1954, as we have just heard, both from him and from the message of the President of the Council of the French Republic, for which we are all so deeply grateful, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the inauguration of the Entente Cordiale between Britain and France. The year 1904 was certainly a fateful date for both our countries. Indeed, to students of history in the future I think it may well go down as one of the most encouraging dates in the whole history of Europe. For it marked the end of a centuries-old period of mistrust between the French and the British peoples, and the replacement of that mistrust by a close and cordial relationship, based both on mutual interest and on deep mutual affection. Ever since mediæval times, I suppose, Britain and France have regarded themselves as rivals, both in Europe and throughout the newly discovered areas of the world. It was one of those things which people regretted; but it was a fact; and if anyone had said in those days, in either of the two countries, that the time would come when they would become comrades in arms, fighting side by side in a common cause in two world wars, it would hardly have been believed. Yet to-day that conception of the essential importance of friendship between France and Britain is so firmly established that, I suppose, in either of the two countries, no one but a lunatic would seek to dispute it.

What has brought about this great change? No doubt there have been a variety of causes. First, there were the personal effort; of King Edward VII. To which the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, has referred. That achievement was certainly the most memorable one of his great reign—and it was, indeed, a great achievement. Also, in part, no doubt, it was due to the rise of Germany as a great Power at the beginning of the century, which forced both Britain and France at that time to reconsider their attitude to each other. Partly, possibly, it was a recognition of our common interests in the Colonial sphere: and partly, perhaps—and, to my mind, this was the strongest of all reasons—it was due to the sheer shrinkage of space which came about as a result of modern inventions. After all, Britain and France are divided geographically only by about twenty miles of sea, and however wide a barrier that may have been in earlier days, it has shrunk to a mere ditch since the conquest of the air. We are both equally vulnerable to attack from the air from each other's territories—and, indeed, from an area far wider afield than that. In the terrible modern world in which we live, therefore, nations so closely associated as we and the French nation are cannot afford to quarrel; our fates are to-day far too intimately linked.

The necessity for a closer friendship between the two countries was, as your Lordships know, already apparent as far back as 1843, when M. Guizot, the Foreign Minister of France at that time, first coined the phrase "Entente Cordiale." But the friction which was an unhappy legacy of the past still continued, and, as we have heard this afternoon, it was not until 1904, exactly fifty years ago, that the combined efforts of King Edward VII, Lord Lansdowne, the then British Foreign Secretary, and M. Delcassé, the French Foreign Minister, culminated in those Agreements which we are celebrating this afternoon. Since then, though there may have been individual issues on which we have not always agreed—and I am afraid that that is quite inevitable, even between the closest and dearest friends—it may broadly be said, I believe, that the need for Franco-British friendship has become ever more firmly established with every year that has passed, until to-day in this country it is taken quite as a matter of course by every man and woman.

We have fought shoulder to shoulder in two great wars; and now we are both championing the cause of freedom, not only in Europe but in Asia as well—we in Malaya and the French in Indo-China. I should like, in this connection, to echo what has already been so well said by the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, and to pay a heartfelt tribute to Colonel de Castries and his heroic force, who are to-day so bravely maintaining and sustaining the cause of liberty in Indo-China. We have all watched the dauntless defence of Dien Bien Phu, on which so much depends for us all, with pride and admiration. There can have been nothing finer, I imagine, in the whole history of French arms, and I am happy to pay a tribute to them to-day.

Nor is it only on the field of battle that our interdependence has been shown. By our joint signatures to the Brussels Treaty and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation we have shown our determination to act together for the preservation of peace. In the economic sphere, too, our collaboration has been in recent years equally close. Long may that continue, my Lords! After all, the inexorable facts of geography will not change; they will only become, with the widening discoveries of science, ever more compelling. To-day, fifty years after the Entente Cordiale first came into being, let us re-dedicate ourselves to the purpose which inspired its creators. It is inevitable, I suppose, in some ways, that the character of the contributions which our two nations have to make to the maintenance of our common heritage and our common interest may not be absolutely identical. To my mind, that does not matter. What does matter is that they should be complementary; that the policy which each of our countries adopts in Europe, in Asia and in Africa should harmonise with the policy of the other. It is that which should be our joint aim. We are moving, as we know only too well, into uncharted seas. We are faced to-day with new perils—perils in some ways more formidable than we have ever known before. It was never more important that we, with the other free nations, should stand together.

I should like to end on this wider note. It must be our hope that this Entente Cordiale which we celebrate to-day may prove the exemplar and prototype of other more extensive arrangements and agreements between nations for the removal of the ancient enmities and mistrusts which at present divide them. That must be the aim and the object of all our policies. On that, most surely, the survival of all civilisation, and perhaps the survival of humanity, will depend.

4.28 p.m.

EARL JOWITT

My Lords, it is wholly fitting that this House to-day should discuss the message which we should send to our friends on the other side of the Channel; and it is wholly fitting, too, that the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, should have been chosen to move this Resolution. He has rightly referred to the great names of the past, British statesmen who have kept our friendship alive in every way they can—Lord Derby and, more recently, Lord Norwich. Now the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, is himself playing the same part. as Chairman of the Franco-British Society. Fortunately, there are on the other side of the Channel to-day people who are playing a corresponding rôle. The Ambassador, M. Massigli, who is so good a Frenchman, has come to be regarded as one of us over here, and to his services and those of the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, we all owe much. I desire to identify my Party with everything that has been said in appreciation of what the French are doing to-day and the burden they are carrying in the war in the Far East.

But I desire to say something more than that. We are accustomed to these examples of French gallantry. But just stop for a moment and think what the whole world owes to France in the sphere of peace, in the art of living, in the art of painting, in the art of literature. What a dull world this would be without the contribution that Frenchmen have made and are making! So far as the Entente Cordiale itself is concerned, I, too, have been making my historical researches. If there were two Frenchmen to whom it was primarily due, they were, I suppose, M. Delcassé and M. Paul Cambon. After Fashoda, M. Delcassé became Foreign Secretary, and he selected M. Paul Cambon to come to London. When Lord Salisbury, the grandfather of the noble Marquess, was still at the Foreign Office—he left. I think, in November. 1900—he judged it then too early to attempt to settle all the many outstanding problems; and, indeed, whilst the Boer War was still active, he was almost certainly right, for in all these matters timing is of the essence of the thing.

It is recorded that in 1902, at a party at Marlborough House, Mr. Joseph Chamberlain and M. Cambon had an animated conversation lasting for halfan-hour. We now know, because the German archives are available to us, that this was reported to his Government by Baron Von Eckardstein. He described the conversation, which he said was very animated, but he explained, rather apologetically, that he had been unable to hear very much. All he had heard were the two rather significant words "Morocco" and "Egypt." Then, in 1903, King Edward VII visited Paris. In Sir Sidney Lee's book it is recorded that when he went there his reception was to say the least of it, a trifle reserved. Cries of "Vive les Boers!" "Vive Marchand!", "Vive Fashoda!" were heard, amongst other rather more cordial greetings. But, after a few days. when the Parisiens had got to know the King better, when they had been captivated by his personality, his wit and his gallantry, and when they had listened to his speeches proclaiming his desire for friendship, there was no sort of reserve in their welcome. When finally he left the British Embassy for the Gare des Invalides, accompanied by the President of the French Republic, the route was lined with a madly enthusiastic crowd, and the universal cry was now "Vive notre Rol!" That visit made it possible for Lord Lansdowne and M. Delcassé, and the Ambassadors of the two countries, to clear up all the problems, from Siam to Newfoundland and from Morocco to Egypt, which had vexed the relationships of the two countries.

Meanwhile, in Germany, Holstein and Bulow, with characteristic blindness, were informing their master that the rival claims of France and England to influence in Morocco were bound to keep the two countries permanently apart. Yet exactly fifty years ago the Agreement clearing up all these troubles was signed, and the consequences of that Agreement belong to history. I cannot myself pretend that thereafter the two countries have always managed to keep completely in step. Indeed, I believe that if they had kept completely in step there might have been no Hitler and there might have been no Second World War. However that may be, the necessity for keeping step in the future must be a cardinal point in the foreign policy of each country. It matters enormously to us that France should remain strong, free and independent, and I fancy that Frenchmen feel the same about England. My Lords, I have much pleasure in supporting the Resolution.

4.35 p.m.

VISCOUNT SAMUEL

My Lords, on behalf of noble Lords on these Benches I rise to support the Motion which has been so ably moved by the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, who has himself rendered such great services for so many years to the cause of Anglo-French friendship. It is now only the oldest among us who can remember what was the international situation before 1904. It was a situation that was always uneasy and often dangerous, mainly owing to the rivalry between Britain and France. In the preceding half century and more, the whole of Africa had been divided among the Powers in Colonies, Protectorates or spheres of influence; and a considerable part of Southern Asia as well. This had been accomplished without any war between them, but often with the danger of war. Sir Edward Grey has described the situation in his book of memoirs under the title, Twenty-Five Years. He had been Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office in Mr. Gladstone's last Administration of 1892, when Lord Rosebery was Foreign Secretary. In his book he writes of: The constant friction, rising on the slightest provocation to quarrel and hostility, between Great Britain and France or Russia. He adds: The ground-swell of ill-will never ceased. It is now quite forgotten that in 1893 Britain and France were on the very edge of war. The dispute arose over the question of Siam. France had a frontier dispute between her Colonies in Indo-China and Siam, and had declared what was termed a "pacific blockade" of the coast. Britain refused to recognise that there was such a thing as a "pacific blockade," and sent a cruiser to those waters. This cruiser was ordered away by the French commander on the coast, and a French warship steaming past the British cruiser that lay at anchor trained her guns upon the ship. Grey records that for twenty-four hours it was thought that war between Great Britain and France was inevitable. And he adds: It was told me that one of the most influential men on the Opposition side had said that it was evident that war between ourselves and France must come, and that it would be better to have it at once"— that sinister and fatal doctrine of the inevitable war, the preventive war, which has done, and is doing, such infinite mischief in the world. Had the Government of the day taken that advice and regarded the war as inevitable, it would have become inevitable. As events have turned out, sixty years have gone by and that "inevitable" war has, happily, not come.

Five years after that incident, in 1898, when Lord Kitchener led his army after the Battle of Omdurman to occupy the Sudan, he found there the expedition of Lieutenant Marchand at Fashoda having hoisted the French flag, and another grave situation arose. However, that was overcome. Then, after a few years, the shadow of German militarism began to spread over the international situation. Already having a powerful Army, Germany was openly seeking to build the second greatest Navy in the world, to become, if possible no doubt, the greatest Navy. Those events compelled Britain and France to reconsider the whole of the situation. Someone has said with much truth: We are told that we should love our neighbour, but often it is the neighbour who is the one person most difficult to love. We all know that, very often, the closer the contact, the greater may be the friction; and it must be confessed that it was not a universal good will or a common humanity, so much as the fear of a common danger, which in those years brought together Britain and France. But soon, that ripened into something much better.

Just tribute has been paid to the memory of King Edward VII and the part that he played in those events. He did so always within the limits of constitutional principle and practice. Grey, who had become later, of course, Foreign Secretary in the latter part of the reign of King Edward VII, says about that: A legend arose in his lifetime,"— that is, King Edward's lifetime— which perhaps was believed more widely afterwards, that British foreign policy was due to his initiative, instigation and control. This was not so in my experience. He not only accepted the constitutional practice that policy must be that of his Ministers, but he preferred that it should be so. Nevertheless, as tribute has been paid to-day, it was his friendliness, his good humour, his good will, which relieved the, French suspicions that existed at the outset and soon converted the political entente into a real cordiality.

The growth of the German Fleet, and the fact that the German Army was becoming more and more formidable, brought the two countries still closer together; and a Russian entente also was added. There came the crisis of 1914 I am now the last member of that Cabinet left in your Lordships' House, and in another place there is only left the present Prime Minister. I had already then, in 1914, been five years in the Cabinet and so was well acquainted with all the circumstances. It has been widely said that, when that great crisis came, the British people had already been bound, by secret understanding made by the Government of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and Sir Edward Grey, to come to the support of France in such circumstances as had arisen. That was not the case. There was no such obligation. The matter had, at the desire of the whole Cabinet, been thoroughly discussed with the French Government in 1912, and there were some exchanges of correspondence between Sir Edward Grey and M. Cambon, whose name has been mentioned, that in the event of such a crisis occurring—and it was looming in the future—the two countries should consult together as to the course to be taken. Nothing more than that was said, and nothing more than that was claimed by the French.

In those terrible days at the end of July and the beginning of August, 1914, M. Cambon, on behalf of the French Government, neither in official dispatches nor in private conversations, declared or claimed that any such obligation rested upon the British Government. The British Government was free to judge the matter on the merits of the case, and did so, holding that France and Belgium were the victims of sheer aggression, that the provisions of the Anglo-Belgian Treaty had become operative, and that that Treaty most be either honoured or dishonoured. Those circumstances led to the Cabinet being substantially united, and with that union there was a united Parliament, a united country and a united Empire. The British Army stood on the left of the French line, small but efficient and very valiant. It was defeated at the outset by overwhelming forces, but it held fast on a line further back and saved Paris. Since then, in two wars over a period of nine years the two countries, side by side, have faced a double ordeal and won a double victory.

The age is past when in France, or in any other country, glory is to be found in war. The French no longer regard the greatest period of their history as the conquests of Louis XIV or Napoleon. They recognise, as we recognise and as the world does, too, that the finest services of France, to her own people and to mankind, have been in the realms of the sciences, the arts, philosophy and learning—all the achievements of a high civilisation; and also in the love of liberty, national freedom and personal freedom. So that, for a long time past, it has not been only the fear of common danger, then in one quarter now in another, that has bound the two countries, Britain and France, together, but the love and the service of common ideals.

On Question, Motion agreed tonemine dissentients.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

It would be your Lordships' wish that I should send the appropriate Message to the President of the Conseil de la République.