Sitting of 4 May 1921

Preamble
The House met at a quarter before four of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
LORD INVERNAIRN.
Sir William Beardmore, Bart., having been created Baron INVERNAIRN of STRATHNAIRN in the county of Inverness—Was (in the usual manner) introduced.
PORTSMOUTH WATER BILL.
Read 3ª, with the Amendments: Further Amendments made: Bill passed, and returned to the Commons.
THE INDUSTRIAL CRISIS.

  ADDRESS IN REPLY TO HIS MAJESTY'S MESSAGE.
  Order of the Day read for the Message from the King to be taken into consideration.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON)THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON) had given Notice to move to resolve—
  " That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty, thanking His Majesty for His most gracious Message communicating to this House His Majesty's Declaration that a State of Emergency exists within the meaning of the Emergency Powers Act, 1920."
  And also to move to resolve—
  "That the Regulations made by His Majesty in Council under the Emergency Powers Act, 1920, by Order dated the 30th April, 1921, shall continue in force, subject, however, to the provisions of Section 2 (4) of the said Act."
  The noble Earl said: Yesterday the noble Earl, the First Commissioner of Works, gave Notice in my name of two Motions which it would be my duty to make to-day, and the terms of those Motions appear in their place upon the Order Paper. I thought that, immersed though I am in other subjects which do not leave much leisure to consider matters of domestic concern, however important they may be—and the importance of this internal issue no one can doubt—it would yet be
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  disrespectful on my part if I did not come down here in order to move these Motions that stand in my name.
  What your Lordships are asked to do is practically to continue in operation, with certain modifications and alterations, the Regulations which you saw fit to pass some weeks ago. The Regulations in their present form are practically the same as those to which you gave assent on April 5 last, but there have been a few additions intended to give the Government Departments powers to make Orders in respect to certain matters should the necessity for doing so arise. I may now say, however, as I said on the previous occasion, that it is hoped that it will not prove to be necessary to make extensive use of those powers. The matters in question to which I refer are these: Further restriction of trans services; restrictions on the use of excursion and other steamers and vessels; further restriction of lights; extension of summer time by an additional hour; and billeting. Reference to these will be found in the new Emergency Regulations as printed in the form which I hold in my hand.
  The first four of these restrictions are directed, as is obvious, towards the economy of coal and fuel; and in using them, if they have to be used, the Government will, of course, bear in mind the convenience of the public, so far as this is possible consistently with the fuel resources of the country, as the latter may exist from time to time. The provision as to billeting has been asked for by the War Office, and your Lordships may like a word of explanation about it. It is not intended that the powers relating to billeting should be used unless absolutely necessary. It will be recognised, if particular localities are to be guarded and protected, that the troops stationed in such localities must have some accommodation, which must always be of a suitable nature and location for the carrying out of the duties which, in any particular case, they may be called upon to undertake. The first of the Emergency Regulations, as at present framed, gives the War Office power to take possession of any land, building, works or property. The exercise of these powers—which it is understood carries with it the right to take possession of any building, or requisition it—would, it is thought, cause far more dislocation and discontent to the owners of such build-

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  ing than would the requiring of such owners, while continuing to occupy their property, to accommodate troops billeted on them during the emergency. One of the main objects of this new provision, which evil be used as sparingly as the exigencies of the sit nation permit, is to enable, troops employed on protective services, in the interests of the community, to be accommodated on premises with as little disturbance as possible to the civil population.
  The only other noteworthy Amendment is Regulation 3 (8) which gives the Army Council concurrent powers with the Ministry of Transport under Regulation 3 for the purpose of providing transport for His Majesty's Forces. The effect of this Amendment is to avoid the necessity, which might be inconvenient in the case of urgency, of making a special arrangement with the Ministry of Transport, under Regulation 21. That is, J think, all that I need say in explanation of the particular form in which the Regulations have now been framed.
  THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: Can the noble Earl say whether it is intended to use the power to lengthen summer time, or is that only to be kept in reserve in case it is wanted?
  EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON: I should like to consult the Department before I give a definite answer to that question. As regards the general situation, in the earlier phases of this unhappy crisis I came down here and made a statement almost from day to day. The last occasion on which, in my absence, this was done by my noble friend, Lord Crawford, who was acting for me, was on April 25—at the beginning of last week. On that occasion he alluded to the offer which had just been submitted by the mine owners, and under which, over a temporary period of three months, reductions in wages in each area should be a uniform amount per shift for all workers, and should in no case exceed such an amount as might be fixed by the Government, the owners, and the men, for each of the three months respectively, while in any district in which it was necessary for the Government to assist in the payment of wages the owners in the aggregate should forego all profits.
  That arrangement had only just been put forward when my noble friend spoke. Negotiations upon it continued between
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  I all the parties concerned for three or four days, and, to the infinite distress of all those concerned, they the ultimately broke down on April 28. As to the part which the Government played in the matter— I speak not so much of the Government's handling of the negotiations as of the actual contribution that they proposed to the solution of this difficult question—I should like to add these words. They offered a sum of £10,000,000 to assist in the payment of wages until the end of August, on condition that an agreement was reached for the regulation of wages, for a reasonable period thereafter. This offer was published in the Press, and is familiar to your Lordships. Further, they under' took that during May and June in no case should wages be reduced by more than 3s. per day and 3s. 6d. per day respectively, and though they remained opposed, for reasons which have often been stated here, to any pooling arrangement, the object of which should be that profitable pits should subsidise unprofitable pits, it was definitely stated by them that there was no objection to the institution of a system whereby the wages earned in the industry could be more equally divided as between district and district.
  The offer in question also contemplated the institution of a National Board to fix the principles on which wages should be determined in the districts, and to act as a Court of Appeal from the districts on wages questions. Unhappily, however, on April 28, the date that I have named, the delegates' conference passed the following resolution—
  " That this Conference rejects the Government's proposals as they do not concede the fundamental principles of a National Wages Board and a national pool, for which we stand."
  It is clear, therefore, that the stoppage continues because recognition has not been granted to the fundamental principle for which the miners have throughout contended—namely, that there should be some national arrangement whereby the weaker pits should be subsidised by the stronger. The negotiations are, therefore, I grieve to say, at any rate in London, at an end for the time being, and the matter has now been referred to the districts where it is being threshed out between the miners and their representative organisations.
  What may happen I am not at all in a position to say. I was reading the latest reports that reached the Government

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  this morning, and while I observed in them symptoms in some places of a desire to return to work on the part of the men, and evidence in a good many quarters that the proposals of the Government, which I have summarised to the House, are regarded as not unreasonable, yet I should not like to build upon those symptoms, scattered as they arc, too confident an inference as to the possibilities of a satisfactory solution. I am afraid that I cannot truthfully say to your Lordships that I see at this moment any immediate prospect of a termination to this disastrous dispute.
  As to the attitude of the Government, the proposals that I mentioned just now indicate, I think, a sufficient desire on our part to make what contribution we can to a pacific and equitable settlement, but, for the reasons which have been repeatedly stated by me and others in this House, and which, I think, have been acquiesced in broadly speaking by the general sentiment of your Lordships, it is impossible for the Government to recede from the position they have taken up on the question of the national pool of profits, since they remain convinced, after the most careful consideration and reconsideration, that the establishment of any such pool would be fatal to the success of any system of private ownership, and would require legislation winch they are not prepared to propose and which they do not think that either. House of Parliament would be prepared to pass. I am sorry that I cannot give your Lordships a more sanguine account of the situation or a more hopeful estimate as to the immediate future.
  Moved, That the Message from His Majesty be now considered.—(Earl Curzon of Kedleston.)
  THE MARQUESS OF CREWE: My Lords, the announcement made in the latter part of the noble Earl's speech, that he is not able to see any daylight through the gloomy prospect of this industrial dispute, will not surprise your Lordships, because we had gathered so much so far as we had been able to follow its course in the daily Press and from private sources. It stands to reason, of course, that so long as the two parties stand to the assertion they have made—the one, His Majesty's Government., explaining that they will not admit the existence of a national pool for profits; and the other, the miners, saying that they
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  will not consent to consider the question of wages apart from the institution of such a pool—it is quite clear that nothing can be done, that the deadlock is absolute. That is, of course, a position which cannot continue indefinitely. The time will come when further negotiations will have to be instituted.
  I may take it, I am pretty sure, that they are not likely to be instituted by any retrocession on the part of His Majesty's Government from the position they have taken up, that they are not prepared to consider this question of a national pool. But there may be ways of getting round the difficulty by dividing the consideration of the different questions and obtaining some agreement to consider them separately. I imagine that if the question of wages could be determined with a fair prospect of its not being merely a settlement for a few weeks or months, but bearing promise for the future, His Majesty's Government might not refuse some further impartial inquiry into the whole economics of the coal trade in the future. Whether that is likely to be brought about it is impossible to say, but at present we have to admit that His Majesty's Government adhere to the view that a national pool of profits is impossible, and, so far as my personal opinion is concerned, I confess I entirely agree with them, and equally, for the time being, the miners will not deal with the wages question apart from that.
  I wish to make one observation with regard to the Emergency Regulations to which the noble Earl alluded in the first part of his speech. I suppose it may be assumed that the extra billeting powers which His Majesty's Government have asked will be used with great caution and discretion.
  EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON: And very likely not at all.
  THE MARQUESS OF CREWE: And very likely not at all. I am sure that His Majesty's Government will realise that a free and indiscriminate use of them would be unpalatable to a. great many persons. The only other point is the matter which was mentioned in a question by my noble friend, Lord Salisbury—that of the application of an extra hour of summer time. The noble Earl was not in a position at the moment to reply to the noble Marquess's question, but I should

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  like to call his attention to this. The noble Earl knows, and at any rate there are two noble Lords here (the First Lord of the Admiralty and Lord Ernie on the second bench) who know very well, that even as summer time now exists it is a very unpalatable institution to farmers as a whole, and the addition of an extra hour to summer time would cause something like consternation so far as that part of the community is concerned. I am not at all supposing that it might not have to be done in the common interest and for the purpose of economy of fuel, and I have no doubt a very large number of persons, including probably most of us, would be in no way inconvenienced by it. I merely wish to remind the noble Earl that there is that by tic, means unimportant body of opinion which would be bitterly hurt by the addition of another hour to the present system.
  LORD ORANMORE AND BROWNE: My Lords, may I point out, with reference to what has been said, that the question of summer time is even more important in Ireland? There, already, we have been given English time, which is twenty-five minutes in advance of the time in Southern Ireland, and forty-five minutes in advance in the West of Ireland. If it is further advanced it would mean that the time in the West of Ireland would be nearly three hours head, and the result would he very much worse for Ireland. Perhaps the noble Earl will bear that in mind if any changes are to be made.
  On Question, Motion agreed to.
  EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON: My Lords, it is now my duty to move to resolve—
  "That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty, thanking His Majesty for His most gracious Message communicating to this House His Majesty's Declaration that a State of Emergency exists within the meaning of the Emergency Powers Act, 1920."
  On Question, Motion agreed to nemine dissentiente, and Address ordered to be presented to His Majesty by the Lords with White Staves.
  EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON: My Lords. I beg to make the other Motion standing in my name which reads as follows—
  "That the Regulations made by His Majesty in Council under the Emergency
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  Powers Act, 1920, by Order dated the 30th April, 1921, shall continue in force, subject., however, to the provisions of Section 2 (1) of the said Act."
  Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.

CAPTIVE BIRD SHOOTING (PROHIBITION BILL.
Brought from the Commons, read 1ª, and to be printed.

MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER (DOVER EXTENSION) BILL. [H.L.]
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY OF THE MINISTRY OF HEALTH (THE EARL OF ONSLOW): My Lords, this Bill is to confirm a Provisional Order of the Ministry of Health relating to Dover, known as the Ministry of Health Provisional Order (Dover Extension) Bill. It extends the borough boundary to take in the port and rural parish of River. That is done in order to complete the housing scheme of the town of Dover which extends into this parish. The extension also takes into the borough the piers which extend into the sea and, therefore, were not technically in the borough. The piers are the Admiralty pier, the Prince of Wales pier, and one or two smaller jetties. I do not think there has been any opposition to this Bill, and I beg to move that it be read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2ª.—(The Earl of Onslow.)
On Question, Bill read 2ª.—

PILOTAGE PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 2) BILL.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD SOMERLEYTON: My Lords, this Bill is exactly similar to one which your Lordships were pleased to pass the other day. It refers simply to the piers of the districts of Belfast, Coleraine, Londonderry and Portrush. I do not think any explanation is required, but I am quite willing to go into details if there is a desire that I should do so.
Moved, that the Bill be now read 2ª.—(Lord Somerleytan.)
On Question, Bill read 2ª.

NAVAL WAR STAFF.
VISCOUNT HALDANE VISCOUNT HALDANE rose to ask the First Lord of the Admiralty how the Naval War Staff is now composed, with what body the direction of operations rests, and what is the distribution of functions in the Naval War Staff; and to move for Papers. The noble Viscount said: My Lords, I ask your Lordships' indulgence while I make some observations explanatory of the Question which I have put on the Paper, and of the Motion which follows it. The question of organisation for war is one of high importance, and I need hardly say that I have not risen to criticise in the least the noble Lord opposite, who is head of the Admiralty, awl has only recently entered upon his arduous and difficult duties. I know too well, from cognate experience, the intricacies of the problem which he has to face. I sat for eight years upon the Defence Committee, and was there engaged in the almost continuous study of relations between the Navy and the Army, and the principles of amphibious war, and I am well aware of the problems that consideration raised.
Some of your Lordships may ask why, in a time of peace, we should have to consider this subject. My answer is a simple one. It is only in time of peace that we have the time to consider it. In time of war, when you find yourself compelled to rely on improvised schemes, you discover that you are not ready. It is only if a long process of thought and research has preceded the event that you are prepared for that event. No one in this House wishes more firmly than I that the Navy may never have to fight again, but since in this uncertain world nothing can be absolutely predicted, even when the sky is of the clearest, I hold that it is a duty, so long as we have a Navy, that that Navy should be in order. Moreover, having regard to the character of our Islands, their dependence upon free access to arid from the sea, and to the scattered condition of the Empire, a Navy to some extent is a necessity of these Islands.
I do not rise, either, to make any criticism on the fighting Navy. In the great war that Navy fought magnificently, as of yore. In strength, in spirit, in courage, it maintained, as was evident, the old tradition unbroken. The investigations and disclosures made subsequently to the war revived certain great defects not in sheer fighting power, but in strategical
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preparation. The notable book written by Lord Jellicoe, and one written from such ay different point of view as that of Admiral Tirpitz in his "Memoirs," have- shown that there were certain things which had not been thought out, and which had not formed the subject of that continuous study and thought which are requisite. More recently, the other day, there appeared a book, which I read with the keenest interest, written by a laymen, but a layman gifted with a most graphic pen, Mr. Filson Young's book "With the Battle Cruisers." Mr. Filson Young gives a dramatic description of the various situations which arose on the battle cruisers that were engaged at the Dogger Bank and elsewhere, and, with a vividness which perhaps only a layman would allow himself, and with an unerring eye, he has drawn attention to difficulties and embarrassments which were obvious because of the want of that continuous and all-pervading school of thought which ought to be present in a great Service like the British Navy, and which ought to leave its imprint on the mind and the knowledge and the spirit of every one engaged, so that there might be community of action and understanding.
It is impossible to ignore the fact that, magnificent as our Navy was and completely successful as it was in wielding its great instrument of blockade, due to its power of commanding the sea, there were moments attended with a certain amount of anxiety, and moments in which we owed a great deal to the deficiencies of our enemies. The German Navy, although in some respects admirably organised, showed defects in its higher command. It had failed to grasp before the war the tremendous implication of sea power when accompanied with command of the sea, and it had also failed to realise the necessity for swift and determined action, such as might very well, in the partially unprotected condition of the Channel, have made it impossible—if the German Navy had acted swiftly —to transport the Expeditionary Force. However, we were spared these things by the defect of our enemies, and it is only investigation which has revealed the risks to which we were exposed.
We do not seem to have thought out the proportion in which destroyers were required to battleships and battle cruisers; nor were we adequately provided with submarines. Our mines were not only too

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few but were, rela7ively speaking, defective. Our harbour defences were far from perfect when the war broke out, as any one can see who reads Lord Jellicoe's book; and even in the matter of plans there was a great; deal of obscurity, arising from the gap between the centralised organisation at Whitehall and the naval officers who were in control of ships at a. distance, and under orders through wireless from Whitehall. Why was this? The answer is a very simple one. It arose from the want of systematic, organised and continuous study of naval strategy and the conditions of modern naval war by a sufficiency of highly trained officers. The reason why that was wanting is not difficult to find. In the Navy, even more than in the Army, the administrative side had not been marked out as distinct from the operations side, or the side which deals with. strategy. Administrators dealt with strategy, and strategists were up to their elbows in administration. You have but to look at the story revealed in the books I have mentioned to see to what an extent that was the case.
It is only recently that we have come to the consciousness that in the organisation of the fighting Services, whether military or naval, the separation of strategy from administration is of vital importance. Command and training belong to one side; and business, supply, transport, the raising of troops, the building of ships, and a host of other things, belong to the other side. The principle is no new one. It is quite true that it was introduced into the Army a comparatively short time ago. There was a well-known Committee, called the Esher Committee, of which Lord Sydenham is a prominent member, which put the principle in the forefront, and also the principle of a General Staff to deal with the strategic side and the training side, such as never existed in the Army before. But it is one thing to accept a principle, and another thing to work it out. It was not until 1906 that we had an organised Staff in the Army, and it took two years more to put bones in the flesh; but the results were very remarkable, as they always are when you see that principle carried out.
I had the good fortune to be invited, at a time when we were on perfectly peaceful relations with Germany, to go to Berlin —in the year 1906—and I had the unusual privilege of being permitted to sit in the chair of the Secretary of State at the
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German War Office, and see the principle of the separation of the two systems at work. I had an extremely competent expert with me, and we studied the system in all its details. It was so familiar to the Germans that there was no secrecy about it; and at the end, when we had seen a great deal, they smiled, and said: "You seem not to be aware that this great principle is a British principle. It was the, Duke of Wellington, above everybody else, who taught this lesson to our great Moltke." The Duke of Wellington in the Peninsula War separated command from administration so thoroughly that all his transport, commissariat and supply were in one set of hands, and the command of the troops and the executive work in another set of hands, in the hands of officers he had carefully picked.
Even in the Navy, in the days of Lord Barham the principle, in a rather less crystallised form, was present, but between that date and the beginning of the present century it had fallen out of sight, and fallen out of sight more in the Navy than it had in the Army. Indeed, it is not until the year 1911 that we find any separation definitely made at all. In that year, for the first time, a War Staff was instituted in the Navy. A change was made in the Board of Admiralty. There had been much discussion in the Imperial Defence Committee., and it was decided that there should be a War Staff, just as there had been a General Staff for five years in the Army. Mr. Churchill, who then became First Lord, and to whom we owe a great deal for the number of ships he added to the Navy between 1911 and the outbreak of the war, took the matter in hand, along with a very distinguished sailor to whom the country owes more than it knows, and whose name I should like to mention because it has been too much forgotten. I refer to the Marquis of Milford Haven, then known as Prince Louis of Battenburg. He was at that time Second Sea Lord and afterwards became First Sea Lord. He had a thorough grasp of this great question of principle. I am speaking not merely from rumour. I was privileged to be familiar with the principle of a General Staff, and I had the distinction to be asked to go over. I sat with the Board of Admiralty for some days while it was working out the new system. I remember being impressed with the mense knowledge that Prince Louis showed in his grip of working out all the details.
Then there came further changes. There has always been in the Admiralty something which, in those days, amounted almost, I think, to an obsession, an obsession of secrecy about war objectives. You may have as much secrecy as you like about particular battle plans—the more the better—but about great objectives there cannot be very much secrecy, because they are deductions from very great principles which are the same in war at all times, and under all conditions, and in every country. The result is that even if you are careful not to announce them your enemy will at once deduce what you are doing. If you make these objectives a great flatter of secrecy it is quite certain that no school of thought will he in the dark about them. Accordingly, the tradition arose—I think it was due largely to the fact that staff questions were in the hands of administrators—that the thinking out of this particular branch of naval warfare was, I will not say neglected, but very much concentrated in the hands of men who had not given to it any very profound study. It was really the same to some extent with both the Army and the Navy if you take the older men.
Some of these men were magnificent. The country owes an enormous debt to Lord Fisher and to Lord Kitchener. These were men of commanding personality and stature, who put courage, energy and driving power into their work, and did a great deal. But they did it in their own ways, and in ways which perhaps were not in all respects adapted to the exigencies of modern warfare. Modern war had become, not only a great art but a great science, and you could not study its principles in the light merely of traditions inherited from the days of the Seven Years War. The old notion that the Navy should carry troops on its back and dump them down somewhere on the north coast of Germany had become an absolutely obsolete notion. If turned out that in the Admiralty of those days there was not even a map of the Prussian strategic railways which would have shown that within 48 hours of troops being dumped down on the coast they would have been surrounded by 500,000 men. All that shows what new and complicated problems arose and how little they had been the subject of systematic study.
How is that study possible? Not, certainly, if it is in the hands of a First Sea
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Lord who is also up to his elbows in administration. The First Sea Lord ought to be somebody who has been rendered perfectly free from consideration of administration. I know that the noble Lord opposite will say that he is to-day. To a great extent he is, and I am very glad of it, but I will show in a moment that the principle has not even yet been quite thoroughly carried out of defining exactly the responsibility of the First Sea Lord—saddling him with the full responsibility for thinking out war plans, for the consequences which follow from those war plans, and for the schemes which are necessary to give effect to them—and that he is still in a position where he is hampered in certain respects. I only judge from outside, from what appears in Orders in Council in the papers, but Orders in Council in the papers are often very significant.
What ought to be the position of a War Staff with its Chief? It may be opportune in a sentence or two to sketch that before contrasting it with the present position. The Chief of the War Staff of the Admiralty would naturally he the First Sea Lord. I have no doubt the noble Lord opposite agrees with me that the real course, in the interests of efficiency, for the First Lord of the Admitalty, or the Secretary for War, is to put the full responsibility on the shoulders of the Chief of the War Staff and the First Sea Lord to hold them free and at the same time highly responsible. The First Sea Lord must pick his own people and shape his own means to his end, and his consultations must be concerned rather with objectives than with the means of getting to those objectives. You must get the best school of thought and the best type of mind applied to the work. If that were carried out the First Sea Lord would find his work divided into two parts. I am now drawing a great deal upon my War Office experience, but I think the principles are the same and apply exactly in this case. Part of his work would consist of the practical operations—a comprehensive arm with a Director over them with whom he would work. The other part would be concerned entirely with training.
I will say a word or two about training first because it is of vital importance. There is nothing in which I think the Navy is more defective to-day than in the system of training officers. To begin with, it has not a Staff College. There

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is the War College at Greenwich, but that is a very poor substitute for an ideal Staff College. The courses are short and are largely attended by senior officers. What officer in the Navy has a chance of getting one year's or two years' class work at a properly equipped college on the level of the Staff College? I will give one instance only which brings the matter out. Oar wars are almost essentially amphibious. Soldiers and sailors must study together in consultation with one another, and the Staff College for the Navy should be near to the Staff College for the Army, so that ideas could be interchanged, lectures taken, and studies worked out in common. Greenwich is a very long way from Camberley, and it is practically impossible for two Staff Colleges geographically so situated to work together, even if—which I doubt being the case—the War College at Greenwich is upon the level, as to equipment or the class of officers who go there, with the Staff College at Camberley.
But it does not end there. Look at the system of education in the Navy as it is to-day. I am considering it with a view to seeing how you can pick out officers for this highly expert staff work for which so much training is necessary. Sonic years ago—and it looked a very good plan at the time—Osborne College was started. I gather, that Osborne College is now obsolescent. But there still remains Dartmouth College, which takes on the students from Osborne and gives them a certain training, after which they go into ships and their education practically ceases. I have been at some pains to talk to the professors at the Universities to whom a certain number of young naval officers have recently been going, and to ask them about the sort of education these men had received. They said that those young officers were very admirable and most interesting, but that they showed signs of not having been put through the mill. The training even at Osborne, they say, is not equal to the training which can be got from a first rate public school, if full advantage has been taken of the educational instruction that can be obtained there.
When I was at the War Office I found something of the same difficulty. Sand-hurst men were not quite of the quality we wanted, particularly for staff purposes. So I asked the headmasters of certain
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public schools to meet me, and I said: "I am going to ask you to undertake a responsibility; if you will pick out young men of 17 or 1.8 whom you think are specially qualified for the Army—qualified in all sorts of ways; not only in book knowledge and character and physical capacity—I will trust to you, take them and put them quickly into Sandhurst, and they shall have a full chance." That was done, and we got a very fine class of young officer, who trained up admirably as an officer, and who was typical in the Expeditionary Force at the commencement of the war.
The Navy has no room for that. You cannot take the best youth from the public schools in that fashion., because you want them early, so that they may imbibe the traditions of the sea—traditions set going by Marryat's novels. I never despised Marryat's novels, because I know they formed part of the study of German officers before the war, and were very highly thought of by them. But still you must consider what you lose. If you had young men who had a thoroughly first rate general education, and took them to Dartmouth and taught them the technical things which they are required to know before going on board ship, and afterwards, on board ship, made some provision for the expansion of their education, which could very easily be done, because they would educate themselves if their studies were directed, then you would have a class of young officer from whore, having been to sea and having been observed, you could select in order to get those who promised well for staff work. You could select those who promised best and send them to a proper Staff College— not merely for a short course hut a proper Staff College, at the sort of age at which they go in the Army. They could then go through a real course, and afterwards come to the Director of Operations or the Director of Training under the First Sea Lord, and there get their positions on the Staff.
It is obvious that that could only be done if you had a Director of Training who had given his mind to the matter, but at present the unfortunate officer charged with training in the Navy can do nothing but make schemes. As I understand, the administration of education and training of the officer rests not with the First but with the. Second Sea Lord, who is
responsible for personnel. I have no doubt that

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with the admirable good sense which characterises people the Second Sea Lord consults the Director of Training before he does things, but he makes appointments and is responsible for the course of the training. That is absolutely wrong, and if you have it wrong on paper, it is certain that it will go wrong in practice. I have no doubt it is responsible for a good deal of the deficiency of training which characterises the great bulk of young officers.
That is training. Now T conic to operations, which is the other branch which ought to he under the First Sea Lord and be quite separate. It comprises intelligence, plans, and many things of that kind, but at present—I have not, of course, the accurate knowledge which the noble Lord has —so far as I can make out from. a study of the names in the Navy List, under the Director who is responsible for these things to the First Sea Lord, there is a whole basketful of fragments, collected together without any organic relation. There is trade route defence, local defence, and all sorts of things. Now, the defence of trade routes, and not only their defence but aggressive operations on trade routes, form perhaps the largest part of naval warfare in modern times. They are essentially a part of strategy. They are not things to be taken and isolated, or treated as fragments of operations with other fragments. But what can a Director do who is loaded up with all these things and, in addition, has to look after the vast subject of training?—because, if I am right, under the Director responsible for operations is placed the subject of training.
I would ask this question. Is it not the case that instead of having two Directors, one of operations and one of training; as I have suggested, the First Sea Lord has to-day a Deputy Chief of the Staff and an Assistant Chief of the Staff? The Deputy Chief of the Staff has all those things to which I have referred lumped together, and the Assistant Chief of the Staff has all sorts of curious subjects such as gunnery, torpedoes, and so On. Those either belong to training, or have no business to be there at all. Of course, it is the necessity of the War Stall that it should make plans for the use of weapons, and the patterns of those weapons, but the work is limited so far as it trains officers who direct the using of them, and all these subjects are put together without any reference to strategy or training. Then what happens is that the
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unfortunate officer responsible for them noleus voleus collies in for a certain amount of administration, and that is how confusion arises.
It does not end there. Looking at the Navy List, apparently the Deputy Chief of Staff and the Assistant Chief of Staff sit together with the First Sea Lord on the Board of Admiralty—a most extraordinary and an astounding thing. You want to make somebody responsible. You want him to work out and direct, and you put his two assistants to sit along with him. It is a most curious arrangement, even if it existed on paper only, and I have no doubt the relations are most amicable, but it is a state of things which can give rise only to confusion. Unless you have the principles, and the expression of those principles, right, you are sure to get into trouble. But it does not even end there. "Operations" is the general name for all the work for which the First Sea Lord ought to be responsible. Of course, the First Lord himself is responsible to Parliament. His great function is to get it all together and see that everybody does his duty, but something much more than that happens here. The First Lord, the Deputy Chief of the Staff, and the Assistant Chief of the Staff, as I am informed—possibly incorrectly, but it is rumoured—sit on another body called the Operations Committee, over which the First Lord himself presides, and which may be extended, when there is important business, by the introgression not only of the other Sea Lords, who have nothing to do with operations, but even civilian elements, such as the Secretary of the Admiralty. If that is so there is nothing more calculated to kill the spirit of the War Staff, and to prevent it from obtaining that stature without which you cannot have a really efficient War Staff.
I am not reproaching the noble Lord opposite for this. He has inherited it; it is a tradition grown up from the day when they did not distinguish functions and apportion responsibility; when strategy and tactics were not distinguished from administration, and when all these things grew up sporadically. I am not referring in this Motion to anything connected with the other branches of the Admiralty. I will only say this, that the introgression of the civilian to which I have referred is a thing which has always caused me -a good deal of concern. I have had much to do with generals, and I found that when you told them they had just so much money to

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spend and it was their responsibility for making the most of it, they were the best economists. 'You got most for your money if you trusted the soldiers; and I believe you get most for your money if you trust the sailors. They will put things in order of Urgency much better than anybody else can. But I also found that it was most important, in order to get that done, that you should give them their own financial advisers. I never succeeded in carrying this out perfectly: the weight of tradition was adverse to it. If the noble Lord finds it difficult I shall deeply sympathise with him. But I went as far as I could, and I suggest to the noble Lord that the administration Lords—the Second, Third and Fourth—ought to have on their own staffs their own financial advisers, adequately trained, whose functions it would be to translate into sovereigns, or Treasury notes as we should say to-day, the meaning of whatever proposition is brought up.
Let the officer responsible know at the earliest moment what his ideas are going to mean in money. That he will get only if he has his own people and his own staff to which to go. If you send him to the Finance Branch outside, or the Secretary of the Admiralty, it is certain that he will not go, and the result is that you will get confused estimates and overlapping and extravagance. At least that was my experience, arid it may be that the noble Lord opposite has had enough experience already to show him that something of the kind tends to exist whenever the like conditions prevail. Trust the soldiers and sailors; they are the best economists; tell them exactly what you want from them, but do not intermeddle more than you can with their means of attaining the object to which they are working up. So will you best get economy as well as efficiency And, of course, that applies to the whole system of costing. Now-a-days, since the war, we are getting quite new notions about costing, and I gather that these have -been taken into account in the Admiralty as well as elsewhere. But you want a thorough finance system which will show what everything means in money at every turn.
All these subjects constitute parts of an organic whole. Even designs of ships depend profoundly upon strategy. You cannot take them in isolation. And therefore it is quite wrong when there is an agitation and people say, "Oh, the United States, or somebody, is building ships
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faster than we are; we must build more and faster." If you do that, you find that you have built upon the wrong design ships that are obsolescent almost from the very beginning, and that you have wasted a vast. amount of money. The very function of a War Staff is to tell you what you are going to do, how you are to lay out your money, and what not to do, just as much as what to do. It is by that method and taking the full advantage of such a Staff that you get the best results and reduce your misfits to the smallest proportion. Mistakes you will make, even in the best regulated Admiralty, but you will make many fewer mistakes if the designs of the ships, the weapons you are going to use, have been first carefully tested in the light of the principles of war, which have been the subject of continuous study.
That brings me very nearly to a conclusion. I want to add this. I have seen what seem to me to be wild proposals lately for one Joint or General War Staff for the Army and Navy, to take the place of the Defence Committee. I think that would be a profound mistake. Each Service has its own traditions, its own objective, and its own work. The Navy has its own problems, problems so difficult —I am talking mainly of strategical problems just now—that they never can be mastered unless a very long period is given to their study. It is only by taking promising officers, training them very highly in an adequate Staff College, and then setting them to work, that you can pick out the men you want, and that you can get the kind of knowledge that can be made to circulate through the entire Navy, It is the same with the Army. And the functions of the Army and the Navy, although they conic together in amphibious war, are functions which they had much better study as two independent Staffs, but in constant consultation, bringing together and co-ordinating their views under the, Defence Committee, a body which, I think, will never become obsolete.
Our national strategy is a very simple one. It is a great thing to have first principles quite simple. Command of the sea is a necessity for this nation until there comes that better state of things in which all Armies and Navies are no longer necessary. But, so long as any Navy is necessary, command of the sea is more important to us than to anybody else. The other thing that is necessary is an. Expeditionary

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Force, which can be transported by the Navy. As rapidity in mobilisation and concentration is of its very essence, as it must be always ready, it must, I think, of necessity be professional, and therefore voluntary. It is not always realised how much this Empire owes, in material prosperity and expansion, to the fact that we always have had a Navy which could command the sea and a professional Army. If you have got a conscript Army, well, you raise it for the defence of the country or for a great war under a great agitation, but you cannot send an expedition straight off. And if your Lordships choose to turn up the history books and look at the parts painted red on the map of the world, you will find how much has been due to the prompt efficiency of the Navy in being able to transport what was, perhaps, apparently a small but a sufficient force for the purpose to the vacant territory. I am not saying it is a good thing. There may be an argument from the point of view of eternity against this weapon, but it is the most effective weapon this country can possess; and therefore, as the noble Lord is concerned with naval and military rather than ethical considerations, I commend it to him as a principle which we must always keep in view.
And if we do keep it in view, then it has a very important bearing on a problem which must presently conic before him. There is going to be a Dominion Conference, which will soon be formed into an Imperial Cabinet. At that possibly—I do not know —naval considerations will come up; they may come up very prominently. I remember what the experience was in the year 1909 at the then Dominion Conference in which I took part. The Dominions arc now, as Mr. Bonar Law has said, a group of self-governing Commonwealths; they will not part either with the command of troops or of ships. That came even more plainly home to us at the War Office than it could come home to the Navy in those days, and we saw a way of solving the problem, which was to take the new General Staff and make it Imperial. And we did make it Imperial.
We said to the Dominion Premiers, "Here is a school of thought, consisting of picked and highly trained officers. Would you like to have some of them? If so, take them, and give us some of yours in exchange, and we will train them, and send them back to you. And our purpose,
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that of your officers and ours, shall be to elaborate in co-operation a scheme of Imperial defence which shall apply all over I the Empire, but which shall not involve the least interference with the complete power of every Dominion to do what it likes with its own. Turn out our Imperial Staff afterwards if you like from your territory; only then you will find yourselves cut off from the Imperial General Staff. If you want them, let them advise you on types of weapons and all sorts of things, and consider their advice, whether it is good or is not good, and see what your own people say about it." That went with the utmost smoothness and it led to the various Dominions of the Empire organising with the same types of weapons, of military formations and divisions, and so on.
I have often thought what a solution of naval problems it would be if you could have a Naval Imperial War Staff with highly trained men—you would require for that a really first-rate Naval Staff College to which your remaining officers might go and take the training—so that you had one body for the whole Empire, all thinking alike on the same principles, trained in the same school, breathing the same air, with the same traditions, and shaping that unity of the Navy of the Empire which comes from the spirit not from the letter, and which is far greater than any friction which can be opposed to it from the smaller jealousies that obtain between independent sections.
I am not one of those who take at all a gloomy view of the future of the British Empire or the British nation, if we only work on proper principles. If we did that our naval and military power would be, and would remain, enormous. The Empire is growing, and if we can only keep this cohesion of ideas not merely in military and naval matters but in other matters, we shall become such a power in the world as the world has never seen before. I am not arguing whether that is a good or a bad thing. I am only saying that it is on community of ideas, well thought out and organised ideas, that unity and strength depend. I think, perhaps, the best illustration of that is the subject that we have been discussing this afternoon. In this quiet period we have to sit down and think. It may be that we shall never have another war, but we cannot reckon on it. We ought to be thinking—the problem being a specialist one for thoroughly-trained minds

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—what possible enemies we may have, what ought to be our objectives in dealing with trade routes, or whatever else these objectives may be, what co-operation of Armies and Navies will be wanted for them, and what weapons and types of ship will be required. When the first three of these questions are answered, the last question —what our shipbuilding programme should be—becomes a much simpler one, and one with which we can deal not only effectually but economically. It may be we shall find we can postpone certain things until the position becomes clearer. But I am sure it is only in that way that we can secure avoidance of waste and so economise.
I would far rather spend money upon a real Naval Staff College than have another battle cruiser. We should gain much more in strength, as well as in prospective efficiency, and I only hope that the noble Lord, in what. I trust, will prove to be a long career at the head of the Admiralty, will be able to initiate that as one of his great reforms. If so, I think he will have distinguished himself. I hope, further, that he will obtain a new Order in Council and new paper documents which will put the organisation of the Navy I do not say just in the form I have suggested to him, because I may be very far wrong in detail, but in sonic new form more up to modern requirements than can be one in which civilian functions are so closely mixed up as they appear to me to be at the present time. It is with the desire of getting further information upon a subject which interests me very deeply but which I feel I am not sure of for want of the material, that I now move for Papers.
LORD SYDENHAM: My Lords, the Army General Staff, to which the noble and learned Viscount has referred, was the direct result of the South African War. The exhaustive inquiry which was held after that war showed that the Staff arrangements were in many respects almost chaotic, and traced the causes of some of our failures to that situation. Then it was that Mr. Balfour determined that the War Office must be reconstructed, and in 1904 the first foundations of a real General Staff were laid. The noble and learned Viscount took charge of this infant institution in 1906 and gave the greatest possible attention, care, and assistance to it. It must be a great satisfaction to him now to have seen during the recent war the result of his care and attention.
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Ten years is not a long time in which to build up a General Staff, but before August, 1914, it had been possible so to organise and prepare the Expeditionary Force that it was able to go out to France in an extraordinarily short time. That may fairly be called a triumph of good staff work. I think it can truly he said that the reconstruction of the War Office in 1901 bore good fruit throughout the late war, and I know that the military authorities of America and of Italy were both impressed by the smooth working of our Staff arrangements in the field. But in the. earlier stage of the war there was a certain set-back to the General Staff at the War Office. Officers were taken away who were very much wanted in London, and there arose a tendency to trust over much to improvisation, which led to insufficient use being made of the General Staff. It became necessary for Mr. Asquith to restore the General Staff at the War Office to its proper position, and after that, under that most distinguished officer, Sir William Robertson, it did extraordinarily good work in raising, organising, and training the large forces that we were subsequently able to put into the field.
Before the war, the Navy had no real, properly constituted General Staff at the Admiralty and, as the noble and learned Viscount has said, the time and attention of the First Sea Lord, who should have been its natural chief, were often taken up with, and absorbed in, matters which ought never to have come near him. The result was a certain loss of power in the early stages of the war, although we commenced with the very finest Navy that the country ever had. I know of no war in which the Navy more brilliantly distinguished itself than it did in the great war which is just over. But there had been a certain over-concentration upon?matériel and insufficient study of the higher branches of the art, or, as the noble and learned Viscount calls it, the science of war, and among the serious consequences of those deficiencies I trace distinctly the escape of the Goeben and Breslau. which led to grave results affecting the whole course of the war. I also believe that the loss of the Crecys, with the sad tale of gallant lives sacrificed, was due to the same cause. I feel quite sure that the purely naval attack on the forts of Gallipoli would never have been undertaken if there had been a trained Naval General Staff, with the innumerable instances of the failure of operations of that kind

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before it. I believe also that if there had been a competent Naval General Staff in existence the very misleading account of the Battle of Jutland would never have been issued. Few of us, I imagine, will ever forget the feelings with which we read that unfortunate account.
I am very glad to know that one result of the great war is that there is to be at least the foundation of a real General Staff at the Admiralty. I think the noble Lord, when he replies, will be able to show that the situation is not quite so bad as the noble and learned Viscount has suggested. I am sure that he realises that the great thing is a perfectly clear definition of duties, and then to keep everybody to those duties, but I hope he will remember that it must take some years, perhaps many years, to build up the kind of structure which is essential to the maintenance of our sea power, and to its effective handling in war. Habits of thought, traditions, and methods are not easily formed, and they are of the essence of a good working General Staff. I hope there will never be such a reaction at the Admiralty as occurred for a short time at the War Office. Naval war, as the noble and learned Viscount has justly said, is much more complex than it was in the past, and our national security absolutely demands a highly trained body continuously studying all its problems, and also educating officers in the higher branches of that most exacting Service of the sea.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWE: My Lords, I merely desire to supplement shortly what has been said by the noble and learned Viscount, and by the noble Lord on the cross benches, both of whom are so fully qualified to discuss this Question. I am sure it will be a satisfaction to everybody, not least to the noble Lord, the First Lord of the Admiralty, that the Question has been raised by my noble and learned friend. We do not have many naval debates in this House. There have not been many in the past, owing partly, no doubt, to the fact that there were far fewer naval officers than military officers in your Lordships' number, and it is not always that we have been favoured with a direct representative of the Admiralty. It was not until the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, represented the Admiralty here that we could be ensured of a direct Admiralty reply. Now we have the noble Lord, the First Lord, giving up ploughing
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the land and taking to ploughing the seas, and we can be sure of a reply of the highest possible authority.
My noble and learned friend said that this, in a sense, is a new question, and so it is, but for a good many years past there has been a groping and seeking after the institution of a body that would be in fact a War Staff —although it was not at the time technically so named—which would bring about that division of functions to which my noble and learned friend attaches supreme importance. Thirty years ago what was known as the Hartington Commission sat to inquire into the state of the Navy, following the Naval Defence Act, of, I think, 1889, passed under Lord George Hamilton's administration, by which such a large increase of the Navy was secured. Lord Randolph Churchill, who was a member of that Commission, in a separate Report which he made, stated that there was evidence that no conceived plan for defence of the Empire in any given contingency had ever been worked out or decided as between the Departments.
I think it was Sir Geoffrey Hornby who, about the same time, said very much what has been said by my noble and learned friend to-night, that if it were possible successfully to institute what was then called an Intelligence Branch—which is practically the same thing as a War Staff; that is to say, it was to be concerned with operations and strategy and war plans—it would mean more to the Navy than even the great addition to the Fleet which had just been consummated by the Naval Defence Act of 1889. It is also, I think, right to mention that nobody was more active in pressing for such a reform than the noble Lord whose loss to the House we all greatly regret, Lord Beresford. At that time, as Lord Charles Beresford, he did sometimes run his head against constituted authority, but there is no doubt that he brought to bear a freshness of inspiration and an energy of intention which were of the highest value at a time when interest in naval affairs was undoubtedly somewhat dormant.
Then came what has been alluded to by my noble and learned friend, the institution of the Imperial Defence Committee. Those of us who, like myself, had the honour of sitting for many years on that body, realise what an important part it has played. Mr. Balfour's name

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will be remembered, I am sure, for many things, but for nothing inure deservedly than for the institution of the Committee of Imperial Defence. We all know also how much that institution owes to the fostering care in turn of the noble Lord, Lord Sydenham, Sir Charles Ottley, and Sir Maurice Hankey. I desire to express:Inv strongest concurrence with what fell from my noble and learned friend—namely, the hope that, whatever happens, the Imperial Defence Committee will continue to exist and to be an active part of our system of Government. I am certain, like my noble and learned friend, that it could not be profitably replaced by any junction of the Naval, Military and Air Departments under a single head, and with a combined Staff. Those who know how much the work previously done by the Defence Committee contributed to winning the war will, I am certain, not be disposed to hold a different opinion.
My noble and learned friend said that this time of peace—a time of peace in the midst of disturbance, as one is obliged to admit— is an appropriate moment for considering this question of the reorganisation of the Naval Staff. I entirely agree with him, and, if one comes to think of it, it is a singular fact that for the first time within the memory of any of us here we are without a potential enemy by sea or land. Those of us who are no longer young carry back our recollection over the different potential enemies that we have had. At one time it was Russia. For a number of years it was thought there might be war with Russia. At another time, and for a considerable period, although it now seems unbelievable, it was France. There was a time when the United States was very mach a potential enemy, although, happily, not for long. And then Germany, with the building of her great fleet and the inception of her policy of world dominion in place of the old Prussian conception of the dominion of the Continent of Europe, became not merely a potential but a probable enemy; and we know how that ended.
Now we have, and it is a happy reflection, no potential enemy to consider. That does not relieve the country, or the Government, from the most careful and sober consideration of the needs of imperial defence. We all hope, when the present fever of the world gives place to a lower temperature, that the possibility of a
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general, if gradual, disarmament may be brought into view. But in the meantime I entirely agree with my noble friend that it is impossible to ignore the situation as it exists, and, while pressing forward the need for national economy and the avoidance of anything like a forward policy in foreign or colonial affairs which could lead, of itself, to a large expenditure upon armaments, it is clear that none of the three Services can be starved. There is all the more need, therefore, for a joint consideration by the different Departments of a system not merely of national, but of Imperial defence. If the hope—I think it was more than 'a dream—to which Lord Haldane alluded of the establishment of an Imperial Naval Staff could be realised, it would be an advantage from every point of view, Imperial an I economical, and would also prove to be one addition to the power, which this country would always desire to preserve, of acting in the interest of the peace of the world.
THE FIRST LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY (LORD LEE OF FAREHAM): My Lords, it is not often that a Minister has to thank his critics for bringing forward a debate in which the administration of his Department is brought into public review and its composition rigorously analysed, but I feel Under considerable obligation to noble Lords who have spoken on this subject, and particularly to Lord Haldane who, I know, has given a life-long study to this question and made it peculiarly his own. I hope I can be fairly impartial in my reply for the very reason he gave—namely, that I have not been long enough in my present position to be really responsible for the system that has grown up, or unduly wedded to it by long use and association. He very handsomely acquitted me of being jons el origo—I am afraid to add mali; I trust it is not:;o bad as that.
I hope I may be able to reassure Lord Sydenham that the system is not perhaps quite so bad in some respects as has been feared by Lord Haldane. The noble and learned Viscount commenced with a very interesting historical retrospect of the creation of the Staff idea in the Military and Naval Forces of this country, and he took, quite justly, a sort of parental pride in the growth of the General Staff idea at the War Office, which coincided largely with his own administration. He naturally held it up, I will not say as a perfect model, but at any rate as an Unproved design

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which the Admiralty ought to follow more closely than they perhaps have done in the past. At the same time he and Lord Crewe disclaimed any idea of advocating a sort of coalition of the. Military and Naval Staffs, and there I am, I need hardly say, in entire agreement. If you try to combine the two you get something which is neither "fish, fowl, nor good red herring"; and you would really destroy the incentive to a full development along individual lines, which is essential if you are going to produce the best results.
That, however, does not preclude, but rather enhances, the importance of there being the closest and most constant cooperation between the Naval and Military Staffs. Their problem is the same in this respect—that it is to carry out the defence of their common Empire. There are many things that can be done short of a coalition Staff—I use the jargon of the day. Amongst other things there are the arrangements to which Lord Haldane alluded, of Staff Colleges in close proximity, sending military officers to Naval Staff Colleges for special courses, and naval officers to Military Staff Colleges for special courses; in fact, everything which would bring the two Services in sympathy with regard to joint operations in future war. That necessity is very present to the mind not only of the Admiralty but of the War. Office, and every effort is being made in the direction of bringing the two Staffs into the closest contact, without in any way tampering with their special identity, and by an exchange of officers to bring about as much common thought as is possible upon the common problem of defence.
I should like to thank Lord Haldane for the tribute he paid to the work of the Navy during the war. It is, of course, freely admitted that many defects in our organisation, in our Staff system, in our thinking out of problems, not only before but at the time, were revealed; but I am sure he will not suppose for a moment that continuous effort has not since been made to remedy those defects. They are under the constant and anxious consideration of the Naval Staff at the Admiralty, and already I venture to think that improvements have been effected which will save us in future wars from many mistakes which we made in the course of the late war. In particular, the reform which he presses—that is, the separation of the strategic from the administrative side—
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has been already effected almost to as full an extent, I think, as is possible in present conditions. He urged that the First Sea Lord should be kept free from the hampering of administration, that he should be able to devote his whole time and thought to problems of strategy, historical study, and so forth, and that he should not be diverted by the ordinary administrative work of the office.
So far as is practicable, I think that has already been effected. It is not practicable to do it altogether. You cannot keep the First Sea Lord living, so to speak, in a sort of vacuum, doing nothing but think out strategic problems. He is first, after all, the head of the sea Service. He represents the fighting Navy on the Board of Admiralty, and it is essential that he should be called into counsel, and should advise, on all matters affecting the welfare of the great Service which he represents. But if that limitation is recognised, the list of his duties which I will very briefly give shows, I think, that what the noble Viscount wishes has been duly effected in the distribution of the work.
The duties assigned by the First Lord of the Admiralty to the First Sea Lord are thus defined:—All large questions of naval policy and maritime warfare; the organisation, distribution and fighting and seagoing efficiency of the Fleet; advice as to, and general direction of, operations of war: internal organisation and general direction of the Naval Staff; and cooperation of the Naval Staff with the matériel side of the Admiralty. It is impossible to keep the two things in watertight compartments altogether. Those are the principal functions with which he is concerned, except in so far as he is the head of the sea Service and a member of the Board of Admiralty, and, therefore, has to come into consultation on all large questions of policy.
Before I pass from the First Sea Lord himself I should like to take this opportunity of expressing my heartiest agreement with the tribute which Lord Haldane paid to a very distinguished First Sea Lord at the beginning of the war—Lord Milford Haven, who was then Prince Louis of Battenberg. I agree with him that the Navy and the Admiralty owe to his guidance and his wide and exceptional experience in all these matters, a debt which it would be difficult to exaggerate, and I know no more unnecessary tragedy than his withdrawal

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from the counsels of the Admiralty at an early stage of the war, owing, as I think, to a totally unnecessary and ridiculous prejudice. At ally rate, his name is honoured and revered thoughout the Navy, and will always stand out as one to which the Admiralty and the Naval Service of this country owe a particular debt.
Lord Haldane then proceeded to criticise or deplore the absence of adequate Staff College arrangements. I agree that the Naval Staff College is not at present as developed either in size or in its location or, possibly, in the length of its course, as we should wish, and. I hope that before long, and as opportunity offers, the matter will be put right. But I think it would be going altogether too far to suggest to your Lordships that there is not in existence at the present time a Naval Staff College on the right lines. I may be mistaken, but there seems to me to be some confusion in the noble Viscount's mind between the Staff College at Greenwich and the War College.
VISCOUNT HALDANE: Oh, no.
LORD LEE OF FAREHAM: Then I misunderstood my noble friend's remarks. He spoke particularly of senior officers. The Staff College is quite a separate thing from the War College course which is attended by senior officers. The Staff College is an institution which happens also to be at Greenwich at. present—largely for financial reasons—and which provides a course for young officers, the limits of age being, I think, almost precisely those which obtain in the Army—namely, 25 to 34. Officers who have shown promise are selected for this course and go through it in much the same way in which Army officers go through the course at Camberley.
VISCOUNT HALDANE: How long is the course?
LORD LEE OF FAREHAM: At present it is only a year, as compared with two years at Camberley. I admit that it would be desirable, if possible, that the length of that course should be extended. The reason for the length of course adopted is that the need of the trained staff officer is so great that at the institution of this system of college training it is essential that we should get men passed through in as large numbers and as rapidly as possible, in order to have a sufficient nucleus in case
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of emergency— as large a pool, so to speak as possible. I hope it may be possible to lengthen the course, and also to move the Staff College to Camberley in close proximity to the Army Staff College, so that there may be an even closer liaison between the two trainings than there is at the present time. But this is an age of economy, and for the moment the very heavy expenditure that would be incurred in building and equipping a new Staff College at Camberley has compelled the scheme to be deferred. But I can assure your Lordships it is only deferred, and it will be proceeded with at the earliest possible opportunity.
Then Lord Haldane, as I understand him, to a certain extent falls foul of the method under which we take our young officers and train them, first of all, until recently, at Osborne, which now, as he knows, is given up, and at Dartmouth. He seemed to infer that they did not receive as good a general education, and as widening an education, as they would receive in the public schools outside, and that it would be better if we took more of our young officers from the public schools, and at a later age. I imagine that Lord Haldane is aware, as many of your Lordships must be aware, that that system is already running parallel with the Dartmouth system; that we already take a number of the best boys from the public schools every year, at the age of eighteen, and bring them straight into the Navy. After considerable experience, and comparing that material with the material which comes through Dartmouth, and which is taken at an earlier age, I will not go so far as to say that it is superior—I do not think it can be said that it is superior—but it is excellent material and an excellent amalgam for the young officers' corps.
VISCOUNT HALDANE: Can the noble Lord tell us something about the numbers and the proportions?
LORD LEE OF FAREHAM: I may be able to tell the noble Lord a little later, but I cannot give him the figures on the spur of the moment. The value of that source of young officers is very keenly recognised in the Navy. A special investigation was made, as a result of the war, as to the records of the young officers who came from the different sources, and I say that, on the whole, the public school

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officer stood well in comparison with, although I am not prepared to admit that he was in any way superior to, the officer coming from Dartmouth. I am able to inform the noble Viscount that the proportions are forty a term from Dartmouth and fifteen from the public schools. Those are proportions which may be varied as experience shows it to be desirable.
Moreover, so convinced have we been of the importance of continuing the education of young officers on somewhat broader lines than is possible on board ship, that, as I think the noble Viscount knows, for Mlle time we have been giving opportunities to a number of young sub-lieutenants to proceed to Cambridge University and there go through practically the life of an undergraduate. That has undoubtedly been of enormous advantage to the young officer himself in broadening his general outlook on life, and, we are convinced, it will be of enormous value to the future of the Navy. That development we would wish to continue and, if possible, to expand. Therefore, I think I may claim that the Admiralty are not showing any obscurantism in the matter of the education of the young officer, and that every effort is made at all stages to give him the best and most up-to-date training. When I come to this question of training I am unable to follow the noble Viscount in his criticisms, because he seemed to suggest that training, while nominally under the Naval Staff, was practically under the Second Sea Lord.
VISCOUNT HALDANE: What I really meant was that training was so great a subject that it really needed a Director of its own, and that at present training and staff duties are lumped with operations under the Deputy Chief of Staff, instead of being under a separate Director.
LORD LEE OF FAREHAM: There I think the noble Viscount is under a misapprehension. The training is under a Director of Training and Staff Duties.
VISCOUNT HALDANE: But he is under the control of the Deputy Chief of Staff.
LORD LEE OF FAREHAM: Some one must co-ordinate the different branches.
VISCOUNT HALDANE: But the Director of Training is a very important person. At the War Office the D.M.T. is now amal-
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gamated with the Director of Staff Duties. The two subjects together are so important that they have a special Director, on the same level as the Director of Operations. I want to see the importance of training recognised by being put under a Director on the same level as the Director of Operations.
LORD LEE OF FAREHAM: Which is precisely the position at the Admiralty. The Director of Training is exactly on an equality with those of other branches co-ordinated by the Deputy Chief of Staff, who is a Vice-Admiral. The noble Viscount may not approve of that system, but it is comparable with the system at the War Office, where both officers are under a member of the Army Council.
VISCOUNT HALDANE: Under the Chief of General Staff.
LORD LEE OF FAREHAM: But there is a Deputy Chief of Staff at the War Office, and his position is exactly analogous to that of the Deputy Chief of Staff at the Admiralty.
VISCOUNT HALDANE: It was not so in my time.
LORD LEE OF FAREHAM: Many things have happened since then, among others, the war, and as a result of the experiences of the war it was found absolutely essential that the Chief of Staff should have a deputy, who would set him free for some of this high thinking to which the noble Viscount attaches so much importance. Let me assure the noble Viscount that they are treated at the Admiralty as two great, separate subjects, each with a Director, in exactly the same relative positions as the corresponding Directors at the War Office, and the activities of these Directors are co-ordinated by the Deputy Chief of General Staff, who is a member of the Board of Admiralty, and who is relieving the Chief of Staff of some of his responsibility, though always responsible to him. To that extent I think that the system which the noble Viscount desires is really being carried out at the present time. I do not say that it is not capable of some improvement. We shall digest the observations coming from the wide experience of the noble Viscount, and if we find any means of making improvements we shall not proceed with closed minds.

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Then, as I understood, the noble Viscount somewhat ridiculed the system of responsibility for operations which exists at the Admiralty at the present time, but I should like to explain that because it is a matter Of some considerable importance. He particularly, I thought, cast ridicule upon what was called the. Operations Committee, which was set up some time ago, during the war, and which consisted then of the First Lord, the First Sea Lord, the Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff and the Assistant Chief of the Naval Staff. I was not responsible, of course, for the creation of that Committee, but I understand that the reason for the creation of it was that the First Lord, after all, must be officially responsible for all things that are done by the Board of Admiralty, even for operations in the last resort. It was therefore thought desirable that when necessary the more important operations should be brought within his purview, and that it should be done in a. body which was small enough, and at the same time responsible enough, to give him all the advice and explanation that was necessary.
In the last resort a question of that kind might be big enough to be considered by the whole Board of Admiralty, which, I must remind the noble Viscount, holds a rather more historical and corporate position than the Army Council, and which has always acted more as a unit, to which the whole of the Fleet and the Naval Service looks for authority and guidance. But in practice, in almost every case, the decision with regard to operations is the real responsibility (delegated, it is true, by the First Lord) of the First Sea Lord, the Chief of the Naval Staff. And his responsibility is carried very far. This is the position. Under the Order in Council the First Sea Lord, as Chief of the Naval Staff, is responsible to the First Lord for the issue of orders to the Fleet affecting war operations and the movements of ships, which orders may be issued in his own name in his capacity as Chief of the Naval Staff. He, in effect, is the member of the Board who is solely responsible for the operations. The ultimate chain of responsibility to Parliament and. to the nation must, of course, be maintained through the Board and. the First Lord, and to that extent the question of operations may come before the consideration either of the smaller Operations Committee or even of the full Board itself.
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So far, I am informed, there never has been the slightest difficulty arising from this system, and I see no reason for questioning the soundness of the principle which was laid down when it was adopted. It clearly leaves the direction of operations with the First Sea Lord as Chief of the Naval Staff, whilst at the same time retaining general Ministerial responsibility, which is inseparable from the position of the First Lord and of the Board of Admiralty. I have dealt with that at some length, because it seems to be perhaps the most serious criticism the noble Viscount made.
The rest of his criticism appeared to be directed against what he called dividing the work of the Naval Staff into fragments, or odds and ends I think he said, and putting them into one basket. Really, I cannot quite follow his objections, because the eight divisions into which the Naval Staff is divided—and in regard to which I will give full details, if he wishes, in the Papers, but with which I will not weary your Lordships by detailing them now—all deal with branches of Naval Staff work which are, so far as practicable, separate. Of course, they must be harmonised and co-ordinated by someone. One group is co-ordinated by the Deputy-Chief of the Naval Staff, who is a Vice-Admiral; the other group deals with the more material side of questions—that is, strategy as applied to design as distinct from the mere material side of the Controller's Department—and that is coordinated by the Assistant Chief of the Naval Staff; those two officers, who are members of the Board, being in turn coordinated and responsible to the First Sea Lord, who is the Chief of the Naval Staff and responsible for the whole. With regard to that I venture to say that there is a perfectly coherent and normal chain of responsibility, leading up to the First Sea Lord, and I am unable to see how any other system could be workable.
But there is one improvement suggested by the noble Viscount, which I must say commends itself very much to me, and has done so for some time. That is that all these technical advisers should have associated with them some financial advisers dealing with their particular problems. I agree with that in principle; the extent to which it is practicable depends, of course, a good deal upon Treasury con

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siderations. But the value of it, I think, was shown very much in some of the War Ministries, notably the Ministry of Transport, where one of the most distinguished financial authorities in the country, Sir Hardman Lever, was associated as a financial adviser, dealing only with the affairs of the Ministry, and with enormous benefit, I think, to the Exchequer and to the officials concerned. We all know that the expert in any branch, concentrated, in his enthusiasm, on the perfection of his weapon, may be adding only an inch here or an inch there, and at the same time adding tens of millions to the national expenditure, unless the financial consequences are brought home to him at the time by a special adviser.
VISCOUNT HALDA.NE: On his own staff
LORD LEE OF FAREHAM: On his own staff. To that extent I am in entire agreement with the noble Viscount in wishing to make that system more general. The last point with which he dealt was the importance of the Imperial Staff. Again, I am in complete agreement with him And we have made a beginning in that direction. We have already invited the Dominions to send their officers to our Naval Staff College, to take part in actual administrative work at the Admiralty, to become thoroughly acquainted with our whole system, administrative, educational, and Staff, in order to produce, so far as practicable, that community of ideas upon which, as he rightly says, possibly the very future existence of the Empire might depend. That matter will be more fully explored at the coming Imperial Conference, but it is undoubtedly a matter of the utmost importance and significance in the future, and one which engages the wholehearted approval of the Board of Admiralty.
I think I have answered, so far as is possible in the time, the general criticisms of the noble Viscount, and of the other noble Lords who have spoken. With regard to the actual Questions on the Paper, if the noble Viscount wishes I will circulate a Paper giving the detailed information for which he asks. I think it would be more convenient, possibly, to do it in that form, rather than that I should now proceed to read a somewhat long statement giving the exact duties of the various officers concerned.
VISCOUNT HALDANE: After the very full and frank response of the noble Lord, I should not think of pressing the Motion for Papers, but if he will do what he says and let us have a Paper showing, with a conspectus, the organisation as it is at the present time, it will be of great assistance and will, I think., relieve a good deal of anxiety.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

THE ARMYIN INDIA.
LORD SYDENHAM: My Lords, I desire to ask the Under-Secretary of State for India the Question which stands in my name on the Paper—namely, whether he can state the extent of, and the reasons for, the intended reductions in the Indian Army —and to move for Papers. The reduction of the Indian Army at this juncture raises what are really great Imperial questions and, I think, needs more justification than it has yet received from anybody. Decisions which may have the most serious consequences seem to have been taken without the previous knowledge of Parliament, and I am quite certain that very few people in this country realise how serious is the step that is contemplated. Before the great Mutiny, the Indian Army consisted of 311,500 native and 39,500 British troops. That Army rendered great services overseas in Ceylon, Amboyna, Egypt, Macao, Bourbon, Rodriguez, Java, Persia, Afghanistan, Burma and China. That was a great record, which is too often forgotten in these days.
After the disbandment of the revolted Bengal Army and the assumption of authority in India by the Crown, the Army was drastically reduced. It was reduced again about 1881 in consequence of the Report of the Eden Committee. But, following the Penjdeh scare in 1885, it was again greatly increased, regiments which had been broken up a few years previously were reconstituted, and a fourth squadron was added to the Cavalry regiments. In my humble opinion, the Russian menace to India was always an illusion, but it became a sort of obession of the great forward school in India and it has for years powerfully influenced the whole of our policy throughout Asia. The menace of the Bolshevik autocracy to-day has assumed a far greater danger than anything that arose from the Russia of the Czars, and I cannot understand how

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anyone can believe that the situation is not more threatening to-day than it was in 1885 when we added largely to the Army. Since 1885 there have been further additions to the Army, more especially to the mountain artillery, and the fixed proportion of one to two and a-half has been established between the British and Native elements of that Army. That decision was arrived at after long and most careful consideration.
Briefly, that is how the Indian Army stood at the outbreak of war, when, of course, an immense increase became immediately necessary. About a million Indians served overseas, and some 60,000 of them were killed. I need not repeat what has been so often said in this House—how much the Empire owes to the gallant fighting classes of India which gave their lives freely in almost every theatre of war. The disbandment of the new levies was inevitable, but the reduction of the prewar Indian Army is quite a different matter. We have been told that eighteen fine Cavalry regiments are to be abolished. As I said the other day, the Cavalry is the flower of the whole Indian Army. It is drawn from the pick of the yeoman classes of India, of which it is the hereditary profession. I am well aware of the opinion which has arisen after the campaign in France that Cavalry has depreciated greatly in importance. I believe that theory to be quite as baseless as some of those which were drawn from the exceptional circumstances and conditions of the Boer War.
The noble Earl will probably say that aircraft, tanks, and armoured cars justify this very sweeping reduction of the Cavalry. Against that view stands the opinion of Field Marshal Lord Allenby, who states that these new elements add to the importance of Cavalry. He says:
"The battle value of Cavalry increases with the breadth of vision bestowed by aircraft. The Air Service by enlarging the horizon renders possible such bold strokes by masses of horsemen as were seen in Mesopotamia, Palestine and Syria."
Then he goes on to say that tanks and armoured cars can also afford great assistance to cavalry.
No one can attach more importance to aircraft than I do, but it must be clear that against insurrectionary movements they are far inferior to the use of mounted men.
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The use of aircraft has been so much restricted in India that they would be almost impotent to deal with great disturbances. In any case the aviators cannot seize and hold a position, nor can they relieve a hard-pressed garrison. In place of breaking up those eighteen splendid Cavalry regiments, would it not have been wiser to have restricted the cadres of the whole of the other Cavalry regiments to three squadrons, which could have been expanded when war made it necessary? I do not know what reduction of Infantry is proposed, or whether it is intended to retain the proportions as between British and Indian troops which for many years was regarded as inviolable. I am quite certain that the noble Earl will make all these matters and the intentions of the Government of India and the India Office perfectly clear when he replies to me.
The danger to the peace of India, internally and externally, was never so great as it is now. The Dobbs mission has been in Cabul for four months and apparently has accomplished nothing. That is a humiliating fact which must tell against our prestige throughout the whole of the East. It is admitted. It has been admitted in this House that the Afghans, while negotiating with our Mission, concluded a Treaty with the Bolsheviks.' Since then, according to the Manchester Guardian, a supplementary clause has been added to that Treaty providing for a subsidy of one million gold or silver roubles, and also the construction of a telegraph line from Kustk through Herat and Kandahar to Cabul, with any technical assistance which may be required. The object of that telegraph line is obvious. But it is also reported now that another Treaty has been made with the Nationalist Turks by the Afghans. So it seems that the Afghans are rapidly falling under the influence either of the Bolsheviks, or of Pan-Islam, or possibly of both.
Besides that, fighting is now constantly taking place on the frontier, as we read almost every day. With a hostile Afghanistan, or even an unfriendly Afghanistan, frontier warfare would be far more serious and more continuous than it was in the past. In 1897 we employed 120,000 troops on the frontier, though the Afghans at that time were quite friendly to us. In the spring of 1919 when the Afghans invaded India, we required over 200,000 troops on the frontier, or, with non-

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combatants, about 300,000 men, though only part of the tribes rose at that time. Is the Government sure that when the Army is reduced as proposed it will be able to deal with the much greater troubles that may at any time arise on the frontier and at the same time be sufficient to preserve order in India?
The internal situation, in my opinion, was never so menacing as it is to-day. I am most anxious not to seem to exaggerate the situation, but I must say that some of the reports we receive are really most fallacious. Latterly, I have seen it said that Mr. Gandhi is rapidly losing his influence with the educated classes and that his non-cooperation movement is breaking down. That may be true to some extent, but what is forgotten is that his appeal to the ignorant and fanatical masses has aroused a feeling of race hatred which may take years before it subsides, if, indeed, it ever does subside. He has followed Mrs. Besant's earlier efforts but with much greater effect, working upon the masses and upon the boys and students, to imbue them with dislike and contempt not only of the British Government, but of all British officials in India, and the strength of that appeal lies in its religious aspects. Mr. Ghandi and his myrmidons teach that British rule is satanic, that it is the duty of all religious Indians to get. rid of it. No one who has not lived in India can quite understand how dangerous such teaching is, especially when the teacher claims, and is conceded, supernatural powers and supernatural sanction.
The Moslem extremists are even more violent in their language than Mr. Gandhi himself, and the wildest falsehoods about our treatment of the holy places of Islam have been widely circulated amongst the fanatical classes in India. During the last month we have seen two shocking outbreaks of violence, one at Malegaon in the Bombay Presidency, and the other on the Bengal coalfield. The police were easily overpowered, and loss of life and destruction occurred because troops were not available in time to deal with these disturbances. Then the forces of Bolshevism are certainly being brought to bear upon parts of India at the present time. The objects of the Bolsheviks, of course, differ from those of Mr. Gandhi and his associates, but they reinforce each other, because they both agree in the determination to turn us out of India.
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The personal experience of a nonofficial Englishman and his young wife, who had just arrived in India, will show better than anything I could say what has been the effect of this continuous preaching of race hatred. This was written after a journey through the Punjab in March last—
" At the station we found ourselves in the midst of a crowd of the most menacing and hostile Indians I have ever seen. We appeared to be the only two Europeans anywhere near, and we at once received the attention of the whole crowd. They collected round our carriage, jeered at my wife—who, as you know, only arrived in this country last week—and finally decided to enter our carriage. A policeman on duty—the only one visible—kept some of them back, whilst I myself was able to keep the door closed against the remainder. The train fortunately started, and I had hoped all was well, but at each successive station the crowd got down from their carriages and endeavoured to get on to our compartment, sometimes hem both sides, all the while shouting: Mahatma Gandhi ki Jai,' Hindu Mussalman ki Jai: The experience for my wife, who is only a girl of twenty, was most terrifying, and for myself was one of the most trying experiences I have ever had. The crowd was practically in possession of the train. None had a ticket, and they all entered whichever compartment they pleased, only being kept out of mine by force. Fortunately, though prepared for it, I was not obliged to shoot, but it was a near thing. as had they succeeded in getting into our carriage I would have done so to protect my wife."
That was a crowd which had just been attending one of Mr. Gandhi's great demonstrations, and as so often happens in India now, it took possession of the train, and travelled without taking any tickets.
But that is not an isolated instance. I could give several more of the same kind. It shows clearly to what a pass things have come owing to the free preaching of race hatred against us. It seems to me that it will be almost impossible for Englishmen and Englishwomen to live much longer in India if that kind of thing can go on. Speaking in the Legislative Assembly on March 8, the Commander-in-Chief gave a plain warning of danger, both external and internal, and I cannot understand how he consented to these reductions before he could have had time to make himself completely master of the situation in India. Since the Mutiny, and before the great war, Indian troops have served in Abyssinia, Afghanistan, Egypt, Sudan, Somaliland, Burma, China and Malta, but all this seems as if it were now to be changed. According to the very remarkable Resolution passed by the Legislative Assembly on

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March 26, the Indian Army is no longer to be counted among the armed Forces of the Crown, as it has been hitherto. Henceforth it is to be employed only for defensive purposes in India, "except in very grave emergencies "—those are the words of the Resolution—" and with the consent of the Governor-General 'in Council "which might not be forthcoming in face of a hostile Assembly that might be dominated by the extreme Party. If, when we have reduced the Army, some emergency arose which needed reinforcements, we should have to supply those reinforcements, but there is no reciprocal obligation upon India at the present time, since the passing of this Resolution.
The Indian Army is a very delicate instrument which would easily break to pieces if it were mishandled. I do not think it is generally realised here that so long as we provide officers of the right type for the Indian Army we retain the affection and respect of the classes which, after all, are the most. important classes in India, and the classes which will take charge of India when Home Rule arrives. For the present, at least, we remain absolutely responsible for the defence of the Indian frontiers, and for the preservation of internal order; and latterly, I am afraid, we have not effectively discharged that second task. I cannot believe that a democratic Government, formed on Western models and controlled, as it will always be in the years to come, by a very small minority, will ever be able to create and maintain an efficient Army. Left to herself, India will be open to invasion, and India will most certainly be invaded. I cannot see how we can ever share with an Indian Parliament the control and organisation of a great Army.
I am well aware of the present financial stringency—which is due to many causes—some of which, I am afraid, will be permanent—and of the fact that we are replacing what was one of the most wonderfully cheap Governments in the world by a Government which will be far more expensive. There are reasons why there will be financial stringency in India for some years to come, but surely security comes before everything else, and I must warn His Majesty's Government that the weakening of our military forces at the present time may make it impossible for us to fulfil our grave responsibilities to the masses of India, and may very easily lead us to disaster. I beg to move for Papers
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showing the opinion of the late and present Commanders-in-Chief in India, and that of the Imperial General Staff, if taken, upon the intended reductions in the Indian Army.
LORD CHELMSFORD: My Lords, before the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, replies to the speech which has just been delivered by the noble Lord, I should like to say a few words on this very important matter, because I have been responsible during the past five years for the policy in India. I accept that responsibility, and I wish to place before this House the reasons for the various Questions which the noble Lord has raised this afternoon. In the first place I should like to draw the attention of the House to the particular Question and Motion which the noble Lord has placed on the Paper. He asks the Under-Secretary of State for India whether he can state the extent of, and the reasons for, the intended reductions in the Indian Army. The greater part of the noble Lord's speech was taken up with a lurid account of the condition of India at the present moment. I quite agree that the state of India and the external menace to India from Afghanistan and the tribes are factors which have to be taken into account in any reduction of the Indian Army, but one felt, listening to the noble Lord, that these were the matters to which he, wished particularly to draw your Lordships' attention.
May I point out one interesting fact in reference to the letter which the noble Lord read to your Lordships. He gave as its date March 9. That was at least three weeks before I left India, and the occurrence to which the noble Lord has drawn your Lordships' attention was never brought to my notice during those three weeks. Between March 9 and the date of my leaving India the Governor of the Punjab, who was my guest at Delhi, and with whom I had a long discussion with regard to the state of India, never mentioned any occurrence of this sort. He told me that with the exception of the Sikh problem, which resulted in the massacre of which your Lordships have heard, the other causes of unrest have greatly diminished, and that he was not anxious about the unrest with reference to the Punjab affairs of 1919, nor was he anxious in other directions. It is interesting to find that on March 9, at least ten days before the Governor of the Punjab paid me a visit,

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this very striking occurrence should have happened. I can only regret that it was not brought to my notice, and to the notice of the Governor of the Punjab at the time. We should certainly have taken action with regard to it.
The noble Lord asks the reasons for the intended reductions in the Indian Army. I can state them in a sentence. We in India attempted to cut our coat according to our cloth. We attempted to balance our income and expenditure. I know that is not a fashionable thing to do in these days, and it may be regarded as a somewhat insufficient reason. But in India we regarded it as a sufficient and as an imperative reason. In consequence of our very parlous financial position we cut down ruthlessly our civil expenditure far below the limits of efficiency, reducing some of our Departments almost to starvation estimates. But even then we could not balance our Budget, and so we had no alternative but to consider the position with regard to Army expenditure.
Noble Lords here will perhaps hardly realise the colossal increase which has taken place in the Army expenditure in India during the past five years. If I may, I will deal with figures which are familiar to those connected with India, though perhaps not so familiar to your Lordships. The Army in India this year is going to cost 62.20 crore of rupees, as against 26.11 crore of rupees in the last financial year before the war. That is more than double. Those are the only figures I shall mention. I doubt whether Lord Sydenham would ask me to go in detail into the figures for this year, though the financial problem is necessarily at the bottom of the situation. This increase is largely due to three causes. In the first place it is due to the very large rise in pay of the British soldier in India, which has practically trebled during the past three years; in the. second place, to the largely increased expenditure on matériel and equipment of the Army in India, which found little or no place in the expenditure in 1913–1914; and, lastly, to the necessity which we, as the Government of India, were under to make up the leeway for past years of starvation in respect to military matters for which we, as a Government, could take no responsibility whatever—for instance, hospitals, barracks, and all those things which make for the health and welfare of the British and Indian soldier.
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The Esher Committee made strong recommendations as to improvements in that direction. But before the Esher Committee had issued its Report we had ourselves taken steps to deal with this matter; and that is another reason why our military Budget assumed the colossal proportions it did this year as compared with previous Budgets. When I remind your Lordships that these figures represent more than 50 per cent. of the whole Budget of India, no one can doubt the seriousness of the situation. If you have a military Budget which is going to sterilise all civil development of the country, it is a matter which you have to take into serious consideration and see what steps can be adopted to remedy it.
We have taken it very seriously, and more than a year ago I appointed a Special Committee, consisting of members of the Council, to go into the whole question in detail. They found that while a certain laxity had grown up in expenditure as the result of the removal of the stringent financial supervision which had existed in pre-war days, they were not able to suggest any reductions which would obviate the necessity of having to deal with the number of troops in India. I remember the care with which every possible method of effecting some reduction in our Budget was explored, and they always came back to the only possible form which would enable us as a Government to balance our income and expenditure—namely, by a reduction in the personnel of the Army.
The noble Lord has drawn a lurid picture of the possible emergencies which the Government of India, or British rule in India, may have to meet. He strongly urged that the Government of India should base its military strength on all the possibilities it may have to face. If you attempt to organise your military Forces on the basis that they should be sufficient to meet every possible emergency, I can only say that any Government which attempted to do so would head straight for bankruptcy. It is what no nation in the world attempts to do, and certainly not what His Majesty's Government at the present moment are attempting to do. If that is to be the basis on which His Majesty's Government should organise the Forces, I can only say that the present state of the Imperial Army is one of the greatest bluffs in history. It is obvious that our military Forces on the basis that they should be sufficient to meet all possible Imperial emergencies, are grossly

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insufficient. I repeat, that India must be allowed to base her requirements on reasonable probabilities; and it is on reasonable probabilities that the Government of India is taking up the question of the redaction of the Army as necessitated by our very parlous financial position.
I should like to say one word, before I conic to the possible reduction of British troops in India, with regard to what the noble Lord said on the reduction of the Indian Cavalry. From first to last that has been an entirely military question. The late Commander-in-Chief, to whom I was talking the other day, had contemplated a reduction of the Cavalry in India. He left before the scheme by which that reduction was to be effected had been carried out. The present Commander-in-Chief took up the question where Sir Charles Monro left it, and the present scheme for reduction by the amalgamation of certain Cavalry regiments is, from first to last, a military scheme to meet the exigencies of the situation. No pressure of any sort has been put upon the Commander-in-Chief to carry out such reduction. It was first initiated by the late Commander-in-Chief, and carried through under the auspices of the present Commander-in-Chief, after very careful consideration on his part as to the best method of effecting the reduction.
The noble Lord, Lord Sydenham, has practically said that we were bringing about these reductions in India at great peril to the British raj. May I assure him that that was not our idea, and that we had examined that question before we made any suggestions with regard to reduction. I would draw a distinction between troops which are required for the external defence of India and those which are required for internal security. As regards those required for external defence on the frontier and in connection with Afghanistan, no reduction was contemplated. In the scheme that we considered it was clearly laid down that there would be no reduction of British divisions which were essential for security from external invasion or disturbance.
When one comes to the question of whether it is possible to reduce the troops required for internal security, I would remind your Lordships of what I have already pointed out in connection with the expenditure on the Army, that as regards material and equipment our Army in India now is many times stronger than
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it was in 1913 and 1914. We have machine guns and Lewis guns to an extent which is colossal as compared with 1913 and 1914. We have a large motor transport service which did not exist at all in those years. We now have aeroplanes, and it is contemplated that we shall also have tanks. In all these respects the Indian Army has a vastly greater military strength than it had in 1913 and 1914. I think we may very fairly draw the deduction that for the purpose of internal security a single company of 1921, with its machine guns and Lewis guns and its capacity to get about the country by means of motor transport, can almost do the work of a battalion of 1913 and 1914. On that point I found that my civilian colleagues largely agreed with me.
It is natural that His Excellency Lord Rawlinson, the Commander-in-Chief, did not see altogether eye to eye with us. But no man could have worked more loyally, and with a greater desire to meet the financial side of the situation, than did Lord Rawlinson. He showed himself most reasonable and most ready in every way to try to meet our financial position. That question, however, is really immaterial, because we found, when we proposed this to His Majesty's Government, that the system of troops in India was so inextricably hound up with the British troops in England, owing to the system of linked battalions, that it was impossible for us to reduce any British troops in India without giving longer notice than had been proposed.
The whole question of the British troops has therefore been postponed for consideration at both ends—in India by a Committee of the Executive Council. Had I remained as Viceroy in India I should have myself served on that Committee, because I can conceive of no consideration which is of greater importance to the whole question of the military strength of India than the ratio of British to Indian troops. When I left India, the matter had been settled in England. The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, will doubtless inform us as regards India. It was settled that in England this matter should be taken up before a Sub-Committee of the Imperial Defence Committee. At both ends it will be very carefully considered, and I feel confident that when Lord Sydenham hears that this is what is proposed and is being done, he will feel complete confidence in the two bodies who are now carefully giving their consideration to this most important matter.
THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (THE EARL OF LYTTON): My Lords, I think I can best answer Lord Sydenham's Question by first of all stating as clearly as I can the actual facts regarding the reductions in the Indian Army which have already been approved. I have already dealt with this matter on a previous occasion, but I should like to remind your Lordships what these reductions actually are. The total establishment of fighting units in India—that is, exclusive of troops at Aden, in the Persian Gulf, and in overseas garrisons outside India and Burma—the total strength allowed for in the Budget for 1.921–1922 is less than the corresponding figures for. 1914 by about 6,000 British ranks and 7,500 Indian ranks. With regard to British troops, the reduction has come about in this way. During the war a number of British units were withdrawn from service in India for service elsewhere, with the result that the numbers now are less than those before the war by one British Cavalry regiment and six British infantry battalions. With regard to the Indian troops the reduction of eighteen Cavalry regiments—that is, from 39 to 21—has been sanctioned, as I explained on a previous occasion, the Infantry battalions remaining the same.
As Lord Chelmsford has just reminded your Lordships, these reductions were made with the unanimous approval of the Government of India and with the complete assent of the late and the present Commanders-in-Chief. The reasons for them were, I think, as follows. In consequence of the improved equipment of the Army by the introduction of Lewis guns and Hotchkiss guns, by the improved machine guns and by the addition of armoured cars, tanks and aeroplanes, it was possible, in the opinion of the military advisers of the Government of India, to make these reductions in numbers without reducing the fighting efficiency of the Army. Lord Chelmsford has told your Lordships that in his opinion the Army to-day, in spite of these reductions, is far stronger and more capable of meeting the requirements of at any rate the internal situation in India than it was, with larger numbers, in 1914.
I am anxious to dwell upon this point, because on the last occasion when we debated the subject I was asked a supplementary question by Lord Crewe, and I said then that I thought the introduction of an Air Force had largely influenced the
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minds of those who had advised a reduction in the Army. I want to correct the impression which I then conveyed. Certainly the introduction of an Air Force was one of the factors, but it was only one factor. The better equipment of the Army, the better weapons, and, above all, the introduction of armoured cars, were matters which I think were even more important factors than the existence of an Air Force.
Those reductions, as I have said, have been made with the unanimous approval of the Government of India. They have been sanctioned by the Secretary of State, and they bring the Army of India to numbers which represent a provisional post-war strength of that Army. It is true, as Lord Chelmsford has told us, that the Government of India wished to make further reductions in the numbers of the personnel beyond a point to which the present Commander-in-Chief was prepared to agree, and possibly it is to those reductions that my noble friend has referred in his Question. The object of the Government of India in desiring to make further reductions was to reduce their present heavy military expenditure, and in this they were certainly neither alone nor peculiar. Even my noble friend himself, I think, would admit that it is desirable to reduce. expenditure upon armaments, provided it is safe to do so.
The whole question really being what it is safe to do, my noble friend has given your Lordships reasons why, in his opinion, no further reductions should be made in the Indian Army at the present moment, and why, in fact, even those reductions that have been sanctioned were possibly not consistent with considerations of safety. I would very briefly remind your Lordships of some reasons why every effort should and must be made to reduce expenditure upon armaments in India, as well as in other countries. They are reasons which, in the main, are common to all countries, reasons of which we are very conscious in this country, but many of them are reasons which weigh even more strongly in India than they do here. During the war expenditure upon armaments became so enormous that every other branch of the administration was necessarily starved, and the commercial, industrial and economic life of the nation, which 'was completely at a standstill during the war, is now anxious to expand, and for its expansion requires the expenditure of public money.

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Two results, in particular, were caused by the war, both of which necessitate increased expenditure at the present time. They are both reflected in the figures which Lord Chelmsford has given to your Lordships of the present military expenditure in India. The first is an improved standard of comfort, and the second is the increased cost of almost every article. Money is wanted to-day for education, for houses, for rates, for every kind of development, and, above all, to meet the recent rise in wages; and I would remind your Lordships that the rise in wages applies also to the pay of the naval and military Forces. In consequence of the increased pay, of the improved equipment-, and of the increased cost of everything, Lord Chelmsford has told us that the Army in India to-day is costing three times what it cost in 1914. Those are reasons which make it imperative for the Government of India to endeavour to reduce its expenditure on this head. Lord Sydenham has told us that in his view it is not safe at the present time to contemplate making economies by further reducing the strength of the Army, and he has referred to a number of incidents which he is right in thinking are a cause of great anxiety to those responsible for maintaining public order in India to-day.
In regard to the letter from which he quoted, Lord Chelmsford has told your Lordships that that letter was not brought to his notice before he left India. I think it probable that it never would have been brought to the notice of the Government of India by the writer, and yet your Lordships, I think, will agree that if there is one person to whom the information contained in that letter is of the utmost importance it is the Viceroy, and his advisers. I can assure my noble friend, Lord Sydenham, therefore, that as soon as I became aware of the existence of that letter, and it was sent to me, we communicated by telegram with the Government of India to ask whether they were aware of the facts mentioned in it, and on learning from them that they have no knowledge of the incidents referred to, we shall send the letter to the Government of India, in order that they may make investigations regarding the occurrence, and take what steps may be necessary to prevent any possibility of its recurrence.
But, whether the picture drawn by the noble Lord is exaggerated or not, it is
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undoubtedly true that the situation is, and has been for a long time, very anxious, and, because of the existing unrest in India, we are told that it is really not possible to contemplate further reductions in the Army. But the Government of India have to consider the cause of the existing unrest and to deal with the removal of those causes, if possible, as well as with the suppression of unrest where it is evidenced. One cause, at any rate, of unrest in India to-clay undoubted] y is the intolerable burden of taxation— a burden which we feel greatly in this country, but which is felt even more greatly in India. Consequently, the strongest possible pressure is put upon the Government, by public opinion in India, to produce economies, if possible, and naturally, after the successful issue of the war, to reduce expenditure upon armaments, if possible. It was natural, therefore, I think, that there should be some difference of opinion between the civil and military advisers of the Viceroy, or at any rate that the civil and military advisers should look at the question from slightly different points of view, one body desiring to reduce the military expenditure in order to make the country more contented, the other advising that so long as unrest existed it was not safe to make further reductions.
The proposed reductions and the opinions of the Government of India and of the Commander-in-Chief were conveyed, of course, to the Secretary of State, and he had to decide what action he should take in the matter. I need not assure your Lordships that the Secretary of State and his advisers at the India Office felt the utmost sympathy with the Government of India in their desire to effect greater economy. But on one thing we were quite determined, and that was that though the Army in India ought to be reduced to the minimum which was compatible with safety, considerations of safety, and not of economy, must ultimately be the determining factor. I feel sure that my noble friend will be glad to know that that was the view taken by the Secretary of State in Council, and that although he is entirely with the Government of India in wanting to effect such economy as can be made consistently with the military needs of the situation, he is also determined that whatever Army is necessary—and, in the opinion of the body to whom it has been referred, necessary for the external and internal defence of India,—that Army must be maintained.

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The question, therefore, is not what Army can we afford, but what is the minimum force which the military situation in India requires? The Government have decided to submit this question to a body which, I feel sure my noble friend will agree, is the most competent body to give us advice on the subject— namely, the Committee of Imperial Defence. That Committee will, of course, hear all sides of the question, and, as Lord Chelmsford has reminded your Lordships, the Viceroy is appointing a Committee of his Executive Council to prepare material to lay before the Committee of Imperial Defence. The Secretary of State has given an assurance in the House of Commons that, until this Committee of Imperial Defence has made its report, no further reductions beyond the point to which I referred at the beginning of my remarks will be sanctioned.
I have not entered, and I do not propose to enter, into a discussion of the merits of either the reductions which have been made, or those which have been suggested for the future. I do not propose to take up the point raised by Lord Sydenham as to whether it is, or is not, safe at this moment to make further reductions, because the matter is at the moment sub judice, and it is being considered by a body far more competent to give an opinion on the subject than I am. I hope, therefore, your Lordships will agree that the Government has taken the best steps for determining what are the military requirements of the situation, and I have assured your Lordships that, when that is determined, they will not agree to reducing the Army below what is necessary in view of that military situation. They have also given an assurance that no further reductions will be made until the Committee of Imperial Defence has expressed its opinion. My noble friend will see that whilst that Committee is pursuing its labours it would not be possible for me to undertake to produce the opinion of individuals who will appear and give evidence before it, or to lay any Papers on the subject. I hope that he will be satisfied with the assurance I have given him, and that I have been able to remove some, at any rate, of his anxieties.
LORD SYDENHAM: I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

REDUCTION OF CAVALRY.
LORD RATHCREEDAN LORD RATHCREEDAN asked His Majesty's Government whether, seeing that the main reason why the 5th Lancers, although senior to the 18th Hussars, has been selected for disbandment is in order to maintain the linked regiment system, this trivial administrative difficulty cannot be overcome, and a gross injustice coupled with a departure from the dominant principle avoided by converting the 15th Hussars into Lancers, whereby six Lancer and eight Hussar Reginents would be available for continuing the linked system.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I make no apology for re-introducing this Question, because it is a matter of a gross injustice being done to a most distinguished regiment. When the Government declared their intention of reducing the Cavalry they stated that they would be reduced upon the principle that four junior regiments should be taken. The four junior regiments were not taken; the Government now acknowledge that. It was pointed out that an Order made by Queen Victoria had certainly not been observed, and the Goverment declared that there was no specific reason for abiding by that Order. When it was proved that the regiment in question, the 5th Lancers, had by half a century longer service than the regiment which ought to have been reduced, the 18th Hussars, the Government then shifted their ground, and said it was not the total length of service which had to be taken into consideration, but the time from which both the regiments had been re-raised.
It was then conclusively proved, and acknowledged by the Government, that the 5th Lancers was distinctly senior to the 18th Hussars. Now we are told that the reason is some administrative difficulty in connection with the linked system. The linked system has never been in complete operation in the British Army. In days gone by the system was observed of having about half the number of our Cavalry regiments abroad, chiefly in India. Some fourteen regiments of the Cavalry line in India fed some fourteen regiments at home. This was done by means of a troop of each regiment abroad being quartered at the Cavalry depot at Canterbury. Even in those days regiments naturally relieved each other, and it was immaterial whether they were Lancers, or Dragoons, or Hussars.
In 1897 what was known as this linked system was introduced. That is to say, the regiments at home prepared recruits and sent out drafts to the regiments abroad. When the South African War took place this system broke down, and the depot system was reverted to. Then the linked system was reintroduced, hut still four Cavalry regiments were fed by the depot at Canterbury. Then the great war came, and it was found desirable to have reserve regiments of Cavalry. These reserve regiments then fed the regiments abroad. And now the linked system is again in partial, bat not in perfect, operation, and I wish to learn from whichever member of the Government replies to me what the difficulty is in connection with this linked system; why a gross injustice should be done to one particular regiment; why it should be taken out of its proper place when it is senior to another regiment; and. why this junior regiment should be preferred before it.
It is said that there is some difficulty in connection with carrying out the linked system. There is no difficulty whatever; at least, if there is, I shall be glad to know it. It may be said there is a difficulty with reference to the training of the men, but I venture to assert—and. I have acted in almost every capacity in connection with the staff of a regiment—that you can convert a Lancer regiment into a Hussar regiment, or a Hussar regiment into a Lancer regiment, with the greatest ease. For example, if a Lancer regiment is required, now that the 21st Lancers have been reduced, to link with the other 5th Lancer regiment, there is no difficulty whatever in converting what will then be the junior Hussar regiment —namely, the 15th Hussars—into Lancers. You have simply to give them the lances of the 21st Lancers which you are reducing and in the space of a couple of months train them to the use of that weapon, and you have a Lancer regiment ready made and no gross injustice is done to the senior Lancer regiment in the Service. If, on the other hand, you wish to have a Lancer regiment less and a Hussar regiment more, there is no difficulty whatever in converting the 5th Lancers into Hussars by removing their lances and linking them up with the 10th Hussars. Therefore, I am anxious to learn from the noble Viscount the nature of the great administrative difficulty in connection with the linked system.
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE DUCHY OF LANCASTER (VISCOUNT PEEL): My Lords, I must congratulate my noble friend on the sleepless energy with which lie has returned to the charge on behalf of the 5th Lancers for the fourth time during the last three or four weeks. I can only regret that his energy and the variety of the tactics which lie has pursued did not lead him to remain in the Army and thus continue a military career instead of exchanging it for a political one. With all the good will in the world I cannot add to what I have already said more than once in your Lordships' House. The suggestion is that the 18th, 19th and 20th Hussars and the 21st Lancers should be disbanded and that to restore the balance in the linked system the 15th Hussars should be converted into Lancers. My noble friend has come forward with the definite proposal that the 15th Hussars should be converted into Lancers and the 18th Hussars should he disbanded instead of the 5th Lancers.
My noble friend has poured a good deal of ridicule, I think, upon the linked system, but the War Office do not consider it at all trivial. They regard it as a very important factor indeed in matters affecting administration and problems of recruiting and drafting. In regard to selection for disbandment, there was so little difference—some three weeks, as I think my noble friend admits—between the continued service, after re-raising, of the 18th Hussars and the 5th Lancers, that in the interests of the Service it was impossible to overlook the importance of the administrative difficulties. I should like to say that there has been no inconsistency whatever in the attitude of the War Office towards the question of re-raising. They have always maintained that for this purpose a regiment must be dated from the time of the last re-raising. That principle was applied in the case of Yeomanry regiments. It is essential that for every regiment abroad there should be a regiment of the same Corps at home, and this necessitates an even number of regiments of the same Corps existing in the aria of the Service. Two Lancer and two Hussar regiments were, therefore, selected for disbandment.
Let me turn to the specific proposition of my noble friend. To change the 15th Hussars into Lancers and retain the 5th Lancers while disbanding the 18th Hussars would certainly produce this equality of numbers of similar Corps regiments, but,

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as has been pointed out on previous occasions, it would introduce a number of difficulties. I may add that under my noble friend's scheme, though the number of Lancer regiments would remain the same, the Hussar Corps would be reduced by no less than four different regiments; so that the whole weight of the disbandment would really fall on the Corps of Hussars.
LORD RATHCREEDAN: Under my scheme it would be one only.
VISCOUNT PEEL: I repeat that there would be a reduction of the Hussar corps by four regiments. The 18th, 19th and 20th Hussars are to lie disbanded and it is proposed to convert the 15th Hussars into Lancers, reducing the Corps of Hussars, therefore, by no less than four regiments.
In the first place, though my noble friend is inclined to think that the matter is so easy of accomplishment it requires an Act of Parliament to authorise the compulsory transfer of a man in a Hussar regiment to a Lancer regiment, and the result of such action would be to create a feeling of insecurity throughout the whole Army, because no man would know to what Corps he belonged if, in consequence of sonic controversy, legislation were resorted to in order to break his contract. It must be remembered, too, that if such a. transfer were authorised it would affect not only the men who were serving at the moment in the 15th Hussars, but also the reservists of the 15th Hussars, who, of course, are scattered all over the world.
In the second place, the conversion of a Hussar regiment into a Lancer regiment involves certain financial expenditure, in that as Lancers the men have to be rearmed, retrained, and, as regards full dress, reclothed. In addition, considerable expense would fall upon the officers.
I do not know whether my noble friend has examined the record of the 15th Hussars very carefully, but they have an unbroken record of service dating hack to 1759, which he, as I understand, wishes ruthlessly to destroy by altering the Corps to which they belong. They have held the title of Hussars since 1806. It would be very difficult to justify the conversion of this regiment into Lancers in order to prevent the disbandment of the 5th Lancers, a course which does not involve
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any administrative difficulty or expense. I am afraid, therefore, that as at present advised the War Office must stand by the original decision, and, though I admire the courage of my noble friend, his forces are hardly adequate to converting the War Office to his views.
LORD RATHCREEDAN: I must thank the noble Viscount for his answer, which is completely and entirely unsatisfactory. I purpose taking other steps to endeavour to prevent this gross injustice being done.

CONSOLIDATION BILL PROCEDURE.
LORD MUIR MACKENZIE: My Lords, I beg to propose the Motion that stands in my name on the Paper.
Moved to resolve, "That it is desirable that all Consolidation Bills in the present Session be referred to a Joint Committee of both Houses of Parliament."—(Lord Muir Mackenzie.)
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I understand that this Motion is accepted by the House.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

ECCLESIASTICAL COMMITTEE.
LORD MUIR MACKENZIE: My Lords, I would now make the second Motion which stands in my name on the Paper, as to which I understand no objection is taken.
Moved to resolve, "That the Ecclesiastical Committee, being a Committee constituted under the provisions of the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act, 1919, be requested to communicate to the House the Proceedings of the Committee in reference to the Parochial Church Councils (Powers) Measure, 1921, and that the said Proceedings be printed." —(Lord Muir Mackenzie.)
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My noble friend has been good enough to assure me, as has the noble Viscount, Lord Cave, that the slight doubt which existed when the noble Lord moved on an earlier occasion has been resolved.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House adjourned at twenty minutes past seven o'clock.

METROPOLITAN WATER BOARD (CHARGES) BILL.
  THAMES CONSERVANCY BILL.
    LEE CONSERVANCY BILL.
    Report from the Committee of Selection that Lord Loch be proposed to the House as a member of the Joint Committee on the said Bills in the place of Lord Clwyd; read, and agreed to.
MID-GLAMORGAN WATER BOARD BILL. [H.L.]
Reported, with Amendments.
COUNTY OF LONDON ELECTRIC SUPPLY COMPANY BILL. [H.L.]
Reported from the Select Committee, with Amendments.
DE TRAFFORD ESTATES BILL. [H.L.]
Judges' Report received: Bill presented, and read 1ª.
HASTINGS TRAMWAYS (EXTENSION) BILL. [H.L.]
Committee to meet on Tuesday next.
LAW OF PROPERTY BILL. [H.L.]
Report of Amendments (which stands appointed for Tuesday next) put off to the First Sitting Day after the Recess at Whitsuntide.
PERTH CORPORATION PROVISIONAL ORDER BILL.
Brought from the Commons; read 1ª; to be printed; and referred to the Examiners.
DOUPE'S DIVORCE BILL. [H.L.]
Message from the Commons for copy of the Minutes of Evidence taken before this House, together with the proceedings and the documents deposited in the ease: Ordered to be communicated with a request that they may be returned.