Sitting of 9 March 1922

Preamble
The House met at a Quarter before Three of the Clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.
NEW WRIT,
for County of Surrey (Chertsey Division), in the room of Sir DONALD MACMASTER, Baronet, K.C., deceased.—[Colonel Leslie Wilson.]
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS.
  ROYAL AIR FORCE.

    RECRUITING.
    Lieut.-Colonel CAMPIONasked the Secretary of State for Air the amount of money expended in recruiting advertisement during the current financial year, and the number of recruits obtained?
    The SECRETARY of STATE for AIR (Captain Guest): It is estimated that expenditure on recruiting advertisements for the Air Force, including posters, film's, etc., will be £15,000 on Air Votes in the financial year now ending, and £3,000 on' the Stationery Office Vote. During the first 11 months of the year, some 6,320 recruits have been obtained.
    Captain Viscount CURZON: Would it not save money to combine with the Navy and Army in this matter of recruiting posters and so on?
    Captain GUEST: That is one of the matters which are receiving the close attention of the Government.
    Colonel ASHLEY: Could the right hon. Gentleman say why it costs so much more to get recruits for the Air Force than for the Army?
    Captain GUEST: The type of recruits whom we require is of a very high standard.

    ABSENCE OF AIR MECHANIC I. GOLLAND.
    Mr. R. RICHARDSONasked the Secretary of State for Air if he will inquire into the case of Second Air Mechanic Israel Golland, No. 90,772, Royal Flying Corps, who was born in Russia and is believed to have been in a state of absence or desertion since 1917; and whether, in view of the fact that this man was not of British birth, is now over 41 years of age, and his failure to return from leave was due to the serious illness of his mother, these circumstances can be taken into consideration by way of mitigation?
    Captain GUEST: The case of Golland is already under consideration, and I am prepared to have his case dealt with under Section 73 of the Air Force Act, dispensing with his trial for desertion and granting a discharge certificate.

    BUILDINGS, HALTON.
    Mr. G. LOCKER-LAMPSONasked the Secretary of State for Air whether it is proposed to proceed with the large expenditure upon buildings at Halton?
    Captain GUEST: The answer is in the affirmative. The buildings are four-fifths completed, and to stop now would be a very false form of economy, since provision would have to be made, elsewhere for the training of these boys.

    AIR ATTACHES.
    Mr. RAPERasked the Secretary of State for Air how many air attachés there are; what are their duties; and what is their remuneration in the aggregate and individually?
    Captain GUEST: There are two air attachés, at Paris and at Washington, and their duties are to keep His Majesty's Government in touch with the developments of aviation in all its aspects in the countries to which they are accredited. Their remuneration consists of their ordinary Air Force pay, together with a foreign allowance (also admissible for naval and military attachés) of £5 a day at Washingon and £4 at Paris, inclusive of entertainment and all other allowances, except travelling allowance for journeys outside the capital city.
    Mr. RAPER: Is it not the fact that France, which is so far ahead of us as regards progress in aviation, has already decided to dispense with air attachés, as being unnecessary?
    Captain GUEST: I am not aware of the point raised by my hon. Friend, nor am I prepared to admit that France is so far ahead of us in aviation.
    Mr. G. MURRAY: What is the rank of these two officers?
    Captain GUEST: To the best of my recollection, one is an air commodore and the other a group captain.
    Mr. RAPER: If, as I suggest, France has withdrawn her air attachés as unnecessary, will the right hon. Gentleman consider doing the same?
    Captain GUEST: We will certainly consider it.
    Rear-Admiral Sir R. HALL: If it be the fact that France is withdrawing her air attaches, could the right hon. Gentleman ascertain who is doing the work?
    Captain GUEST: I feel convinced that the work is being done by somebody.

    ROUND-THE-WORLD FLIGHT.
    Mr. RAPERasked the Secretary of State for Air whether the proposed flight round the world to be undertaken by Sir Ross Smith will be financed or subsidised in any way by His Majesty's Government?
    Captain GUEST: The answer is in the negative.

  EX-SERVICE MEN.

    AIR MINISTRY (MR. SEWAEDS).
    Mr. RAPERasked the Secretary of State for Air why the application of a Mr. Sewards, under Clauses 36–39 of the Lytton Report, was rejected by the second investigating committee; whether it is a fact that owing to his absence in Washington his immediate chief was not interviewed as in the other cases; whether his chief had previously recommended Mr. Sewards; whether he subsequently wrote from America protesting against his rejection, and stating that he considered him specially competent;
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    whether Mr. Sewards had been given a special increment for efficiency and been recommended for promotion; and whether, in view of the two cases of misrecording of evidence which have already been admitted, he will cause this case to be reconsidered?
    Captain GUEST: The statements in the question are substantially correct, but, to complete them, it should be added that, in the opinion of two other experienced officials under whom Mr. Sewards served, he is below the standard of his grade for efficiency, and in these circumstances I am satisfied that the decision of the Investigating Committee was correct, and I cannot agree to reconsider the case.
    Mr. SUGDENasked the Secretary of State for Air how many temporary officials there are in his Department above Grade 1 clerks' who were previously employed in other Departments from which their services were dispensed with on account of age, ill-health, or other causes; whether any of them are in receipt of pensions; and why these officials are retained whilst ex-service men are being discharged?
    Captain GUEST: I would refer my hon. and gallant Friend to the replies I gave to identical questions put to me by the hon. and gallant Member for Lewisham East yesterday, and by the hon. and gallant Member for North Cumberland on the 21st February.
    Mr. SUGDENasked the Secretary of State for Air whether applications have recently been invited for certain civil positions under the Air Ministry in Iraq; and whether such appointments will be restricted entirely to ex-service men?
    Captain GUEST: I would refer my hon. and gallant Friend to the re-ply given yesterday to the hon. and gallant Member for Lewisham East.
    Mr. SUGDENasked the Secretary of State for Air whether efficient ex-service men are being discharged from the Air Ministry to make room for clerical officers who qualified at the recent examination; whether cases have occurred in which it has been found impossible to obtain a sufficiently qualified clerical officer to fill the vacant post; whether the procedure in the case of substituting non-service personnel has always been to obtain a suitable substitute before

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    dismissing the non-service man; why this preferential treatment has been extended to non-service men; and why ex-service men liable for substitution are not similarly retained until a suitable substitute is actually obtained?
    Captain GUEST: I would refer my hon. and gallant Friend to the reply given yesterday to the hon. and gallant Member for Lewisham East.
    Mr. CARRasked the Secretary of State for Air whether, in view of the completely changed conditions of Government employment of ex-service men and of the fact that he is finding it necessary to discharge scores of ex-service men, including disabled and those with overseas service, and that these discharges include highly qualified technical ex-service men while other non-service personnel are retained as indispensable, he will set up another committee, including ex-service men representatives, to review all these cases?
    Captain GUEST: My hon. Friend, if he will place himself in my position, will, I think, realise that the changed conditions to which he refers make it increasingly important that, to make up the reduced complements of staff, only those who are most efficient and best qualified shall be retained. Who are best qualified for performing the work required in the different Departments of the Air Ministry, I, with the advice of the heads of Departments, am responsible for deciding. Notice will be given to those persons whom, after all relevant points have been reviewed, it is considered least advantageous to retain. I am prepared, after the notices have been given, to have a list of the persons affected supplied to the authorised ex-service men's representatives, and I shall also be prepared to receive from them any representations they may wish to make from the ex-service point of view and will give careful consideration to such representations, but I must retain the responsibility for deciding, after balancing all the points involved, who is to be retained and who is to be discharged. In accordance with the decision of the Government, the expenditure of the Department must be reduced without avoidable delay, and it is not possible to withhold notices pending discussion or consideration by a Committee.
    Mr. CARRasked the Secretary of State for Air what has been the procedure adopted in his Department for interviewing candidates sent by the joint substitution board to substitute non-service men; whether in many cases such candidates have been interviewed by officials well known to be hostile to substitution; whether, in view of the numbers of technical ex-service men who have been submitted by the joint substitution board as suitable, but rejected by officials in his Department as unsuitable, he will cause a Committee to be set up to interview all such applicants, such Committee to contain an ex-service representative; and whether, in view of the numerous non-service technical men still employed at Farnborough and at the Air Ministry headquarters, he will apply to the joint substitution board for candidates to be re-submitted for all such posts?
    Captain GUEST: The answer to the first question is that candidates sent by the joint substitution board are, in all cases interviewed by responsible officers competent to judge their qualifications. The answer to the second is in the negative. With regard to the third, I am satisfied that the examination of candidates has been properly and fairly carried out and that, as the joint substitution board can only say whether a candidate has primâ facie qualifications which entitle him to be considered, no useful purpose would be served by adopting the proposed procedure. The answer to the fourth is, that the joint substitution board has been asked to submit candidates for all temporary technical posts held by non-service men. In certain of these cases, however, the officers are specialists, and in view of repeated and unsuccessful attempts to find qualified candidates, the joint substitution board has agreed that further action need not be taken.

  GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS.

    AIR MINISTRY.
    Mr. E. HARMSWORTHasked the Secretary for State for Air whether the central editing section of the Air Ministry was in abeyance during the recent absence of Air Vice-Marshal J. F. A. Higgins, C.B., D.S.O., A.F.C., at the Washington Conference; and whether it is now, on his return, resuming its functions?
    Captain GUEST: The central editing section was necessarily in abeyance during the absence of Air Vice-Marshal Higgins at Washington, since no other senior officer possessing the requisite qualifications was available to take charge of it. On Air Vice-Marshal Higgins's return from America in the last week of January, it was decided that the section should resume its functions for a specified period of six weeks, in order that certain outstanding items might be completed, and, in pursuance of this decision, it ceased its functions on the 6th instant.
    Mr. HARMSWORTH: Is it starting its functions again after the six weeks, or will it be possible, in consideration of the fact that during the absence of this officer in America the section was not considered necessary, to dispense with it under the economies that will be effected in the Ministry?
    Captain GUEST: Most of the hon. Member's supplementary question has been dealt with in my answer.

  NAVAL AND MILITARY PENSIONS AND GRANTS.

    MARRIAGE AFTER DISCHARGE.
    Mr. RHYS DAVIESasked the Minister of Pensions whether it has been decided not to grant pensions or allowances in the cases of men disabled in the late War who married after discharge from the forces, and who have since died leaving widows and children who were ordinarily dependent on them?
    The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of PENSIONS (Major Tryon): The answer is in the affirmative. The terms of the Royal Warrant expressly forbid such grants.

    ENTITLEMENT.
    Mr. J. GUESTasked the Minister of Pensions who is responsible for the appointment of the War Pensions Entitlement Committees; if he will give the names of those persons at present serving thereon; and the number of cases dealt with by such Committees during the 12 months ending 31st January, 1922, together with the number of cases dealt with in which the Committee decided that entitlement was not proven?
    Major TRYON: My hon. Friend appears to be under some misapprehension. There are no such bodies as War Pensions Entitlement Committees. Questions of entitlement are dealt with by experienced officers of the Ministry, against whose decision there is, as my hon. Friend knows, a full right of appeal to an independent tribunal.
    Mr. GUEST: Am I to understand that there are no Committees dealing with this matter, except the permanent or paid officials of the Ministry?
    Major TRYON: The hon. Member is to understand that there are no such bodies as the Committees to which he refers in his question.
    Mr. GUEST: May I have a definite assurance that, whatever the name may be, there are no Committees dealing with this work?
    Major TRYON: Those Committees do not exist. The officials of the Ministry deal with these cases, and if the pensioner is not satisfied, he has a full right of appeal to the Pensions Tribunal.
    Mr. ROYCE: Is the hon. and gallant Gentleman aware that there is a great and growing amount of dissatisfaction in reference to the decisions that have been given by the Appeal Tribunals?
    Mr. SPEAKER: That does not arise out of the question.

    ORTHOPÆDIC HOSPITAL, SHEPHERD'S BUSH.
    Sir HENRY FOREMAN(by Private Notice) asked the Minister of Pensions whether he is aware that the time for vacating the Orthopædic Hospital at Shepherd's Bush is drawing near; can he report whether fresh negotiations have been entered into with the guardians on the question of rent; if not, is he prepared to facilitate these negotiations by withdrawing the expression "blackmail," which he used in a reply to a question on this subject some days ago?
    Major TRYON: My right hon. Friend is willing to withdraw any expression of his provided he is assured that the State will have the opportunity of continuing to maintain its disabled men in this hospital at a fair and reasonable rent. He is still prepared to stand by the offer of an increased rent which he has already made, and in order to avoid any possible doubt, he is so informing the guardians.
    Sir H. HARRIS: If this hospital be closed, will not disabled men suffer?
    Major TRYON: I am informed that the alternative hospital is a very good hospital and in better surroundings. [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] I am so informed by the highest medical authorities we have, but we are prepared to allow them to remain on reasonable terms. I think I ought to inform the House that we have been paying £8,000 a year since we took it over up to the end of last year. We are now willing to give £12,000, but these guardians are asking us for £14,000.
    Captain BOWYER: Has my hon. and gallant Friend considered the proposal, and if not will he consider it, of letting the Minister of Health arbitrate in the matter and so save this hospital for the ex-service men?
    Major TRYON: I think the perfectly simple solution is for the guardians to accept the reasonable and largely increased rent which we have offered them.
    Colonel WEDGWOOD: Is the hon. and gallant Gentleman aware that, although the alternative hospital is suitable for inpatients, it is extremely unsuitable for those who have to attend for treatment?
    Major TRYON: My hon. and gallant Friend has made a perfectly good point. It is obvious that we should make provision—and if we move we intend to make provision—for the out-patients, but I have found, on inspecting both this hospital and the hospital at Roehampton, that the Roehampton authorities would regard our move as one bringing out-patients nearer to the work which they are doing.
    Viscountess ASTOR: Is it not true that the equipment of this hospital is far better than in any other?
    Major TRYON: The equipment can be moved.

    PARENTS' PENSIONS.
    Captain BOWYER(by Private Notice) asked the Minister of Pensions by what authority a time limit has been fixed by him for parents' dependant and flat-rate pensions, in view of the fact that no mention of a time limit is made in the Royal Warrant—Article 21; whether he is Aware of the hardship involved to parents of men, who, though still living to-day, may die as a result of their War injuries
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    after the 1st April; and whether he will reconsider his decision, or at least postpone the date, as no sufficient publicity has been given to those concerned?
    Major TRYON: After full consideration, the Government decided that the time had now come to adopt the recommendation of the Select Committee of this House on Pensions in 1919. No hardship will be involved by this decision, inasmuch as any parent of a man who dies in consequence of his War injuries in the future will be entitled to claim and to receive pension, if in need of the assistance which would otherwise have been afforded by the deceased son. Ample publicity has been given to the decision of the Government, and my right hon. Friend is unable, therefore, to accept the suggestion in the last part of the question.
    Captain BOWYER: Is my hon. and gallant Friend aware that the British Legion in London said only yesterday that none of the ex-service men's papers has had any notification of this at all?
    Sir H. HARRIS: Will this change require a new Royal Warrant?
    Major TRYON: No, Sir.

  IRELAND.

    CIVILIAN ARTIFICERS.
    Colonel Sir C. YATEasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland on what terms the civilian artificers engaged under contract for service in Ireland have been disbanded?
    The CHIEF SECRETARY for IRELAND (Sir Hamar Greenwood): I assume my hon. and gallant Friend is referring to mechanics temporarily engaged in the Royal Irish Constabulary for service in the Mechanical Transport Division. Civilian artificers whose yearly contracts had not expired at the date of dispersal are receiving pay to the end of the period for which they contracted to serve together with the bounty of £25 for each year of completed service. Those who at the expiration of their contracts accepted a monthly engagement receive a month's pay in lieu of notice, and a bounty calculated at the rate of £25 per annum, or the sum of £20, whichever is the greater. Those on a weekly engagement receive a week's pay in lieu of

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    notice, and a bounty at the rate of £25 or the sum of £10 if greater.

    ROYAL IRISH CONSTABULARY (PENSIONS).
    Lieut.-Colonel ARCHER-SHEEasked the Chief Secretary whether he is aware that pensions payable to many disbanded constables of the Royal Irish Constabulary are not being paid; and, if so, whether he can say when the payment of these pensions will commence, in view of the fact that many of the men are out of work?
    Sir H. GREENWOOD: The preliminary arrangements are now well advanced, and I hope it will be possible to commence payment of pensions for February very shortly. I should like to add that these men at the time of dispersal were granted an advance of £10, representing, in most cases, over two months' pension.
    Sir JAMES REMNANT: Does the right hon. Gentleman's answer apply to all the men of the Royal Irish Constabulary who have been disbanded on refusing to serve under the Irish Free State, and is any option given to the men who have been disbanded to accept, in lieu of pension, a compassionate grant?
    Sir H. GREENWOOD: The pensions to which I refer are pensions given to the British recruits of the Royal Irish Constabulary who have been disbanded. The question of the commutation of these pensions, or some portion of them, is now under consideration.
    Sir J. REMNANT: My question had reference to the original Royal Irish Constabulary who have been disbanded. Are they entitled—
    Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Baronet is now raising another point, and should put that question down.
    Sir J. REMNANT: Seeing that the question says nothing about men who were recruited in England, is not my question in order? Would not reference to the Royal Irish Constabulary usually be assumed to mean the Royal Irish Constabulary in Ireland?
    Sir H. GREENWOOD: The Royal Irish Constabulary in Ireland have not yet been disbanded. The question refers, as I understood it, and my answer certainly
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    refers, to the disbanded members of the Royal Irish Constabulary, who are the British recruits of that force.
    Sir J. REMNANT: I want to ask another question—
    Mr. SPEAKER: That is the reason why I suggested that the hon. Baronet was raising a second point, and had better put the question down.

    LAND PURCHASE.
    Colonel Sir A. HOLBROOKasked the Chief Secretary if he is able to give an assurance that the explicit pledges given to Irish landowners with regard to the completion of purchase will be fulfilled; and, as no pronouncement has been made regarding the Government's pledges in connection with the terms of the recent Treaty with the Irish Free State, and serious loss will be incurred by Irish landowners if any delay occurs, can he state when a settlement may be anticipated?
    Sir H. GREENWOOD: I cannot at the moment add anything to the replies which. I gave to questions on this subject addressed to me by the hon. and gallant Member for Maidstone (Commander Bellairs) and the hon. and learned Member for York (Sir J. Butcher) on the 9th and 16th February, respectively, namely, that the question of land purchase is at present under consideration and will be a matter for consultation with the Provisional Government; but I can assure the hon. and gallant Member that the statements previously made by Members of His Majesty's Government, and the considerations to which he refers in the latter part of his question, are not being lost sight of.

    AUXILIARY CADETS.
    Lieut.-Colonel ARCHER-SHEEasked the Chief Secretary when the Paper giving a full statement with reference to the re-engagement for a further period of 12 months' service of several hundred Auxiliary Cadets in June, 1921, which re-engagements were subsequently repudiated, though the majority of them had been published in Part II Orders, will be laid?
    Sir H. GREENWOOD: I hope to be in a position to lay this Paper next week.

    REPUBLICAN COURTS.
    Captain FOXCROFTasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is aware that republican Courts, presided over, in one case, by King's Counsel, are now openly sitting in the South and West of Ireland, and are purporting to exercise both criminal and civil jurisdiction, thereby ousting the jurisdiction of His Majesty's Courts; whether the holding of such Courts is in accordance, with the provisions of the Treaty; and whether it is intended to allow such Courts to continue to function?
    The SECRETARY of STATE for the COLONIES (Mr. Churchill): I am aware that Courts other than those established by Statute are sitting simultaneously with statutory Courts in parts of Ireland, and that in some cases, particularly in areas where the authority of the Provisional Government is not definitely established, these Courts are still called Republican Courts as they were prior to the signature and ratification of the Treaty. It must be left to the Provisional Government to decide as to the action which can best be taken in the matter during the difficult transitional period pending the establishment of the Free State.
    Captain FOXCROFT: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that a Republican Court was sitting last month in Dublin, presided over by Mr. Meredith, K.C., and will he take steps to prevent K.C.'s from presiding over republican Courts?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: I must ask for notice of that question.
    Sir J. BUTCHER: Does not the right hon. Gentleman see the great impropriety of allowing an illegal Court to fine and, it may be, imprison or otherwise punish one of His Majesty's subjects?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: Yes, I see the impropriety of it, but I think the remedy for it is the speedy passage through another place of the Irish Free State (Agreement) Bill, which will put these matters on a proper foundation.

    AIR ESTIMATES.
    Mr. G. LOCKER-LAMPSONasked the Secretary of State for Air whether the Air Estimates for 1922–23 have been framed in accordance with the Cabinet
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    instruction of 1919, on the assumption that no great war is to be anticipated within the next 10 years?
    Captain GUEST: The answer is in the affirmative.

  RUSSIA.

    FAMINE RELIEF.
    Major BARNESasked the Prime Minister what, if any, steps are to be proposed by the Government to the other European Powers for providing the necessary financial assistance to the relief of the famine districts of Russia?
    Mr. G. BARNESasked the Prime Minister if he has received the resolutions, among others, unanimously adopted by the Glasgow City Council and the Glasgow Trade Council, urging the Government to grant relief to the non-Bolshevist Russian people stricken by famine; has his attention been called to the statements made by Sir Benjamin Robertson and Dr. Nansen to the effect that money is required for seed for next harvest which cannot be procured in time by voluntary agency; and whether, having regard to the urgency of the matter, he can now reconsider the whole question with a view to making a grant and thereby possibly stimulate other Governments to do likewise, so as to help in averting even a greater calamity next year?
    Lord H. CAVENDISH-BENTINCKasked the Prime Minister whether the Government has reconsidered its decision to refuse relief to the sufferers from famine in Russia?
    Mr. CAIRNSasked the Prime Minister if he intends to give immediate relief to the starving millions in Russia, as suggested by Dr. Nansen?
    Mr. CHAMBERLAIN (Leader of the House): We have given serious and renewed consideration to this question, but in view of the large sums which this House has already voted for the relief of Europe, of the very heavy burdens resting upon our own people, and the great distress and suffering existing among them, we are unable to propose a grant from public funds, but every effort will be made to add to the supply of medical stores already placed at the disposal of the Red Cross Society. The re-

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    sources in the possession of the Government are being reviewed for this purpose.
    Mr. BARNES: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the American Government have given 12,000,000 dollars and are at present voting about 7,000,000 dollars, I think, to women and children in Russia as against our £700,000 or less, and also is he aware that there are 5,000,000 poods of seed short for this spring sowing, and if the seed is not forthcoming the Russian people will be faced with a catastrophe next year even worse than this?
    Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: I am aware that the American Government has devoted a large sum, even larger than my right hon. Friend has mentioned, to the purpose of famine relief. I believe the horror of the situation in Russia can hardly be exaggerated, but we must have regard to what we have already done, to the burdens we have put upon our own people, to the possibility and even probability that we shall shortly be asked by the League of Nations to vote a further sum to combat the spread of typhus out of Russia into Europe which menaces all the western nations, and I cannot altogether overlook that the Russian Government has resources of its own which are being applied to matters much less urgent—[HON. MEMBERS: "Shame!"] It may be a matter of shame, but not for this country—much less urgent and vital than the relief of famine among its own citizens.
    Sir D. MACLEAN: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that so competent an authority as Sir Benjamin Robertson, who has just returned from this very area, is of opinion that, even on material grounds, as an investment for this country, it would be a wise thing for us to advance a sum of between £400,000 and £5,000,000?
    Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: The sums I have been asked to advance vary between £400,000 and £3,000,000 or £4,000,000.
    Sir D. MACLEAN: It is not so.
    Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: It is so. I do not wish to underrate the gravity of the position, but the Government, after reviewing the position most carefully, have, upon the grounds mentioned, come to the conclusion I have stated.
    Mr. CAIRNS: If we do not support Russia now, will that mean a shortage of grain for this country next year?
    Lieut.-Colonel Sir J. NORTON-GRIFFITHS: Is the right hon. Gentleman in a position to give an assurance that he will not consent to give any funds whatsoever, without first referring the matter to this House?
    Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: I have stated the policy of His Majesty's Government. Until the House disavows it, that is the policy of the Government As regards the question of the hon. Member for Morpeth (Mr. Cairns), of course the world is poorer by the desolation which has overtaken Russia. The desolation of the great grain-growing regions of Russia must affect the corn supply of the world. That is inevitable. But it is not due solely to the drought of last season.
    Colonel WEDGWOOD: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that he is not only the trustee for this nation's finances, but also for its honour in this matter?
    Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: This nation has never been backward in coming to the relief of distress in other countries. That has been done almost universally through the means of subscriptions given by the charitable in this country, generally on an appeal from the Lord Mayor. I know of no demand that there should be a Vote from public funds in the whole of the last century comparable to that which is asked to-day, under circumstances where the distress of our own people and the burden of our responsibility is incomparably greater than at any other period.
    Lord R. CECIL: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether there has ever been any instance of distress comparable with this that now exists in Russia, and whether it is not the opinion of Indian experts that in India we do not know what famine means compared to what it is in Russia; and is he aware that the opposition to our advancing money comes solely from the richer classes?
    Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: I am certainly not aware that the opposition to spending our resources at this time, when there is so much distress, and more distress than we can meet, among our own people, comes solely from the well-to-do. I am sorry that my Noble Friend has made a suggestion of that kind. As regards the

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    state of affairs, I do not think that it can be exaggerated. I believe that the utter disorganisation of the transport and of the ordinary means of commerce and trade in Russia has immensely aggravated, and does immensely aggravate the situation, and takes it out of the category of anything we have had to deal with, even in the worst times, in India; but I think there have been calamities in the world's history on as large a scale where it has not been thought right, or even proposed, that we should Vote public money for that purpose.
    Lieut.-Colonel ARCHER-SHEE: Is it not a fact that there are cargoes of grain lying in the Black Sea which cannot be transported to the famine area? What is the use of our sending more until that grain has been sent?
    Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: How is distress among our own people going to be helped if our potential customers are to be allowed to die to the number of 20,000,000, and how are we to reduce unemployment?
    Mr. G. BARNES: I beg to give notice that, owing to the unsatisfactory answers which have been given, I shall ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House.

    PRE-WAR DEBT.
    Sir H. BRITTAINasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he can give the amount of money owed by Russia to this country upon the outbreak of war in August, 1914?
    The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. Hilton Young): If my hon. Friend refers to indebtedness of the Russian Government to the British Government, the reply is that no money was owed by the Russian Government to the British Government upon the outbreak of war.

  ELECTIONS (COMPULSORY VOTING).
  Sir HARRY BRITTAINasked the Prime Minister whether, following the example of other European countries, he can see his way to introduce legislation for the purpose of making voting at elections compulsory on the part of those who are entitled to that privilege?
  Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: No, Sir. I do not think that the adoption of my hon. Friend's proposal is desirable.
  Sir H. BRITTAIN: Is the right hon. Gentleman not aware that this system works perfectly well in certain countries of Europe, and is the only way to get at the real wishes of the electors?
  Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: No. I was not aware of that.

  PEACE TREATIES.

    DISARMAMENT, GERMANY.
    Mr. DOYLEasked the Prime Minister if his attention has been called to the persistent reports that Germany possesses a secret army of over 1,000,000 men, well officered and drilled, and to the repeated discoveries of stores of hidden arms and war stores; what part the British military forces have taken to unearth such hidden munitions, &c.; and what steps the Supreme Council propose to take to put a stop to such a dangerous state of things?
    The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for WAR (Lieut.-Colonel Sir R. Sanders): I have been asked to answer this question. I am aware of the reports referred to, but while there are naturally in Germany at present many more than 1,000,000 men trained as soldiers, it is safe to say that she does not possess artillery armament and equipment for a modern army of a million, and could not put any such army in the field. The quantities of hidden arms and stores which have been discovered are evidence of the activities of the Inter-Allied Commission of Control. No British troops other than the officers of the British Section of the Commission have been engaged on this work, which is a matter of investigation and not of the employment of military force. In regard to the last part of the question, the Supreme Council will continue to avail themselves of the services of the Commission of Control for as long as may be necessary, and this is the most effective step they can take.

    EX-KAISER.
    Mr. DOYLEasked the Prime Minister whether, in view of the fact that the note sent on 24th March, 1920, by the

    1467
    Allies to the Dutch Government on the question of the extradition of the ex-Kaiser has so far remained unanswered, it is proposed to take any further action, and, if not, why not; if he can state the present residence of the ex-Kaiser; and if adequate, and, if so, what measures are being taken to prevent his escape?
    The ATTORNEY-GENERAL (Sir Ernest Pollock): I have been asked to answer this question. I can add nothing to the reply given on the 13th February last to the hon. Member referring him to the letter of the Prime Minister, dated 3rd November, 1920, addressed to the hon. Member for East Islington, in which the reason for not taking further diplomatic action is explained. As to the latter part of the question, I refer the hon. Member to the answer given to him on the 19th April, 1920, by the late Lord Privy Seal.
    Mr. DOYLE: Is it a fact that the Government are not going to take any action in regard to the answer of the Dutch Government of the 24th March, 1920? Is the matter to remain as it is at the present time?
    Sir E. POLLOCK: It is obvious that my hon. Friend has not done me the honour to read the letter of the Prime Minister, dated 3rd November, 1920, in which he pointed out that the resources of diplomatic action had ceased, and stated that it was never contemplated that all the Allies would go to war with Holland for the purpose of securing the extradition of the ex-Kaiser.
    Mr. DOYLE: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether in regard to the ordinary courtesies of nations one with another the absence of a reply from the Dutch Government does not abrogate all the conditions in regard to international matters as they are understood?
    Mr. MACQUISTEN: Get the Irish Republican Army to kidnap him.

    EXPORTS LEVY, GERMANY.
    Sir H. COWANasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, seeing that under the Reparation Clause of the Allied Conference the German Government is required to levy a special duty of 26 per cent. on all exports from that country, he will state whether the amount of such levy has been paid by the German Government to the Allied authorities; whether the German Govern-
    1468
    ment has raised the amount required to meet such payment by actually levying the specified duty on exports, or whether the sum required is derived from general revenue; and, if so, seeing that this method of raising the tax is an evasion of the agreement between Germany and the Allies, and calculated to defeat the object which the Allies had in view in imposing a tax on exports from Germany, will he make the necessary representations on the subject?
    Mr. YOUNG: As the answer is a lengthy one, I will, with my hon. Friend's permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
    The following is the answer:
    By the Schedule of Payments Germany is obliged to pay to the Committee of Guarantees as security for the Reparation Annuities inter alia a levy of 25 per cent, on the value of German exports, unless the German Government offers and the Committee accepts other funds in substitution. The hon. Member, however, is in error in supposing that the object of this arrangement was to impose a tax on exports. It was proposed solely as a means by which the German Government could secure foreign currencies, and it was specifically provided that the equivalent of the levy shall be paid in German currency by the German Government to the exporter. I understand that in June last the Committee of Guarantees accepted a proposal of the German Government not to enforce the levy pending the preparation of an alternative scheme by the German Government, on condition that equivalent amounts were paid to the Committee each month as from 15th November last. The German Government has put into operation a scheme under which exporters, as a condition of the grant of an export licence, must make out their invoices in foreign currencies and hand over to the German Government the whole or part of the proceeds in foreign currencies. This scheme has been operating since August last, but the German Government failed to pay over the proceeds before 31st December last, alleging the necessity of meeting other outstanding liabilities. I understand that since 1st January the equivalent of the levy has been duly paid under the provisional arrangements now in force.

  ENGINEERING AND SHIPBUILDING TRADES.
  Lord H. CAVENDISH BENTINCKasked the Prime Minister whether, in view of the threatening situation in the engineering and shipbuilding industries and also in view of the necessity for the disputes in question to be considered from a national rather than a sectional point of view, the Government will once more issue invitations to the representatives of the trade and industry of the country to meet in an industrial Council; and whether they will give a pledge that they will submit in good faith the recommendations of the Council to the sanction of Parliament should they require such sanction?
  Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: In the case of the shipbuilding industry, my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour has been able to arrange for negotiations to be resumed between the parties. In the case of the engineering industry, the negotiations between the parties which were resumed at the suggestion of the Minister of Labour have not led to agreement, but my right hon. Friend is in close touch with the parties.
  Sir J. NORTON-GRIFFITHS: Is it the fact that the Government intervention in this case has been by request of the employés or the employers. Would it not be better to leave, it to the masters and the men to settle these disputes by themselves?
  Colonel WEDGWOOD: What is the use of leaving it to the masters and the men when one side are all powerful and the other helpless? [HON MEMBERS: "Which"?]
  Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: I think I can give an answer which is not controversial. It is obviously always better in the interests of all parties that these disputes should be settled, if possible, between employers and employed, without the intervention of anybody else, but when so grave a calamity threatens the nation as a disturbance of trade of the magnitude that might be caused by this dispute, it does become the duty of the Government—when the parties concerned have failed—to try, if they can, in any way to avert the calamity.
  Lord H. CAVENDISH-BENTINCK: Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree
  1470
  that it would be better if these disputes were settled from the national point of view?
  Mr. MILLS: Has the right hon. Gentleman considered this proposition in regard to this matter, that in the Dartford division there are 2,000 engineers out of work, and the community are called upon to pay them unemployment dole, while other men may be working two weeks in one; and does not the engineering employer get money at the public expense?
  Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: I do not think it will help a solution of this question by airing grievances of our constituencies.

  GENOA CONFERENCE.
  Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHYasked the Prime Minister whether the date of the postponed Economic Conference at Genoa has yet been decided on; and whether he is in a position to give the names of the British delegates?
  Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: The present arrangement is that the Genoa Conference should meet on 10th April. The answer to the last part of the question is in the negative.
  Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: Has the question of Easter in Italy been considered in reference to the date of the Conference, and will it not probably be postponed for a few days until about the 15th or the 20th?
  Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: The British Government suggested apparently the 10th to the Italian Government. I think that the Italian Government have no desire to postpone the Conference to a later date than is necessary. If the particular date appears to be inconvenient to them, they will no doubt say so.

  FRENCH DEBT (GREAT BRITAIN).
  Colonel WEDGWOODasked the Prime Minister whether he will see that those recurrent liabilities in connection with which we are liable to France shall not be paid over to France until the French debt to Great Britain is paid, and that meanwhile one debt shall be set off against the other?
  Mr. YOUNG: I have been asked to reply. The answer is in the affirmative.

  HOUSING (CONSTRUCTION).
  Mr. TREVELYAN THOMSONasked the Prime Minister whether, in order that there shall not be a single house the less built under the Government's revised rules for carrying out their housing schemes for 1919, they will now authorise the Minister of Health to sanction the erection of more than the 176,000 houses already promised, in order that all the available labour and materials may be fully employed on house building?
  The MINISTER of HEALTH (Sir Alfred Mond): I have been asked to reply. In view of the large programme of housing still to be completed, and the continued reduction in prices, I hope that further State intervention in any form will not be required, and that the building industry will return to its pre-War economic basis.
  Mr. THOMSON: Are we to understand from what the right hon. Gentleman says that the Government are not going to fulfil the original promise of the Prime Minister to build 500,000 houses?
  Sir A. MOND: I am not aware that either the Prime Minister or any other Minister ever gave such a promise.

  LORD TREVETHIN.
  Mr. G. THORNEasked the Prime Minister when the late Lord Chief Justice sent in his resignation; whether it was then accepted; and, if not, whether he was consulted as to the date on which his resignation should become effective?
  Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: The late Lord Chief Justice's letter of resignation was dated 1st November last. He was then asked by the Prime Minister to postpone his resignation, and consented to do so. The matter was again referred to towards the end of January, and his resignation was further postponed with his consent. On Thursday last the Prime Minister wrote to the Lord Chief Justice saying that he was accepting his resignation, and thanking him for his eminent public services. I speak on behalf of my right hon. Friend When I say that I should be extremely sorry if the official announcement of the resignation, so soon after the delivery of this letter, led to any misconception as to the respect and regard felt
  1472
  for the Lord Chief Justice. The directions for publication were given in the midst of a great press of business. An endeavour was, in fact, made a few hours later to postpone the announcement, but it had already been circulated to the news agencies and the Press.
  Captain BENN: Is it a fact that the Lord Chief Justice was unaware that he had resigned, and that he announced on Friday that he would sit on Monday, and then learned on Saturday that he had resigned?
  Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: That assumption is quite as inaccurate as most of the assumptions of the hon. and gallant Gentleman.
  Mr. GWYNNE: Is it not a fact that the Lord Chief Justice was in the middle of the trial of a case when the announcement was made?
  Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: Yes; he was trying a case which he was able to finish next morning.

  FABRIC GLOVES.
  Captain BENNasked the Lord Privy Seal whether His Majesty's Government has considered the recommendation of the Statutory Committee that a duty should be imposed on fabric gloves under Part II of the Safeguarding of Industries Act; whether a decision has been made; and, if not, what is the cause of the delay?
  The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. Baldwin): I have been asked to reply. I would refer the hon. and gallant Gentleman to the answer given to the hon. Member for Chippenham on Monday last. I hope to be in a position to make a statement on the subject at an early date.
  Captain BENN: Will the right hon. Gentleman answer the last part of the question? What is the cause of the delay, inasmuch as the recommendations of the Committee have been in the hands of the Government for two months?
  Mr. BALDWIN: The simple cause of the delay is that I am seeing certain people who wish to put their case before me who were unable to put their case before the Committee.
  Captain BENN: Is not the right hon. Gentleman bound by the Statute to refer complaints to the Committee, and is he able to reverse the provisions of the Statute?
  Lieut.-Colonel ARCHER-SHEE: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that owing to the combination of slump and dump German manufacturers can send their gloves into this country at half the price at which British manufacturers can make them, and that if a British manufacturer makes 40,000 of these gloves he can employ 250 hands, and will he frustrate the efforts of these free trade fraternisers?

  SIBERIA AND SAGHALIEN.
  Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHYasked the Lord President of the Council whether the question of the continued occupation of the northern part of the island of Saghalien, the port of Vladivostok, and the maritime province of Siberia by the Japanese was discussed at Washington; if not, can he give the reasons; and whether his attention has been called to the support being given by Japanese naval and military forces to the counter-revolutionary generals and their bands of soldiers in Vladivostok and the maritime province?
  The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. Cecil Harmsworth): The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative. The second part does not, therefore, arise. It is well known that Vladivostok and the surrounding zone are in the occupation of Japanese forces. My information is that M. Merkuloff, the head of the Vladivostok Government, has complained that he does not receive support from the Japanese.
  Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: Are His Majesty's Government satisfied with the assurance of the Japanese that they are going to withdraw these forces?
  Mr. HARMSWORTH: Yes.
  Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: With regard to the northern part of Saghalien, has it not come to practical annexation without any justification?

  APPROVED SOCIETIES (AUDITS).
  Mr. RHYS DAVIESasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether it
  1474
  is proposed to adopt the suggestion contained in the Geddes Committee Report that the cost of auditing the accounts of approved societies should be borne out of the administrative expenses of those societies?
  Mr. YOUNG: In view of the very heavy burden which will have to be transferred from the Exchequer to the funds of approved societies in order to secure the saving recommended in the First Report of the Committee on National Expenditure, I am afraid it will not be practicable to recover the cost of audit from insurance funds as suggested in the Third Report of the Committee.

  BEER (PRICES).
  Mr. SIMMasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer (1) if he is aware that beer of inferior quality is commonly sold at 5d. per pint or in glasses at 5d. per glass containing less than half a pint; recognising that beer and spirits yield so large a revenue, will he consider the desirability of taking steps to ensure that beer and spirits sold shall be of a reasonable standard of quality and only recognised standard measures permitted;
  (2) asked the Home Secretary if his attention has been drawn to a statement of the judge at the Newcastle-on-Tyne Assizes, when a man was being tried for supplying inferior beer and spirits at maximum prices, that such frauds were not unknown outside Newcastle; and if he will consider the desirability of strengthening the law to protect the public against such practices and ensure the due enforcement of a standard quality of beer and spirits being supplied in standard measures?
  Mr. BALDWIN: My attention has not been drawn to the facts stated in the first part of either question. For the rest, I would refer to the answers which I have given recently in the House, copies of which I am sending to the hon. Member.
  Sir J. NORTON-GRIFFITHS: Does my right hon. Friend drink beer? Has he tasted it?
  Mr. MACQUISTEN: Will the right hon. Gentleman cause the Cabinet to consider in the forthcoming Budget a

  1475
  reduction in the duties, because wages have fallen so much that the workman can hardly buy a pint of beer?
  Viscountess ASTOR: Will the right hon. Gentleman inquire into the profits made by the brewers out of beer before reducing the price of beer to the working man? The brewers can do it. [HON. MEMBERS: "Speech!"] It is not a speech.
  Mr. MACQUISTEN: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the price of champagne for the aristocracy was reduced in the last Budget?

  LAW OFFICERS (SALARIES AND FEES).
  Mr. MILLSasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer the amount of salary and fees paid to the Solicitor-General and Attorney-General from 1915 to 1921?
  Mr. YOUNG: The salary of the Attorney-General is £7,000 and of the Solicitor-General £6,000. But these amounts were at their own wish reduced in each case during the period of actual hostilities by £1,000 per annum, apart from the further reduction due to the Ministerial pool. Fees are paid to the Law Officers of the Crown in litigious cases only, and the period referred to was one of heavy and increasing litigation, which, however, has recently diminished. For example, in the Department of the Treasury Solicitor alone the number of new cases rose from 3,730 in 1914 to 7,747 in 1920–21, exclusive of prize cases. During the six financial years covered by the question the aggregate amount of fees paid to the Attorney-General was £77,887 10s. 9d., and to the Solicitor-General £51,863 8s. 4d. These amounts were of course greatly diminished by Income Tax and Super-tax. I should like to add that a considerable part of the Law Officers' fees does not fall on public funds. In cases where the Crown succeeds with costs, the costs are recovered from the unsuccessful party, and during the period in question a large number of the cases were cases in the Prize Courts, where the claimants were almost invariably foreigners.

  AUDITORS (FRIENDLY SOCIETIES ACTS).
  Sir J. NORTON-GRIFFITHSasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, in view of a Treasury Minute of 1920 restricting the appointments of public auditors under the Industrial and Friendly Societies Acts, 1893 and 1896, to members of the Institute of Chartered Accountants and of the Society of Incorporated Accountants, he will consider the desirability of withdrawing such restrictions, having regard to the existence of other associations of accountants of efficiency and repute?
  Mr. YOUNG: In making the rule in question the Treasury followed the precedent set by Parliament in recent legislation, and it would not be in the public interest to alter the present practice.
  Sir J. NORTON-GRIFFITHS: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the London Association of Accountants are a very responsible body, and, in view of that fact, will he not reconsider the matter?
  Mr. YOUNG: I am well aware of the status of the body referred to, but, in view of the precedents in legislation and the recommendations of the Committee of this House, I think that the conclusion to which my right hon. Friend has come should stand.

  BELGIAN DEBT (GREAT BRITAIN).
  Mr. WISEasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if the Government has consolidated the Belgian debt; and, if so, what are the terms?
  Mr. YOUNG: The Government have agreed in principle with the Belgian Government that the Belgian debt to this country (other than the War debt, which is being taken over by Germany under the Treaty of Versailles) shall be consolidated, but the terms have not yet been settled.

  FRIENDLY SOCIETIES (FEES).
  Mr. RHYS DAVIESasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he

  1477
  has received any protests against the proposal to impose a fee of 10s. on each annual and valuation return sent to the Chief Registrar of Friendly Societies; whether it is his intention to carry out the proposal; and, if so, whether he will take into consideration the fact that this fee would be in the nature of a penalty for carrying out a duty already imposed on those societies by the State?
  Mr. ALFRED DAVIES (Clitheroe): asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, in view of the fact that friendly societies are compelled by law to present annual returns to the chief registrar, and that the recommendation of the Committee on National Expenditure that a fee of 10s. should be charged for each return would impose a burden upon those societies for the promotion of thrift, he can give an assurance that the recommendation will not be put into operation?
  Mr. YOUNG: I understand that one protest has been received by the chief registrar. As regards the second and third parts of the question, the imposition of a fee is at present under consideration. It is, however, not the case that such a fee would be in the nature of a penalty. It would merely be a contribution by the society or branch towards the expense of registering and otherwise dealing with the return as part of the administration of certain Acts of Parliament, under which very substantial advantages are conferred upon the body making the return.
  Mr. RHYS DAVIES: Will the hon. Gentleman bear in mind, as a very important fact in this connection, that a large centralised society with a large membership would only be called upon to pay 10s., whereas a smaller society with

  Period.

  Gross receipt.

  Repayments.

  Net receipt.

  £

  £

  £

  1st April, 1921, to 7th March, 1922

  …

  111,576,000

  83,151,000

  28,425,000

  NATIONAL DEBT (RATE OF INTEREST).
  Mr. N. MACLEANasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware that an Act to reduce the rate of interest from 4 per cent. to 3½ per cent.
  4,000 branches would be called on to pay £2,000 at the 10s. rate?
  Mr. YOUNG: Yes, Sir, undoubtedly. In dealing with this matter such considerations will be very carefully taken into account.

  CHINA TEA (DUTY).
  Mr. FORRESTasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer the revenue from the duty on China tea for the various years since 1914?
  Mr. YOUNG: As the answer is somewhat lengthy, I will, with my hon. Friend's permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
  Following is the answer:
  The revenue derived from China tea during each of the years 1914 to 1921 (inclusive) has been as follows:

  Year.

  £.

  1914

  281,000

  1915

  461,000

  1916

  436,000

  1917

  801,000

  1918

  41,000

  1919

  221,000

  1920

  179,000

  1921

  238,000

  EXCESS PROFITS DUTY.
  Captain TUDOR-REESasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how much has been received by the Treasury during the present financial year in Excess Profits Duty; and what is the total paid or payable by way of refund?
  Mr. YOUNG: The approximate figures are as follow:—
  was passed without opposition on 20th December, 1749; that this Act was not one of conversion of national debts but a notice of reduction of rates of interest to those persons, bodies politic or corporate, including the Bank of England, entitled

  1479
  to any part of the National Debt; that this Measure was responsible for an annual saving of £288,000 on the amount of debt affected of £57,703,475; that the rate of interest was later reduced to 3 per cent.; that this Measure received the commendation of William Pitt, who described it as a piece of consummate wisdom; and whether, in view of this precedent on the part of British statesmen, he can now see his way to reconsider his decision not to introduce a similar Bill in the present Session?
  Mr. YOUNG: The hon. Member is mistaken in supposing that the Act to which he refers was not one for conversion. The Act enjoined "strict regard to public faith and private property," and holders were given the option of having the principal repaid at par, a sum of £3,290,041 being in fact so repaid. The rest of the question does not arise.
  Mr. N. MACLEAN: Is it not the case that where creditors are repaid at par, that is not conversible, and is the hon. Gentleman not aware that this Act dealt specifically with the reduction in the rate of interest, and that with the exception of the few millions mentioned, all the large holders, including the Bank of England and the East India Company, accepted the terms of Mr. Pitt? In these circumstances and in view of the fact that tomorrow the French Ministry do the same with their War Bonds and reduce the interest by one-half per cent., will this Government also take steps?
  Mr. MARRIOTT: Is it not the case that at the time of the conversion referred to in the first part of the question, the funds stood at over par, and was it not that fact alone which enabled the conversion to be made?
  Mr. YOUNG: I think that was the case, but I defer to my hon. Friend's superior knowledge of the subject. As regards the question put by the hon. Member for Govan, the interesting circumstance about this Act was that it was voluntary and not compulsory. As regards what is, or what is not, conversion, that appears to be a matter for discussion. The provisions of this Act to which I desire to draw special attention express the view that strict regard shall be had to public faith and private property.
  Mr. N. MACLEAN—
  Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member cannot argue the matter.
  Mr. N. MACLEAN: I wish to ask a further question.
  Mr. SPEAKER: If the hon. Member has a further question, he should put it down.
  Mr. N. MACLEAN: It bears upon this matter. [HON. MEMBERS: "Order, order!"]

  ST. LAWRENCE WATERWAY.
  Mr. BIGLANDasked the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he has any information as to the nature of the action the Government of the United States is taking with reference to the scheme for deepening the St. Lawrence waterway to enable oceangoing steamers to pass into the great lakes dividing Canada and the United States; and whether he is able to issue as a White Paper definite details of the proposed plans?
  Mr. HARMSWORTH: A proposal of this nature was brought before Congress at the end of last year, but various alternative schemes were advocated by the representatives of different States. His Majesty's Ambassador at Washington is being instructed to report on the present position.
  Sir H. COWAN: Has the Imperial Government refused to make any contribution towards the preliminary expenses of the scheme?
  Mr. HARMSWORTH: Perhaps my hon. Friend will give me notice of that question.

  CHINA (LOANS).
  Mr. L. MALONEasked the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware that many important British firms have in the past offered loans to China at terms more favourable to China than those offered by the Consortium, and that these offers did not receive the support of His Majesty's Government, and did not, therefore, mature; whether, seeing that the Consortium Agreement gives seven British banks a monopoly for the exploitation of China, to the detri-

  1481
  ment of both China and the rest of the financial world in England, he will consult the other nations concerned in the Consortium with a view to bringing its policy more into line with the spirit of the Washington open-door resolutions?
  Mr. HARMSWORTH: His Majesty's Government are not aware that the facts are as suggested in the question, and they do not propose to take any action in the sense indicated.

  LEBANON (ADMINISTRATION).
  Mr. RAFFANasked the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what is the present status of the Lebanon; whether that status meets with the approval of the inhabitants; whether the pre-war rights and obligations of Great Britain with regard to the people of the Lebanon continue in force; if not, what is the nature and extent of the change in that respect and the reason for such change; and whether it has resulted in the orderly government of the country or otherwise?
  Mr. HARMSWORTH: The Lebanon is part of the territory placed under the mandate of France in accordance with Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, and the decision of the Supreme Council at San Remo in April, 1920. I am not clear to what pre-war rights and obligations my hon. Friend refers, but if it be to the arrangement relative to the administration of the Lebanon accepted by Turkey in the Protocol of 1861 between her and certain European Powers, it must be clear that there is no need to maintain this arrangement after the cessation of Turkish rule. So far as His Majesty's Government are aware, the answer to the second and last parts of the question is in the affirmative.

  MORPHIA LICENCES.
  Mr. GILBERTasked the Home Secretary what is the form of licence issued under the Dangerous Drugs Act, 1920, permitting the manufacture of morphia in Great Britain; how many premises and persons have been licensed for such manufacture; what was the amount of British-made morphia exported
  1482
  during the year 1921; and to what countries was it consigned?
  The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. Shortt): The form of licence is an authorisation to carry on the manufacture of morphine at certain premises specified in the licence and subject to certain conditions. The conditions are not necessarily the same in each case but, in general, they provide for adequate supervision, exclusion of unauthorised persons, keeping of records of production and the like. The number of firms and premises licensed is three. The amount of British-made morphia exported during 1921, as shown in the Customs Returns, was 81,098 ounces, but this does not include the amount exported through the parcel post. The total amount of morphia licensed for export, including export by post, was 112,681 ounces. Morphia is exported to all parts of the world, but over one-half of the amount shown in the Customs Returns went to France. Other countries which received more than 5,000 ounces were Sweden, Belgium and Canada.

  ALIENS.

    OFFICIAL INQUIBIES.
    Mr. KENNEDYasked the Home Secretary whether any official investigations were conducted, on the ground of suspicions communicated to the authorities in 1917 and 1918, regarding the good faith of any member or servant of the British, Foreign, and Colonial Corporation, Limited, of 57, Bishopsgate, London, and with what result?
    Mr. SHORTT: I find no record in my Department of any such official investigations.
    Mr. KENNEDYasked the Home Secretary if he is aware that Mr. F. A. Szarvassy, an alien enemy subject, was not interned during the period of the War; that he retained his position as a director of the British, Foreign, and Colonial Corporation, Limited, of 57, Bishopsgate, London, during that period, and had, in that capacity, full information regarding the movement of vessels belonging to shipping companies with which the British, Foreign, and Colonial Corporation was associated; and if he can state any reason for the exemption of this alien

    1483
    from the scope of the Defence of the Realm Act?
    Mr. SHORTT: Mr. Szarvassy, who is now a British subject, was exempted from internment as an alien enemy in 1915 on the recommendation of the Advisory Committee after full consideration. I have no doubt that they had good reasons, though I have no record of them, for considering that he might be so exempted without danger to the Realm. He retained his position as a director of the British, Foreign and Colonial Corporation, Limited, but I have no knowledge of the information to which in that capacity he may have had access.

    IMMIGRATION.
    Mr. DOYLEasked the Home Secretary how many aliens, Russian, German, Polish, and Scandinavian, have arrived in Great Britain for residence here during the last 12 months; how many were proved to be engaged on Bolshevist propaganda; and how much money they approximately possessed?
    Mr. SHORTT: As I have stated before, it is not possible to say exactly how many of the aliens arriving in this country in any year have come to reside, but probably about 300, 400, and 750 would be the respective numbers of Russians, Poles and Scandinavians (including Danes). Germans may not be permitted to land for more than three months, and except for some dozen returning in accordance with the recommendation of the Advisory Committee under Section 10 (4) and about 40 British-born women, no Germans came here to reside permanently during 1921. I cannot give the information asked for in the second and third parts of this question.
    Captain BENNasked the Home Secretary whether, seeing that of 294,569 aliens who landed at British ports during the 12 months ended 31st December last only 1,712 were refused permission to enter the country, and that the cost of rejecting these aliens was £58 per head, he proposes to take any action to reduce this burdensome expenditure?
    Mr. SHORTT: With my hon. and gallant Friend's permission, the answer to this question will be circulated in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
    Captain BENN: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this is taken from the Geddes Report?

    CRIMINAL LAW AMENDMENT ACT.
    Mr. CAUTLEYasked the Home Secretary whether he will consider the advantage of taking the opinion of His Majesty's Judges of the King's Bench as to the expediency or desirability of taking away the defence of reasonable cause of belief under Sections 5 and 6 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885?
    Mr. SHORTT: I do not think it would bs right or proper for mc to attempt to elicit such an expression of opinion.

    WANDSWORTH GUARDIANS (POLICE PROTECTION).
    Mr. SAMUEL SAMUELasked the Home Secretary whether he is aware of the fact that, at a meeting of the Wands-worth Poor Law guardians, held at their board room on the 26th January last for the transaction of the board's business, the members were locked in by members of the public, and that the keys were taken away and have not been returned; is he aware that at the same meeting a member of an unemployed deputation made an application to the Wandsworth Guardians for a deputation to be received, accompanied by a threat from the applicant that, if the request was not acceded to, the deputation and others accompanying them would prevent the guardians from proceeding with their business; and will he have adequate measures taken in the future to provide police protection to members of the Poor Law guardians to enable them to discharge their public duties free from threats and molestation?
    Mr. SHORTT: I am informed by the Commissioner that at 4.50 p.m. on the day in question a request for police assistance was received from the Wandsworth Poor Law Guardians, St. John's Infirmary, as a number of unemployed were at the guardians' offices threatening disorder and refusing to leave. Police were immediately sent and on arrival were informed by an official that the men had gone quietly away. The official also stated

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    that a key was missing from one of the doors of the board room, and that he suspected it had been taken by one of the men who had applied for unemployment relief. The police are always prepared to render any assistance in such cases so far as their duties and legal powers permit, and prompt attention appears to have been given to the application made to them on this occasion.

    OVERSEAS COMMITTEE.
    Mr. R. GWYNNEasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether a new Bill will be introduced to continue and enlarge the work of the Overseas Committee and, if so, when?
    The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the ADMIRALTY (Mr. Amery): I have been asked to reply. I invite the attention of my hon. Friend to the answer given by the Leader of the House to a similar question on the 7th instant.

    STREET TRADING COMMITTEE.
    Mr. BRIANTasked the Home Secretary if the Committee on Street Trading has yet reported; if the Report will be issued; and when proposals dealing with the recommendations will be submitted?
    Mr. SHORTT: I have received the Report of this Committee. It is now in the Press, and it will be presented to Parliament and put on sale to the public as soon as possible. I must have time to consider the recommendations of the Committee before I can be in a position to say what action will be taken on them.

    LICENSING STATISTICS.
    Mr. RAFFANasked the Home Secretary whether, in the licensing statistics published annually by his Department, information can be given as to the hours of opening and closing licensed premises for the sale of alcoholic liquors fixed by licensing authorities in their respective areas, and also as to the hours fixed for the supply of alcoholic liquors in registered clubs?
    Mr. SHORTT: I hope to include in the volume now in preparation as much information on the subject of permitted hours for the sale or supply of liquor as can be got into a reasonable compass. But I cannot be sure that considerations of economy in staff, time, printing, etc. will allow me to cover all the ground desired by the hon. Member.

    WOMEN POLICE PATROL.
    Captain BENNasked the Home Secretary whether, by abolishing the mounted branch of the Metropolitan Police, a saving could be effected approximately equal to the cost of the women patrols?
    Mr. SHORTT: No, Sir; they would have to be replaced by foot police in much larger number.
    Captain BENN: But are not mounted police much more expensive than foot police, and if foot police replaced mounted police, could not the economy desired be effected?
    Mr. SHORTT: No. The foot police required would be a very much greater number.

    WOMEN (CONVICTIONS).
    Viscountess ASTORasked the Home Secretary what proportion of women committed to prison in 1921 had previous convictions to their names; and what proportion were under 25 years of age?
    Mr. SHORTT: The total number of women received into prison on conviction for the year ended 31st March, 1921, was 11,043, of whom 8,100, or 73·3 per cent., had been previously convicted. There are no figures available showing the number who were under 25 years of age, but of the above total 3,861 were under 30, namely, 743 between the ages of 16 and 21, and 3,118 between 21 and 30.
    Viscountess ASTOR: Is it not true that a woman once convicted is very apt to be convicted again, and if we can prove that the women police have prevented convictions, so showing that it is an economy to keep them, would the right hon. Gentleman consider it? You see the point?
    Mr. SPEAKER: This is not the time for Debate.

    CRIME (DETECTION).
    Captain TUDOR-REESasked the Home Secretary whether he is aware of the increasing number of grave crimes that are being committed in which the offenders are not brought to justice; and whether, in order that the number may be largely reduced, police authorities in whose district such crimes are committed can be compelled instantly to apply for the assistance of Scotland Yard?
    Mr. SHORTT: I am not aware that there is any increase in the number of cases referred to in the first part of the question, and it must be remembered that the fact that the perpetrator of a crime escapes detection does not prove that the best detective measures have not been employed by the police. The local police are fully aware that they can, if occasion requires, obtain assistance from Scotland Yard. I have no power to compel them to do so.
    Captain TUDOR-REESasked the Home Secretary how many murders in respect of which the perpetrators have escaped arrest have been committed in Great Britain during the past year?
    Mr. SHORTT: This information is not at present available, but I will make inquiries.

    LICENSING JUSTICES.
    Mr. SAMUEL SAMUELasked the Home Secretary whether, seeing that justices interested in the brewing trades are not permitted to serve on licensing benches, he will secure a similar prohibition against members of temperance associations or other bodies working for prohibition or local veto sitting, in view of the difficulty that must accrue to their consciences to give unbiased decisions?
    Mr. SHORTT: Justices interested in the brewing trade are prohibited from serving on licensing benches in the district in which they brew or in the adjoining districts, but in any case I cannot adopt the suggestion in the latter part of the question.

    ASSAULT, UGANDA (Mr. C. F. ANDREWS).
    Colonel WEDGWOODasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he has received any report as to the assault committed upon Mr. C. F. Andrews while travelling on the Uganda Railway by one of the European colonists; and, if not, will he inquire into these outrages and obtain a report?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: I have received no official report, but I will make inquiry of the Governor.

    FLOODS, KILLALAN.
    Major Sir KEITH FRASER(by Private Notice) asked the Secretary for Scotland is he aware that the Black Bridge across the River Elchaig, near Killalan, Kintail, West Ross, has recently been swept away by a spate, and that the inhabitants of Camuslainie township are now completely isolated and are unable to get supplies across the river, that no doctor can get to the district, and that the children are unable to attend school at Killalan; and what steps does he, propose to take in this matter?
    The SECRETARY for SCOTLAND (Mr. Munro): I have no information regarding the circumstances referred to. I am, however, having inquiry made, and I will communicate further with my hon. and gallant Friend.

    CROWN v. WILTS UNITED DAIRIES, LTD.
    Mr. G. LOCKER-LAMPSON(by Private Notice) asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he proposes to take any further action with regard to the case in which the Court of Appeal has given Judgment against the Crown in proceedings to recover certain moneys claimed to be due from the Wilts United Dairies, Limited.
    Mr. BALDWIN: In the case to which my hon. Friend refers, the decision of the Court of first instance was to the effect that the Crown is entitled to recover certain moneys claimed to be due from the Wilts United Dairies, Limited, in respect of charges made by the Ministry of Food on licences to export milk from

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    one area to another. This decision has been reversed by the Court of Appeal, and an appeal to the House of Lords has been lodged. If Judgment be given by the House of Lords against the Crown, the Government will bring in a Bill to legalise their procedure in cases of this nature during the period of control.

  SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA.
    RESIGNATION OF MR. MONTAGU.

      STATEMENT BY MR. CHAMBERLAIN.
      Mr. A. HERBERT(by Private Notice) asked the Secretary of State for India whether a telegram has been received by the Government from the Government of India specifying definite modifications in the Treaty of Sevres which they recommend; whether the publication of this telegram was approved by the Government of India or by His Majesty's Government; who is responsible for its publication; and whether the Government will to-day declare their attitude on this unprecedented incident?
      Captain BENN(by Private Notice) asked the Prime Minister whether the telegram from the Viceroy of India urging a revision of the Sèvres Treaty represents the view of His Majesty's Government?
      Mr. GIDEON MURRAY(by Private Notice) asked the Secretary of State for India whether His Majesty's Government has received a communication from the Government of India recommending the revision of the Treaty of Sevres and the settlement of the Turkish question on certain definite lines; whether he will say what are the specific lines of settlement recommended and what His Majesty's Government propose to do in the matter?
      Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: I understand that this telegram was published by the Government of India, with the sanction of the Secretary of State. No other Minister was consulted.
      I desire expressly to abstain from any comment upon the subject-matter of the telegram, though the terms exceed those demanded even by the warmest friends of the Turks themselves. This, however, is matter for discussion at the Confer-
      1490
      ence, into which it would be highly inexpedient for me now to enter. But the publication of such a pronouncement of policy, without consultation with the Cabinet, and without their assent, raises a different question all the more important because the Conference was just about to meet at Paris, when, as it seemed, there was a fair prospect that in concert with our Allies, we should be able to lay the basis for peace between Turks and Greeks.
      His Majesty's Government are unable to reconcile the publication of the telegram of the Government of India on the sole responsibility of the Secretary of State with the collective responsibility of the Cabinet, or with the duty which all the Governments of the Empire owe to each other in matters of Imperial concern. Such independent declarations destroy the unity of policy which it is vital to preserve in foreign affairs, and gravely imperil the success of the impending negotiations.
      The Secretary of State has tendered his resignation to the Prime Minister, and His Majesty has been pleased to approve its acceptance.
      When the Foreign Secretary proceeds to Paris to discuss the Eastern settlement with the Foreign Ministers of France and Italy, it will be his object to arrive at a solution that will be equitable to all parties. Due weight will be given by him to the opinions of the Indian Mahommedans, as expressed by the Government of India. But he cannot hold himself bound to accept any solution that may be put forward by that Government irrespective of its relation to the problem as a whole. The responsibility for the revision of the Treaty of Sèvres and the conclusion of peace in the East rests with the Allied Powers in combination.
      Mr. HERBERT: Arising out of the entirely unsatisfactory nature of that answer, I beg leave to move the Adjournment of the House, to call attention to a definite matter of urgent public importance—
      Mr. SPEAKER: There are other questions first.
      Colonel WEDGWOOD: May I ask whether the Secretary of State for India resigned before or after the publication of this document?
      Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: The Secretary of State tendered his resignation to-day.
      Mr. T. P. O'CONNOR: May I ask my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House—who, I have reason to believe, would regard a discussion such as that suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Herbert) as inopportune at the moment—whether ho will undertake to give the House an opportunity, at an early date, of discussing not only the dispatch, but the policy of the Government with regard to the Near East?
      Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: Of course, if it be the general wish of the House to discuss the policy of His Majesty's Government, I must endeavour to provide an early opportunity for it, but I do most earnestly impress upon the House the view that a discussion of the policy of the Government, or of the action which is to be taken by the representatives of the Government in the Conference at Paris before that Conference takes place, cannot serve the public interest. The successful conduct of negotiations is impossible if the Government are to be asked, before entering the Conference, to state exactly what they will do, and what is to be the outcome of it. I should, therefore, earnestly deprecate any discussion as to the policy to be pursued in respect of these matters, in anticipation of the Conference.
      Mr. ASQUITH: Is the House to understand from what my right hon. Friend says that this very important document was communicated to the Press on the sole authority of the Secretary of State for India? We have on the Paper to-day, as the first Order, a discussion upon the Vote for the Middle East, Supplementary Estimates, and—I am only suggesting this to my right hon. Friend, and not in any hostile spirit—the opinion of the House on certain points connected with that matter will be very largely affected by this pronouncement, and by the action of His Majesty's Government upon it. That does affect vitally—or would, if it were adopted in any sense by His Majesty's Government—the whole future of that part of the world. Shall we not be rather embarrassed in that discussion if we do not know what is the attitude of His Majesty's Government?
      Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: My right hon. Friend is correct in interpreting my
      1492
      answer. I need hardly say that my answer was explicit on the point. The document was published by the Secretary of State for India on his sole authority, without consultation with any Member of the Cabinet.
      Mr. ASQUITH: I only wanted to make that point clear.
      Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: I do not think that the discussion on the Middle East, in regard to which my right hon. Friend the Colonial Secretary is prepared to make a general statement, will be prejudiced in any way by this very regrettable incident. As regards the attitude of His Majesty's Government towards the negotiations or Conference at Paris, I have stated what that is, and I deprecate Members pressing the Government for any more explicit statement as to policy, in anticipation of the Conference. I think a good deal of mischief has been done in connection with previous conferences by debates, not, indeed, in this House, but in other places, which have endeavoured to pledge Ministers to a particular solution, before they met the representatives of other nations in conference.
      Colonel GRETTON: As questions regarding the Government of India are involved in the subject raised in these supplementary questions, may we understand that the right hon. Gentleman will give a day for the discussion of the Indian side of the matter if it be generally desired?
      Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: I cannot accept my hon. and gallant Friend's premise. The Government of India were obviously entitled, and indeed almost bound, to put their views before His Majesty's Government, and they were quite entitled to ask that those views should be published, but the question of publication should have been reserved for a Cabinet decision. The responsibility of the Government of India for that document is wholly covered by the responsibility taken by the Secretary of State, who authorised its publication.
      Major-General SEELY: There is one point which I am sure the House would like cleared up in this important matter. The statement appears in the Press as a Reuter telegram. How does it come about that it is published as a Reuter telegram, and yet the Secretary of State for India is the only man to blame?
      Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: The Government of India asked that they might publish this telegram, and the Secretary of State for India authorised it to be published in India. It was published in India, and it was telegraphed from India to this country. It was not published in India before it had reached the Secretary of State for India, or had been circulated, but it was published in India, I suppose, yesterday. I do not actually know that; I only assume, from seeing it in the papers this morning, that it was published in India yesterday. That publication in India was authorised by the Secretary of State for India, and has led to his resignation on the grounds of Cabinet responsibility and Imperial policy which I have described to the House.
      Mr. G. MURRAY: What form did that publication take? Was it a proclamation through the Press, or what form did it take?
      Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: I do not know.
      Mr. HERBERT: May I ask my right hon. Friend if he is not aware that the last thing that I should desire to do to-day is to embarrass him or the Government in the very serious situation in which they are placed? May I also ask him if he is aware that men like myself have known that this disaster was going to come for the last two years, and that we have been denied all knowledge, while Sir Basil Zakharoff has known exactly what the Government were going to do?
      Sir C. YATE: What is the date that the Paris Conference is to assemble?
      Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: My memory is charged with a good many matters at the present time, and I am not quite certain of the date, but I think the meeting is contemplated for the 22nd March.
      Mr. SPEAKER: I have a question on the same subject from the Noble Lord the Member for Hastings. I take it that his point is covered.
      Lord EUSTACE PERCY: Certainly.
      Mr. HERBERT: Shall we be given a day for the discussion of this question next week?
      Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: I can make no promise on that subject. I gather that my hon. and gallant Friend (Mr. Herbert) wants to discuss the line of
      1494
      policy which His Majesty's Government, or the representatives of His Majesty's Government, should take at the Paris Conference. That is the particular request which I have asked hon. Members not to press, it being contrary to the public interest, and almost incompatible with the successful conduct of the negotiations.

RUSSIAN FAMINE RELIEF.
Mr. G. BARNES: I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House for the purpose of discussing a definite matter of urgent public importance, namely, "the refusal of the Government to agree to any Grant-in-Aid of the Russian Famine, and the consequent injury that will necessarily arise to the economic interests of this country."
Mr. SPEAKER: I cannot accept that Motion as one coming under Standing Order No. 10. Unhappily, the famine in Russia has been a long-continuing matter. It has been pointed out to-day that there is no change in the attitude of His Majesty's Government, and therefore, in my view, the Motion does not come under Standing Order No. 10.
Sir D. MACLEAN: Would it affect your view if it were brought to your knowledge that the whole of the British funds will be exhausted on 15th May, and that afterwards there will be no means of feeding these children there?
Mr. SPEAKER: I do not think that affects the matter. I have to look not merely at the individual case, but where the question will lead, and I know of no Motion for Adjournment under Standing Order No. 10 which proposed to call upon the Government to spend money outside this country. I can think of a dozen cases which might arise if I were to set a precedent.
Mr. BARNES: May I ask if you have given due weight to the concluding sentence of my Motion, namely, "the consequent injury that will necessarily arise to the economic interests of this country"—the reflex of the impoverishment of Russia upon this country. If we cannot have the adjournment to-night, may I ask the Leader of the House, having regard to the great public interest in this matter, if he could arrange to give time for a discussion?
Mr. SPEAKER: I have given due weight to the last paragraph of the right hon. Member's proposed Motion, but it does not alter the view that I take.
Captain BENN: May I ask, as regards the question of urgency, whether you have borne in mind the fact that the time for sowing in Russia is limited?
Mr. SPEAKER: That does not affect the principle upon which I have based by decision.
Colonel WEDGWOOD: I was going to press the Government, if possible, to give a day for the discussion of this matter.
Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: There is no Member to whom I would more gladly give way if it were in my power to do so than to my right hon. Friend (Mr. G. Barnes) but we are in great difficulty about the business of the House.
Supply has moved more slowly than I anticipated, and much more slowly than was anticipated by my right hon. Friend the Member for Peebles (Sir D. Maclean) when we were discussing the Motion taking the time of the House. The Irish Free State (Agreement) Bill has also taken more time, and I do not see how it is possible to give extra days for other discussions until we have completed the Supply necessary before 31st March. There is hardly a day passes on which I am not asked to allot time for one subject or another.
Colonel WEDGWOOD: Could we have a day after the 31st March?
Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHY: Would it be possible to raise this matter on the Civil Service Estimates Vote on Account?
Mr. SPEAKER: That will be in Committee, and that is a question for the Chairman of Ways and Means; but I imagine, if it be the desire of the House generally, that it could be done, because the salaries of all the Ministers are included in the Vote on Account, and therefore any responsibility attaching to any Minister could be brought up.
Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: For the convenience of the House, may I say that if the right hon. Gentleman who has raised the question, or any other hon. Member, will put a question down for
1496
Monday or Tuesday, I hope by that time to be able to give a more specific answer as to the extent of the relief which we can give under the terms I have already mentioned.
Lord R. CECIL: Will the right hon. Gentleman not be able to facilitate some discussion on the matter, which excites the greatest possible interest of many people outside, who feel that it is one which very closely affects the good name and welfare of this country?
Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: If the matter be in order on any of the business that comes before the House, I shall, of course, raise no objection to a discussion, but I cannot make more than 24 hours in a day—and less than that in a Parliamentary day—nor can I stop the discussion which the House may think necessary for the special business on the Order Paper.
Mr. SPEAKER: The Vote on Account, if there be a responsibility attaching to the Government, or one of the stages of the Consolidated Fund Bill might afford the opportunity he wishes to the Noble Lord.
Lord R. CECIL: Yes, Sir, but the difficulty is that it is impossible to get a Division in the House which will indicate the opinion of hon. Members on this very important question. Personally I think it is the most important question we have now before us.
Mr. SPEAKER: In any case, the Noble Lord, as a private Member, could not initiate expenditure.
Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: May I say that if a question be put down for Monday, I may be able to speak rather more definitely than I have been able to do, and to say also whether a Supplementary Estimate will be needed to authorise the gift of supplies. I understand that such an Estimate will be needed, and, therefore, it may afford an opportunity for discussion of the matter.
Sir J. NORTON-GRIFFITHS: Will the right hon. Gentleman endeavour that it shall be so arranged that this House may have an opportunity of voting upon it?

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
Sir D. MACLEAN: Can the Leader of the House indicate what will be the business next week?
Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: On Monday we propose to take the Civil Service Vote on Account, and I understand that the Ministry of Health Vote will stand first.
On Tuesday, we shall take the Report of the Civil Service Vote on Account, and, subject to the authority of the Chair, the discussion will be on Egypt.
On Wednesday, we shall move to get Mr. Speaker out of the Chair on the Army Vote—Vote A and Vote on Account.
On Thursday, we shall move to get Mr. Speaker out of the Chair on the Navy Vote—Vote A and Vote on Account.
The business for Friday will be announced later.

NEW MEMBER SWORN.
Sir ROBEET BLAND BIRD, Baronet, for Borough of Wolverhampton (West Division).
PUBLIC ACCOUNTS COMMITTEE.
First Report brought up, and read; Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.

MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.
That they have agreed to:
Kilmarnock Gas Provisional Order Bill, without Amendment.
That they have passed a Bill, intituled, "An Act to dissolve the marriage of Alice Mary Maguire with Leonard Cornwall Maguire, her now husband, and to enable her to marry again; and for other purposes." [Maguire's Divorce Bill [Lords].

MAGUIRE'S DIVORCE BILL [Lords].
Read the First time; to be read a Second time.
ORDERS OF THE DAY.

  SUPPLY.
  Considered in Committee.
  [Mr. JAMES HOPE in the Chair.]

CIVIL SERVICES AND REVENUE DEPARTMENTS SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATE, 1921–22.
  CLASS V.

    MIDDLE EASTERN SERVICES.
    Motion made, and Question proposed,
    "That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £1,737,600, be granted to His Majesty, to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1922, for Salaries and Expenses in connection with Middle Eastern Services under His Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonies, including certain Grants-in-Aid."
    Sir D. MACLEAN: On a point of Order. May I ask you, Mr. Hope, in regard to the scope of the discussion on this Vote, as to whether you will allow a fairly wide area of debate in view of the fact that the original Supplementary Estimate amounted to two million odd pounds. The additional sum required—this is really the point—amounts to no less than £2,861,600.
    The CHAIRMAN: I should hesitate to rule on the ground of the amount of the Estimate, but perhaps I may be able to give satisfaction to the right hon. Gentleman on another ground. There are two items for new Services, and on one of these the policy which has led up to the item may be discussed.
    The SECRETARY of STATE for the COLONIES (Mr. Churchill): It is a far cry from Ireland to Iraq, but although this is a different drama I must make my apologies to the Committee that the management has not been able, or found it possible, to present a different cast, and I am called upon again, with so short an interval, to intrude upon its indulgence. I have, on the whole, a fairly satisfactory tale to tell. First of all let me deal with the Supplementary Estimate. On page 34 there is a note which explains exactly the relation which this Estimate bears to the expenditure in Iraq during the current year. There has been no failure to make good the under-
    1536
    taking which I gave to the House in June last. On the contrary, the rate of the evacuation of the troops has been accelerated and consequently the expenditure has been diminished. There would, therefore, be no need for a Supplementary Estimate, and I should have been able to return a substantial sum to the Exchequer, in spite of the fact that the troops have cost more than anticipated, but for the fact that two large items deal with the pre-Colonial Office period, legacies from the Entente régime, and which have come into account for the first time. Both of these are charges which arise on the civil administration, and are due to the payments to India, the first in regard to remittances to Indian soldiers, in connection with which a considerable deficit is due to India, and the second, the deficit on the Civil Budget in Mesopotamia in the year before the current financial year—
    Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: Mesopotamia! I thought we had decided to call it Iraq?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: Yes, so we had, and for the moment I had forgotten, and, after all, it is a good thing to change names sometimes. It is Iraq alias Mesopotamia. To continue. Both these charges refer to the earlier period, and it is all the more necessary, therefore, that I should not leave the Committee under the impression that we have not succeeded fully in making good the forecasts and anticipations which I presented to the House about eight months ago. It is impossible, I think, to understand the position in Iraq and in Palestine without taking more or less a general review of the financial and political situation; also indulging to some extent in retrospect. The Committee could not at all do justice to the subject unless they see exactly what is the position, so as to compare it in their own minds with the position which existed this time last year or the year before that. Let us, then, just see what are the milestones on the road we have travelled.
    When the War came to an end, there was an army in Iraq and Palestine, taking the two together, which might be measured by 175 battalions—I take the figure of battalions because it is a convenient index, for there are cavalry,

    1537
    artillery, and the ancillary services. In the Estimates for 1919–20 we were demobilising these armies and bringing them home, and on 1st April, 1919, the force had fallen to 99 battalions, and the cost for that year was estimated at about £75,000,000. In 1920–21 the number was reduced to about 70 battalions, costing about £40,000,000. The current year opened with a military force of 48 battalions, which the Government had already decided to reduce to about 37 battalions, while exploring the possibilities of making further reductions during the year. When the War Office Estimates for the current year, 1921–22, were finally prepared, it was on a basis of an army of 37 battalions, costing about £32,500,000. It was at this stage that the Cabinet decided that the triple control of the War Office, Foreign Office, and India Office should cease, and that a separate Vote for the Middle Eastern Services should be set up, that one Minister should be made responsible and that that Minister should be the Secretary of State for the Colonies. As the Committee knows, I was invited to move to that Department. As I have carefully explained on other occasions, I take no responsibility, other than the general responsibility for the circumstances which led us to Iraq and Palestine, or to stay there once we had entered those countries. During the period when very important decisions on this subject were taken, I was not a member of the War Cabinet, which alone had constitutional responsibility; I was only serving under it in what I had described as a quasi-technical capacity.
    I think the Committee will not accuse mo of being backward in assuming responsibility—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"]—or taking my share in it. I am quite willing to do so, and to explain the whole course of events, and the whole policy, but I decline altogether to be placed in a position of splendid isolation or of solitary eminence in regard to either Iraq or Palestine. The pledges which were given were pledges given by the Government before all the world, and the decisions which have been taken were decisions with which I was only connected in a general, and in some cases in an indirect, manner. When, therefore, in January of last year I assumed direct responsibility for the administration of the Middle East I was accorded by the
    1538
    Cabinet the full power necessary to discharge those responsibilities, and I felt perfectly free to take a new view of the way in which we could best carry out the responsibilities we had assumed in those countries. I felt at the outset that if the expense of Palestine and Iraq had remained at £30,000,000 a year, it would have been out of the question to remain in those territories at all. I put this view to the authorities summoned to Cairo, and I demanded from them a policy which should secure first of all an immediate diminution in the expenses of the current year.
    Sir D. MACLEAN: The right hon. Gentleman has given us the figures for 1919–20 and 1920–21. Can he give us the figures for the current year? He mentioned a figure of £32,500,000 in the Estimates, but what is the ascertainable figure now?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: With regard to the expenditure up to last June the War Office had such great faith in my powers of economy that they anticipated £3,000,000 or £4,000,000 of economies that would arise, and consequently the Estimates were £27,000,000 instead of £32,000,000, and to that must be added the Supplementary Estimate. I said that first of all there must be an immediate diminution in the expenses of the current year, and that the expenses for 1922–23 should be reduced to a certain figure which I specified, and which I afterwards announced to the House. Economies were effected to the amount of £5,000,000 during the current year. I consider that the new policy must be credited with the advantage of having secured a diminution of the Estimate of £35,000,000, to a realised figure of £30,000,000. If the plan could not have been carried out within these reduced limits, I should have been perfectly ready to recommend the evacuation of either or both of those countries.
    We sought ourselves advice on our policy and in the end complete agreement was reached between all the authorities representing the political, military and aerial elements, and this policy was approved by the Cabinet and announced by me in the House in a speech of inordinate length last year. That policy brought a saving of £5,500,000 to the Estimates of 1921–22, with every prospect of a further reduc-

    1539
    tion of nearly £18,000,000 in the Estimates for 1922–23. I said that I hoped that the expenses for Palestine and Iraq might be in the neighbourhood of £10,000,000 in the year 1922–23, but I was careful to guard myself by stating that I offered no guarantee that the policy we were adopting would, succeed. I pointed out the extraordinary embarrassment which the protracted quarrel between Greece and Turkey was causing throughout the Near East, and the need of early peace which gave proof of a desire that Great Britain should act in harmonious relationship with the Moslem world as a whole. I pointed out that if this peace was not forthcoming the hopes of success of our policy in Iraq would be very greatly diminished. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Paisley (Mr. Asquith) will remember that I proceeded with a long series of "ifs."
    Mr. ASQUITH: So did I.
    Mr. CHURCHILL: I believe my right hon. Friend accepted all my "ifs" and dotted all the i's in my "ifs." Here are some of them. "If the arrangements we are now making be successful, if the policy which rendered these arrangements possible is carried out, and if it is not interrupted by untoward events, I hope that the Estimates for 1922 and 1923 for the normal current expenditure both in Palestine and Iraq together, apart from terminal charges and special charges for the repatriation of troops, will not exceed £9,000,000 or £10,000,000. That has only a pre-War value of some £4,000,000 or £5,000,000." The figures which I have now given for this year are in the neighbourhood of £10,000,000, but they do include a large sum for terminal charges, and a sum for the repatriation of troops. Not only am I able to keep up my forecast, but I have been able substantially to improve upon it in the absence of the factor I mentioned about Greece and Turkey being successful.
    Mr. ASQUITH: Is the right hon. Gentleman talking of the figures for the next financial year?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: It is impossible to make this statement without the House having in mind the figures which have been given through the publication of the Geddes Report.
    Mr. ASQUITH: I am not complaining. I only want the point made clear.
    Mr. CHURCHILL: It would be a great mistake for the Committee to try to form a judgment on this question without realising all the relative and dominant facts of the situation. There is no doubt whatever that this very guarded position which I took up was very clearly understood by the House, because my right hon. Friend the Member for Paisley, a fortnight later, when he had had an opportunity of considering the matter with deliberation and in the cold light of reflection, drew attention to the hypothetical form in which this policy was presented, and he said:
    "Have I exaggerated or over-stated the case? … If not, what becomes of his reduction?"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 14th July, 1921; col. 1528, Vol. 144.]
    If the Committee feel that, these anticipations have been fulfilled to a very considerable extent, they will, I trust, agree that a real measure of credit should be extended to those skilful and sagacious officers on the spot on whom the burden and difficulty of carrying out this policy has rested, as well as upon the group of highly skilled and experienced advisers here who have been gathered together to form the Middle East Department, and from whose united action our policy in Iraq has been entirely derived. At any rate, I think it may be said that I have excited no undue hopes or given any excessive assurances, neither am I going to do so to-day. I am only going to show how far the policy I announced has been carried out. I will indicate under the same reserve what further forecast it is, if not prudent, at any rate possible, to make at the present time.
    Of course this reduction in expense mainly takes the form of a great diminution in the garrison. All thought of reducing expenditure in those countries was absolutely futile unless accompanied by an immense repatriation of the troops, and a breaking-up of those costly establishments which linger on so obstinately long after the War has finished. At the beginning of this year—I am speaking of Iraq only—we had 48 battalions, and we decided to cut them down at once to 23 battalions, and I hoped to reach the figure of 12 battalions by the end of this financial year. We have already reached the figure of nine battalions, and we are

    1541
    contemplating dropping to six and then oven to four battalions. [An HON. MEMBER: "Are these British troops?"] They are British and Indian troops and there would be a certain proportion of Europeans, certainly not more than half and probably less. How have these great reductions been obtained? By adopting a policy of air power and local forces. First of all, with regard to local forces, we have raised considerable forces of local levies, which are now occupying practically all the outlying districts except Mosul which we are still holding with an Imperial force. In addition to that, there is the Iraq Army under Ja'afar Pasha, whose exploits I announced to the House a year ago. This force is not developing so fast as we could have wished and it has not reached the efficiency one expected up to the present.
    Mr. ASQUITH: Is Ja'afar Pasha in the service of the Government?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: He is Secretary of State for War. As these local forces come into being, our troops have been rapidly withdrawn, and this enables us to concentrate our troops at rail heads in a position of comfort and security, instead of having small portions of troops scattered about all over the country. Local troops are employed on the frontiers with the exception of Mosul. The great factor in these reductions has been the use of air power. With regard to the Air Force, we had six squadrons last year, and we have raised that number now to eight squadrons.
    Mr. ASQUITH: Is Mosul still in Iraq or in Kurdistan?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: It is in Iraq. We have there a force of British and Indian troops and artillery and a squadron of the Royal Air Force, with a large curtain of levies, and a local Army is gradually coming into being there. In view of the unsettled condition of our relations with Turkey, we are keeping a certain force there in the hope that when better relations are established, they will permit of the withdrawal of our troops.
    Leaving the troops, let me come to the air power. We have eight squadrons all concentrated at Baghdad in a loop of the river which renders them certainly secure. They constitute the principal agency by which the local levies all over the country are supported, by which the
    1542
    authority of the Arab Government is rendered effective, and by which the frontiers are to a very large extent defended. It is a very powerful concentration. There is nothing like it elsewhere in the British Empire at the present moment. The eight squadrons represent one-third of the whole strength of the Royal Air Force. We propose during the coming year to place the military control and security of Iraq under the charge of the officer commanding the Royal Air Force. That will be much the largest force in the country, and it is only right in that case that command should follow the bulk of the forces there. There will be ancillary units, armoured-car companies, steamboats on the river, and armoured trains, which will all be comprised within the general control of the Air Force, and will look after the mechanical depots which eight squadrons require. By the time the Air Force take over control there will only be four battalions of troops, and they will be there for the purpose of keeping order in Bagdad and securing the aerodromes from marauders, and not for the purpose of wandering about the country on expeditions.
    Colonel Sir C. YATE: Could not the Air Force themselves defend their aerodromes?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: I think it is better to have a certain force of men to see to the security of the central organism on which this novel scheme of holding a great country depends. I should like to say how enormously the whole of this reduction of troops has been facilitated by the Air Ministry and by Air-Marshal Sir Hugh Trenchard, whose exploits in the War are so well-known. He, again and again, has had to face the terrible difficulty of actually doing things on the spot in contact with hostile influenes. He has thrown himself into this task with extraordinary energy and power, and I am most deeply indebted to him and the Air Ministry for the assistance they have rendered us. It would have been absolutely impossible to secure anything like the saving we have made if it had not been for their whole-hearted co-operation in a scheme which, after all, is of consequence to the Air Force and to the whole position in the future of our aerial Army. Before I leave the Air Force, I may say that everything goes

    1543
    to show that that force will play a great part in keeping order in these territories —not by violent measures. The mere demonstration of the presence of aeroplanes has again and again been effective in preventing disorder. It has put the civilian officers in close contact with the various tribes, it provides the means of supporting the local levies if outbreaks occur, while it does not involve the movement of bodies of troops and does not place small parties in a position to be cut off and ambuscaded; neither does it involve long, vulnerable lines of communication. It is a very powerful factor which at present is only in an experimental stage, but which has been gradually growing in its claim on the confidence of the authorities on the spot during the whole of the present year. I should like to say that the air mail which I indicated was to be started last year is now running with fair regularity from Bagdad to Cairo. Indeed, one individual has actually travelled from Bagdad to London in from six to seven days. The Government's communications with Iraq have been shortened by nearly two-thirds—by a month out of six weeks—and there is no doubt that the civil communications will go that way by this aerial route as soon as it develops a little further.
    I have spoken of the levies and of the Air Force. Let me say that these would be quite useless but for policy. If we are to-day in the occupation of the whole of Iraq and of Mosul, if a large portion of Turkish area is within our boundary lines, if people move about the country with very great freedom and security at the present time, then that is due to the fact that we are not so much holding the country as allowing the country to hold itself. We have endeavoured very earnestly to set up a form of government which will claim the support and respect of the masses of the inhabitants. The principal element in our policy was the creation of the independent Arab State of Iraq, with a prince of the Sherifian house, and we were led to believe that Emir Feisal was the candidate whom the people of Iraq would select most freely, and who by reason of the qualities he possessed was most likely to make an efficient ruler. In choosing him we made a wise choice: the Emir went to Iraq in
    1544
    August or September last year and the people were perfectly free to choose. There was another candidate before them.
    Mr. ASQUITH: Had both the candidates the coupon?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: That, I believe, is rather an essential element for a successful election. From the moment that Feisal landed he made a great impression on the people. As many hon. Members who have met him know, he is a man of very commanding personality with great gifts of courtesy and address and with a charming manner. As a member of the great Sherifian family he was in a position of common sympathy with the peoples, notwithstanding the lamentable schisms which existed between Sunni and Shiah. The Arab Council of State, on the motion of its President, passed a unanimous resolution declaring the Emir Feisal King of Iraq provided that he maintained a constitutional democratic government limited by law. This declaration was confirmed on a referendum by a majority of 96 per cent, of the voters. I do not believe there has ever been a more genuine attempt to establish representative government in a country which has not hitherto enjoyed any representative institutions. [An HON. MEMBER: "HOW many voters were there?"] I cannot say. There were quite a large number, several hundreds of thousands. The Emir was duly declared King at Bagdad, and the Naqib became President of the Council of State. The Government are deeply indebted to him, because at an advanced age he took up the burden of office and showed a patriotism which His Majesty has recognised recently by bestowing the dignity of G.B.E. upon him. It was hoped that by now the National Assembly would have met, but that has been delayed principally by the difficulty of providing for tribal representation, which the Turkish electoral law excluded. The municipal elections, which under the Iraq electoral laws are an essential preliminary to the election in the National Assembly, are nearly concluded. They have resulted n the return of moderate men known to be in sympathy with the policy of His Majesty's Government. In many cases the mayors appointed by the British authorities have been re-elected, and that is very remarkable, considering we have no troops outside the City of Bagdad.
    Mr. LAMBERT: You have several millions of money.
    Mr. CHURCHILL: No money has been spent in that way. I think the right hon. Gentleman is doing an ill service in this matter. A little humour and a little merriment may be all right to while away the tedium of the afternoon, but I should be sorry—
    Mr. LAMBERT: Ten millions of money is not a humorous thing for the taxpayer.
    Mr. CHURCHILL: I am reproving the right hon. Gentleman for an exhibition of levity which I regret should take place on this Vote, and which ill compares with the incursions he makes into our discussion on financial matters. Remember, if this policy excite derision, it is an essential part, at any rate, of the process by which over twenty millions have been saved. In Bagdad, where the extremist party is strong, the seats are almost equally divided.
    5.0 P.M.
    I cannot help feeling that we have been well-advised to pursue this path of developing these Arab institutions, and I can soc no rcasAn why we should not make progress in the near future. We have had a peaceful year. The total number of British officers and civilians killed in the whole of Iraq and Kurdistan during the whole of last year is six killed and seven wounded, and three of these were killed and four wounded by air accidents without any hostile action at all, such as might occur at aerodromes in this country. Three or four persons have been killed in this wild country, newly recovered from a state of convulsion, in the whole course of the year. With a force smaller than that with which the hon. Member for the Wrekin Division (Sir C. Townshend) said he would hold Basra, the entire country has been kept tranquil and open, in spite of the Turkish menace. There has been no political execution, no one has been punished for treason of any sort, and there has been but one single deportation, only one—our Home Secretary. Apart from that unfortunate episode, everything has proceeded entirely smoothly. I think that is an excellent record. I should not have hesitated if no one else had said it. Luckily, I have a higher authority. I have the Geddes Report. I am one of those admirers of the Geddes Report who have hitherto
    1546
    kept my adoration within reasonable bounds, but I have had to criticise some of those recommendations both publicly and in my official work. When I read the third section, Chapter 3, which deals with Middle Eastern Services, I read on page 14:
    "So long as the existing British responsibilities in the Middle East continue, we cannot suggest any further modification of the arrangements which are being carried into effect by the Colonial Secretary."
    And then I read on a previous page:
    "The Colonial Secretary has given us full explanations of the present position in these countries and the vigorous steps which he has taken to reduce the expenditure consistently with the fulfilment of the obligations undertaken by the Government."
    When I read that I said to myself, "This is a very able document—at any rate, in parts." I read it all, and it seemed to me that there is more to be said for these business men than I had thought. They are detached from the ordinary conflict of party, unhampered by Parliament, with no interest to serve—I had almost said, no axe to grind. At any rate, weighing up the Geddes Report, I feel it is my title deed, and I ask the Committee to permit me to celebrate it by the mixing of my metaphors, and to say that the blackest sheep in the flock is the only one who has left court without a stain on its character. My right hon. Friend the Member for Paisley (Mr. Asquith) draws attention to the sentences of the Reports of the Geddes Committee on the subject, which make it clear that they took no responsibility for the general question of policy—whether we should stay in these countries or not. They say, "If you stay, this is probably the best path along which you should move," but they leave, and rightly leave, to the Cabinet and to Parliament the duty of deciding what measures shall be taken to fulfil the pledges and obligations into which the State has entered.
    I am going to ask the Committee to consider this question of policy once again. I address a very practical argument to them. In the War—we were waging war for two or three years on a great scale on the Euphrates and Tigris. We spent £200,000,000 or £250,000,000 as part of our great war expenditure. The money spent in Iraq since the War, on the demobilisation of the troops, and bringing them home, and all those other matters—that certainly amounts to

    1547
    £125,000,000. We may therefore Bay that the cost of securing our present position in Iraq, including war expenditure, has certainly been not less than £350,000,000, four-fifths of which expenditure was expenditure in the War and arising out of the aftermath of the War. The question to be settled this afternoon when a Vote like this comes up is, Can it all absolutely be thrown away for nothing just at the moment when it may well be that satisfactory results are at hand? I think it probable that an expenditure of £8,000,000 this year in Iraq—I am not speaking of Palestine; I am coming to Palestine later—and about £4,500,000 next year, and a considerably smaller sum the year after, if all goes well, will suffice to carry us forward to the time when we may reasonably expect to secure some return both in trade and the development of the valuable oil possibilities which abound all over that area. This is a matter of profound interest to this country and to the world. I feel if we can create a contented and tranquil native State under a Government that it likes and supports, and if we can, through that Government, secure peace and tranquillity in the country, and the gradual beginning of economic development, at the same time continually reducing our responsibilities and burdens in regard to that country, we may, at the cost of two or three years of diminishing expenditure—£8,000,000, £4,500,000, £3,000,000 and £2,000,000 a year—get into a position where we shall not have thrown away hopelessly and uselessly immense sums which we have spent wisely or unwisely, but shall have succeeded in discharging the responsibility we undertook in keeping our pledges, and not be put into the humiliating position of returning the mandates we have accepted before all the world. We shall find a way out of our difficulties which does not involve any humiliating abandonment of our undertakings, and it seems to me that the practical aspect of this deserves consideration.
    I must say a word about Palestine. The expenditure on Palestine for 1921 was £8,000,000. The expenditure in the present year is approximately £4,000,000, and I am expecting to get through the coming year for about £2,000,000. That is not an absolutely unsatisfactory state of affairs, but I am going to point this
    1548
    out. As to Palestine, I am not in the same position as I am in the treatment of the Iraq question. In Iraq I have been free to follow the best guidance on policy that this country can produce, a policy we believe in—getting the goodwill of the inhabitants. But in Palestine we are pledged, as the Committee well know, to a policy absolutely right in itself, but which, nevertheless, does encounter and must necessarily encounter, a great deal of suspicion and resentment on the part of the majority of the population of Palestine. I am not going to re-argue the whole question of Zionism, or the pledges which were given by us in the War. I do not feel that this is a subject which I need take up at the present time, but I should like to say that I explained it fully to the House last year. We had an able speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Ormsby-Gore) on this question. These are our difficulties, and it is no good saying you are in favour of the Zionist policy. You are in favour of our keeping our word, and at the same time complain that there is a certain amount of irritation and difficulty in Palestine.
    I said last year that our policy was one of moderation, endeavouring to persuade one side to concede and the other to forbear, endeavouring to keep a certain modicum of military force available in order to prevent violent collisions between the two sides. There has been a very quiet and peaceful year in Palestine. There was an abortive riot in Jerusalem in November, and some disturbance in Jaffa in May last year, but, broadly speaking, the country has been tranquil, though I do not for a moment pretend that the feeling of irritation, suspicion and disquietude has disappeared from the hearts of the Arab population. The Jewish immigration has been most strictly watched and controlled from the point of view of policy. Every effort has been made to secure only good citizens who will build up the country. We cannot have a country inundated by Bolshevist rifraff, who would seek to subvert institutions in Palestine as they have done with success in the land from which they came. Altogether, about 9,000 immigrants have come in this year, and they bring with them the means of their own livelihood, the Zionist Association expending nearly a million a year in

    1549
    the country. Some progress has been made with the important water-power works on the head streams of the Jordan River, and agricultural development and roadmaking is proceeding. There is really no reason why, kept within moderate limits on a reasonable scale, this movement should not go on, bringing with it an increase in the material prosperity of the whole country, and particularly of the Arab residents there. I, of course, have been brought up against a very difficult proposition with regard to the Constitution. The Arab Delegation which has been in this country, and other Arabs with whom I have been in touch, have asked, "If you are able to give a free Constitution to Iraq, why cannot we have a similar free Constitution?" And I have decided to go to the utmost possible length in giving them representative institutions, without falling into a position where I could not fulfil those pledges to which we are committed by the Zionist policy. I am bound to retain in the hands of the Imperial Government the power to carry out those pledges. I have, however, strongly urged the Arabs to take part in the new Elective Council and to bring their critical faculty to bear upon all questions connected with the Government of the country and with immigration. The only reservations that must be made are in regard to the measures necessary to enable us to discharge our pledges which we have given before the whole of Europe. The Constitution is on a very wide franchise, but, of course, there is a secondary election. It is not direct election. Nearly everyone has a vote, but those voters elect, I think it is 1,000 secondary electors, and those secondary electors choose the Legislative Council. There are certain nominated members, but there will be a non-official majority upon the Legislative Council. It will not be all Arabs. There, will be some Jews elected, of course. Of course, to our ideas, anything of the nature of a secondary election is, perhaps, objectionable at first sight, although hon. Gentlemen who so greatly admire Russian methods will know that, under the Soviet system, there are as many as six or seven indirect elections. This will be a first experiment. In a country of the character of Palestine it is necessary to fall back upon something of that kind. We shall develop and extend these institutions as they take root.
    1550
    I would ask the Committee to realise the difficulty of the situation in which we stand, in that we are bound to carry out a great, world-wide pledge—in itself part of a policy of profound significance—which must cause a certain amount of local anxiety and irritation, which we are trying to the best of our power to allay. I must now say a word about Trans-Jordania. I am happy to say that the Emir Abdullah, the brother of King Feisal, has fulfilled our expectations of last year. Conditions in Trans-Jordania are steadily improving, and public security is increasing every day. Only two raids have taken place there since March, 1921, and both were checked at the outset. Four hundred kilometres of railway have been repaired on the Hejaz Railway, and a system of telegraphs is slowly being put into operation. In the Central Province revenue is being collected without trouble, and in the outlying districts arrangements for the collection of revenue are well forward. The country was in a state of complete anarchy a year ago, and the French were complaining every day of the disturbance of their territory owing to the fact that all this territory was in a derelict condition. We have had no troops there at all; it has all been done by a few British officers raising local levies, by an Arab Prince who displays the insignia of his house, which is regarded with the greatest honour, and also by a few armoured cars and occasional small visitations of aeroplanes.
    Mr. ASQUITH: What is the cost?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: It has cost about £100,000 to manage this territory—much less than the cost of a single battalion, which, if stationed there, would have been in a very dangerous position, involving us in the greatest difficulty. I have ventured to stray over a considerable field, because I thought it was really convenient that the Committee should be in a position to judge—
    Lord R. CECIL: Would the right hon. Gentleman explain the item of £30,000 for gendarmerie in Palestine? What, exactly, is that?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: The original Estimate for Palestine was something over £3,000,000, and it was then intended that the country should be held by troops under the War Office in the ordinary

    1551
    way. I proposed to the Cabinet, however, that we should endeavour to effect a further economy by using Indian troops and having a force of white gendarmerie, transferring the control of Palestine entirely to the Colonial Office in the military as well as in the civil sense, as is the case with Iraq, and as is the case with Nigeria, East Africa, and so on—though I do not mean to indicate a similarity of status between those States. The result has been that we have been able to reduce the Estimate for future years by £1,000,000. This gendarmerie is formed to a very large extent from constabulary and auxiliaries who have served in Ireland, and were being disbanded, brought home and thrown on the market. There are altogether some 700 of them, and the greatest care has been taken to select men of the very highest possible character. That enables us to dispense with, at any rate, two British Cavalry regiments, and to effect an enoromus saving in the general expenditure and in the burdens which are put upon us. The amount hero included for the gendarmerie is a small sum for the raising of the force. Next year the amount will be about £350,000, but I hope to recover a certain proportion of that from the Government of Palestine, and I am in communication with the High Commissioner on that point.
    Colonel WEDGWOOD: Does Aden come within the purview of the right hon. Gentleman's speech to-day?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: No, Sir.
    Major-General SEELY: Nor Somaliland?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: No, Sir; I am only dealing with these Middle Eastern mandated territories.
    Lord R. CECIL: Then the right hon. Gentleman is not dealing with the portion of the Estimate relating to the Arabian subsidy?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: I will gladly speak about that. I have explained that this is no new charge. In fact, we have spent less than the subsidy which I asked the House to give us in June last. There, again, one has to choose whether gold makes a better weapon than steel or lead. Sometimes it does, and is cheaper in the end. There is no doubt that we
    1552
    have by these subsidies kept a greater measure of peace than would otherwise have been possible. King Hussein and Ibn Saoud have passed the year in a very tolerable manner, considering the usual state of frontier amenities which prevails between potentates who are not only temporal, but also spiritual rulers. I am certain that it is far better to avoid disturbance by the tranquillising effect of subsidies rather than to have large bodies of troops kept in the country at far greater expense. I cannot guarantee that the future will be unclouded or that no misfortunes will arise; I cannot at all promise that either in Iraq or in Palestine. I can only say that I believe the course we are taking is the best we can take in the circumstances. There is much more reason for thinking it will succeed than there, was last year, and, if the reasons which induced the House last year to assent to a continued occupation of Iraq and Palestine were good, those reasons present themselves to-day in a far stronger form.
    Mr. ASQUITH: My right hon. Friend has traversed a large area of ground in, as the Committee will agree, a most interesting and attractive fashion; but I suspect that about nine tenths of what he has said has no real relevance to the Vote before the Committee. It is not, however, for the House of Commons, certainly in Committee of Supply, to complain that the Minister in charge of a Vote so enlarges the area of discussion as to permit to humbler people the same liberty or licence. A fact that the Committee would hardly have observed, unless they happened to have read the Supplementary Estimate, is that the only two substantial items which we are now discussing are Items J. l and J. 2—Civil deficit to 31st March, 1921, and Loss by Exchange on Funds supplied by India—both of which ought to have appeared in the Estimates of last year. I do not understand why my right hon. Friend has not said anything about the absence of those two items from the Estimates of last year.
    Mr. CHURCHILL: It was simply because the accounts had not been furnished. There is great delay in the presentment of accounts" from India.
    Mr. ASQUITH: So I can see, and the result is that the sum of £2,000,000, which ought to have appeared on the Estimates

    1553
    of last year, appears now for the first time in the month of March in the Estimates for the present year. That really is the whole subject which is before us, except for some more or less minor items; but, since the right hon. Gentleman has himself set the example of latitude, there is no reason why we should not, in our various degrees, follow him. I think that, since the subject at large is open, it is desirable to point out at once what this business of Iraq is really costing us. My right hon. Friend has given us some very formidable figures, and it is very difficult to disentangle the Iraq and the Palestine adventures one from the other. I am sure, however, that I am speaking well within the bounds of statistical moderation when I say that since the Armistice, after allowing for the very large sum which, I agree, had to be expended in demobilising, evacuating, and bringing home the vast forces which at that time, were stationed in that part of the world —I am sure I am well within the mark after making the most liberal and even generous allowances, when I say that that burden of expenditure which has been imposed upon the British taxpayer during those three years has amounted to well over £100,000,000.
    Mr. CHURCHILL Mr. CHURCHILL indicated dissent.
    Mr. ASQUITH: I have examined the figures very carefully, and should say the amount was £100,000,000. The corrected figure the right hon. Gentleman has given us to-day for this year is £29,000,000. I am sure I am not doing an injustice to the Government in saying we have spent an average of £30,000,000 a year in these three years in this particular commitment.
    What does that mean? I said the other day in another connection that it was sometimes useful to translate from time to time figures of expenditure into terms of taxation and revenue, and this £30,000,000 a year, which is the average expenditure for this part of the world in the last three years, so translated may be represented in terms of income tax by 7d., or more than 7d., in the £1, or in terms of indirect taxation by the whole of the Sugar Duty and more than the whole, and if you like to put it in another way, by more than twice the whole of the Duty on tea. That is what Iraq has cost the British taxpayer, after you have made
    1554
    every allowance for the necessary consequences of winding up the War in a region of the world—I am speaking now both of Iraq and Palestine—where the total population does not amount to more than 2¾ millions, if so much, and which therefore means rather more than £10 a head of all the people concerned. And for what? This would not be relevant unless my right hon. Friend had kindly enlarged the area of discussion. I discussed and analysed in some detail last year the hypothesis that we were under obligations of various sorts and kinds to the people concerned. The actual obligations when so analysed amount to nothing more than this. Having conquered, as we did, the Turks in Palestine, in Syria, and in Iraq, we went there under two pledges, and two pledges only, the first of which was that the inhabitants of these regions should not be submitted once more to Turkish subjugation, a pledge which I hope we shall keep, notwithstanding the formidable pronouncement issued this morning, and, secondly, that we should endeavour with all the resources at our disposal, material, moral and administrative, to provide, so far as Iraq is concerned, for the setting up of a free Arab State in such a position, at any rate with such prospects, that it could carry on with the uncoerced assent of the population the development of an independent national existence. I have left out Palestine, I am speaking of Iraq. I will not say what I think of Palestine—I never have said it, and I do not propose to say it now. I quite agree that in Palestine there is a separate obligation arising from commitments from which we cannot recede, whether we think they were right or wrong, about the construction of a national home for the Jews. I had bettor say explicitly that I am speaking throughout of Iraq.
    Was it for the redemption of either of these two pledges that this vast expenditure has been incurred? The fact is that in Iraq you tentatively nibbled at, and you have finally repudiated, your first policy, the most ambitious and as it would have turned out, far the most expensive, of what you may call the Indianising of the country. I remember well, in the first speech I made in this House after a temporary absence, pointing out that in the Estimates of that year there was Item after Item—railways, acquisition of

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    land, construction of barracks and that kind of thing—which could only be justified and explained on the assumption that you were going to deal with Iraq as a province or district which was to be governed in the Indian fashion. You had able men there of the Anglo-Indian type. The whole thing was laid out just like plotting out an estate, on Anglo-Indian lines. These skilled administrators of ours had found a new area for the exercise of their inventive and great executive-ability. That really was the assumption on which the Estimates were presented in the first year after the War. Happily that is as dead as Queen Anne. The next policy—I do not say it was pursued or developed at any length by the Government though there were some expressions used by the Prime Minister which gave at any rate semi-official patronage to it—was the policy of exploitation. This country was supposed to be a possible source of wealth, of industrial development, oil, and other resources which made it a desirable possession for the British people. I think we have now come to the con-elusion that if anything of that kind is done it must be done by private enterprise alone. Then there was a third policy. It was said to be a necessary strategic link for the defence of India.
    Mr. CHURCHILL Mr. CHURCHILL indicated dissent.
    Mr. ASQUITH: I am sure my right hon. Friend never shared it, but it was shared by a great many people. That has gone by the board too. My right hon. Friend, I think, repudiated it last year. I did too. It was the greatest nonsense. I think the gallant general whom I see opposite repudiated it too.
    Sir CHARLES TOWNSHEND: Yes. I repudiated it as being strategically necessary. I said it was a great blunder.
    Mr. ASQUITH: That, I believe, represents the most enlightened military opinion. All these three possible alternative policies are now repudiated by universal consent, and any expenditure which is to be justified as a means or a contribution to the attainment of anyone of them is expenditure which cannot be defended in this House. I am delighted that my right hon. Friend is now supplied with all that he and his responsible advisers think to be necessary for the
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    discharge of our responsibilities in Iraq, by the retention of eight squadrons of the Air Force.
    Mr. CHURCHILL: With a local army.
    Mr. ASQUITH: I am not disposed to indulge in anything of the nature of recrimination. The way of the transgressor is hard, and it ought to be made harder. When the wicked man sees the error of his ways and retraces his steps we ought to make his path to a better frame of mind as smooth and as easy as we can. Therefore, no word of recrimination or reproach as regards the past will escape my lips to-day. My right hon. Friend spoke of the controversial spirit that I showed when I spoke on this subject last July, and enlarged, as I agree I did, on the number of hypothetical conditions on which his sanguine, but not, I think, very confident, estimate of the future then depended. I only followed his own example. Here are his words:
    "If the arrangements we are now making are successful, and if the policy which rendered these arrangements possible is carried out, and if it is not interrupted by any untoward trouble. I am putting in a great many 'ifs'. Long and varied experience leads me to safeguard myself as effectively as possible."
    He never said a wiser thing. Never did a Minister entrench himself behind a more impregnable stockade of suppositions than my right hon. Friend did on that occasion. All that I did was to reduce his abstractives to concrete form. Anxious as I am to believe, and ready as I am to hope, that we shall be able to reduce our expenditure in this part of the world to £8,000,000, I think we are apt in these days to indulge in the habit of shouting "hurrah"—not only about Iraq—and throwing up our hats and ringing our joy bells before we are quite out of the wood.
    Mr. CHURCHILL: I hope my right hon. Friend will notice that I have kept all my "ifs" in being. I have not withdrawn one of them.
    Mr. ASQUITH: My right hon. Friend is not under the illusion which possesses some of those with whom he co-operates. I am not speaking in a controversial sense at all. I want to point out to the Committee that in regard to this matter of Iraq there are still two very serious hypothetical conditions, the fulfilment of which in the sense that we all should desire is essential to enable as to accept,

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    without the fear of Supplementary Estimates, my right hon. Friend's figure of £8,000,000 or £9,000,000. What are they? The first is one on which he has touched very lightly, the question of Kurdistan. Geographically, I understand that Mosul is excluded from Kurdistan for the purpose of this arrangement, and is now part of what he calls the Iraq State, but even Mosul, I understand, is not now held by Arab levies, but by British troops.
    Mr. CHURCHILL: Imperial troops.
    Mr. ASQUITH: British and Indian troops. Last year we were told, and I suppose it is the case now, that Southern Kurdistan, which is more remote, further north, is not to be part, at any rate, in the first instance, of the Iraq State, and that separate arrangements would be made. I should like to know whether that has been done. Will the right hon. Gentleman say if anything has been done?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: I will say later.
    Mr. ASQUITH: That is a comparatively unimportant point. The real question is this: When I spoke last year—and it was agreed to and, I think, anticipated by the Secretary of State himself—I said that the situation in Iraq could never be secure, and our contemplated progressive reductions from year to year could never be regarded as anything but hypothetical, unless there was a real and lasting Treaty with Turkey and Greece, an arrangement which must take the form, I think everybody now agrees, of a modification, at any rate, of the Treaty of Sevres. Unless there is an arrangement come to, with the authority of the great Powers, and, I should hope, the League of Nations, for the adjustment of the territorial sovereign rights of the powers of the majorities and the privileges of the minorities in that part of the world, Iraq will never be secure, and you will never be able to reach the £7,000,000, £8,000,000, £9,000,000 or the £4,000,000 or £3,000,000 Budget which my right hon. Friend contemplates in the not remote future. They are all illusory things and absolutely unstable unless you can bring about a real, permanent, guaranteed arrangement between Turkey and the other Powers.
    I do not want to say anything that might in any way embarrass negotiations
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    on that subject, which, I understand are going on or will shortly go on in Paris; but I should not be doing my duty, particularly after the remarkably grave, even formidable pronouncement which has appeared only to-day, under conditions, as we have gathered from answers given from the Treasury Bench which are absolutely unexampled. I have known nothing like it in my time. After that pronouncement, which comes apparently with the authority not only of the Indian Government, but of the Indian Government after consultation with the Governors of the different Presidencies—[HON. MEMBERS: "Speak up. We cannot hear you."]—it is of the utmost importance that no illusions should be allowed to exist as to our policy in the Middle East. Speaking for myself, I will never be a party to any policy which has in intention or in effect the re-establishment of Turkish rule over large bodies of Christian populations. I am not in the least degree a fanatical anti-Moslem. I quite recognise, perhaps nobody' more, the feeling of our vast Mahommedan population in India—we are a great Mahommedan Power after all—and nothing ought to be done which is not dictated by considerations of justice and high policy, which would in any way be offensive to their sentiments and susceptibilities. But we all know what Turkish rule has meant: not Mahommedan rule. I make the greatest possible distinction between them. I am not speaking of any form or regime of Government which is the essential or logical development of the principles of the Mahommedan faith, or of the practice of the Mahommedan creed; but I am speaking of the rule of this sterilising, devastating power over the Christian populations both of Europe and some parts of Asia. Anyone who bears that record in view will never allow this country to be a party to such an arrangement.
    Sir C. TOWNSHEND: As one who has criticised our policy in Iraq in the past year or so, I feel great satisfaction at seeing that the Government have made this strenuous effort to reduce the garrison. The right hon. Gentleman made reference to my plan for holding the seaborad province of Busra with 12 battalions. That is true, but with that plan one would guarantee security against all comers. The plan of the right

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    hon. Gentleman now is one of four battalions, or one brigade, coupled with an air force of eight squadrons, and an irregular native levy. I hope that that plan will be a secure one, but I agree with the right hon. Member for Paisley (Mr. Asquith) that it depends upon whether or not we make peace with Turkey. Absolutely that is the key to the whole situation, not only in Iraq but in India and Central Asia, as most people will agree. With regard to the rest of the argument, I do not propose to say anything. The question of Iraq has been threshed out several times in the House. I should, however, like to recognise the strenuous work and the ability shown by the right hon. Gentleman in coping with the situation. I feel satisfaction that a plan has been adopted which is a practical evacuation, and I hope the Government will succeed in the Measure which has been so ably explained by the right hon. Gentleman.
    6.0 P.M.
    Mr. ORMSBY-GORE: I do not propose to embark upon the somewhat dangerous ground and wide discussion of our policy in regard to Turkey, which has been made increasingly serious by to-day's news, more particularly because I think that the right hon. Member for Paisley was perilously near the bounds of order in the comments which he most carefully chose. The right hon. Gentleman in introducing the Supplementary Estimates was somewhat wide in his general discussion of the whole position in Iraq. I am sure that it is no use any longer flogging the old dead horse of what might have been done after the Armistice until the right hon. Gentleman took over Iraq from the Foreign Office and the India Office, or, rather, from the Curzon Committee of the Cabinet. There is no use going into these wasted millions which were wasted by the Middle Eastern Committee of the Cabinet in a wrong policy. We have to-day to congratulate ourselves on the fact that the new policy has turned out better than a great many people anticipated. I think that the right hon. Gentleman can now withdraw, not all the "ifs," but most of them. The mere fact that Emir Feisal has been King of Iraq, running an Arab administration through Arab Ministers, with very little news coming through to this country from
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    Bagdad, augurs well. In this I think we might say that no news is good news. Had there been any serious difficulties or disturbances, we should have heard of them. It is clear that the new Arab policy in Iraq is going slowly but steadily forward, and that whereas its success when last we discussed this subject, appeared to be something in the nature of a gamble, the odds in favour of its success are steadily increasing.
    But the Committee must not be in too sanguine a mood. Apart altogether from the effects of the Turkish situation, which may be by to-day's events landed once more into a serious position, it is going to be a long time before the agricultural and mineral development of Palestine is adequate to pay back some of the money which we have advanced on preparing for its development. But I do not regard Iraq in that light. Once formerly the great granary of Asia, containing literally millions of fertile acres, devastated by nearly 400 years of Turksh rule, it is full of oil that can one day repay the world, and I regard ourselves as temporary trustees who have an international obligation of seeing Iraq on to the road to prosperity. I am sure that the verdict of history, not the verdict of penny newspapers here, but the verdict of history 40 years hence, will justify the British House of Commons to-day. Iraq all through its history has been a difficult and expensive country to run. During the 350 years in which the Turk was in occupation, it never paid him. He always had to maintain garrisons there, and unless and until Iraq is developed, we are bound to pay something for it, and I think that we can congratulate ourselves at any rate on the fact that since the Colonial Office took over from the India and the Foreign Office the guidance of policy in Iraq, the reductions have gone on at a very rapid and increasingly rapid rate. For that I believe we have in the main to thank, not only the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Churchill), but those experts in the Middle Eastern Department who know something of the Arabs and of the country, and have studied the matter, and whose advice there was an inclination to disregard on the part of those who were all powerful in this matter a few years ago.
    Coming to the details of the Supplementary Estimate, there are one or two matters as to which the Committee would be interested to hear from the Under-

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    Secretary when he replies. In the first place, the civil deficit to 31st March, 1921, is the principal item in this Estimate, and amounts to over £1,000,000. It is the deficit on civilian administration during the last year of what I call the Anglo-Indian regime before the new policy was started. The Committee ought to know what the civil expenditure is as a whole. We only have before us the deficit. We ought to know how much Iraq raised in local revenue towards defraying the civil administration. Further, lest we be called upon to pass any further Supplementary Estimate of this character shortly, we ought to have from the Under-Secretary some figures for the current year on this particular point—what is the civil revenue and what the civil deficit, if any, is likely to be—because we do not want Ministers coming here again and again on this question of Iraq if we can avoid it. The loss by exchange on funds supplied by India is a matter for which it is hard to blame the Government or the policy in Iraq. That is the next largest item in this Supplementary Estimate. It is really fortuitous and not the result of policy.
    There are some questions of detail with regard to smaller items. I believe that I am the only Member in this House who has ever taken much interest by way of asking questions in what has been going on ever since the Armistice in South Western Arabia, that is to say, along the Southern coast of the Red Sea. Here we have an item at last which is concerned with this—the expense of a political resident at Hodeidah pending the completion of negotiations, that are contemplated with the view of concluding an agreement with the Idrisi of Asir. When the Armistice with Turkey was concluded, and even when the Treaty of Sevres was drafted, we left the whole of this part of the world in the air. There is nothing in the Treaty of Sèvres and nothing in the terms of the Armistice, except that the Turk is to be evacuated out of these former provinces. Nothing has ever been stated as to what is the policy of His Majesty's Government or the Allies and what is to be the future of this part of the world. Most people do not know, but it is a fact, that the population of this corner of the world exceeds the total population of Iraq to-day. To-day the frontier is, of course, all along the frontier of this Protectorate out of which
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    a great many of the tribes and the Turk broke during the War. In order to deal with the situation, we entered into a preliminary treaty with the potentate who is mentioned hero, the Idrisi, who is a somewhat new arrival in Arabia, and apparently it is proposed to appoint a political officer to enter into further negotiations with him.
    I think that the Committee, before voting the salary of that political officer, ought to know exactly what he proposes to do and what he is doing and has done, because for two years we maintained a garrison in this town of Hodeidah, which is within the Idrisi's sphere of influence, while the hinterland belongs to another potentate. We spent a considerable sum of money in maintaining that garrison, and I understand now that we have evacuated it, but on what terms I do not know and what the future attitude of the British Government is to be in that part of the world I should like to know. It is important internationally because it is immediately opposite the Italian colony of Eritrea and a great deal of exploration work has been done by this colony. We should have some statement of policy as to what is to be done in this question, especially as Aden is being taken over by the Colonial Office. With reference to Arabian subsidies, I hope that they will not be lumped together in a single figure. £200,000. We should be told exactly who is being subsidised. We all know that in the later stages of the War the India Office were backing one man and the Foreign Office were backing another. Both were supplying gold and arms to the men whom they backed and those resources were used by these men to fight each other. That portion of the Colonial Office's activity has ceased and they only agree to a subsidy if the parties do not fight. That is a much better system. Parliament ought to know what is the exact amount of subsidy voted to each of these independent Arab rulers, and what are the conditions upon which that subsidy is granted.
    As to the Palestine gendarmerie, I am not sure that it is really well officered. That is the most important point. It should be officered by officers who have some knowledge of the very peculiar conditions of the country. Such a force will be far more valuable and far cheaper than, say, a similar force of cavalry, and a gendarmerie is really the ideal force. I would appeal to the right hon.

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    Gentleman to see that very great care is taken in selecting men of good character for this force. It is not an easy country to police, and, above all, the cities of Jerusalem and Jaffa, in both of which I spent some months, are particularly difficult cities to police. In Jaffa the members of the three faiths, Mahommedans, Jews, and Christians, are about equal in numbers. Jerusalem is not much of a commercial city, but it is a city where the three faiths are, more or less, concentrated in their religious activities, and, whether under Turks or Arabs, it is notorious that the city of Jerusalem is very liable to explosions. That is to say, you are liable to get a Jewish feast, a Christian feast, and a Mahommedan feast—or fast, as the case may be—happening upon the same day. Religious processions take place, the crowd is worked up into a state of religious fanaticism, and then the whole thing goes, as though one put a match to paper. Out comes the knives and revolvers, and there is bloodshed.
    The maintenance of a gendarmerie which is outside local religious passions is absolutely essential to the peace of these cities. I have myself seen the conditions, and in this country people who have not seen the conditions do not realise, that in a holy city—and Jerusalem is purely and only a holy city—everybody who lives there is a witness to his faith. There are 42 separate Christian communities, each sect with its cherished chapels, its cherished sites and its cherished rites. Under the Turkish régime the Turkish gendarmerie had to be maintained, even inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to prevent the sort of thing which will always have to be prevented there, namely, religious quarrels. Therefore, I hope this force will be of the very highest character in the matter of discipline, considering the duties it will have to perform and the task it will have to carry out. That duty will be most difficult and delicate when riots happen such as the fearful riots of last year. In such cases you can collect evidence from both sides, under which you can prove everybody in the wrong or everybody in the right.
    Sir F. BANBURY: That is so everywhere.
    Mr. ORMSBY-GORE: It is peculiarly so in Palestine. It is essential you should have a special force there, in addition to the ordinary local police, to prevent these disturbances. One must say this of the Turks, that during the Turkish régime, except for intersectarian quarrels among some of the Christian sects, there were very few religious riots. They only occurred occasionally, because they were always put down and put down at once. The one thing in which the Turks did show strength was in preventing clashes between Jew and Christian, Jew and Mahommedan, Mahommedan and Christian, as the case might be. April is the dangerous month there. Every April every year, this force will be wanted in Palestine, and if you get the Roman Easter and the Greek Easter and the Jewish Passover and a Mahommedan festival all in the same week, you will have to reinforce the garrison.
    I wish next to ask a question relating to the refugees. There is a further sum put down here for refugees, although only the other day we wore discussing a previous Vote for refugees. It would be a great improvement if the Treasury could put down in one single Supplementary Estimate the total amount we are being asked to pay for refugees in different parts of the world. They are always cropping up, and it would look at first sight as if this sum belonged to the Iraq account, but again it is the Russian business. These are Russian refugees and Armenian refugees who have found their way into Iraq, and therefore the Vote was put under the heading of Iraq. It is high time we had a Refugee Vote quite separately, and I think that Armenian and Russian refugees should not be shown under the Vote for the Middle East, but under a Foreign Office Vote. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for the Colonies in his opening speech told us nothing as to the numbers of the native levies he has so far raised. There is a sum of £287,000 for native levies in Iraq. I advocated the formation of these levies in this House in 1919, and have consistently supported it, and I rejoice to hear that the matter is so well under way, but before voting this money the Committee should be told precisely what progress has been made with these levies. We should have some idea as to the numbers and the organisation; we should know what is the British

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    officer personnel, if any, what is the Arab officer personnel, if any, and, shortly, what is the rôle of these levies. Are they recruited from the town populations of Bagdad, Basra, and Mosoul, or from the tribes? The Committee should be informed on all those matters.
    I should also like to ask what is the present status and what is going to be the future status of the railway in Iraq. If the railway is going to be kept as a State railway I am quite sure it will not pay. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary and I had a terrible time during our recent visit to the West Indies on account of the Jamaica railway, and I do not want to see another Jamaica railway in Iraq. Before voting any money to defray any deficit on the working of this railway the Committee should be told what is going to be the future of the railway. My own impression is that the sooner it is sold to a company the better. The company is much more likely to make extensions and to make it a paying commercial proposition than if it were retained as a State railway. I have spoken in many Debates on Iraq, and one of the first speeches I made on this question criticised the flooding of the Iraq railway with Indian personnel. The overstaffing of the railway with Indian personnel was one of the reasons for high expenditure, and was a cause of friction. I should like to know if it is true that the greater part of the Indian civilian personnel have been sent back to India, and what steps are being taken to put the railway on a self-supporting basis and a local basis—that is to say, to have it officered and worked, as far as possible, by local Iraq inhabitants.
    Finally, I wish to add a word of appreciation of the work and the efforts made by the new King of Iraq, the Emir Feisal. Those who came across him in this country or who have known him at all have formed a very high opinion of his personality and character, and I am quite sure this country not only owes a great deal to Feisal for what he did during the War, but still more for the tact and forbearance he has shown in the difficult times since, and even more for his readiness and willingness to step into the breach in Iraq, because I am satisfied if it had not been for him we should have had the greatest difficulty in finding an Arab ruler to run that State. Of the
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    other available candidates there was not one who could have done nearly so well, and but for him we should have been landed into great difficulties and into further expenditure. The loyalty he has always shown to this country and the regard ho has for this country deserve reciprocal recognition by anybody referring to Iraq, and as this is the first Debate on the subject we have had since he has actually been on the throne, I should like, as one of his personal friends, to pay my tribute to the part he has played.
    Major-General SEELY: The Secretary of State for the Colonies announced today a very remarkable policy, and one of an entirely novel character. It is a policy which has been advocated by my hon. Friend who has just spoken, and by others in this House, and perhaps I may say, especially by myself, and I may be permitted to congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on having carried it out in so thorough a manner. It is proposed to do this astonishing thing—to hand over the defence of this vast country of Iraq to the Air Force. Not only is it to be defended practically solely by air, but the defence is to be entrusted to an air officer, and by that means it is proposed to reduce the number of battalions—which, of course, is the measure of the cost—from an original estimate of something like 30 to 34 to only four, and to maintain only four battalions and eight squadrons of aeroplanes. By that means he trusts to keep the peace. Whether we withdraw to Basra, as has been proposed from these benches, or maintain garrisons at Bagdad, Mosoul, and elsewhere—whichever policy is followed—it is claimed by my right hon. Friend that we may reduce expenditure from a minimum estimate of £20,000,000 a year to a sum of about £2,000,000 a year. That is economy with a vengeance and should satisfy even the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of London (Sir F. Banbury), who has persistently claimed to be the greatest economiser in these regions.
    It is worth examining the question of whether there is any alternative policy which can be put forward by any body of opinion in this House. When my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for New-castle-under-Lyme (Colonel Wedgwood) addresses the House, he may inform the Committee what would be the policy of

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    the Labour party. Hitherto, that party, and also the party which follows the hon. Member for Paisley (Mr. Asquith), have not said that their policy would be one of evacuating Iraq altogether. They realise that, having accepted the mandate, and with our peculiar position on the Persian Gulf, we cannot go away altogether, and their proposal has been to retire to Basra, or, at any rate, to a series of forts at the head of the Persian Gulf and defend them—in other words to have another Aden. The position would be similar to that in Aden. Any one who has been in Aden knows the extraordinary difficulty of keeping the health of the garrison satisfactory, and the immense cost of maintaining it there. At the present moment, so far as I know—I do not think it is confidential—we have a force in Aden which will be about as much as the force which the right hon. Gentleman proposes to maintain in Iraq when he has completed his policy. Instead of being able to maintain order, we would be sitting there in that most unsatisfactory of positions, always on the defensive, and in the most unwholesome place in the whole inhabited world. The actual cost, if you take Aden as a guide, and if you take Berbera, in Somaliland, as a guide, would be far more than the amount which the Secretary of State for the Colonies now hopes he will be able to come down to.
    It is a most interesting experiment. It opens up vistas of economy compared with which anything suggested by the Geddes Committee is really as nothing. If this experiment succeeds, you will be able to do the most astonishing things all over the world in the way of reducing the number of your garrisons, and especially in the way of reducing the number of garrisons in unhealthy places, but do not let anyone think that the Secretary of State's statement will go unchallenged. I know it will be bitterly opposed by all old-fashioned people, and possibly by some others. It has already been denounced, and I am afraid there is one old-fashioned Friend of ours here who will say with vigour that to attempt to substitute the good old infantry by these new-fangled aeroplanes is bound to lead this country to disaster. I paraphrase what he will say, but there are others. Already we have seen mutterings in the Press, and I have heard very eloquent
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    speeches denouncing the policy from other sources. Who is right so far as we have been able to go? I have seen a number of people who have come back from Iraq, where this policy is being carried out against the violent opposition of what I must term the War Office—I do not say the present Secretary of State for War, but the old-fashioned military idea. If the War Office are right, we are going to be landed in disaster, and instead of diminishing the cost from £20,000,000 to £2,000,000, we shall land ourselves into untold millions of expenditure, but, if they are wrong, we are going to save all this money and administer the country in a more economical and merciful fashion.
    Let us see what has happened so far During the past year there have been four little rebellions, and the Secretary of State told us that, so far as is known, the casualties have been in the neighbourhood of three or four killed and three or four wounded due to air accidents. At a place called Naziriyah there was trouble. If it had not been for aeroplanes, we should have sent an expedition which would have taken several weeks to get there, and there would have been considerable casualties, but on this occasion aeroplanes flow over and dropped a warning. At the appropriate interval they came back and dropped a more efficient form of warning in the shape of a bomb or two, and the very next day the inhabitants came in and apologised and surrendered. That was in September last. There is another place called Bani Said, where an exactly similar thing happened in the last year. There again a warning was conveyed by aeroplane; there again the political officer himself went to the place, or as near as he could, to explain to them that they really must keep the peace; there again it was necessary to take hostile action in the form of dropping bombs upon such bodies as could be seen; and there again within a week the whole body came in and surrendered. Now I will come to this year. All this I have heard from people who have been on the spot. Not far from Basra, as distances go in that country, a tribe went into open rebellion; that is to say, they refused either to pay taxes or to allow the District Commissioner to approach the place, or any political officers to go there. Again we sent a warning by aeroplane, and again, the warning not having been attended to,

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    aeroplanes were sent for hostile action, and yet again within a week the whole party came in and surrendered.
    It may be said that all these are places in the plains—and that is so—but what about Kurdistan, of which we heard a good deal from the right hon. Member for Paisley (Mr. Asquith)? There are steep mountains there, where, it is said, aeroplanes are valueless, but, really, it is quite the other way; according to my information, the argument is all the other way. It is just in those mountainous regions that the advance of troops is so dangerous, as in the defiles on the Indian frontier. Your men are picked off at considerable distances by the modern rifles, and, in fact, it is true to say that, for infantry operating in these countries, in frontier warfare the improvements in modern weapons tell against our power, both in India and in Iraq and such places, and that more infantry are required to perform the same operations. That view is strongly held by the War Office. It has, indeed, been openly expressed, and I believe it to be entirely true, because the power of the modern rifle in the hands of the sniper multiplies his power for destruction tenfold or a hundredfold, but if you adopt the entirely new methods of strategy involved in attacking from the air, you do not attack the enemy by means of a prolonged expedition. The last time I spoke on this question and urged that this policy should be adopted, little knowing how soon it would be adopted, we had not got such good concrete cases as we now have. The Sulaimaniyah, in Kurdistan, rebelled three years ago. We had to send an expedition at once. There were very heavy casualties, and it took six weeks to restore order by flying columns operating at extraordinary speed. Exactly the same type of thing happened in the same region with the same people last January. Air power was, however, employed, and the warning was issued within a day. The result not being satisfactory, an attack was delivered within 48 hours, and as these gentlemen did not surrender a further attack was delivered two days later, on this occasion the attack being delivered from Bagdad, 160 miles away, without the machines ever coming down, and within a few days the whole party again surrendered and are now loyal, and, let us hope, contented subjects.
    1570
    Anything more dramatic than that one could not well find, and I think the right hon. Gentleman did no more than justice when he paid tribute to the Air Ministry and the Secretary of State for Air, and especially to Sir Hugh Trenchard for the tremendous energy he has put into applying this new method of warfare to this territory and the remarkable success which has already attended his efforts. There may be an objection raised to the employment of air power in this way, that it is cruel, but I believe that the exact contrary is the case. It is said to be cruel to bomb unfortunate women and children, but that is an absurd doctrine. What difference is there between releasing a projectile from the air and firing it from a gun, except that in one case your range is limited to a few thousand yards and in the other case it is extended to several hundred miles? So far as mercy is concerned, the result is exactly the same, and many hon. Members in this Committee at this moment who spent many months and years on the Western Front during the War will, I am sure, agree that it never occurred to us that there was anything more brutal in a bomb dropped from an aeroplane than in a bomb fired out of a gun. That argument will not bear a moment's examination, but it has been advanced, and in important sections of the Press, with the sole object of depreciating this new weapon, with its astonishing power, which, it must be admitted, if successful in the way it has been here, will completely revolutionise our whole conceptions of not only tactics, but strategy as well, while really important people might be relegated to the shelf, and other people, not perhaps so important, but younger, advanced to important positions, which may indeed save us untold millions of money.
    It is always a very bad thing to say "I told you so," but I cannot help saying it this time. Two years ago, when I resigned from the Government, I ventured to address the House until they were bored, and again and again I said, "If you will adopt the air policy, you will save thousands of lives and millions of money." I said it so often that I am sure I bored the House to distraction, but here we have the Secretary of State for the Colonies coming down and announcing that he has already saved many millions and that he expects to save

    1571
    something in the nature of £20,000,000 a year in this one single theatre of the British Empire. I do not wish to detain the Committee longer, except to say this. How is it that this remarkable result has been attained in this case, how is it that, although Iraq is not more peculiarly suited to this method of policing and maintaining our Empire than many other parts, this is the only place where it is being applied in this novel manner? Of course, we all know it is because the Cabinet, for some reason which seems to have worked very well, handed over the whole business apparently — military, naval, and air—to one Minister, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, and he impartially decided to do it this way, with the remarkable result that I have described. Why cannot we do it elsewhere if it is wise to do it elsewhere? The reason is the jealousy between the three Services, and I do not really believe that you will get the economies all over the Empire which you have got here unless you take some steps, and take them at once.
    The CHAIRMAN: The right hon. Gentleman will not be in order in entering upon the subject generally, apart from the question of the air defences of Iraq.
    Major-General SEELY: I bow at once to your ruling, sir. I thought it was germane to the subject to say that one could save money elsewhere, but I will not pursue that point. I will only cordially congratulate the Secretary of State for the Colonies and the Secretary of State for Air on the success which has so far attended their efforts, beg of them not to relax them, especially not to be afraid of the formidable attacks which will come from old-fashioned people, and assure them that there is a great body of opinion in this House which will back them up with all its power in adopting and developing this efficient and merciful means of maintaining our Empire.
    Sir J. D. REES: The right hon. Member for Paisley (Mr. Asquith) has every right to address the House in regard to Mesopotamia, over and above the right which attaches to his great position, for it was he and his Government who took us there. I am not saying that in order to say that it was the wrong thing to do, but it is a fact that is very frequently forgotten, and in his speech he made two
    1572
    important statements, with one of which I heartily concur and the other of which I profoundly regret. He complained, as I have done whenever I have had the opportunity, of the Indianisation of Mesopotamia, the introduction into it of almost every blessing of modern civilisation except female suffrage and continuation schools, the complete conversion of that country of nomads into a pale reflection of a British Indian district, which naturally drove the people there to revolt. I have often complained of this, and I will now content myself with saying that I was glad to hear the right hon. Gentleman say what he did upon that subject. Being an Indian civil servant myself does not at all blind my eyes to the folly and weakness of introducing a form of government the people do not want, by spending the taxpayers' money on making the Arabs uncomfortable and making ourselves unpopular. But the right hon. Member for Paisley could not resist the temptation, to which almost every Member of this House succumbs, whenever he comes upon Eastern subjects, of saying something which must further embitter the natural—I believe, the perfectly natural—feelings of discontent and resentment which animate our Mahommedan fellow-subjects. He said, with regard to Iraq and Palestine, that he would be no party ever to bringing under Turkish domination any Christian nation. I do not know who made us princes and governors over the whole world, to set up and pull down, to build and destroy. Why is it necessary for my right hon. Friend, in dealing with this subject, to follow the example, so unfortunately set in many quarters of this House, of taking the whole Turkish and Christian problem as being one to which there are not two sides, but everything against the Turk and in favour of the Christian?
    The CHAIRMAN: I trust the hon. Baronet is not going to pursue that subject.
    Sir J. D. REES: No; I had, in fact, done with it. My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Ormsby-Gore) referred to affairs in Palestine. I want to ask the Secretary of State whether the Palestine mandate is absolutely irrevocable, because the advantages to us I for one cannot see, and it seems to me a deplorable thing that we should be

    1573
    keeping down the Arabs in their own country at a large expense to our own country, for the sake of a comparatively small number of people who are really strangers, except in a religious sense, in that land. All this is being done in order to carry out some pledge, which I myself, having frequently read the text, which has been freely annotated, do not think bears the interpretation put upon it, or does irrevocably commit this country to its uncomfortable sojourn in Palestine. If the Secretary of State replies, I hope he will say something on that subject, which, I notice, Ministers invariably shirk. My right hon. Friend has an opportunity which, I hope, he will take. May I come, for a moment, to the subsidies? I hope these subsidies will be stopped. It does not appear to me that the British taxpayer gets any adequate return for the large sums of money which are paid to subsidise these Arab potentates. I cannot think that King Hussein has really conducted himself, as my right hon. Friend said, in a tolerable manner.
    Mr. CHURCHILL: He has not got any subsidy.
    Sir J. D. REES: He may not have the cash, like some of the others, but he is supported by us, and, if not, he would not be where he is; neither would King Feisal. My hon. and gallant Friend, whose information about Iraq, I admit, is far greater than mine, as he has been there quite recently, long since I have been there, and I hope he is right in thinking that King Feisal, whom we have put on the throne, will be as successful as he anticipates, although I cannot help remembering the sinister end of a similar venture on the borders of India. I turn to the question of the Russian refugees. Ever since the Armistice, I have continually brought this matter before the House, and protested against this expenditure. The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs said the other day:
    "The British High Commissioner in the Black Sea gave an undertaking, as to the wisdom of which I will say nothing to-day, that His Majesty's Government would become responsible for the officers and families of General Denikin's force."— [OFFICIAL, REPORT, 7th March, 1922; cols. 1113–4, Vol. 151.]
    Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: On a point of Order. I think that the £158,000 under Sub-head J is entirely for Armenians, and that the Russian
    1574
    refugees come under another Vote, which we discussed earlier in the week, when the hon. Baronet was, unfortunately, not here.
    The CHAIRMAN: The hon. and gallant Member for Central Hull (Lieut.-Commander Kenworthy) is right.
    Sir J. D. REES: I am surprised that the hon. and gallant Gentleman should grudge me a little of that irrelevance, in which he so freely indulges. I do not mean to deal with this subject, but it is one to which I have devoted myself more than any Member of this House in resenting expenditure to which the British taxpayer has been committed under this head. I did not understand the Under-Secretary of State, and I think the matter ought to be cleared up. He says, "the officers and families." They do not amount to over 10,000 people.
    The CHAIRMAN: The question of the Armenian refugees has nothing to do with a promise of the High Commissioner.
    Sir J. D. REES: I confess that I really thought on Report to-day we could cover ground which was covered in Committee.
    The CHAIRMAN: I would not be here if this were the Report stage.
    Sir J. D. REES: These points were raised in Committee, but I was not here.
    The CHAIRMAN: It is an entirely different Vote. If the hon. Baronet will look at the explanatory note, to which the hon. and gallant Member for Central Hull called my attention, he will see that this is confined to Armenian refugees.
    Sir J. D. REES: I will say that I raise an equal objection to the expenditure on behalf of the Armenians. It is a most distressing thing that there should be no subject connected with the East which does not represent us as favouring the Armenians and Greeks as against the Turks. I want, in conclusion, to ask the Secretary of State why he invariably calls Mesopotamia "Iraq," because Mesopotamia consists of two portions, one Arabian and one Persian. The Persian portion, speaking entirely from recollection, is almost as extensive, and certainly more populous than the Arabian Iraq, and, in the interests of precision, it would be very desirable that this should either be spoken of as Arabian Iraq, or else revert to the term "Mesopotamia," which,

    1575
    at any rate, has a well-established meaning. Shall I be in order in referring to relief in Russia, £15,000?
    The CHAIRMAN: Will the hon. Baronet direct my attention to where the item is? I have not seen it. He is speaking of another Vote.
    Sir J. D. REES: I beg pardon.
    Colonel WEDGWOOD: The right hon. Member for Paisley (Mr. Asquith) pointed out that the success or the failure of our policy in Iraq must depend, primarily, upon the successful termination of our semi-hostilities with Turkey, and he urged upon the Committee the desirability of harbouring no illusions as to the critical nature of affairs in the East, as exemplified by the telegram we have seen from the Viceroy for the first time to-day. He urged that we should be under no illusions, and I will also urge that even the Indian administration should be under no illusions.
    The CHAIRMAN: I have made myself acquainted with what the right hon. Gentleman said on the question, on which the hon. and gallant Gentleman is now embarking, and it would not be in order to pursue that beyond what the hon. and gallant Gentleman has said.
    Colonel WEDGWOOD: I will be very brief. I do not wish us to be under any illusions as to the position in the East. The Mussulman in India will not be satisfied with any concessions so far as Iraq or the Holy places—
    The CHAIRMAN: That is out of order.
    Colonel WEDGWOOD: I should like to point out that, in my opinion, it is; in order to reply to the argument used by the right hon. Member for Paisley. The settlement in the East depends far more upon the democratic settlement in India itself, and Mussulman sentiment will not be satisfied merely by—
    The CHAIRMAN: I must again point out to the hon. and gallant Gentleman that that is not in order.
    Colonel WEDGWOOD: I must, in that case, leave this subject, owing to the ruling of the Chair, but I would like to say that I, at any rate, regard the resignation of the Secretary of State for
    1576
    India, which is wrapped up with this question, with the greatest possible regret, and that I consider that that resignation will have an effect—
    The CHAIRMAN: I am coming to the conclusion that the hon. and gallant Gentleman is trying to evade my ruling.
    7.0 P.M.
    Colonel WEDGWOOD: The remark has been made by someone, I forget at the moment who, that most of the master class come under one of two categories —those who do their physical exercises before breakfast and those who intend to do so. The right hon. Gentleman, the Secretary of State, who has addressed the House to-day, seems to me to come under the second of these categories. He is always going to economise. He has been in charge of the Middle East since January, 1921, and the expenditure of the Colonial Office in connection with the Middle East Department during this past year has amounted to £30,000,000 of money, expenditure in no way associated with the demobilisation of the Army after the War. I do not call that a very satisfactory result of 14 months' administration, but we have been promised that next year the expenditure will be cut down and that we shall have an estimate not of £30,000,000 a year but of £10,000,000 a year. So far so good, but do not expect from this side of the House any excessive congratulation of the Colonial Secretary for, at the end of three years, bringing our expenditure down to £10,000,000 of money, even if there be the prospect of further reductions in future years. The policy he is now carrying out has been advocated consistently for the last three years not only by the Labour party but by the Free Liberal party as well, and it has taken the Government three years to adopt that policy, just as they were three years late in Ireland and elsewhere.
    We have gradually come round to an economical policy in connection with Iraq, but the charge still remains £10,500,000 a year, even on the Estimates as revised both by the Geddes Committee and the right hon. Gentleman. This charge is one which the taxpayers of this country cannot permanently carry on their shoulders, and we must protest against the £10,500,000 next year or the

    1577
    charges which may come due in the succeeding years. We must protest against that charge being permanently a burden upon the British taxpayer. In all other Crown Colonies, where there has been a deficit, and where they have had to come on the British taxpayer to make good the difference between revenue and expenditure, that Grant-in-Aid has been treated as a debt. It has not been written off; it has not been charged against the taxpayer as expenditure, but it has been booked as one of the debts which has to be taken into account when that Crown Colony becomes self-governing or becomes solvent. What has been done in connection with Nigeria should be done in connection with Iraq; whether it be £4,000,000, £3,000,000, or £2,000,000 a year, those sums should be charged up against the permanent debt of that territory or Crown Colony. We have no right to leave it entirely to the British taxpayer to bear the burden. We have to remember that the British taxpayer in Iraq is handing over assets to the Iraq Government of King Feisal which are far more valuable than even those grants-in-aid of £30,000,000 or £10,000,000. During the War there were very valuable railways in Iraq. After the War there were enormous experimental farms established, drainage works made, and canals cut, all at the expense of the British taxpayer. Now, according to the Geddes Report, these assets are being sold off by the British Government at slaughter prices, under circumstances where purchasers are few and money extremely hard to come by, so that the assets which ought to stand to the credit of the British taxpayer are being got rid of to private capitalists.
    Iraq railways are a case in point. I have no idea what those railways cost —probably £50,000,000 would not be an over-estimate. They are being sold off. They may even be sold off now for a song. I do not know whether we shall be able to get the price from my right hon. Friend who represents the Colonial Office. I would like to know what they are being sold off for and what they cost the taxpayers of Great Britain. But we on these Benches protest against the sale altogether. What we should like would be to have the railways leased for terms of years, but do not let these assets be sacirficed in perpetuity in order that some body of European capitalists may come in during hard times like these and
    1578
    buy them up for a mere song—assets which may be in years to come worth many millions of money. Do not sacrifice the transport system of Iraq and hand it over at a time like this to some group of European capitalists. Under the Geddes Report the railways are being sold off. What is being done with the irrigation works and the model farms? Are these assets to be sold off to the highest bidder or are they to be transferred, as similar assets are in Ireland, to the Government of King Feisal and added to the debt owed to this country by Iraq? I maintain that every one of those assets should be transferred and booked to those Governments and, if the railways cannot be carried on as a Government concern, they should be not sold but leased for a term of years, in order that the monopoly may not pass permanently into private hands. The capital spent in Iraq and the Grants-in-Aid we have to make in the years to come should both be booked against that Government.
    I think the whole policy of those subsidies to foreign native princes—for that is what they amount to—can be carried too far. The right hon. Gentleman is in love with subsidies. Every time he hands over to Abdullah or the Emir Feisal or any other of those new potentates who have been set up, he says, "I am saving this money because I am saving two regiments." That is legitimate, but it can be carried too far. The buying off of the barbarian has been tried in the past. Then the right hon. Gentleman says that he is never to give these subsidies except in arrears as a result of peaceful good behavious. I wonder whether these potentates, who are always at war with each other or are at war with everybody else in Arabia—I wonder if they deserve the subsidies they get? I think it was the Roman Emperor Theodosius who bought off the Ostro-Goths and other barbarians and gave them kings, and he probably said, "Admirable! We shall save legionaries. We shall never pay them the subsidies except in arrears. When the Ostro-Goths and other barbarians are good they will get the subsidies." The downfall of the Roman Empire followed after the subsidies. The barbarians came and wanted more, and they got it, not in arrears, but in advance. That policy may be equally disastrous to us. I would like to know whether there

    1579
    are any subsidies which have not been paid on account of the bad behaviour of the peoples who were to receive those subsidies. We are in effect setting up in Arabia and Iraq and other places a system of native princes such as we have in India, where the native princes carry on, more or less, absolute rule under the protection of British bayonets. A certain amount of injustice may by that system be laid at our door. You may have an absolute ruler tyrannising over his people. The only means of getting rid of an absolute tyrant was that the people rose and turned against the tyrant and substituted for him a new one. That is not possible so long as these native princes are maintained by British bayonets. I do not say there is the slightest danger in any of these cases of any such tyranny being protected by us, but it is a thing the Colonial Office ought to watch. They ought to exercise some sort of control over the exercise of power by any potentate when that power is solely maintained by British bayonets or British money.
    There is only one thing I would like to add about Iraq, and that is my regret that the hon. and gallant Member for Ilkeston (Major-General Seely) who, during the War, had perhaps the finest and most gallant reputation of any Member of this House—that he should to-day give the ægis of his gallantry to the theory that dropping bombs on women and children is at all comparable with shelling troops on the Western Front. Shelling troops, or rebels, or robbers is justifiable by any Government, but you require much more justification to start dropping bombs on native villages. It is true that the warning is given, but how many of the people of the village will know anything about the warning? It may be necessary. I do not say whether it is necessary or not. But when that system of policing the country is adopted, letting loose a man in an aeroplane with bombs with which he may kill many women and children—then that is not a system that can be lightly handed over. It is a system that requires the closest scrutiny and inquiry when any action has been taken.
    I pass from Iraq to Palestine.
    I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on having given to Palestine a con-
    1580
    stitution which, on the whole, has its merits. I am not very lavish in my praises of constitutions which have been given from that Bench lately. My right hon. Friend has given to Palestine a normal Crown Colony Constitution. It is true that in reply to an interruption from me he said that there was an elected minority on the Palestine Council, but there is besides that a certain amount of nominated elements who will represent the minority of Christians and Jews and the nominated or official element, which will be principally British, have the majority on that Council. The best Constitution that is given to a Crown Colony is always on those lines. It is on those lines for a very simple reason; that in our Colonies there is always a large minority or, perhaps I should say, a majority of uneducated people who require protection from the intelligent people with votes and power to elect members to the Legislature. In British Africa we protect by an official majority the natives and the Indians. In the same way, in Palestine, with an official majority we protect the Jew and the Christian, and when an Arab Delegation comes to this country and tells us that this Constitution is monstrously unfair, and that it is not compatible with our declaration of self-determination, I would reply that we should be only too pleased to give them full self-government as soon as it is obvious that the minority of Jews and Christians can be protected adequately, and when the feeling of hatred and hostility at the present time between the adherents of these religions in Palestine has ceased to exist.
    Unfortunately there is the example we have had of that hostility, even during the past year, and so long as you have pogroms going on in Jaffa and Jerusalem, and intense religious hatred in Palestine, we cannot possibly surrender complete self-government to the people of that country. That is the attitude we are bound to take up. I might perhaps be permitted to add this: I think that religious hostility in Palestine is exaggerated and exploited for motives which are not purely religious, or even economic. You have there the French, the landlords, and the wealthier classes who used to profit under the old Turkish administration with cheap labour. You have that class extremely reluctant, naturally, to see this new immigration of the Jews into the

    1581
    country bringing Western ideas wholly alien to centuries-old traditions. They resent it, and use their power and tradition, naturally, to stir up feeling against the new-comers. Even in this country and in this House you find Members who are always ready to get electoral kudos or any other sort of profit if one happens to talk reasonably of foreigners, and you must expect that such a state of things would be more prevalent in a country like Palestine. You get agitation stirred up, and the upsetting of the whole condition of affairs. Still that feeling of hatred between Arab and Jew is to be found in the upper classes, and not to be found amongst the common people. I was talking to Mr. MacDonald the other day. He had just come back from Palestine. He told some of us that at Tiberias there is a Committee consisting of Arabs, Christians, and Jews who are working together. They have created there a joint school where the children of the three religions can be educated, so in spite of the fact that there is one effendi or landlord there, the relations of the three races are perfectly amicable. The contrast is to be seen in another town, Nablus, where the whole administration, I understand, is in the hands of three big Turkish effendis. Here the feeling is very bitter indeed. A Jewish lady doctor was invited to the place, and going down received a welcome from the population; but sooner or later the effendis got together and had her thrown out. It is, as I say, mostly among the richer folk that these antagonistic feelings prevail, not amongst the common people who stand to benefit enormously by the development that the Jewish people bring into Palestine. I am afraid I have been carried away by the speech of the right hon. Gentleman, but it must not be thought that the Jews that are going to Palestine are Bolshevists. They are nothing of the sort. They are amongst the bitterest opponents of Bolshevism, because they have seen something of it—
    Mr. CHURCHILL: The hon. and gallant Gentleman had better be very careful what he is saying or he will split his party.
    Colonel WEDGWOOD: It is the only party that is not split at present. The right hon. Gentleman seems to suggest
    1582
    that the Jews are Bolshevists. I want to give that a flat contradiction.
    Mr. CHURCHILL: No, what I said was that special measures were being taken to keep out Bolshevists.
    Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHY: Political tests!
    Colonel WEDGWOOD: The fact is that amongst the Jewish immigrants into Palestine you find a far larger proportion of college bred men than amongst the proletariat of any other country. There are college bred men at work making roads who are teaching their fellow workmen in the evenings. You are getting also a good many people in the villages who, though poor, have managed to get American tractors and employ the latest methods of cultivation. On the other hand, you still see the wooden plough in use, though the people who use them are learning from the Jews, and gradually civilisation is spreading all over Palestine. It is not the Oriental Jew who is bringing Western civilisation into Palestine. No, they seemed to me to be, the more I have seen of them, a very hard-headed and business set of people, these people from the West, these men who are taking with them and spreading a revived hope. They do not think they get fair play very often, but they say quite frankly: "We know your difficulties and we cannot expect to have everything our own way. We are quite prepared to wait so long as we get a fair show, and gradually we shall come all right." That, of course, is the attitude of sensible people of every country. Our duty is, naturally—I say quite frankly—to see that they are allowed to come into the country and allowed to prosper, that they are allowed to have votes in that country, and as their numbers grow to increase their voting power. Until they have sufficient voting power it is our duty to retain control over the Legislative Council so that there may be no repetition of persecutions by an elected majority, and until these newcomers have a fair chance to protect themselves. The only effective way a population can protect themselves is by the use of the vote. I am at a loss in connection with this constitution to understand why a system of indirect election has been put forward. Why has it been done? The right hon. Gentleman

    1583
    said he had copied a system from the Soviet system in Russia.
    Mr. CHURCHILL: No.
    Colonel WEDGWOOD: I understood him so. In that case it has not even Soviet value. The other matter which is of importance is that the method by which the minority are elected. I hope they will be nominated, and not elected on a mere English basis. There is only another thing in connection with Palestine. Hon. Members are apt to say: There goes £22,000,000 spent over Palestine, and the British taxpayer is paying for it, and we ought to cut the loss and drop the country. As a matter of fact, we shall probably have in the near future to increase our Army in Palestine, not to protect the people of Palestine against cutting each other's throats, but we shall be cleared out of Egypt. We have got to have some force there to protect that main artery, the Suez Canal, and not only the Canal, but the air cross-roads, the land cross-roads, and the water crossroads. If you clear out of Egypt—I will not go into that now—we are bound to use Palestine as a base for the protection of that local point. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will take note of that. He is rather inclined, I think, to suppose we can go on staying in Egypt for ever, and that the Army can continue where it is, and that we need not consider any alternative. But we have to consider an alternative.
    The CHAIRMAN: Egypt is not included in the Vote.
    Colonel WEDGWOOD: I was not talking about Egypt, but about Palestine. I have been called to order so often upon these matters that I was endeavouring to keep strictly in order and to the point.
    The CHAIRMAN: I am sorry if the hon. and gallant Gentleman was not referring to Egypt. I was under a misapprehension. I understood him to mention Egypt.
    Colonel WEDGWOOD: I was going to discuss the matter of the barrier between Palestine and Egypt. I am sorry it is difficult to keep away from one or the other, but if we have to garrison the Suez Canal, we must rely on Palestine in future rather than on Egypt for the centre of our military forces. If that is so, the
    1584
    right hon. Gentleman ought to consider the possibility of establishing our frontier, so that it might be near the Suez Canal rather than where it is at the present time. We shall have the whole of the railway up to Jerusalem to control, and we shall need to be able efficiently to protect the main highway of the Empire. Perhaps I might be permitted before I sit down to say what the Labour party's policy in connection with Palestine would be.
    Mr. G. MURRAY: Does the hon. and gallant Gentleman speak for the whole of the Labour party?
    Colonel WEDGWOOD: Certainly. Our policy would undoubtedly be that we should as soon as possible see that Palestine is put on a self-supporting basis and that grants-in-aid that had to be made to Palestine during the coming few years would be treated as grants-in-aid to the other Crown Colonies are treated —as a debt. That debt would no doubt pile up, but ultimately as Palestine becomes self-supporting, we should, as in the case of other Crown Colonies, be able to get interest on that money and be able to treat it as a live asset. That is a policy that we should recommend. One of our first duties would be to see that the charge for the Army, in so far as it was an Army for the protection of Palestine, was reduced to a minimum, and that the place of the Army was taken by a gendarmerie which the right hon. Gentleman has started there and which has already done such useful work. We want that gendermerie, and we say that it could become equivalent to the North West Mounted Police. That is the force you want to have. You do not want a number of British regiments squatting down in Jerusalem or Jaffa, but an efficient gendarmerie under European officers doing the ordinary police work, a North West Mounted Police. If there is to be a British Army remaining in Palestine, because we know that at this point we must have an Army to protect the Suez Canal, then that is Britain's own affair and no proper charge upon a self-supporting Palestine.
    Lord EUSTACE PERCY: I will not trouble the Committee with anything more than one point, and that is with regard to Palestine. The right hon. Gentleman said something in the course of his speech that he was not accustomed

    1585
    to shirk responsibility. I should like the right hon. Gentleman to take unto himself a further responsibility and to give me an assurance upon one particular point. There have been in the case of Palestine various agitations and proposals to have the whole immigration question inquired into by a judicial Committee, and that immigration should be suspended pending such an investigation. I think the Colonial Secretary will agree with me when I say that the reason why we need the gendarmerie in Palestine is the continuing uncertainty as to whether we mean to stay in Palestine, what kind of mandate we propose to have, and so forth. The only thing that can do away with that uncertainty is that British administration should be made strong enough to administer the country. We do not want a suspension of our policy in the hands of any judicial Committee. The population of Palestine have confidence in us, and I hope the Colonial Secretary will assure us that so long as he is responsible for the administration of Palestine he will remain responsible for the controlling of immigration, and not pass it on to any Committee of any sort or kind.
    Mr. L. MALONE: With a certain amount of the policy of the Government, so far as the Near East is concerned, I find myself in agreement. At one time I used to be one of the foremost admirers of the Colonial Secretary, and even during the War I admired his very brilliant conceptions of Gallipoli and Antwerp which, owing to a thing over which he had no control, were not so successful as they might have been. Since then I think the right hon. Gentleman has rather gone off the rails, and I am afraid he has got into the hands of bad interests. In the East the Colonial Secretary has an opportunity to make a great reputation with a large section of the people. In the East the right hon. Gentleman has taken over a great many legacies from the War. During the War I spent 12 or 14 months in Arabia, Palestine and Abyssinia, and I saw some of the muddles the Government got us into in those countries. Take the case of the Arab bureau and our dealings with the Sheik of Mecca in regard to subsidies. In this matter there was rivalry between the Secretary of State for India and the Arab bureau in Cairo. The point on which I should like a reply is with reference to the
    1586
    legacies of the India Office in regard to the payment of yearly subsidies to these Arabs. Are they to be paid in perpetuity? How long are we to pay these legacies to the native princes in the East, and what return can we expect to get in this country, either nationally or individually.
    Is any individual in this country getting any benefit in return for the money being spent there or is it simply being spent as an honourable return to uphold the pledges of this nation in the past? If it is merely a question of national honour we are under just as great obligations to save the starving people of Russia. What is really the keynote of all the troubles in Arabia to-day? What is the remedy for the unrest and strife and bickerings which the Colonial Secretary finds himself face to face with to-day? The real thing he has to face is that a settlement has to be made with Mustapha Kemal Pasha in Angora, and a Treaty has to be signed with him. That is the pill which we have to swallow. It is not a question of whether we have to swallow it or not, but as to how bitter that pill is going to be. I suggest that the Colonial Secretary should make use of the opportunity of the visit to this country of Yussef Pasha—
    The CHAIRMAN: I have already ruled that such matters as these cannot be discussed on this Vote.
    Mr. MALONE: All I wish to say on this point is that peace with Turkey would bring about peace and prosperity in Europe and elsewhere. I should like to see some arrangement made on these lines. Would it be possible for Mustapha Kemal Pasha to accept office as Prime Minister under the Sovereign? We shall never get peace in Iraq so long as we continue negotiating with a shadow Sultan at Constantinople. The point upon which I wish to congratulate the Secretary of State for the Colonies and the Minister of Air is the development which the Air Service has undergone in the East. I only say this on this particular Estimate, and I think I am entitled to talk about the air because the Colonial Secretary himself mentioned it in his opening speech. I think a great deal more might be done with the Air Service in this part of the world- The railway to Bagdad and Constantinople will not be completed for another five or six

    1587
    years, because there is still a great gap of between 130 and 140 miles to be completed in addition to the renovation of a number of bridges which were destroyed during and since the War.
    I think a great deal more might be done with the Air Service out there. Flying there is good practice for our airmen and it is a good thing for the progress of civil aviation in this country. No money spent on the Air Service there is wasted. Even if there is no war for the next 20 years the airmen carrying out commercial flying in those parts will reflect on the prosperity of this country. I think the Colonial Secretary will be well advised to approach his colleague the Postmaster-General and try and get a definite contract for the carrying of mails to Bagdad. The air post from London to Bagdad takes something like nine days as compared with five weeks by the sea route. If the right hon. Gentleman exerts pressure on the Postmaster-General I think the Government can put commercial flying on very nearly a paying basis within the next two or three years. It might also be possible in the not very far distant future to extend flying as far as India. I do not want to say anything more about the Air Service in the East to-night, because we shall have opportunities of developing this question at greater length on the Air Estimates the week after next. I think it is rather singular that the air work in the East has had to be developed by the military side of the Air Ministry and by the Chief of the Air Staff and not by the Controller of Civil Aviation.
    The point upon which I mainly want to speak to-night is the question of Palestine. I feel that the Palestine question is the most important section of the Colonial Secretary's work in the East, and it is there that he may look for the most lasting results of his work. It is in Palestine that the right hon. Gentleman can look for a place to bury some of his corpses of past catastrophies. We have been flooded during the past few months by propaganda pamphlets describing two sides of the Palestine question, and I think it is only right in this place to make a little comment on those pamphlets. I hope the Colonial Secretary when he comes to reply will give us a more definite assurance as to
    1588
    the Government's policy in Palestine. In his opening remarks to-day the Colonial Secretary did little more than slur over the attitude of his Office and of the Government towards the Palestine question.
    I think the people ought to understand what this Arab Delegation in London really means. We ought to understand who these people who are holding meetings in London really represent. I should like hon. Members and the public not to treat this Arab Delegation too seriously. What is this Delegation which is now staying at the Hotel Cecil? I have it on very good authority that the Delegation now at the Hotel Cecil does not represent the best Moslem opinion in Palestine. Not only the two or three Moslem societies in the country, but all the important Arabs of any standing decline to associate themselves with the activities of the Arab Delegation now in London. I have read very carefully their statements and their tracts and the accounts of the meetings which they have held, and I find that they are absolutely unsupported by either the official reports of the High Commissioner of Palestine or by the facts as we know them. I want to deal with one or two of them.
    It is stated by the Arabs that the Balfour Declaration of November, 1917, absolutely contravenes all the promises made to the Arabs during the War. What do we find? The only pledge mentioned is the pledge given by Sir Henry Mac-Mahon in 1915—and that was never given to the Arabs, it was only given to the Sherif of Mecca. During the recent Conferences in Paris, the Balfour Declaration received the blessing of King Feisal and the Sherif of Mecca. The Arab report says that, as far as the Palestine Service is concerned, every Department is swamped with Jews. That is a gross travesty of the facts, for if one turns to the Interim Report of the High Commissioner it will be seen that in the Senior Service, out of a total of 360, only 50 are Jews; while in the Junior Service, out of 2,130, only 566 are Jews. If there is any ground for legitimate criticism of our administrative machine in Palestine, that it is not that there are too many Jews, but that with regard to the remainder—the Christians and the Moslems—there are not enough Moslems. I do not know why. It may be it is difficult to find sufficient Moslems

    1589
    with administrative ability. But what are the Government of Palestine doing to produce more Moslems who are fitted to take their part in the Government of the country?
    Again, the pamphlet says that a tide of Jewish immigration is pouring into Palestine. There are in Palestine to-day nearly 70,000 Jews, but of this number we must remember more than 35,000 take no part in its political life. They are confined in Jerusalem. Of the remainder, 20,000 are employed on public works and just over 15,000 are colonists doing really good productive work in farming, afforestation and other industries. The Arab delegations in their statement refer to a little pamphlet published in this country called the "Jewish Peril." I do not think, however, that those who voice the aspirations of the Arabs in this country do their case any good by referring to this pamphlet, nor do they do any good to their cause by associating themselves, as they do in all their meetings at the Hyde Park Hotel, with professional anti-Semites in this country and those who are loudest in their declamations in the columns of the "Morning Post" and elsewhere against any work by any person of the Jewish faith. It is a rather curious travesty that these anti-Semites are so loud in decrying the keeping of a Jewish minority in Palestine by means of British bayonets, seeing that they are exactly the persons who in this House a few weeks ago were urging that we should keep a British minority in India with British bayonets. Evidently the principles which they apply to India they are not prepared to apply to Palestine.
    I do not want to criticise the Arab point of view. But what do they really want? What do the Arab delegations wish to do? Do they want us to abrogate the Balfour declaration? What is their solution for the millions of Jewish people who are to be found in the ghettoes throughout Europe? There is no constructive suggestions in any of their statements, so far as I have seen. I cannot pass from criticising the Arabs without giving a word of criticism to the other side. There are Zionists who are over-ardent, but there is not a single trace of evidence in any statement by the extreme Zionists that the administration of Palestine is not doing justice to
    1590
    the Arabs. What I look upon as the most hopeful sign in Palestine is the scheme for the development of the waters of the Jordan and for the development of electrification and other schemes at Jaffa and elsewhere. This is the first really big constructive scheme which the Zionist supporters—I do not mean the official Zionist organisations—have tried to put into operation in Palestine, and I earnestly hope that the Secretary of State will do everything in his power to help the scheme forward. Further, I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman, or whoever may reply on this Debate, for more definite assurances as to the Government policy in regard to Palestine. For a great many generations Palestine has been looked upon as the lodestar of Jewish idealism, and it would be interesting to see the Hebrews once more making their characteristic contribution to the common stock. It would be a terrible blow if we went back one jot or one tittle from the declaration which Sir Arthur Balfour gave us in November, 1917.
    Lieut.-Colonel MOORE-BRABAZON: I look upon the Secretary of State as a modern Abraham, who, instead of promising us a land flowing with milk and honey, promises us a land of oil and money. What, however, I want to know is how the ordinary British taxpayer is, to use a vulgarism, going to "trouser" the money. Whatever we produce here, even if the country flows with oil and if every particle of the land is producing wheat, surely it is going to the highest bidder, and this country is not likely to reap any benefit except from the point of view of having improved yet another country. Our mandate wants clearing up. How long are we to remain in this country? Is it ever going to be an asset rather than a liability? Cannot we see a vision 20 years ahead where we are still in the country teaching the Arabs trigonometry and fining them for telling fortunes? It will not make them any better; it will make us a good deal poorer. Can the Secretary of State tell how long we are committed to this policy, and how we are going to cash our already big expenditure? Is the policy of the Government the most efficient machinery for doing what we have undertaken? I congratulate the Secretary of State on his imagination in utilising the Air Force as policemen in this country. This is a red-letter day in the military history of

    1591
    the world, because for the first time we see this new young Air Force taking charge of a big country with the older service ancillary to it. The Air Force during the War worked practically entirely for the Army. In this particular scheme the Army has to co-operate with the Air Force, and the success of the venture now being tried can be made or marred by the Army. I hope it will do its best to help the venture in every way.
    Major GLYN: I have listened with very great satisfaction to the speech of the Secretary of State in regard to the policy he is carrying through. If I may be critical, I would say there is one point which the Committtee should not pass over. Although there have been difficulties in the administration of Mesopotamia, tremendous credit is due to those Arabs who consented to come forward and take part in the Government. Feisal has a very difficult task, and some of the Arabs associated with him were doubtful at first whether their lives would not be endangered if they co-operated with him. They have, however, done so, and they have proved themselves worthy of the experiment which has been made. It would be as well if all of us could realise that if we withdrew our forces now those Arabs who helped us would be in very great jeopardy. We do not want, I am sure, to hold Mesopotamia by a large force of troops. Most of us want to see the troops removed. Personally I hope the Secretary of State will extend the idea of the gendarmerie in Mesopotamia, and I trust he will give special attention to the claims of the 3,000 officers of the British Army who are very soon, I fear, to be thrown on the streets, and who are men eminently suited to relieve the British and Indian troops and to assist in training the Arab levies. If that is done in co-operation with the Air Force there, a great deal may be accomplished to justify the hopes of those of my hon Friends who think that by the air you can do everything. This is not perhaps the best occasion on which to discuss the Air Force, but I would like some information as to what is going to happen. If you disagree with the policy of dropping bombs on women and children, a policy which I strongly deprecate, you might use your aeroplanes to secure early in-
    1592
    formation, and thus place our forces in a position to put down any trouble at its start.
    Major-General SEELY: Why should it be assumed that aeroplanes will drop bombs or shells on women and children? It has been suggested that I made some such statement. I never said anything of the sort. An aeroplane need not drop either bombs or shells on women and children.
    8.0 P.M.
    Major GLYN: I was unaware of what the right hon. Gentleman had said, but I think it does not alter the point that the information must be followed up by action. What that action is going to be, remains to be proved, but as I say, it is not fair, before investigation, to discuss the matter. I believe the real benefit of the Air Force to Iraq at the present moment has been to help political officers to keep in touch with people in different parts and to bring the whole of the vast territories into constant communication with headquarters, and through them, you have distributed the actual physical association of those who are in charge at headquarters with the great districts they administer.
    I would like to ask the Under-Secretary a special question. The education of the Arabs was started off by a very elaborate scheme with which the name of Miss Gertrude Bell will always be most honourably associated. Those who have the honour of the lady's acquaintance realise what a tremendous enthusiasm she has, and they will know her great power among the Arab people. They would, I feel sure, do everything possible to assist her in her great work. To-night it is not seemly or suitable to discuss anything about the settlement with Turkey, but I think I should be in order in saying that those who work for the good of the Arabs, and those who wish to see British prestige held high, will do well to follow as far as possible the road of those devoted people who have gone out to help to educate them, and prove by actual fact what British association with any people who are coming out of darkness into light can do, and then we need not be afraid of what the future holds. The whole of Islam at the moment is on the move, and it is difficult for Western people to see in what direction the movement is going.

    1593
    But there is a force which is counteracting the work which has been done by Miss Bell and others—a force which, I think, is rather pernicious. There is established at Fez a large college who send out missionaries into different parts of the Mahommedan world, and these men have done a great deal to stir up feeling and produce unrest. It is as well to realise that people whose education is not yet perfect can be led away by agitators more easily than those who can balance opinion as the result of having the advantage of a full education, and I hope the policy will be pursued in Iraq of not relying on force, but doing everything to disseminate by education that far better British characteristic, which is shown by the fact that one British official with a stick can go anywhere, while some other foreign emissaries, although armed, cannot penetrate without the risk of losing their lives. If we can concentrate troops in areas where they are of real use for Imperial communication, and develop the system of gendarmerie, and establish that machinery to give employment to the ex-officers and non-commissioned officers who served the country well, and who, through no fault of their own, will be thrown on to a very bad labour market to get other employment, I am sure the Secretary of State, with his intimate knowledge, is an ideal man to consider the just claims of these men.
    Lieut. - Colonel FREMANTLE: The Secretary of State has been likened to the patriarch Abraham, and that reminds me that when I had sanitary charge of the base in Iraq I once sent out a young officer with a complete disinfecting equipment to Ur of the Chaldees, the former seat of that patriarch, to disinfect about a thousand coolies. I wanted to ask this point, which, perhaps, the Colonial Secretary will deal with in his reply. People think of the protection of Iraq and of its political importance, but do not ever seem sufficiently to realise how essentially important it is as the health gateway between Asia and Europe. Iraq is one of the essential gateways which has admitted, or not admitted, disease from Asia into Europe. Great waves of epidemics have come through or been stopped there. There have been three gateways for the spread of infection. One we hold the key of, through the Red Sea
    1594
    and the Suez Canal; the other is viâ the Persian Gulf through Basra; and the third is the caravan route through Persia to Bagdad. Owing to a good sanitary cordon and the quarantine regulations set up during the War, we kept an effectual cheek on both these remaining routes, as well as the original one, and I should like to ask whether, in Iraq, that essential factor is likely to be maintained in the new arrangement under the Arab Government now set in force? I will give a reason why this is essential, that is the travelling to the great Shiah shrines of Kerbela and Negif in Iraq, which are the Mecca of all Shiah Mussulmen. There is a very large traffic in corpses coming through from Persia to be buried in these shrines in Iraq. Corpses are brought down from all parts of the country and this makes it additionally necessary for sanitary arrangements and proper precautions.
    The sanitary organisation is in a very difficult position at the present time. As always happens when this country begins to cut expenses, the first thing it will cut down is what they consider to be an ancillary or accessory service, and, above all, those on which they see no result. We ought to be beyond that. At the present time I should hope that we may feel ourselves justified in maintaining these services that are an essential protection from the epidemics of Asia. In the second place, there are the civil health services for the immediate needs of the population. We have established quietly a very large influence through the civil medical service, which was originally the military medical service, throughout the country. We are still keeping up a certain amount of steady work that is enormously valued in the different stations throughout Iraq. What is more, we keep them up not only for the sake of the inhabitants, but we have establishments for the Europeans. That is an essential service. If we are to keep the country with the help of European officers, we must provide for them and their families to have a proper medical service, and that is a difficult question where you are diminishing your services. You have a very long line of communication from Bagdad to Basra and you have these little knots of Europeans for whom and for whose families—it is impossible to divorce them from family life year after year—you must keep a proper medical service. I ask for

    1595
    some kind of assurance that sympathy will be given to the medical staff—I know them personally and I know their magnificent service since the Armistice—in maintaining and developing the medical services, for the sake not only of the European, but still more, for the civilising purpose which is the main purpose of our mandate. The main reason for our remaining in the country seems to be, by a civilising influence, to keep the peace and hold it. If so, there is no way of doing it so effectively as by keeping up and developing your medical service for the sake of the natives.
    I do not wish to speak at any length on the general subject, though I think I could do so quite as effectively as many who spoke without local knowledge. But the following information should, in justice, be given in this kind of Debate. It has not yet been mentioned and it expresses a very sound opinion from a friend who writes from Bagdad:
    "With an Arab Government things have changed very materially. The Shereefian influence of (certain officials) has neither drowned nor tried to drown the real good work which A. T. Wilson put in and on the substructure of which we now rest, and all that is at present going on is made possible. People forget this, and I hate to hear A. T. Wilson run down even though he did go a bit fast."
    Heaven only knows what our country owes that man! He was cruelly libelled in the Debate a year ago. I tried to get an opportunity of saying something to the contrary, but time only can show what his influence and what his constructive organisation has done. I hope that now, in an independent capacity, he may be able to assist very materially in the development of that country.
    I want to refer to one other question —the policy of scuttle. That policy of scuttle has been preached to the readers of newspapers in this country and throughout the Empire quite recently, by those who seem to have a knowledge, but who, as a matter of fact, have hardly any immediate knowledge at all of the circumstances. I hope that that policy of scuttle has now been ended by the action of the right hon. Gentleman. He did it by an extraordinary combination of policy. There is no doubt that there was a disgraceful amount of waste under the old régime. Some of us who know have heard the parody that went round the
    1596
    headquarters at Bagdad, while the country was still under our occupation, during the earlier régime:
    "Half a lakh, half a lakh, half a lakh squandered;
    Up to the Persian hills, G.H.Q. wandered;"
    and the rest of it. There was a great deal of real waste of Government money, and the cost was tremendous. The question was, how to get round that, and yet at the same time carry out what we felt it to be our duty to carry out, having undertaken the Mandate. I hope it will be remembered that a very large number of men from this country fought, and a very large number died, in that country and for that country, and that it has an enormous interest for those who came to know the Arab, to understand him and to admire him, and who saw the possibilities of the future. We felt that a policy of scuttle was ignoble, and we felt that, whatever the future might be—and we believed that there were possibilities, as has been suggested, in connection with oil and so on in Iraq—whatever the future might be, it was our duty and our wish to stay there. That could only be accomplished by this proposal of the Secretary of State, which was cried down and laughed at right and left as being impossible, as being only a half measure, which was worse than none. Having seen a good deal of the work of the Air Force during the War in Iraq, although I myself felt that it was doubtful, I felt that the risk was one which should be taken, and where others cried it down I stood up for it, although I had no qualification so to do except my own opinion. I am glad now to see that it has justified itself, and I hope it will continue to do so. It was a very bold decision on the part of the Secretary of State.
    Do not let us be blind to the future. The right hon. Gentleman has drawn for us extraordinary pictures about the prosperity of the country at the present moment, but those pictures are not borne out by the intimate information that I get from Iraq. It is quite true that the people on the spot, naturally, perhaps, are most alive to the dangers, and are least able to see through the wood to the trees inside, but we must be prepared for the possible breakdown of this Arab dominion. What are we going to do in that case? I hope the result of this discussion, and of the three years

    1597
    of thought which the country has gone through, will convince us that, if Feisal's rule does break down—which God forbid —we must be prepared still to carry out our Mandate. Those of us who have been out there, and had eyes to see what the ravages of the Turkish Government had effected for many years, cannot imagine the country being allowed to go back to that, and we feel that we cannot possibly let it go back; but, unless we are prepared to rule it in case the present rule should break down, we must give it back to Turkey. I have evidence that Arabs of high standing out there say to the British, "We like you; we want to have your rule. You rule well. But if you will not rule, we do not want the Arab. The Arab cannot rule. We know the Arab chiefs. If you will not rule, give us back the Turk. We know and understand him, and a strong rule, even if bad, is much better than no rule at all." That is the cry that comes from all Oriental lands, and it is voiced particularly in a letter to me from the Yemen. I have heard no mention of the Yemen to-night, and I should like to know what is the position there at the present time, and what it is going to be. Are we going to give that also over to Arab rule, or are we still going to keep a large force there? Are we prepared to govern it ourselves, or is it to be left with practically no government at all?
    Having supported, as far as I can, the policy of the Secretary of State, I do hope that he will drop this silly pretence of democracy of which he has made so much in the Debate. It is absolutely absurd and ridiculous to anyone who has been in personal contact with the Oriental, and especially the Oriental who is untrained in Western matters, as is the case among the Arabs, to imagine for a minute that they can adopt any semblance of democratic organisation. The account that the Secretary of State gave us of the election of Emir Feisal as king is more absurd than anything I could imagine ever to have been stated in this Chamber. Everyone knows it to be a ridiculous farce. Why was it adopted originally, and why is it again repeated now? Is it for the purpose of putting us right in the eyes of the world, in accordance with the ideas of self-determination that were thrown about so airily by big statesmen who did not understand the East. Is it to put us right
    1598
    with our Colonial cousins, or to put us right with democratic people in our own country? I hope that among these last there are some who study these things, and that they will join in recognising the absurdity of talking about democratic government among an Oriental people who are illiterate, and of whom I do not suppose one in a thousand would know what they were voting about when they were asked to vote.
    Why keep up this humbug? We know that we, England, for better or worse, believe in Western civilization as better than Eastern. I have lived and worked long enough in Eastern civilization to know that there is another side to that question from the Oriental point of view, but, if we believe in it, when we take charge of a country, we know what is best for the people according to our view. What is best for them is the thing they will like best when they understand it; but to imagine that they can understand it in advance, if we thrust it upon them, is absurd, and to ask their opinion, even if they could give it, is absurd. We believe that the right thing was that Emir Feisal should reign in Iraq. I believe myself that the Secretary was right in making that arrangement, however it was done; but I say that the reason for it is that we knew and the natives on the spot could not understand. We arranged it, and we hope it is for the best, but for God's sake let us drop that sham of democratic government of Orientals by themselves.
    Mr. MACQUISTEN: I hope that this Debate will have, to some extent, instructed the general mass of the people of this country on these two difficult subjects, Iraq and Palestine. In Iraq, as I understand the matter, we find ourselves for the simple reason that it was part of the struggle of the War. We broke up the Turkish Government there, who were our enemies, having joined with the Germans, and we were assisted in doing that by a great many native Arabs. When the War was over it would not have been right or fair had we left the country without a Government. Certainly there was a great deal of extravagance. The Indian Government, when they thought they were spending the money of the home Government, spent it with considerable liberality. We have established a Government there,

    1599
    and it is probably right that we should continue to see that it functions, because even Turkish government is better than none at all. I hope we shall get, some day, some further reward beyond the mere reward of a good conscience. Therefore, I do not think the expenditure in Iraq can be reasonably found fault with.
    When, however, we come to the question of Palestine, I must say that that is a great mystery to the average Briton, especially if he is unemployed and sees good money going for the benefit of people who he always thought knew far more about money than he did. I listened with refreshing joy to the hon. and gallant Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Colonel Wedgwood) the new exponent of democracy. It is a complete mystery to me how such doctrines could be expressed by him. He seemed to think it was our duty to keep the natives of Palestine down until a sufficient number of other immigrants have got in to vote them down. A more extraordinary democratic doctrine I have never heard in my life, and that is the last Bench I should have expected to hear it from. We have seen the results of making settlements of aliens in other countries. We have seen the result of introducing different populations. It is not desirable. They never fuse properly.
    I do not feel that this country is bound by the Balfour Declaration at all. It is a mere pious expression of a wish which has been interpreted as if it was a contract. We know perfectly well that it had no right to be done in this particular way. It may cause as much trouble as the Pope's gift in the twelfth century of Ireland to England. I always ask the Catholics of Ireland to recollect that if they got into a mess by being handed over they have the Pope to thank for it, and now here is very much the same position in Palestine, except that the Balfour Declaration is being made to take the place of the Pope, and is interpreted as if it was handing over what is de facto the home of three-quarters of a million of Arabs to a considerable number of Jews. No doubt the Jews were once in Palestine, but that was a long, long while ago. The Romans were there for hundreds of years. The Romans were once in Britain. The only place they could not get into was
    1600
    Scotland. We drove them out, and they seem to have engaged in an experiment in building to keep us from coming down upon them, which was greater even than this Government has done in building houses. They built a wall, traces of which are still to be found along the border. We have no occasion to go into this ancient history, which gives no right whatever to what is the de facto home of the Arabs. There is no reason why Jews should not emigrate there if they want to, but there should not be any of this almost forced immigration. Those of us who know the history of the north-east corner of Ireland know that there was always there a different race from the rest of the country. We are told it was a settlement put in by James I and Cromwell.
    The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN (Sir E. Cornwall): This ancient history must not be gone into at too great length on a Supplementary Estimate.
    Mr. MACQUISTEN: I am using it as an argument.
    The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN: I allowed the hon. Member to use it up to a point, but I rule now that he is using it at too great length, and he must not go any further.
    Mr. MACQUISTEN: I was dealing at the beginning with the twelfth century. I have now proceeded down the corridors of history five or six centuries further. I was dealing with Henry II. That was in the twelfth century. If my recollection was right, James I was many years after. He was a Scotch King said to be the son of Mary Queen of Scots.
    The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN: I must ask the hon. Member not to pursue that topic.
    Mr. MACQUISTEN: I am surprised that the hon. and gallant Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme wants to repeat the history which he so bitterly deplores in the adjacent island. He is simply making a repetition of it. Why cannot we leave the Arabs to deal with this question themselves? If they want these gentlemen they can emigrate into their country and they will be welcome. If they do not want them, why should we, who are so determined to give the race just across the Irish Channel self-determination, or self-extermination,

    1601
    proceed to operate the principle that we have just thrown overboard? The whole thing is perfectly absurd. Why not Egypt? Why are we not to keep Egypt, where the result of British domination has been to make it blossom like a rose and prosper? Why are we keeping the protection of the Suez Canal for Palestine? That is where the waters of Jordan are, but it is a considerable distance from the Suez Canal. I had the pleasure of meeting this Arab deputation, and I was very favourably impressed. They may belong to what the hon. and gallant Gentleman would call the upper classes. Of course that, to a leader of the Labour party, who always works to raise class distinctions, is sufficient to turn them down. But after all, are not the so-called upper classes of the Arabs the educated classes? I am surprised at the doctrine from the Labour Benches that the so-called educated classes must be more ignorant than the uneducated classes. The Arabs put it plainly. They said, "We do not want them. A great many of them are very undesirable Russian Jews with Bolshevist tendencies, and we are an ordinary law-abiding people." The history of the Jewish race is a brilliant one. The Lord has given them every gift in the world except popularity. They are more an intellectual people than a people who are in the habit of using their hands and perspiring at their labour. They are more inclined to be traders, administrators, lawyers and artists. I cannot follow why the British should be mixed up in this question of providing a national home for them. An hon. Member suggests it might be made a home for ex-Ministers of the Crown.
    Why should we spend a single penny of British money or have a single Scottish regiment in Palestine for a purpose of this kind? It is one which I, being only an unsophisticated Scotsman, cannot understand at all, and I do not think we are bound by the Balfour Declaration. We have the Arabs there, and if those I saw in the Arab deputation are all good samples of the Arab people, all I can say is that they look certainly just as fit to govern as the Labour party or the Tory party. They were a very fine body of men and they spoke with culture, eloquence, and very good reasoning and historical knowledge. We have driven the Turk out of the place because his rule there was cruel, and we left 750,000
    1602
    industrious people, who stood by us during the War, and who fought for us, and I think we ought to leave them to deal with things. We drove out the Turk for them, and they do not want him back. Why should we hand the place over to another people who are aliens? Although they can say that their ancestors were there, it is hundreds of years ago, and they left the place because they could not hold on. Why they should be brought back by the British is a thing that a great many people cannot understand. As far as I have been able to gather, we have had no satisfactory or reasonable explanation given in this House.
    While we cannot do the immediate scuttle that has been suggested, I do say that we ought to make it our business to leave the Arab people there to govern the country on the democratic principle of allowing the majority to rule. If we do that, things will settle down, and I feel sure that the majority of the Arab people will give the Jews just as much fair play as they would give to any other people; we do not need to anticipate any oppression. It is a serious thing for any people to have a body of foreigners forced on them by artificial means. That is bound to cause irritation and great difficulty in Government. The modus operandi suggested by the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Colonel Wedgwood) is a violation of the elementary principles of self-government, of which this House has seen a most astonishing example in the last week. Why we should do these things is entirely beyond me, and beyond most of the citizens of this country.
    Mr. WISE: I should like to ask one question in regard to Item J2 "Loss by exchange on funds supplied by India." The details state:
    "This represents the estimated amount of loss through depreciation of the value of the rupee in supplying Mesopotamia with rupee currency during the period to 31st March, 1921."
    How is it that this is only an Estimate although it is a year ago? Who advises the Treasury or the Department on the exchange position in connection with this Supplementary Estimate of £891,000?
    The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for the COLONIES (Mr. Edward Wood): I am afraid that I am not in a position to

    1603
    give my hon. Friend, off hand, a full answer to the point he has made. One of the reasons why the account is brought into this Supplementary Estimate is that there has been a considerable delay in obtaining full information, or as full information as we have now got in regard to those rather complicated currency points. That explains why at this moment it is only an Estimate. My hon. Friend may, however, take it that the Estimate will not prove to be very far from the actual sum.
    Mr. WISE: It is nearly a year old.
    Mr. WOOD: Up to 31st March last year, but my hon. Friend must bear in mind that these matters involve calculations in sums of values that shift almost week by week and month by month. The task of making up the books with these calculations is not easy, and the hon. Member must be prepared to allow a reasonable period of time for the claims to be finally adjusted. In regard to these currency matters, my right hon. Friend acts on the advice of his financial advisers here, who are always able to consult the experts of the Treasury and he works in these matters in conjunction with the financial experts of the India Office, and the financial advisers of the local administration. Therefore, my hon. Friend will see that there are a good many persons involved. It is, at least, a three-cornered transaction, and that is the explanation why a certain amount of delay is inevitable. If my hon. Friend wishes to pursue the subject further I shall be glad to give him any information that I can obtain, when I have had an opportunity to consult those who actually deal with the figures. I have only tried to answer him in general outline.
    Captain BENN: I want to point out that this Iraq Vote, and the transference of command to the Air Ministry, really involves the whole question of an independent Air Ministry, and inasmuch as we have heard from various quarters that an attack is to be made upon the independence and integrity of the Air Ministry, one notes that these attacks have not been developed to-day. If we accept this arrangement in Iraq, it is quite clear that it will be too late later on to attack the independence of the Air Ministry, and we, who
    1604
    believe that the interests of the country and of economy are best served by the existence of an independent Air Force, are right in assuming that the failure of the opponents to attack this big scheme to-day, means that the opponents of that separate and independent Air Force regard their case as hopeless and do not intend to press it to the full extent. It is very important to state that, having regard to the controversy that will develop in the course of the next 10 days.
    Question put, and agreed to.
    Resolution to be reported To-morrow.
    Committee to sit again To-morrow.

    REPORT [7th March].
    Resolutions reported,

    CIVIL SERVICES AND REVENUE DEPARTMENTS SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATE, 1921–22. UNCLASSIFIED SERVICES.
    1. "That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £465,868, be granted to His Majesty, to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1922, for the Cost of certain Miscellaneous War Services."
    2. "That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £100, be granted to His Majesty, to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1922, for the Salaries and Expenses in connection with Shipping Liquidation."
    First Resolution read a Second time.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House doth agree with the Committee in the said Resolution."
    Sir D. MACLEAN: There is a large number of these Reports of Supply. With regard to some of them, those with whom I act think that the Debate which took place in Committee sufficiently satisfied the criticism which we had to offer. Therefore, with regard to them, we do not propose to take up the time of the House in repeating our arguments, or in adding further ones to them, but we hope that the Government will be able to find time for the discussion of some other subjects of very considerable importance. Such a subject, for instance, as the question of the grant by the State in relief of the Russian famine. If we exercise Parliamentary restraint in the direction which I have

    1605
    suggested—indicating those items which we do not wish to discuss as they are put from the Chair—I am confident that the Government will respond by giving full and proper opportunity, which I am sure the great majority of the House desire, to raise that subject. It has been represented that such an opportunity might be afforded on the Supplementary Estimate, but it might come on late at night, perhaps after 8.15 o'clock. What we should ask is that it should be made the first Order on some day, and I can assure the Government that there would be no unnecessary debate or any desire to delay the proceedings, but only a sincere desire to bring out in this House all the arguments, for and against, on that most important question.
    Mr. NEIL MACLEAN: I desire to support what has been said by the right hon. Member for Peebles (Sir D. Maclean), that not to discuss this at any great length might save time for a matter that has been, in a way, half promised by the Leader of the House, and as an argument for impressing upon the Whip of the Coalition why they should grant the time of this House for the purpose of debating the question of relief in Russia. I would like to draw his attention to the Vote before us in which we find, under two separate headings, money granted by this Government for the maintenance of Russian refugees, and for certain measures of relief in Russia. As the Government Have already conceded the principle of using British money for the purpose set out in this Vote, what was said to-day by the Leader of the House will have to be unsaid, or at least forgotten, and I hope, in view of what they have already done with regard to people who are not suffering from famine, but suffering from what probably the Government might call the after-effects of the War, that they will see their way to go a step further when they give us that day and consider favourably the granting of money for the relief of those who are suffering from famine in Russia.
    Mr. A. SHAW: In case it might be thought that my right hon. Friend (Sir D. Maclean) voiced the desire of only one side of the House, I wish to add that many of us, if not the great majority on this side, would wish, if the course of business permits us, that such an opportunity as my hon. Friend asks for should
    1606
    be given. If such a prospect is held out, he will forego the discussion which otherwise he might take in order to try to facilitate business. It would be out of order, though certain Russian refugees are mentioned in this Vote, to discuss the larger question, but I do appeal to the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Colonel L. Wilson) to realise the very strong sentiment which exists in all quarters of the House that we should be allowed to vindicate our position and good name as a Christian nation in this matter, and I hope that we shall be allowed to discuss it at some early opportunity.
    Colonel LESLIE WILSON (Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury): It is quite true that there are on the Paper at the present time a large number of reports of Votes, and it was anticipated that a considerable amount of time would have to be allotted for the discussion of the Report stage of these Votes. If it were possible, as my right hon. Friend suggests, for the Report stage of all these Votes to be got by 11 o'clock to-night, though without the presence of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House I cannot pledge myself definitely, I think that I am justified in saying that an opportunity could be provided in the House in order to discuss the question raised on the other side. I understand that it is not desired that a discussion should be raised on the Supplementary Estimate, which it is probable will have to be taken in the House to deal with the question of Russian relief, but I take it that if my right hon. Friend desires the matter to be taken in a separate discussion in the House, he will not also desire the Supplementary Estimate to be discussed at any length. So far as I can see, subject, of course, to the wish of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, to whom I will represent very strongly the views which have been expressed to-night, on the understanding that we can clear the Paper of the Report stage of these Votes, I will certainly, so far as I can, give an undertaking that an opportunity will be offered to the House for a discussion on the situation in Russia.
    Sir D. MACLEAN: I can only intervene again with the permission of the House to make two or three observations. On the Report of the Votes which are before the House there are two points.

    1607
    There is one which my hon. and gallant Friend desires to raise with regard to the law costs of the Renfrew aerodrome, and there' is a Class III Vote on which my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypool (Mr. T. Griffiths) and his colleagues desire to raise the question of the Appeal Tribunal, which has been debated before and on which they desire to bring further arguments. Subject to opportunity being given to discuss these two matters I see no reason why the Paper should not be cleared of these Report stage Votes tonight, and as to the question of what other form of Parliamentary opportunity should be given for a discussion on the Russian famine I would rather discuss that with my hon. Friends of the Labour party, and other Members in other parts of the House, and communicate later to my hon. Friend with regard to it.
    Colonel L. WILSON: I may point out that it is only five minutes to nine, and I should be very grateful if hon. Members could see their way to take Class III, Vote 3, dealing with the Pensions Appeal Tribunal to-night. I think there is sufficient opportunity to raise the question to-night. My right hon. Friend the Attorney-General is in the House, and will be very glad to reply to any criticism.
    Colonel WEDGWOOD: We are quite prepared to take that Vote to-night provided we get an hour and a half to discuss it.
    Question put, and agreed to.
    Second Resolution agreed to.

    REPORT [23rd February].
    Order for consideration of fourth and fifth Resolutions read.
    Resolutions reported.

    CLASS II.
    4. "That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £10, be granted to His Majesty, to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1922, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Department of Overseas Trade."

    UNCLASSIFIED SERVICES.
    5. "That a sum, not exceeding £100,000, be granted to His Majesty, to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment
    1608
    during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1922, for Grants in respect of Compensation for suffering and damage by Enemy Action."
    Fourth Resolution agreed to.
    Fifth Resolution read a Second time.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House doth agree with the Committee in the said Resolution."
    9.0 P.M.
    Captain BENN: This is a grant out of the £5,000,000 which has been set aside out of the indemnity money for the repayment of people who suffered through enemy action during the War. What steps are being taken to deal with the many urgent eases of hardship inflicted, particularly on seamen who were interned in Germany or who lost their effects on account of being torpedoed? Like other hon. Members who represent seafaring populations, I, as the representative of a large port, have repeatedly brought to my notice cases of people who suffered in that way, and who are now being repatriated, but who find it impossible to recover even the modest sum which represents their claim against our late enemy. Has the machinery by which these people are to be reimbursed been made so simple that they can easily take advantage of it? My experience is that these men, some of them unlettered men, quite unfamiliar with the machinery of making applications to Government Departments, have been trying week after week to get their claims attended to, and have got no satisfaction whatever. I do not desire to labour the point, but I wish to know, is there any simple way by which people who suffered during the War, including those who suffered from air raids, hut most especially the seamen, can have their claims made against the late enemy for damage to person and property? Are they to go on waiting from week to week until the dispute over reparations comes to an end? I would urge that people who have suffered in this way have moral priority, and that steps should be taken to see that these claims are satisfied. If desired, I could give particulars of cases brought to my notice. I see the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Financial Secretary to the Treasury is present, and he knows a great deal from experience of enemy action. We are now voting £100,000, which, I understand, is the first

    1609
    instalment of the £5,000,000, and I ask him what progress has been made in the settlement of the claims for seamen who have suffered damage either by internment or in their property and person; whether the machinery is simple, and whether these men will have their claims satisfied within a reasonable period?
    The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. Hilton Young): It may be of advantage if I reply at once to the questions put to me on this Supplementary Estimate. I was able to state, on the Committee stage of this Supplementary Estimate, that the Commission which has been set up in order to deal with all these claims acts in the following manner. The Commission itself will distinguish certain test cases, involving questions of principle, and will itself consider and decide upon these questions of principle by means of specimen and typical cases. When it has done so, the bulk of the cases which come within the category of the test or sample case will be dealt with by the Ministry without any further proceeding or hearing. The cases of the seamen will fall under that general rule as to procedure. This I trust and believe—indeed I am satisfied —will meet the cases and circumstances of seamen who are not in a position to embark upon expensive representation and quasi-litigation. The cases will be decided with the minimum of trouble and, I believe, with no expense to the men themselves. As to the general principle to which the hon. and gallant Member has referred, I was able to give the assurance in Committee, which I now repeat, that the claims of the seamen of the sort to which he has referred are being dealt with by the Commission as claims of special urgency. It appears to me most probable that, in their administration of this sphere, those emergency cases with which they are dealing this year, and which call for this Supplementary Estimate in advance of the general provision for next year, will be concerned, to an extent which I cannot particularise, with claims on behalf of seamen.
    Captain BENN: May we be informed as to when the payments will commence?
    Mr. T. GRIFFITHS: I also wish to put a question, and the Financial Secretary may deal with them all together. Are
    1610
    these merchant seamen to receive pensions? I will give an illustration arising out of a boat that was submarined. A man lost about £40 in property on the boat, and while in the water ho contracted a chill, which the doctors say resulted in tuberculosis. The question is as to whether merchant seamen are able to apply for pensions in the same way as ex-service men, or do you only pay compensation for the property that was lost when the boat was submarined? I have two or three such cases in hand at the present time.
    Sir F. BANBURY: I have a few words to say upon this Vote, but before doing so I think I should be in order in asking the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury what arrangement, if any, he has come to with regard to the remainder of the Report stage of the Votes on the Paper?
    Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Sir E. Cornwall): I am afraid we cannot go over that again. I allowed a discussion which was not strictly in order, for the convenience of the House, but I cannot allow it to be repeated now.
    Sir F. BANBURY: No, Sir, but my point is that I cannot agree to any arrangement which has been made, as there are certain Votes which we must discuss. With regard to the Vote now before the House, may I draw the attention of the Financial Secretary to the footnote, which says:
    "On 15th August, 1921, a Royal Commission was appointed … to consider cases in which there is a moral claim by British Nationals … for compensation for sufferings or damage arising out of the action of the enemy during the War within Annex I to Part VIII of the Treaty of Versailles; and to make recommendations as to the distribution of a sum of not more than £5,000,000 out of the first receipts on account of reparation allocated to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom on ex gratiâ grants in such cases."
    Apparently we are now asked to Vote £100,000, which is a new service, as far as I can see, because that £5,000,000 has not been received, for the footnote goes on to say:
    "Although the receipts are at present insufficient to cover the prior charge in respect of the British Army of Occupation, it has been decided to ask Parliament to make available the full sum of £5,000,000 for issue by the Treasury on the recommendation of the Commission."

    1611
    This sum of £100,000 which we are now asked to vote will put what a few years ago would have been considered to be a very large sum upon the already overburdened taxpayer. I believe there are a considerable number of people who ought to receive compensation for damage done to their property, but that compensation, according to the footnote attached to this Vote, ought to be provided by the Germans. The Germans, however, apparently are to be treated much more leniently than is the unfortunate taxpayer in this country. The Government, either because they have already reduced the Army and the Navy to such very small proportions that they cannot force the payment of the debt due to them, or for some other reason, instead of insisting on the payment of this sum under the reparation due by Germany, are coming down upon the taxpayer here and asking him to contribute £100,000 to meet the necessities of his unfortunate fellow-subjects. The question which I should like to ask the Financial Secretary is this—What chance is there of this £100,000 ever being recovered? I think I am right in saying that it is impossible to move a reduction of the Vote, because, you, Sir, have already put the question, "That the House doth agree with the Committee in the said Resolution," but it is possible to vote against the whole sum, and I am not at all sure that we ought not to vote against the whole sum.
    Captain BENN: Oh!
    Sir F. BANBURY: What does "Oh!" mean?
    Captain BENN: "Oh" means that I am amazed to hear the right hon. Baronet proposing to deprive these people who have suffered of some tardy recompense for their suffering.
    Sir F. BANBURY: I am not proposing to deprive the poor people who have suffered of any sum which is due to them. I am proposing to see that the people who ought to pay that reparation do pay it. I know hon. Members opposite would far sooner that the taxpayer of this country should provide the money than that the Germans should provide it, but I prefer that the Germans should provide the money and not the taxpayer of this country, and that is why I ventured to ask the hon. and gallant Gentleman
    1612
    what he meant by saying "Oh!" I should be very strongly inclined—and I am sorry the House is so empty at the moment—to vote against the whole sum on the grounds which I have stated, unless I can get a satisfactory assurance from the Financial Secretary that some active steps are going, to be taken to secure that this sum is paid by the proper people who ought to pay it. I am very much afraid that if we, in our natural anxiety to give these people compensation for the damage they have suffered, agree to find the money out of the pockets of the taxpayer, we may whistle for any chance of getting it out of the pockets of the Germans. It is three and a half years after the Armistice, and yet on this paper is written these words:
    "Although the receipts are at present insufficient to cover the prior charge in respect of the British Army of Occupation."
    I should have thought that hon. Members opposite, instead of saying "Oh!" would have supported me in my endeavour to see that the Germans should pay the sum which they are bound to pay, and which they have agreed to pay, under the Treaty of Versailles. We were told at the last Election that the pockets of the Germans wore going to be searched so that the last farthing should be extracted in order to pay for the charges of the War, whereas, now we find that not only has nothing been given for the charges of the War, but not oven a paltry £100,000 to the people whose property they have damaged. Not only are we asked to pay this sum of £100,000, but we actually have allowed the Germans to pay an insufficient sum to cover the prior charge of the British Army of Occupation. It is not for me to suggest anything to hon. Gentlemen opposite, but if, I were in Opposition I would take advantage of this particular footnote, and see that it was circulated in the constituencies.
    Mr. YOUNG: In reply to the question addressed to me by the hon. and gallant Member for Leith (Captain W. Benn), I would say that the Sumner Commission see their way to dealing in the course of this financial year with urgent claims to the amount of the sum we are asking in the Supplementary Estimate, so that these claims will be settled before the end of March. In reply to the hon. Member for Pontypool (Mr. T. Griffiths),

    1613
    this actual Vote does not cover in any way sums to be allocated for pensions. That is a quite different sphere of administration, and is administered by the Board of Trade under the outstanding claims for pensions for merchant seamen. I speak from memory, and to the best of my recollection, when I say that the general basis of this pension scheme is that a merchant seaman who was serving in a dangerous area, and suffers now from disability or illness in consequence of his service in those areas, is entitled to present his claim for a pension in that direction. Generally speaking, those schemes for pensions and for war compensation, apart from those with which we are now dealing, have put the merchant seaman substantially in the same position as the naval rating. As regards the question, covering a wider field, addressed to me by the right hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London (Sir F. Banbury), I will explain again that the principle of compensation is absolutely adhered to and maintained, that they should be a first charge on reparations recovered from Germany. The reason for the presentation of this Estimate at the present time is that the principle was accepted—and, I am confident the House will agree, justly accepted —that those who suffered injuries of this sort were entitled to compensation. That principle was accepted, I believe, with common consent, and, in the second place, that it should be a first charge against reparations.
    Sir F. BANBURY: After the charge for the Army of Occupation.
    Mr. YOUNG: It was, as it were, first on the list of moral responsibility in the German nation. Having accepted that principle, having held out to those who had suffered in this respect, that they were entitled to compensation, it would be absolutely wrong to keep them waiting any longer than was necessary. I give the assurance to the right hon. Gentleman that we adhere completely to the view that this is a first charge on the reparations, but I cannot believe that he will express the view, or enforce the view, that, having accepted those principles, as I believe they are commonly accepted, we ought to do anything involving delay in regard to these unfortunate subjects.
    Sir F. BANBURY: As I understand it, the hon. Gentleman fully recognises that this charge must be eventually met by Germany, and that, as far as he can, he is prepared to see that that is done. In these circumstances, I will leave the matter there.
    Question put, and agreed to.

    REPORT [28th February].
    Resolutions reported,
CIVIL SERVICES AND REVENUE DEPARTMENTS SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATE, 1921–22.

  CLASS III.
  1. "That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £18,000, be granted to His Majesty, to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1922, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Lord Advocate's Department, and other Law Charges, and the Salaries and Expenses of the Courts of Law and Justice and of Pensions Appeals. Tribunals in Scotland, and Bonus on certain Statutory Salaries."
  2. "That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £10, be granted to His Majesty, to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1922, "for the Salaries and Expenses connected with the County Courts, including Bonus to County Court Judges."
  3. "That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £5,000, be granted to His Majesty, to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1922, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Supreme Court of Judicature and Court of Criminal Appeal as are not charged on the Consolidated Fund, including Bonus on certain Statutory Salaries, and the Salaries and Expenses of Pensions Appeals Tribunals."
  First Resolution agreed to.
  Second Resolution read a Second time.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House doth agree with the Committee in the said Resolution."
  Sir J. D. REES: I have succeeded, more or less, in correlating some of the papers at least, although I am not sure that I have done it correctly, and it would appear that the additional amount required is entered as £11,000. Then you have Appropriations-in-Aid £10,990, leaving £10 now required. Why could not an extra £10 have been Appropriated-in-Aid to save all this accounting? I say this, not for the sake of making a trivial point, but because these accounts are exceedingly difficult to understand, and, unless

  1615
  you have gone through them with great care beforehand, it is not easy to grasp what they are, and exceedingly easy to make mistakes. What is the reason why the hon. Gentleman could not appropriate an extra £10, and save the House and myself the trouble of dealing with it?
  Sir F. BANBURY: It is not in order to save £10 out of the pocket of the Financial Secretary that I now rise, but in order that we may have an opportunity of discussing the Vote. I have always regarded my hon. Friend as being one of the most serious Members of this House, and one who does not initiate a Debate unless he is very fully informed on the subject. It is absolutely necessary in this case that there should be a Token Vote of £10 or otherwise the Appropriations-in-Aid which have not been voted might be taken by the Government and spent in any kind of way they choose to spend it. Therefore we should have a token vote.
  Mr. YOUNG: In reply to the hon. baronet the Member for East Nottingham (Sir J. D. Rees) I might adopt and confirm the explanation given by the right hon. baronet the Member for the City of London (Sir F. Banbury). In regard to the question asked by the right hon. baronet the Member for the Ctiy of London, there is no other explanation of this increase of the Appropriations-in-Aid than the fees, which are due solely to increasing litigation. Fees are provided proportionately to the amount of litigation. I entirely agree that it is by no means a favourable or good sign in regard to the general state of the country that litigation should show an increase. Nevertheless, it does bring grist to the mill, and let us therefore look upon it as a silver lining to the cloud.
  Question put, and agreed to.
  Third Resolution read a Second time.
  Mr. LAWSON: I beg to move, to leave out "£5,000," and to insert instead thereof £4,900."
  The administration of the Appeal Tribunals is becoming a very serious thing indeed. I do not want to be misunderstood in this matter. These tribunals have not an easy task. I know too much about the difficulty and delicacy of dealing with the pensioners. Those who have to deal with cases on the final
  1616
  appeal have not an easy task in deciding on particular test cases. I do not want it to be understood that I am at all violating the spirit in which this House has dealt with these matters by imparting a party spirit into the question of pensions. The method this House has had of dealing with pensions in the past, whereby by common consent they have been kept out of the arena discussion and free from the party atmosphere, on the whole is a spirit that has done a good deal of good. But, on the other hand, I feel we have arrived at a position, in discussing the results of the work of the Appeal Tribunals, where there is just a danger of everybody's business being nobody's business. When the Appeal Tribunals are rapidly reaching a stage when they are free from criticism from this House, I say advisedly that, under the inspiration of the present spirit of economy, they may be administered in such a way that they run a danger of doing injustice to ex-service men in this country. In dealing with this matter, I think the Attorney-General spoke about the possibility of giving a rehearing to some of those cases. I do not know what he has done in that direction, or whether anything has been decided or not, but I feel that unless something in that direction is done—though I know we cannot discuss the even more urgent matter of bringing Anneal Tribunals under the jurisdiction of this House—unless the Government can do the next best thing, that is, to give a definite guarantee of rehearing, then I feel we are approaching a state when the voluble feeling in the country at the moment will have a very dangerous aspect.
  I made a statement when this matter was going through Committee concerning the results of the Newcastle Anneal Tribunal for the past six months. The statement I made then was that the Newcastle Appeal Tribunal had turned down 1,100 cases out of the 1,300 cases dealt with in six months. Out of the 260 widows who went before them, only 25 received pensions. I repeat that I know intimately cases in which gross injustice has been done to the people concerned. Since that time a statement has been made in answer to a question in this House. The hon. Member for Keighley (Sir R. Clough) asked the Minister of Pensions the number of appeals officially rejected by the

  1617
  Appeal Tribunals during the last four periods of three months, and what percentage they formed of the appeals actually heard. The reply was that the number of appeals finally rejected by the Appeal Tribunals for England and Wales and the percentage they represent in the last four periods of three months are, in the first place, from February, 1921, 3,982, making 71·5 per cent, turned down. In the second period we come from very nearly 4,000 to 7,000, a percentage of 72. In the third period we come from 7,000 to 8,000 turned down, a percentage of 72·2; and in the fourth period we come to over 8,000 cases, a percentage of 72·4 turned down. Note the tremendous increase of the cases turned down.
  I hold in my hand a letter which represents the kind of case that some of these figures mean in actual experience. Here is a man who served in a certain regiment for a considerable period, and was discharged in 1919 suffering from valvular disease of the heart. He received a small pension up to 1921, and had entered the police force. Finally, after some time he was turned down as being troubled with the heart affection. He was asked to resign from the police. While the Medical Appeal Tribunal finally said that he had ceased to suffer from his heart trouble the police medical officer asked the man to send in his resignation as he was suffering from the very trouble that the Appeal Tribunal said he was not suffering from at all. The man has no pension and is unemployed. I submit that is a kind of thing that is happening up and down the country. I think there is a reason for it, and I wish I was in a position to discuss that reason. I said six months ago here, and I believe it more to-day than I did then, that the fatal flaw in the pension administration was to remove the administration of the pensions from the region of the local sub-committees, from those who themselves had experience and knowledge of the people concerned. What does this decision mean?
  There are areas in the country to-day where the people have come to the conclusion that if the Medical Board finally decides against a man and they are asked to go before one or other of these Appeal Tribunals that they will not go as the case is lost before they do go. I do not make that charge lightly. I was in a certain
  1618
  village a month or so ago. There was a man bent almost double. He had been shot in the body in the War. He had a pension for some time. Then it stopped. I said to him: "Why not go before the Appeal Tribunal?" He had been a strong man and had served his country well. He is receiving no pension to-day. A crowd of men standing about told me that he had been one of the strongest men that descended the mine before the War. I sent the Minister of Pensions the case. I think I am rendering a service to this House, and that this House will certainly render a very great service to the ex-service men by taking very definite steps of reducing this Vote in order to get some definite re-arrangement concerning the Appeal Tribunal.
  We ought, I feel, to go further so far as the re-hearing is concerned. I feel that while local influence and local knowledge is gone that this House ought insistently to take a stand and get these Appeal Tribunals under the complete control of the Minister of Pensions, and hence, of this House. The right hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London, of whom, to a certain extent, I came to this House an admirer, seems to go about in fear and trembling lest he should be found guilty of showing some signs of sentiment. I think he does himself an injustice. I remember during a Debate on this matter he said he had known of a case where a man had received a pension, and that another man knowing this went and got the pension just the same—
  Sir F. BANBURY: That is not quite the case. What I said was that a man in a certain town had received a pension. Whether he received it justly or not I do not know, but he received it as he had been wounded. A friend of his who had no real claim, and who had been working with full wages, having heard that his friend had got a pension, said that he would apply and see if he could not get one as well.
  Mr. LAWSON: The right hon. Baronet said that in the first case the man was a man who was justified in getting a pension, and that in the second case his friend also went and got a pension.
  Sir F. BANBURY: No, I do not know whether the second man got the pension, but he tried to get it!
  Mr. LAWSON: That men have received pensions who are not justified in having them is possibly the case, but I think that this House has a sufficient sense of gratitude to the men of this country to even run the danger of giving pensions to men not entitled to them in order to make sure that one man—that individual cases, who are justified in receiving pensions, at any rate are not overlooked, or dealt with by the Appeal Tribunals as they have been dealt with. It has been said that the Appeal Tribunals have now got through their arrears of work, and of cases. My opinion is that if they continue to get rid of their arrears in the way they are doing, that they had better not act at all. In moving the reduction of the Vote, I invite the Attorney-General to state exactly what is the position, and how soon this House is likely to get control.
  Mr. MYERS: I beg to second the Amendment.
  I think if the Government desire to consider its reputation this particular Department should receive its very instant and careful attention. I do not know of anything in my experience of public life which has created such dissatisfaction throughout the country as the decisions of this Appeal Tribunal. Those of us who are acquainted with the cases which have been turned down were bound to admit that there is in many instances a real and bona fide grievance. I could produce here and now at least 12 cases which have reached me from my own division complaining bitterly about the treatment they have received at the hands of the Appeal Tribunal.
  I will give the House a couple of cases. There was one discharged man who was originally passed into the Army in the Al category. He was ultimately discharged suffering from some incapacity, and after due investigation a pension of 8s. a week was granted, with 4s. 8d. per week for his wife and two children. Since that pension was allocated there has been an addition to the family, and now there are three children. The incapacity admitted by the pension authorities was something in the nature of heart trouble. Subsequently the man developed tuberculosis and found his way into a sanatorium. His condition was so bad that he was unable to write a letter, and he had to secure somebody connected with the institution to write for him.
  1620
  This communication urged me to do what I could to secure some recognition of this, case, and the writer makes this pronouncement:
  "It is one of those cases which are causing so much dissatisfaction all over the country —verdicts given without reasonable consideration."
  That was the opinion of the writer of the letter. This discharged soldier has appealed for extra consideration, having regard to the fact that he is now suffering from tuberculosis, and the decision of the Appeal Tribunal is that they have granted him a pension for original incapacity and that his present incapacity is neither attributable to nor aggravated by his military service, and they have turned down his claim on that ground. The man is now in a sanatorium and the sole income of his family is under 13s. a week.
  There was another discharged man who was taken into the Army as an A1 ease. He had a pension for incapacity similar to the one I have just alluded to. A subsequent, examination suggested to the pension authorities that that incapacity had disappeared. This discharged man is suffering from tuberculosis, and the decision is very similar to the one I have just mentioned. In the second case, the man's pension has actually been stopped and the Appeal Tribunal declined to admit that his tuberculosis is in any way attributable to his military service, despite the fact that he was accepted as an Al case and had a clean bill of health up to the time he entered the Army.
  I mentioned another case in a question to the Minister of Pensions to-day. In this case the ex-soldier is dead. He left a wife, and she made an appeal to the Pensions Tribunal, but it has been turned down, and the only income she has now is £1 per week from the guardians to maintain herself and her family. These are not selected cases, and many others can be found infinitely more oppressive than these. On this side of the House we could produce shoals of these cases. I suggest that when we are dealing with people in this fashion, it is a very sad reflection upon the pronouncement that was made during the War, "A grateful country will never forget you." All over the country we have thousands of these people similarly affected. I think it can reasonably be argued that if a man had a clean bill of health before entering

  1621
  the Army, and was passed A1 by the medical inspectors employed by the Government, and later on he is discharged suffering from any incapacity whatever, whether a primary or secondary incapacity presents itself, it ought to be admitted that his incapacity had been caused by his military service.
  Mr. A. HOPKINSON: Why?
  Mr. MYERS: Because if he had a clean bill of health before he was taken into the Army, and is discharged for some incapacity, if a secondary incapacity arises it ought to be attributed to the primary one for which he was discharged, because invariably the second incapacity could be, traced to the first one. I am under the impression that the Pensions Act has failed in these cases, and we are having too much examination and too little pension. When these men were taken into the Army a mere cursory examinations was the order of the day. It was a mere perfunctory operation that was carried out, and it nearly got to the length of asking what size of a hat the man took and then he was passed into the Army. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] I agree that that is somewhat of an exaggeration, but I do declare that the medical examinations were just cursory and merely perfunctory. Now we are employing those same medical men to exercise the strictest scrutiny upon the men whom they formerly passed into the Army so loosely in order to find out whether they are entitled to a small pension or none at all.
  It is remarkable that at the present time there are nearly 1,000,000 men in receipt of military pensions and only 31,000 of them are receiving 100 per cent, of the pension. Some of them are receiving 30 per cent., some 40 per cent, and some 50 per cent., and so on. We grant a soldier 50 per cent, of his pension on the ground that 50 per cent, of his earning capacity is left intact, but I would like to ask where can a discharged soldier find employment for 50 per cent, of his capacity when thousands of able-bodied men cannot get employment at all. We have thousands of these men with a 25 per cent, or 50 per cent, pension and they cannot find employment and cannot live on their pension. Some have to seek Poor Law relief. Over 1,000,000 examinations took place in the last year of the
  1622
  Pensions Department Report. I have the figures here. Actually there were more examinations of discharged soldiers in one year than there were men in receipt of pensions. These examinations were directed to secure a verdict in the way of cutting down or discontinuing the soldier's pension. The Appeal Tribunal was set up by this House. I would like to pay a tribute to the Ministry of Pensions here. I suppose the Parliamentary Secretary is quite sick of hearing me knock at his office door. I have always been met with the greatest sympathy and in many instances I have had ample satisfaction for the case I have taken in hand. But from the decision of this Appeal Tribunal there is no other appeal, and, however generous the Minister of Pensions would be, however much he would like to bend in some of these cases, he is compelled to hold his hand by virtue of the decision of the tribunal. His position has become very serious.
  Mr. SPEAKER: My memory is not very good, but was not this tribunal set up by Statute; is it not founded upon an Act of Parliament?
  Mr. MYERS: Yes, the tribunal has statutory authority. My complaint is that its decisions are final, and that there is no appeal to this House. This House set up the machinery taking these men into the Army, and it should keep control of the machinery and see that justice is done to them. Under present conditions justice is not done to many individuals who are entitled to it. There ought to be a review of the decisions of the Appeal Tribunal, and the House should have an opportunity of passing its judgment on the decisions arrived at.
  10.0 P.M.
  Lieut.-Colonel HENDERSON: I believe the hon. Member who brought this matter forward is himself an ex-service man, and therefore his remarks are entitled to sympathetic consideration. But there is a considerable amount of misapprehension on this question. I speak not because I have particular knowledge of the subject, but because I have found in my own constituency an extraordinary amount of misunderstanding. Let me remind the House of the circumstances under which these tribunals were set up. It is most important to bear those circumstances in mind. The tribunals were set up because there was a considerable

  1623
  amount of dissatisfaction with the fact that the Pensions Ministry had the former tribunals under their jurisdiction, and it was said that the Ministry were influencing the members of the tribunals against the award of pensions. It was therefore agreed without any division in this House—it was a general agreement between all parties—that the new independent tribunals should be given the status of Courts of Law under the Lord Chancellor and under the Lord President of the Court of Session. It was also agreed that they should consist of a legal man, a medical man, and an ex-service man. The hon. Member who moved this Amendment is making a suggestion that the gentlemen who constitute the personnel of the tribunals are not carrying out their work fairly.
  Mr. LAWSON: I am sure the hon. and gallant Gentleman has no desire to do me an injustice. What I said was that one of the chief flaws in the constitution of the tribunal is the lack of local intimate knowledge which was an invariable factor in the old tribunal. I made the suggestion that the tribunal is rather under the influence of the economy feeling in the country at the present time.
  Lieut.-Colonel HENDERSON: I will deal with that point at once. These tribunals have had absolutely nothing to do with the question of economy. They are there to carry out their work in the same way as judges sit on the bench to carry out their work, and I am not aware it has ever been suggested in this House that the Courts of Justice have been influenced by economy axes or anything else. These tribunals are not to be judged in the way that an ordinary Court of Law has to be judged, so far as their decisions are concerned. When a man goes to a Court of Law ordinarily he is judged on his merits. So are these cases, but with this difference, that the Pensions Ministry never allow an appeal to go forward unless, in their opinion, it is absolutely certain it cannot be allowed. Every one of these cases going forward is an extreme case which has been examined not once or twice, but three times. When a man makes an ordinary claim for a pension and it is turned down and he subsequently makes an appeal, the whole case is gone into over again.
  1624
  It is specially considered by people who are responsible at the very top and who have the greatest experience on the subject. They never allow any case to go forward to the Appeal Tribunal unless they are perfectly sure the man has not a just claim. Obviously they would not do so. If you had a large percentage of claims going forward to the Appeal Tribunal which were allowed in favour of the plaintiff, the natural inference would be that the Pensions Ministry were not doing their work properly. Therefore it is to their own interest to see that if there is a possibility of a man getting a pension he should receive it. It is equally obvious that it is more likely that claims going forward to the Appeal Tribunal will be turned down rather than allowed.
  There is another factor which has to be considered. A large number of these cases fail through want of evidence. The time which has elapsed since the man was wounded or invalided is gradually growing longer and longer and it is extremely difficult to prove the genesis of the medical disability. Again, it was quite a common thing at the front when a man became ill, and when there was a shortage of men in the front line, to send him back for two or three days to the medical officer's dug-out instead of sending him to hospital. Very often the man was quite ill and under ordinary circumstances would have gone to hospital, but owing to conditions over which the authorities had no control it was not possible to do that. When a man comes home and finds, a year or two later, he is suffering from the same ailment he puts in a claim for a pension and he is asked by the Pensions Ministry if he has ever had the same complaint before. He replies that he had it at such and such a date and was under a certain medical officer. The man does not realise that no record of such cases has ever been kept. He does not distinguish between the advanced hospital and a medical officer's dug-out and cannot understand why, when they cannot find a record, they turn down his case. It is happening over and over again all over the country. It is almost unavoidable. You cannot find the record of these cases. In the case of some hospitals in France and the theatres further East, some of the records have been destroyed. It is only within the past six or nine months that many records have been put

  1625
  into proper order. There are two other points in regard to these Appeal Tribunals to which I should like to draw attention, which must show that every effort has been made to try to see that the man gets fair treatment. It was recommended by the Departmental Committee on Pensions Administration that the précis that the tribunal gets should be the same as that which the man gets, and not as previously, when the man got a shorter statement. Now the man and the widow get the same précis and not only that, but the claimants are allowed the assistance of a member of the Ex-service Association or some other friend to help them in their cases. There is not the slightest doubt that these points were a subject of great anxiety and the need for revision was badly felt for a long time. Those recommendations have been carried out. They are to the advantage of the claimants themselves.
  I do not see, myself, how you can do what the hon. Member who moved a reduction suggested, and that is to bring all the tribunals within the jurisdiction of the Pensions Ministry again without again restarting the whole series of complaints which yon formerly had. You are again going to have the Pensions Ministry attacked on every side, because the House and the public will say that they are influencing these Courts against the claimants. It is wrong that the final court of appeal should have any relation at all to the Ministry of Pensions. It is contrary to any system of justice in this country or any other. If you are not going to do that, the only other possibility is that there may be certain circumstances under which some of these cases should be reviewed. There are certain circumstances, and I should like to suggest to my right hon. Friend that I believe it is now-possible for a case to be reviewed where salient facts have not been brought out in evidence and have subsequently come to light—but very few cases, I think, have actually been reviewed.
  At the same time, there is not the slightest doubt in my mind that there may be some hard cases where facts were not brought out or where the case was not properly explained, owing to the fact that the claimant had not proper assistance. I would like to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether it would not be possible that some of these cases—for instance, any cases of obvious tropical diseases which
  1626
  must have been contracted on service— should be reviewed where, as has been the case here and there, facts have subsequently been brought out, or in the widows' cases, for instance, where it was obvious that they were not able to plead the cases by themselves.
  I do not think, however, that the power should be exercised except very sparingly. There must, of course, be some finality, and I do not see what you are going to gain by having a general review of these cases except that, in 99 cases out of every 100, you are going to raise false hopes in the breasts of all those men. But, of course, some should be reviewed, and beyond that I do not go. When these men or women go before the Appeal Tribunal all the evidence they have they may bring, and they now have the assistance of an ex-service man from the British Legion or an ordinary man who has nothing to do with any ex-service organisation, but who is able to plead their case for them and to explain the facts before the Court. They have an exact copy of the précis similar to the one the Court itself has, and the existence or non-existence of a sub-committee cannot make any difference to the hearing of a case.
  Mr. LAWSON: There is one point. It would mean that some members of the local committees must be going regularly to the Appeal Committee, and that is a matter of expense, while, on the other hand, the person dealt with by the local sub-committee has all the facts taken into consideration.
  Lieut.-Colonel HENDERSON: That has nothing to do with the Appeal Tribunal. If the medical board turns down the man who comes before a tribunal, the board's recommendation is considered, but it has nothing to do with the sub-committee or the main Committee. As a matter of fact, under the Regulations, if a man wins his case, the expenses are allowed by the Court, and, therefore, the question of expense has nothing to do with it. It need not necessarily be a person from a local committee at all. It may be someone outside. I have never once heard any complaint on the part of an ex-service man that the abolition of a subcommittee has in any way affected his claim for a pension before the Appeal Tribunal. As a matter of fact, members of an Appeal Tribunal cannot be in-

  1627
  fluenced by the existence or non-existence of a sub-committee. The only point, I agree, is that there may be certain hard eases which should be reviewed but they should be dealt with very sparingly, and the right hon. Gentleman should be very careful before he allows any general system of reviews, or he may find that he has destroyed all confidence in these tribunals altogether.
  Mr. GRIFFITHS: I quite agree with the hon. and gallant Gentleman who has just sat down that a fair hearing is given to those who appear before the Appeal Tribunals. It is not the hearing of which we on this side complain, but the decisions of the tribunals. We therefore also agree with the hon. and gallant Gentleman that, if it were possible for the Minister of Pensions to review some of these very hard cases which are turned down by these tribunals, it would help matters considerably. Since this matter was discussed when the Estimates were before the House, I have received such shoals of letters, not merely from my own constituency, but from all parts of the country, asking me to take up these cases, that I have had to intimate through the Press that I could not even deal with the mass of correspondence, much less take up the cases with the Minister of Pensions. Several cases have been cited here to-night, and I have here particulars of the case of a man who was wounded in the neck at the battle of Loos. He was sent back to this country, and was treated in hospital, and, as a result of the wound, he contracted a spinal disability. He was paid a pension, he died, and his wife also received a pension, but it was discontinued. She appealed before the tribunal, but they turned the appeal down, saying that the disability had not arisen as a result of war service. Here is a photograph of that man, and any tribunal, I do not care how it might be composed, would be compelled on that to decide in favour of his widow.
  Why was her case turned down? The evidence submitted to the tribunal was overwhelmingly in her favour, but the Chairman of the tribunal said to her, "The evidence of your own husband is against you, because he signed Form Z.22, saying that he was fit when he was demobilised." That is the excuse used by every Chairman in the different tribunals
  1628
  that are sitting all over the country. It does not matter how strong the case may be, if the ex-service man signed this Form Z.22 saying that he was fit, that is brought as evidence against him or his widow when the appeal is being turned down. If we can get this Form withdrawn, and put on the tribunal the onus of proving that these cases have not arisen as a result of war service, it would help considerably. Probably a large number of hon. Members are in exactly the same position in which we are. A case is sent forward; you go to the Minister of Pensions; he says he cannot deal with it because the Appeal Tribunal has turned it down; and they say that the case has been turned down as the result of the ex-service men having signed this Form. In all the cases I have dealt with this form is nothing but a trick to get out of the liability which is due to the ex-service man. These people must get food. They have to go to the local authorities. Some receive £1, 25s. or 30s. a week, according to the number of children, with the result that the local authorities, who are to-day in a state of bankruptcy, have to carry out a national responsibility. We say it is the duty of the Government, seeing that these men have fought and some have sacrificed their lives, to come forward and do justice to those ex-service men and their widows and children. Therefore I support the Amendment, and we will take it to a Division, trusting that the promise made to us on the last occasion will be carried out, that something will be done in order to review some of these very hard cases which have been turned down in the tribunals.
  Mr. A. HOPKINSON: I am always inclined to think my hon. Friends opposite have made a mistake in taking up this matter from their own point of view. I know that these Appeal Tribunals were set up in reference to a very widespread demand among ex-service men themselves, and that since they have been set up the general opinion of ex-service men throughout the country is that they have got all they wanted when they made that demand. They know perfectly well that a man whose case comes before the Pensions Tribunal gets a fair trial, and no one concerned in that trial, none of those who sit on the Bench, have any interest whatever in treating the man anything but rightly and generously. It is for that purpose,

  1629
  in order that no one could say the Pensions Ministry or the Government, with any desire to economise, were going to act ungenerously towards these unfortunate men, that the Pensions Ministry itself agreed and helped to set up this tribunal, and hon. Members opposite are not speaking with real thought when they attack those tribunals on the pretence that by attacking them they are serving the interests of the ex-service man and the pensioner.
  It is only after the Pensions Ministry, through its officials, has made three examinations of a case that this Appeal Tribunal comes into effect at all. I fancy there is something distinctly deeper in the action of hon. Members opposite in moving this Amendment than appears on the surface. It has been hinted at both by the mover and seconder. What is moving them, I believe, is that they do not like the idea of patronage in pensions being taken out of the hands of members of local authorities and Members of this House. That, of course, is the great danger of any pensions system of any sort, that once it comes within the power of elected persons to exercise patronage in the matter of pensions the whole thing becomes one sink of corruption. I should like the hon. Members who have moved and seconded the Amendment to inquire from friends, if they have any, in the United States what is the state of affairs in regard to the Civil War Pensions there. Under a system of local patronage, such as hon. Members opposite desire, they are able to get pensions for friends, relatives and electors. It is fatal in any democratic country that its people should buy votes at the public expense, and hon. Members opposite have absolutely and openly hinted to-night that that is their intention—[HON. MEMBERS: "No!"]—that they do not wish to see these matters decided by a perfectly unbiassed tribunal, such as the tribunals which have been set up, of which they are complaining, and to which this Vote refers, but they wish to see the question of whether a man shall receive a pension or not settled by elected members of local authorities. [HON. MEMBERS: "NO."] They have made a gross tactical mistake, and the ex-service man knows that just as well as I do. To put the matter in a familiar phrase, on this occasion they have put up a cock which will not fight.
  Mr. G. BARKER: I shall be very sorry if this Debate has to be carried on entirely from the Labour Benches. Nothing more unfortunate could be conceived than to leave this question of doing justice to the ex-soldier to become a party question. I am not going to be provoked by the hon. Member for Mossley (Mr. A. Hopkinson). If that was the spirit of this House I would not speak in it. What I have to say is based on knowledge that has come to me. I can testify that there is the greatest dissatisfaction existing amongst ex-service men with regard to the decisions of the pension tribunals. Abundance of evidence can be brought to prove that statement. The significant fact about most of these cases is that these men are suffering from some physical ailment that cannot be seen, some obscure ailment, such as myalgia, and what is termed d.a.h., disease affecting the heart. A large number of these cases which have come before my notice are cases of men who have been through the War, who have been in the trenches and have contracted rheumatism and some disease of the heart. Those diseases are not manifest; they are inscrutable, and can only be discovered by the strictest medical examination. It is men suffering from these kinds of complaints who have been deprived of their pensions.
  Four men came to my house recently. For about two hours the house was almost like a surgery. One man came on crutches. He was an absolute cripple. He took his shoe and stocking off to show mo his foot, which was swollen to twice its natural size. He was getting a 20 per cent, pension amounting to 8s. per week, although he was totally disabled and unable to do any work. He had gone through the Appeal Tribunal, and it was certified that he was only suffering from a 20 per cent, disability.
  Another case is that of an ex-sergeant who was right through the War, He had been refused what is called treatment. He had been under treatment for a long time and then it was discontinued. He was totally disabled and he was also put on a 20 per cent, disability pension. Another case was a man who, on enlistment, was taken as physically in good condition. He was sent to France twice. Afterwards he was put through seven or eight hospitals. Ultimately he was discharged with disordered action of the

  1631
  heart. It was stated on his papers, which he sent to me, that this had been aggravated by service. Then after he had gone before a number of doctors and boards it was ultimately decided that the disease was no longer aggravated, and the man, though he has a wife and three children, has now no pension at all-I do not know whether other hon. Members have got cases like these—[HON. MEMBERS: "Yes!"] It would be an extraordinary thing if these cases came only to the Labour party. This question has never been made a party question in this House. The hon. Member for Mossley (Mr. A. Hopkinson) has been reproaching the American Government and nation for their liberality to soldiers who fought in the Civil War. That is a scandalous attitude to take up. The other day, when President Harding was speaking, he said that there were £800,000,000 due from this country, and that when paid it would be given as bonus and pension to the relatives of the soldiers who died in France. That was a noble thing for the President to say.
  Mr. HOPKINSON: It was not his money.
  Mr. BARKER: I am not going to contest the matter with the hon. Member. If his feelings of humanity do not prompt him to befriend ex-service men he is hopeless. There is tremendous dissatisfaction with reference to these tribunals. They are looked upon as mere screens to save the Ministry from criticism. There is a certain degree of anonymity about these tribunals. There is no individual responsibility. It is the tribunal that did it. The tribunal has no name, no identity, and therefore no real responsibility with which it may be taxed. The tribunal is escaping the public criticism that ought to be levelled against these bodies. This Vote shows that after all there is some obligation on this House. We have to find the money. As long as we find the money there should be some measure of justice at any rate meted out to these ex-servicemen. I shall be very sorry if this debate ends without general support from the House. I absolutely disavow any desire to gain party advantage in bringing thin matter forward. I hope that the Government will exercise greater sympathy towards these men, and, if there is any doubt in the case, give it not against the man
  1632
  but for the man. There must be doubt in the case of thousands, because the highest medical skill cannot discern the effect of some of the service that has boon done in France by these men. I shall leave the matter to the House, but shall vote against the Government.
  Captain BOWYER: The hon. Member who has last spoken, on the one hand wishes that this should not be made a party question; on the other hand, he first taunts many of us on this side of the House with not wanting to join in the Debate, although many of us were rising in our places to speak before he came in at all, and secondly, he seems to claim on behalf of the Labour party that they are the only party concerned about the ex-service men. A more extravagant claim and one more opposed to justice, surely was never heard.
  Mr. BARKER: I must deny that entirely.
  Captain BOWYER: I am glad I was mistaken. I was only judging from the impression which the words used made upon me. I know hon. Members opposite are as keen on behalf of the ex-service men as we are, but I think they are doing ex-service men a great disservice when they oppose this Vote. What are they doing? This Vote is for the purpose of establishing more Pensions Appeals Tribunals. There were arrears of cases which have only been successfully coped with by the present additional tribunals, but if we stop the extra tribunals, arrears will continue. I cannot therefore understand the action of the Labour party in Committee and at the present stage. I agree with members of the Labour party and with other Members who have spoken that there is a very strong case for the re-hearing of some of the appeals. Cases have already been quoted, and although there is not much time, I will quote half a case. I know a case in which not only did the medical and hospital history of the man not come before the tribunal at all, but the man himself, who, unfortunately, was not very well able to conduct his own case, actually went before the tribunal without a précis of his case, and that through no fault of his own. The tribunal turned down his case and he has no remedy.
  The true test surely is this: if new circumstances have arisen since the hearing or if evidence is forthcoming which was

  1633
  not in possession of the tribunal originally, then there is a primâ facie case for re-hearing and somebody should be able to determine whether it is actually a proper case for re-hearing. When you have hard cases arising, it is easy to listen to the stories which are spread about, that economy is being reflected in the treatment of the appeals, or to say with the hon. Member for Spen Valley (Mr. Myers), when your sympathy is aroused, that secondary infirmity ought to rank as pensionable. I submit that hon. Members opposite have put themselves in the position of saying, in effect, that their judgment on the cases brought to their notice is preferable to the judgment of the tribunals. That casts a reflection on the tribunals which I cannot find words strong enough to condemn. If there over was an impartial Court it is a Pensions Appeal Tribunal. I submit you can only make a case for re-hearing where there is fresh evidence. That is the ground on which we can hope for reform, and I trust the Attorney-General will give us some hope that something may be done in this direction.
  The ATTORNEY - GENERAL (Sir Ernest Pollock): I am very grateful to the House for the kind reception they have given me, and I will attempt to deal with what is a difficult problem, and one which probably has a warm place in the heart of every Member of this House. There can be no special privilege belonging to any Member or any section, of the House which entitles them to speak more strongly on behalf of the ex-service men than any other section or any other Member. I hope we shall agree upon that in the deliberations that we have got now to consider. May I say at once that I quite accept the spirit in which the hon. Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson), the hon. Member for Spen Valley (Mr. Myers), and the hon. Member for Pontypool (Mr. T. Griffiths) pro posed, seconded, and supported this reduction. Perhaps they will allow me to treat their speeches in the sprit in which they were made rather than in the words which they actually used? The hon. Member for Chester-le-Street, with a warm heart, forgot the usual good sense, which I am sure is one of his characteristic features, when he spoke of the tribunals as having behaved "outrageously." He will forgive me if I forget that word altogether and make no
  1634
  reply whatever to it. The wisdom of our ancestors over 200 years ago determined that the Judiciary of this country and the decisions of the Courts should be beyond the reach and criticism of Parliament. That is one of the fundamental strengths of our Constitution, one of the great anchors of our liberty, and I cannot help believing, after listening to this Debate to-night, that our ancestors were right. I rather deprecate that spirit which, in one or two speeches, said that we ought to bring these tribunals under the jurisdiction of this House; with what result I know not, except that I suppose we should then criticise the tribunals according to our knowledge of what ought to have been done without any knowledge of the facts, and we should be passing a judgment upon those who had decided what ought to be done with full and complete knowledge of the facts.
  May I remind the House, too, of how it was that these tribunals were set up? They were set up because we quite accepted that it was impossible, merely at sight and at call, to give a pension to every man who merely asked for it. We quite accepted the fact that it was necessary to lay down, by Statute and by Warrant, certain limitations and certain conditions, which should be complied with before a man secured a pension, and the admission of the hon. Member for Pontypool, I think it was, who said that probably some had received a pension who had not deserved it—
  Mr. T. GRIFFITHS: No, I did not.
  Sir E. POLLOCK: Then it was the hon. Member for Chester-le-Street, but, in any case, I think probably some of us, if not all of us, have had some traces of the fact that an attempt—I will not say more—has been made by some persons to try and receive a pension who had not deserved it. There is in all quarters of the House general agreement upon this, that you must have certain conditions laid down before a pension is granted. The difficulty with which the Ministry is faced is this: they were advised first of all by one medical board, by a second medical board, and then they had a third and final medical board, and the criticism was made against them that all these three tribunals were, to some extent, under their control, or perhaps the happier phrase to-day is to say, under their hypnotism, and that,

  1635
  therefore, the ex-service men did not get a real chance. The House, therefore, in the Statute that they passed, provided that there should be a wholly independent tribunal, and when I say independent, I mean independent of this House as well as of the Ministry, and that tribunal is composed of a medical man, of a legal chairman, and of an ex-service man or an ex-service officer. All the criticisms that are directed against these tribunals are a criticism directed to these three members of the tribunals, one of whom, in all cases when men's pensions are coming up, is always an ex-service man. Let us hesitate before we rush to offer criticisms upon tribunals that are so founded. That was the system which had been set up.
  Let me dispose—I hope finally—of one suggestion which has been made in Debate. It is that this spirit of economy, the economy axe, or Sir Eric Geddes Committee, have in some way contributed towards cutting down the pensions, or, shall I say, inspiring the tribunals with a determination to refuse the appeals. Nothing could be more remote from the facts, and the proof of it is the figures which were given by the hon. Member for Chester-le-Street. He gave the House four three months' periods. He said that in the first, 71 per cent, of the appeals failed; in the second, 72 per cent.; in the third, 72·2; and in the fourth, 72·4. Those are four three-monthly periods, which take us back, at the very least, to the 1st January, 1921, and, if my recollection serves me, the Geddes Committee was not set up until August last. So that the criticism of the hon. Member would have been just as well founded if he had made his speech on those figures in July last upon the two three-monthly periods then completed. I can say at once that no such improper effort has been made to interfere with the judgment of the tribunals as to try and make their results more economical. What has, and must have happened is that as the cases come to be decided, and with the lapse of time since hostilities ceased, you have got more and more to a number of cases which may be less easily decided either by the Ministry or the Board in favour of the pensioner. You have left behind a residuum of cases which are, perhaps, more complex, more difficult cases, in
  1636
  which you have to see what development time brings with it, and you get a number of persons who wish to try their luck on another appeal. I do not think any unfair criticism, or, perhaps, too unfair criticism, should be made against them. They have been turned down, but they try their luck once more.
  Will the House allow me to give a little personal experience as a lawyer? If a man loses his case in the County Court; if he loses it when it goes to the King's Bench Division; and if he loses it in the Court of Appeal, I should hestitate for some time before I advised him that the strength of his case was so great that he was sure of winning it in the House of Lords. On the fourth time, he would have probably very little prospect of winning. What is suggested here is that, on the fourth time of asking, this tribunal ought to decide in favour of those who have already had their eases dealt with by the three previous tribunals. Here let me remark that no hon. Member has been found who would suggest that the Ministry of Pensions have not by their personnel at all times met the hon. Members of this House most sympathetically. So far as we have any means of judging of what the attitude of the Ministry of Pensions is, we may agree that their attitude has been sympathetic. The hon. Member for Chester-le-Street has moved a reduction of this Vote. I have ascertained from Mr. Speaker that we are to treat this reduction as a Vote for the abolition of the Pensions Appeal Tribunals. It was decided in Committee that the only way in which discussions such as we have had to-night would be in order, would be a motion for doing away with the whole Pensions Appeal Tribunals. I asked Mr. Speaker's ruling and ascertained that the reduction proposed is a Parliamentary method of voting against the Vote as a whole. The Vote tonight therefore is against continuing the system of Pensions Appeal Tribunals. Shall we have done any service to those whose cases sometimes tear our hearts, because we are very anxious indeed that no injustice should be done to those who fought for us and those who are suffering —shall we have done them a good or a bad., turn by sweeping away those tribunals? The hon. Member for Chester-le-Street says, Look at the last

  1637
  four periods of three months when there were 71 per cent, of the cases turned down, and 72 per cent, and 74 per cent.
  Mr. LAWSON: I can give you more recent figures. I gave you 81 per cent.
  Sir E. POLLOCK: I do not want to make the question more difficult, and perhaps the hon. Member will accept the figures of the four periods. What ought to be the figure? Supposing it was 67 per cent.? ought they to succeed in 50 per cent.? ought the Pensions Appeal Tribunal to decide always in favour of ex-service men in no less than 99 per cent, of the cases? What is the standard to be? I want to know what is to be the measure for the justification of criticism. That is the real point. Until we get into our minds something like a clear opinion of what we moan as to when the tribunals are unsatisfactory, let us not rely on figures of this sort, which are easy to put before the House, but are not easy to understand till one knows exactly what they mean. Let us try to find some sort of measure of what should be the figures if what is called justice is to be done. I put that question to the hon. Member? There is no one more fair-minded in the House when you put a question to him. I think he will agree that there ought to be some sound measure or standard before you can say that the Pensions Tribunal have done their duty if they conform to it, and by which you can endeavour to say they have not done their duty if they do not conform to it. On the question of re-hearing I desire to repeat what I said in Committee. Several hon. Members have
  pointed out the difficulty in deciding the right cases to be re-heard, or whether all should be re-heard. I said:
  "The last matter is the question of the re-hearing. That is a matter that we cannot deal with to-day, as I think it would be necessary to consider the matter very carefully, because it would probably be necessary to alter the Statute, but after the expressions of opinion that have been given to-day, no doubt that can be taken into account in the proper quarter."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 28th February, 1921; col. 339, Vol. 151.]
  My opinion is that the difficulty of the matter has been increased by the fact that you want to hear a certain number of cases and not others. Do not let us suggest that, because the tribunals make use of, or rely upon, Form Z.22, injustice is necessarily done. Form Z.22 is a form that was signed by the ex-soldier himself for the purpose of and in order to get an immediate advantage to himself. No tribunal ought to be open to the criticism that, because it accepts a form signed by an Englishman, that it is not a true statement of the facts of the case. [An HON. MEMBER: "What about the circumstances?"] I do not say it is final and conclusive, but that no tribunal ought to be criticised if they take that signed statement Z.22, into account as one of the factors upon which their judgment is based. I hope that no section of the House will do such a disservice to the men as to divide against this Vote, and say that they are going to sweep away these Pensions Tribunals.
  Question put, "That '£5,000' stand part of the said Resolution."
  The House divided: Ayes, 162; Noes, 56.

  Division No. 44.]

  AYES.

  [10. 59 p.m.

  Ainsworth, Captain Charles

  Brotherton, Colonel Sir Edward A.

  Doyle, N. Grattan

  Amery, Leopold C. M. S.

  Brown, Major D. C.

  Edwards, Major J. (Aberavon)

  Armstrong, Henry Bruce

  Bruton, Sir James

  Elliot, Capt. Walter E. (Lanark)

  Atkey, A. R.

  Buckley, Lieut. -Colonel A.

  Entwistle, Major C. F.

  Baird, Sir John Lawrence

  Burn, Col. C. R. (Devon, Torquay)

  Evans, Ernest

  Baldwin, Rt. Hon. Stanley

  Campion, Lieut. -Colonel W. R.

  Falcon, Captain Michael

  Balfour, George (Hampstead)

  Carew, Charles Robert S.

  Fell, Sir Arthur

  Banbury, Rt. Hon. Sir Frederick G.

  Casey, T. W.

  Fildes, Henry

  Barlow, Sir Montague

  Cecil, Rt. Hon. Lord H. (Ox. Univ.)

  Fisher, Rt. Hon. Herbert A. L.

  Barnett, Major Richard W.

  Chamberlain, N. (Birm., Ladywood)

  FitzRoy, Captain Hon. Edward A.

  Barnston, Major Harry

  Clay, Lieut. -Colonel H. H. Spender

  Ford, Patrick Johnston

  Bell, Lieut. -Col. W. C. H. (Devizes)

  Coats, Sir Stuart

  Forestier-Walker, L.

  Bellairs, Commander Carlyon W.

  Cockerill, Brigadier-General G. K.

  Forrest, Walter

  Benn, Sir A. S. (Plymouth, Drake)

  Coote, Colin Reith (Isle of Ely)

  Foxcroft, Captain Charles Talbot

  Benn, Capt. Sir I. H., Bart. (Gr'nw'h)

  Cope, Major William

  Fraser, Major Sir Keith

  Betterton, Henry B.

  Cowan, Sir H. (Aberdeen and Kinc.)

  Fremantie, Lieut. -Colonel Francis E.

  Birchall, J. Dearman

  Curzon, Captain Viscount

  Ganzoni, Sir John

  Bowyer, Captain G. W. E.

  Davies, Alfred Thomas (Lincoln)

  Gibbs, Colonel George Abraham

  Boyd-Carpenter, Major A.

  Davies, Thomas (Cirencester)

  Gilmour, Lieut. -Colonel Sir John

  Brassey, H. L. C.

  Davies, Sir William H. (Bristol, S.)

  Goff, Sir R. Park

  Breese, Major Charles E.

  Dawson, Sir Philip

  Green, Albert (Derby)

  Broad, Thomas Tucker

  Dewhurst, Lieut-Commander Harry

  Green, Joseph F. (Leicester, W.)

  Greenwood, William (Stockport)

  M'Curdy, Rt. Hon. Charles A.

  Samuel, A. M. (Surrey, Farnham)

  Gregory, Holman

  Macquisten, F. A.

  Samuel, Samuel (W'dsworth, Putney)

  Greig, Colonel Sir James William

  Manville, Edward

  Sanders, Colonel Sir Robert Arthur

  Gretton, Colonel John

  Mitchell, Sir William Lane

  Seely, Major-General Rt. Hon. John

  Guest, Capt. Rt. Hon. Frederick E.

  Molson, Major John Elsdale

  Shaw, William T. (Forfar)

  Gwynne, Rupert S.

  Moore, Major-General Sir Newton J.

  Shortt, Rt. Hon. E. (N'castle-on. T.)

  Hacking, Captain Douglas H.

  Moreing, Captain Algernon H.

  Stanley, Major Hon. G. (Preston)

  Hall, Lieut. -Col. Sir F. (Dulwich)

  Morris, Richard

  Stephenson, Lieut. -Colonel H. K.

  Harmsworth, C. B. (Bedford, Luton)

  Murray, Hon. Gideon (St. Rollox)

  Stewart, Gershom

  Harmsworth, Hon. E. C. (Kent)

  Murray, John (Leeds, West)

  Strauss, Edward Anthony

  Haslam, Lewis

  Murray, William (Dumtries)

  Sugden, W. H.

  Henderson, Lt. -Col- V. L. (Tradeston)

  Neal, Arthur

  Sutherland, Sir William

  Hennessy, Major J. R. G.

  Newman, Sir R. H. S. D. L. (Exeter)

  Thomas, Sir Robert J. (Wrexham)

  Herbert, Dennis (Hertford, Watford)

  Newson, Sir Percy Wilson

  Thomson, F. C. (Aberdeen, South)

  Hilder, Lieut. -Colonel Frank

  Nicholson, Brig. -Gen. J. (Westminster)

  Thomson, Sir W Mitchell- (Maryhill)

  Hinds, John

  Oman, Sir Charles William C.

  Townshend, Sir Charles Vere Ferrers

  Hood, Sir Joseph

  Ormsby-Gore, Hon. William

  Waring, Major Walter

  Hopkinson, A. (Lancaster, Mossley)

  Parker, James

  Warner, Sir T. Courtenay T.

  Hotchkin, Captain Stafford Vere

  Parry, Lieut. -Colonel Thomas Henry

  Wheler, Col. Granville C. H.

  Hurd, Percy A.

  Pease, Rt. Hon. Herbert Pike

  White, Col. G. D. (Southport)

  James, Lieut. -Colonel Hon. Cuthbert

  Perkins, Walter Frank

  Wild, Sir Ernest Edward

  Jodrell, Neville Paul

  Philipps, Sir Owen C. (Chester, City)

  Williams, C. (Tavistock)

  Johnson, Sir Stanley

  Pilditch, Sir Philip

  Williams, Lt. -Col. Sir R. (Banbury)

  Jones, J. T. (Carmarthen, Llanelly)

  Pollock, Rt. Hon. Sir Ernest Murray

  Windsor, Viscount

  Kellaway, Rt. Hon. Fredk. George

  Prescott, Major Sir W. H.

  Wise, Frederick

  King, Captain Henry Douglas

  Purchase, H. G.

  Wood, Hon. Edward F. L. (Ripon)

  Law, Alfred J. (Rochdale)

  Ramsden, G. T.

  Wood, Sir H. K. (Woolwich, West)

  Lloyd, George Butler

  Raper, A. Baldwin

  Worthington-Evans, Rt. Hon. Sir L.

  Lloyd-Greame, Sir P.

  Rees, Sir J. D. (Nottingham, East)

  Young, E. H. (Norwich)

  Locker-Lampson, Com. O. (H'tingd'n)

  Remer, J. R.

  Young, Sir Frederick W. (Swindon)

  Lort-Williams, J.

  Roberts, Rt. Hon. G. H. (Norwich)

  Lyle, C. E. Leonard

  Robinson, S. (Brecon and Radnor)

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—

  Lyle-Samuel, Alexander

  Royds, Lieut. -Colonel Edmund

  Colonel Leslie Wilson and Mr. Dudley Ward.

  NOES.

  Ammon, Charles George

  Graham, R. (Nelson and Colne)

  Richardson, R. (Houghton-le-Spring)

  Barker, G. (Monmouth, Abertillery)

  Griffiths, T. (Monmouth, Pontypool)

  Roberts, Frederick O. (W. Bromwich)

  Barnes, Major H (Newcastle, E.)

  Grundy, T. W.

  Rose, Frank H.

  Benn, Captain Wedgwood (Leith)

  Hall, F. (York, W. R. Normanton)

  Royce, William Stapleton

  Bowerman, Rt. Hon. Charles W.

  Hancock, John George

  Shaw, Thomas (Preston)

  Bromfield, William

  Henderson, Rt. Hon. A. (Widnes)

  Short, Alfred (Wednesbury)

  Brown, James (Ayr and Bute)

  Hirst, G. H.

  Smith, W. R. (Wellingborough)

  Cairns, John

  Jephcott, A. R.

  Sueter, Rear-Admiral Murray Fraser

  Cape, Thomas

  John, William (Rhondda, West)

  Sutton, John Edward

  Carter, W. (Nottingham, Mansfield)

  Jones, Morgan (Caerphilly)

  Swan, J. E.

  Clynes, Rt. Hon. John R.

  Kenworthy, Lieut. -Commander J. M

  Walsh, Stephen (Lancaster, Ince)

  Davies, A. (Lancaster, Clitheroe)

  Kenyon, Barnet

  Watts-Morgan, Lieut. -Col. D.

  Davies, Rhys John (Westhoughton)

  Lunn, William

  Wignall, James

  Davison, J. E. (Smethwick)

  Maclean, Neil (Glasgow, Govan)

  Williams, Col. P. (Middlesbrough, E.)

  Edwards, C. (Monmouth, Bedwellty)

  Maclean, Rt. Hn. Sir D. (Midlothian)

  Wilson, James (Dudley)

  Finney, Samuel

  Myers, Thomas

  Young, Robert (Lancaster, Newton)

  Galbraith, Samuel

  Naylor, Thomas Ellis

  Gillis, William

  Parkinson, John Allen (Wigan)

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—

  Glanville, Harold James

  Poison, Sir Thomas A.

  Mr. Lawson and Mr. John Guest.

  Graham, D. M. (Lanark, Hamilton)

  Rattan, Peter Wilson

  Second and Third Resolutions agreed to.

  REPORT [24th February].
  Resolutions reported,
CIVIL SERVICES AND REVENUE DEPARTMENTS SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATE, 1921–22.

  CLASS II.
  1. "That a sum, not exceeding £1,130,000, be granted to His Majesty, to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1922, for payment of a Grant in Aid of Miscellaneous Services to be administered by the Provisional Government."
  2. "That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £26,000, be grunted to His Majesty, to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1922, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Department of His Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, including the News Department."
  Motion made, and Question, "That the further consideration of the Resolution be now adjourned," put, and agreed to.—[Colonel Leslie Wilson.]
  Resolution to be further considered Tomorrow.

  REPORT [27th February.]
  Resolutions reported,
CIVIL SERVICES AND REVENUE DEPARTMENTS SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATE, 1921–22.
  CLASS VII.
  1. "That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £10, be granted to His Majesty, to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1922, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Ministry of Health; including Grants and other Expenses in connection with Housing, Grants to Local Authorities, etc., sundry Contributions and Grants in respect of Benefits and Expenses of Administration under the National Health Insurance Acts, 1911 to 1921, certain Grants in Aid, and certain Special Services arising out of the War."
  UNCLASSIFIED SERVICES.
  2. "That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £100, be granted to His Majesty, to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1922, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Disposal and Liquidation Commission."

  CLASS II.
  3. "That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £16,945, be granted to His Majesty, to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1922, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Fishery Board for Scotland, including Grants in Aid of Piers or Quays."
  Motion made, and Question, "That the further Consideration of the Resolution be now adjourned," put, and agreed to.— [Colonel L. Wilson.]
  Resolution to be further considered Tomorrow.
  The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.

  ADJOURNMENT.
  Resolved, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Colonel Leslie Wilson.]
  Adjourned accordingly at Ten Minutes after Eleven o'Clock.

EDUCATION.
  TEACHERS' PENSIONS.
  TEACHERS' PENSIONS.
  ELEMENTAHY SCHOOLS (STAFF).
  ELEMENTAHY SCHOOLS (STAFF).
  EXPENDITURE (GREAT BRITAIN AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES).
  EXPENDITURE (GREAT BRITAIN AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES).
  ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CLASSES, LEYTON.
  ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CLASSES, LEYTON.
  NON-PROVIDED SECONDARY SCHOOLS (GRANTS).
  NON-PROVIDED SECONDARY SCHOOLS (GRANTS).
ROYAL NAVY.
  1914–15 STAR.
  1914–15 STAR.
  ADMIRALS' PAY AND ALLOWANCES.
  ADMIRALS' PAY AND ALLOWANCES.
  NAVY, ARMY, AND AIR FORCE INSTITUTES (SERVICE LABOUR).
  NAVY, ARMY, AND AIR FORCE INSTITUTES (SERVICE LABOUR).
BRITISH ARMY.
  FORMS STORES DEPOT (CIVILIANS' PAY).
  FORMS STORES DEPOT (CIVILIANS' PAY).
NAVAL AND MILITARY PENSIONS AND GRANTS.
  NAVAL PENSIONS (RE-ASSESSMENTS).
  NAVAL PENSIONS (RE-ASSESSMENTS).
  DISABILITY PENSIONS (W. HORROCKS).
  DISABILITY PENSIONS (W. HORROCKS).
  TREATMENT ALLOWANCE (F. E. QUATERMAN).
  TREATMENT ALLOWANCE (F. E. QUATERMAN).
  MOTHERS' PENSIONS.
  MOTHERS' PENSIONS.
  WIDOWS' PENSIONS (MRS. STRATFORD).
  WIDOWS' PENSIONS (MRS. STRATFORD).
EX-SERVICE MEN.
  AIR MINISTRY.
  AIR MINISTRY.
  POST OFFICE.
  POST OFFICE.
  OVERSEAS SETTLEMENT.
  OVERSEAS SETTLEMENT.
GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS.
  CONSULAR SERVICE.
  CONSULAR SERVICE.
  BOARD OF TRADE (FOOD DEPARTMENT).
  BOARD OF TRADE (FOOD DEPARTMENT).
  CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION.
  CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION.
  WOMEN CLERKS.
  WOMEN CLERKS.
  NATIONAL WHITLEY COUNCIL.
  NATIONAL WHITLEY COUNCIL.
TRADE AND COMMERCE.
  INTERNATIONAL TRADING CORPORATIONS.
  INTERNATIONAL TRADING CORPORATIONS.
  CHINA TEA (IMPORTS).
  CHINA TEA (IMPORTS).
  THRIFT AND SHARE-OUT CLUBS.
  THRIFT AND SHARE-OUT CLUBS.
TRANSPORT.
  IRISH LIVESTOCK (RAILWAY RATES AND THROUGH BOOKINGS).
  IRISH LIVESTOCK (RAILWAY RATES AND THROUGH BOOKINGS).
  ROADS, GLOUCESTERSHIRE.
  ROADS, GLOUCESTERSHIRE.
  TIDAL LANE CROSSINGS, CHESHIRE.
  TIDAL LANE CROSSINGS, CHESHIRE.
  RAILWAY PASSENGER FARES.
  RAILWAY PASSENGER FARES.
  RAILWAY RATES AND CHARGES.
  RAILWAY RATES AND CHARGES.
IRELAND.
  POLICEMAN'S ACCIDENTAL DEATH (WIDOW'S PENSION).
  POLICEMAN'S ACCIDENTAL DEATH (WIDOW'S PENSION).
  RESIDENT MAGISTRATES' PENSIONS.
  RESIDENT MAGISTRATES' PENSIONS.
  SURRENDERED FIRE-ARMS.
  SURRENDERED FIRE-ARMS.
  PALESTINE GENDARMERIE (RECRUITING).
  PALESTINE GENDARMERIE (RECRUITING).
  INDIAN ARMY.
  INDIAN ARMY.
NATIONAL EXPENDITURE.
  ORDNANCE SURVEY.
  ORDNANCE SURVEY.
  REDUCTIONS.
  REDUCTIONS.
  AIR SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATE.
  AIR SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATE.
  ENTERTAINMENTS DUTY (CINEMAS).
  ENTERTAINMENTS DUTY (CINEMAS).
  PENSIONS (INCREASE) ACT.
  PENSIONS (INCREASE) ACT.
HOUSING.
  PRIVATE ENTERPRISE, SCOTLAND (INCOME TAX).
  PRIVATE ENTERPRISE, SCOTLAND (INCOME TAX).
  UNOCCUPIED DWELLINGS.
  UNOCCUPIED DWELLINGS.
  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (FINANCE).
  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (FINANCE).
  AUDIT STAMP DUTY.
  AUDIT STAMP DUTY.
  DEATHS FROM STARVATION, DURHAM.
  DEATHS FROM STARVATION, DURHAM.
  DIPHTHERIA.
  DIPHTHERIA.
  FOOT-AND-MOUTH DISEASE.
  FOOT-AND-MOUTH DISEASE.
  CANADIAN CATTLE (EMBARGO).
  CANADIAN CATTLE (EMBARGO).
  AGRICULTURE (CONCILIATION COMMITTEES).
  AGRICULTURE (CONCILIATION COMMITTEES).
  NEW ZEALAND MAILS.
  NEW ZEALAND MAILS.
  AIR RAIDS (GRANTS).
  AIR RAIDS (GRANTS).
  INCOME-TAX ARREARS (ARRESTS, ABERTILLERY).
  INCOME-TAX ARREARS (ARRESTS, ABERTILLERY).
  RUMANIAN CONSOLIDATED OILFIELDS, LIMITED.
  RUMANIAN CONSOLIDATED OILFIELDS, LIMITED.
  BETTING BY CHEQUE.
  BETTING BY CHEQUE.
  APPLICATIONS FOR NATURALISATION.
  APPLICATIONS FOR NATURALISATION.
  ARREST OF DESERTERS (POLICE REWARD).
  ARREST OF DESERTERS (POLICE REWARD).
  PROSECUTIONS FOR FRAUD, MANCHESTER.
  PROSECUTIONS FOR FRAUD, MANCHESTER.
  POLICE (MOTOR VEHICLES).
  POLICE (MOTOR VEHICLES).
  FEMALE PRISONERS (CONFINEMENTS).
  FEMALE PRISONERS (CONFINEMENTS).
  CRIMINAL LAW AMENDMENT ACT.
  CRIMINAL LAW AMENDMENT ACT.
  UNEMPLOYMENT INSUEANCE.
  UNEMPLOYMENT INSUEANCE.
  GERMAN WAR CRIMINALS (TRIAL).
  GERMAN WAR CRIMINALS (TRIAL).
Preamble
The House met at a quarter past four of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR On the Woolsack.
NEAR EAST CONFERENCE.

  GOVERNMENT OF INDIA'S TELEGRAM.
  THE MARQUESS OF CREWE: My Lords, I beg to ask His Majesty's Government a Question of which I have given private notice: Whether the publication of the telegram from the Government of India, stating their views with regard to the conditions of peace in the Near East, took place with the knowledge or approval of His Majesty's Government, and, if not, what course His Majesty's Government propose to take.
  THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT BIRKENHEAD): My Lords, I understand that this telegram was published by the Government of India with the sanction of the Secretary of State. No other Minister was consulted. I desire expressly to abstain from any comment upon the subject matter of the telegram, though the terms exceed those demanded even by the warmest friends of the Turks themselves. This, however, is a matter for discussion at the Conference, and one into which it would be highly inexpedient for me to enter now.
  But the publication of such a pronouncement without consultation with the Cabinet, and without their assent, raises a different question, all the more important because the Conference was just about to meet at Paris, when, as it seemed, there was a fair prospect that, in concert with our Allies, we should be able to lay the basis for peace between Turks and Greeks. His Majesty's Government are unable to reconcile the publication of the telegram of the Government of India on the sole responsibility of the Secretary of State with the collective responsibility of the Cabinet, or with the duty which all the Governments of the Empire owe to each other in matters of Imperial concern. Such independent declarations destroy the unity of policy which it is vital to preserve in foreign affairs, and gravely imperil the success of the impending negotiations. The Secretary
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  of State has tendered his resignation to the Prime Minister, and His Majesty has been pleased to approve its acceptance.
  When the Foreign Secretary proceeds to Paris to discuss the Eastern settlement with the Foreign Ministers of France and Italy it will be his object to arrive at a solution which will be equitable to all parties. Due weight will be given by him to the opinions of the Indian Mahomedans as expressed by the Government of India, but he cannot hold himself bound to accept any solution that may be put forward by that Government irrespective of its relation to the problem as a whole. The responsibility for the revision of the Treaty of Sevres and the conclusion of peace in the East rests with the Allied Powers in combination.

IRISH FREE STATE (AGREEMENT) BILL.
Brought from the Commons.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1ª.—(Viscount Peel.)
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, it has not been the practice for your Lordships to raise a discussion upon the First Reading of a Bill, and, except in very small particulars, I do not intend to depart from that practice. I do not desire to raise any discussion upon the actual provisions of the Bill, which, technically, is not as yet communicated to your Lordships; much less do I propose to discuss the merits of its clauses; but, in a matter of this great importance and complication, it seems to me to be for the convenience of your Lordships that, before we enter upon a discussion of the Second Reading, we should know exactly the stages of the policy of His Majesty's Government—how one follows the other in order to achieve the end which they have in view. Therefore I shall venture to put a few questions to the noble Viscount, Lord Peel, of which he has received private notice, so that your Lordships may understand the course of proceeding that is actually proposed.
In the first place, how many Bills are there to be in order to carry out the policy of His Majesty's Government? There is the present Bill, which is now to be read a first time. Is there to be, in addition, a Bill to set up the Constitution of Southern Ireland? Is there, further, to be a Bill to amend the Government of Ireland Act,

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1920? Your Lordships will remember that this Free State Government only applies to a part of Ireland, and that, so far as the North East of Ireland is concerned, the Act of 1920 remains in force. Therefore, I presume there will require to be another Bill to make the adjustments necessary in the Act of 1920, which will then apply only to a part of Ireland. Further, I understand that there will have to be an Indemnity Bill, because, as you are aware, all the proceedings which are now taking place in Ireland are breaches of the law. Therefore, the first question I ask is: How many Bills are proposed to be taken, in order to carry out the policy of the Government?
The next question has reference to Article 11 of the Agreement. That Article provides that nothing shall come into force in Northern Ireland for a month after the Act, of Parliament for the ratification of this instrument, and during that month Northern Ireland can specify its refusal to come into the Free State. What we want to know is whether this Bill now before the House is, in fact, the Bill for the ratification of the instrument, from the passage of which the month's interval is to be calculated.
The third question is as to the order of events in Ireland. The original intention of His Majesty's Government, I understand, was that as soon as the Bill now before us was passed there was to be a General Election in Ireland, and, after that, the new Constitution was to be framed and passed into law. Now, owing to a change of view that has taken place in Ireland, and which has been accepted by His Majesty's Government, the Constitution to be framed in pursuance of this Bill, which we are now about to read a first time, is to be framed not after the General Election in Ireland, but before it. Is that so? Your Lordships will see the importance of it—that the General Election in Ireland will take place not in order to approve or disapprove of the Treaty, but to approve or disapprove of the actual detailed Constitution which follows on the Treaty. A further division of that question is whether this Constitution, so framed in Ireland, is to be passed into law in this Parliament, and in your Lordships' House, before the General Election in Ireland; that is to say, whether it is a Bill for the Irish Constitution which is going to be submitted to the Irish people, or an
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Act for the Irish Constitution which is going to be in issue in this General Election.
The fourth question is what powers and machinery are to be transferred by Order in Council under the present Bill? Probably your Lordships have learnt through the usual sources of information that under the present Bill the Provisional Government is to be set up by Orders in Council, and what I venture to ask, in order that discussion may be clear when we come to the Second Reading, is: What are the powers which are to be transferred under these provisions to the Provisional Government? That is to say, is it the full authority of a Dominion Government which is to be transferred to them, or only parts of it? Further, are they to have only administrative powers, or are they to have legislative powers? During the four months that elapse before the process of setting up the new Irish Constitution is carried out, are there to be legislative powers exercised in Ireland or not? If the answer is in the affirmative, then by what legislative body are they to be carried out? Because there is no legal Parliament in Ireland, and there cannot be until the second Bill for the Constitution of Ireland has been passed.
The fifth and the last question is: At what stage are the obligations of the Imperial Government to be carried into effect for making good the compensation which is due to those who have been injured in the Rebellion, and for making good the completion of land purchase in Ireland? As soon as the Irish Constitution is fully set up all these matters will become germane to its jurisdiction. But I cannot doubt that the Government will think it an absolute obligation upon them to see that the people who are injured whilst in their service, and whilst they were in authority in Ireland, are not deprived of their compensation by reason of the change, and therefore, no doubt, they will take powers, in some form or other, to make good that compensation.
And the same is true of the completion of land purchase, for your Lordships will remember that the Government are pledged up to the eyes to pass an Act for the completion of land purchase in Ireland, which was to have accompanied the Home Rule Act of 1920, and which is very much overdue. I want to know in what part of the procedure will these obligations of honour be met. Will they be met before the Bill

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creating the detailed Constitution in Ireland is passed into law, or after it? Because, although the obligation is primarily an obligation of His Majesty's Government, it is also an obligation of Parliament, an obligation of your Lordships' House, which I am quite sure your Lordships' House will see is properly fulfilled.
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE DUCHY OF LANCASTER (VISCOUNT PEEL): My Lords, I will endeavour to answer the questions of the noble Marquess as briefly as I can, though, in all, they amount to rather a complicated series. The first point was about the number of Bills required. The noble Marquess asked whether a Bill would be required to set up the Constitution of the Irish Free State. The answer is, Yes, it will lie required. That is the first Bill that will be required. He also asked whether a Bill to amend the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, will be required. Certainly, a Bill will be required for that, but I understand that these particular provisions might be embodied in the Bill for setting up the Constitution of the Irish Free State, and there will be other necessary results from that; and it may be, therefore, that there will be one Bill and not two Bills.
THE MARQUESS oF SALISBURY: The Government have not made up their minds?
VISCOUNT PEEL: No, it is not necessary at this stage for them to make up their minds, but I answer the question substantially by saying that it does not matter, as far as administrative form is concerned, whether it is one Bill or two Bills. The third point was as to an Indemnity Bill. That. Bill will be required. It is already drafted, I understand, and very nearly ripe for introduction. The noble Marquess asked also: Is the present Bill the Bill for the ratification of the Articles of Agreement referred to in Article 11 of the Agreement; if not, what will be the required Bill? Of course, the importance of this lies in what is known as the "Ulster month"—from what date will that month begin to run? The month begins to run, by general agreement, not from the date when this measure with which we are now dealing becomes an Act, but from the later date; that is to say, when the Bill setting up the Constitution of the Irish Free State becomes an Act. That is the date from which that month will begin to run. Is that clear?
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: Perfectly clear.
VISCOUNT PEEL: Then, as to the Constitution of the Irish Free State. That is the next question, I think. Is it to be framed—
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: Perhaps I bad better read the question. It actually runs:—Is the Constitution of the Irish Free State (1) to be framed, (2) to be submitted to the Imperial Parliament, before a General Election is held in Southern Ireland? That is to say. Is it to be framed before a General Election is held, and, in the second place, is it to be submitted to the Imperial Parliament before that date?
VISCOUNT PEEL: The answer is quite clear. It is to be framed—the Provisional Government is responsible for that measure—before a General Election is held in Southern Ireland. I think one of the objects of the postponement was that there might be placed before the Irish electors not only the Articles of Agreement, but also the Constitution carrying those Articles into effect, that they may know perfectly well what they are voting about. The second point is: Is it to be submitted to the Imperial Parliament before a General Election? It is not to be submitted to the Imperial Parliament before the General Election, because it is important that the matter should be settled by Ireland; whether they accept it, or whether they do not. There would be no use submitting it to the Imperial Parliament before it had been accepted by the newly-elected Parliament.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: The Imperial Parliament has to accept anything the Irish electors want?
VISCOUNT PEEL: No, that is not so because the instrument will be published, and then it will be known whether or not it comes within the four corners of the Articles of Agreement.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: Whatever comes within the four corners of the Articles of Agreement, whatever it may be, as far as the Government are concerned, is to be accepted without change by the Imperial Parliament?
VISCOUNT PEEL: Not necessarily at all. It then comes before the Imperial Parliament. The Imperial Parliament, of course, will have its responsibility in the matter. The fourth question is: What powers of machinery are to be transferred by Order in Council under the present Bill? The answer to that is that the whole administrative power and machinery will be so transferred. Then, as to the Legislature, the noble Marquess has quite correctly stated that there is no Parliament at present. I believe there are several Parliaments, but, at any rate, there is no legal Parliament functioning now in the South of Ireland, and obviously, there being no instrument for legislation, there can be no legislation. But after the Election (because though this is not very close it is relevant to the point the noble Marquess raised) the new Legislature will be established which will, till the establishment of the Free State, have power to legislate with respect to matters within the jurisdiction of the Provisional Government in the administrative government of Southern Ireland.
The noble Marquess's last point is: At what stage will compensation for malicious injuries and completion of land purchase in Ireland be dealt with by legislation in the Imperial Parliament? Compensation for malicious injuries to property will be dealt with in the Indemnity Bill. As to the completion of land purchase, that in Northern Ireland will require an Act of the Imperial Parliament. The completion of land purchase in Southern Ireland will be a matter with which the Free State Parliament will have to deal. As to injuries to persons, each side—each country—will meet the claims of its own sympathisers for damage.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I do not quite understand that last phrase—each side?
VISCOUNT PEEL: The British Government and the Provisional Government will meet the damages of its own sympathisers.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: Will it not be rather a delicate matter to adjust that exactly? How will that be done?
VISCOUNT PEEL: I should think it quite possible it will be a delicate matter.
LORD ORANMORE AND BROWNE: May I ask the noble Viscount whether the Imperial Government repudiate any res-
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ponsibility for the promises which have been made to this Parliament to settle the Irish land question in Southern Ireland as well as in Northern Ireland, and which have been stated by several Ministers to be an obligation of honour and a necessary part of a plan of Irish settlement.
VISCOUNT PEEL: I do not understand that the Imperial Parliament denies any of its obligations or any of its undertakings.
LORD ORANMORE AND BROWNE: I understood the noble Viscount to say that it was to be left to the Free State to complete the land purchase in Southern Ireland.
VISCOUNT PEEL: In reply to that, may I say that if you set up this independent Government in Ireland you cannot, of course, deal with land or property in Ireland in the same way as you could if it remained under the full control of the Imperial Government.
LORD CARSON: My Lords, I should like to have one or two matters made a little more definite because think they are matters which, if they are not cleared up, may create great difficulties in Ireland, and when I talk of difficulties in Ireland I mean real, serious difficulties among the people. In the first place, the noble Viscount says that this Bill, which is now going to be read a first time, is not the Bill referred to in Article 11 of the Treaty. My own view is that it is the Bill referred to in Article because II think this Bill ratifies the Instrument. The first clause of it states that the Articles of Agreement set forth in the Schedule to the Act shall have "the force of law as from the date of the passing of this Act."
If you say a Treaty is to have the force of law you have certainly ratified it, as far as my opinion is worth anything. I know that is the view of other lawyers besides myself. That is a matter which ought not to be left indefinite, because upon that depends the voting by Ulster out of the Free State into which you are proposing to put them, If the matter is left as it is I strongly advise Ulster, so far as my advice is worth anything, to take the construction I have put upon it so as not to find themselves afterwards in difficulty through what seems to me to be a very strained and very forced attempt at reading this Treaty. If the Government wanted to do so they could make it per-

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fectly clear, I have no doubt, by a section in this Bill; but in the absence of that, I can only say that in my opinion it would be extremely dangerous for Ulster not to take that reading of the words in Article 11: "Until the expiration of one month from the passing of the Act of Parliament for the ratification of this instrument…." That is the first matter to which I desire to refer, and I think your Lordships will see that it ought to be left in no ambiguity at all; because it is a matter which will create passionate feeling in the North of Ireland, probably also in the South of Ireland, and is one which may lead to collision. It is also, I think, one of the many matters which, through their ambiguity in this Treaty are keeping up the very grave state of affairs which exists in Northern Ireland at the present time.
The second matter to which I should like to call attention is this. The noble Viscount said that the Constitution Bill which is to be submitted to the Irish electorate—in the South and West, I suppose, because there is no power to hold Elections in the North unless they are willing to stay in—will be submitted to the electors in the South and West of Ireland before it has passed this House, or before it has passed the two Houses of Parliament, as it must, to become an Act. I think that is a very grave announcement, for this reason. If an Election is held in Ireland and that Act is practically adopted by the course the Election takes of putting into power the particular Party, who will be the Provisional Government, who promoted that Act and who promoted this Treaty, I would like to know how this Parliament is afterwards to alter it?
You would be holding an Election on the plea that that was to be the Constitution. If the electorate adopted it and, as the noble Viscount says, it is then to come before this Parliament and this Parliament will have power to alter it, that does not seem to me to he a very businesslike transaction. It seems to me to be an extremely dangerous transaction in regard to Ireland. Because they will say: "We agreed to the setting up of the Provisional Government, to the adoption of the Treaty and to the Constitution under the Treaty. Now we find that that is not binding on the Imperial Parliament, and it has to go before them, and it may be altered." I hope that the Government will reconsider that matter.
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On the other hand, so complex and so uncertain is the whole of this Treaty, if you take it the other way, that the Bill cannot be altered once the electorate there have approved of it, then, in a matter which gravely affects the whole of this country as well as Ireland, you are practically taking away and abolishing the whole power of the two Houses of Parliament here. That, also, is a very serious matter and, having listened to the debates in the House of Commons during the Committee stage of the Bill, I am apprehensive that what will happen will he just what happened about this Treaty which was entered into behind the backs of all of us—that when the Bill comes up, after it has passed the Irish Parliament which is to be set up after the Elections, we shall be told: "Do not dare to alter a comma in it, because if you do you will upset the whole matter which has already gone before the electors in Ireland." I have not the faintest doubt that is what we shall be told eventually by the Government if it is allowed to proceed in that way. I do not want to comment upon it now, but the whole of this question arises from not adhering to the original form in which this Bill was brought in, and by reason of the concession that Mr. Collins and his Party at the Dail Eireann were compelled to make to Mr. de Valera, which seems to me to have altered the whole basis of the Constitution—which was to be expected.
There is one other point about which I should like to ask the noble Viscount. He has told us, as I understand, that when this Bill becomes law they are going to pass over, under Orders in Council, the whole administration to the Provisional Government. I do not know whether I took down his words correctly but "the whole administration and powers" was all I was able to take down; I do not know whether that is accurate. If that is so, I should like to know what is to become of the 1920 Act as it relates to Northern Ireland? Let me point out to the noble Viscount that the whole, or a great deal, of the Act of 1920 in relation to Northern Ireland will have to be recast from top to bottom if any such plan as has been indicated is carried out.

Let me take one thing. I suppose by Order in Council you will hand over, as you would to one of our Dominions—and that is the only guide apparently that this gives—the collection of Taxes, the Customs

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and Excise, Income Tax and the various other Taxes that go to make up the income in Ireland. What will be the result of that? The whole basis of the 1920 Act, as it affects Northern Ireland, is that this country collects all the Taxes, and then divides them between the two Parliaments in certain proportions (which are laid down by the Act) with the assistance of a Board, if I remember aright, called the Exchequer Board. But the moment you carry out this arrangement with the South and West the whole of that is gone, because you no longer have the money in your hands to divide. An entirely different state of affairs arises. You will continue to collect all the Taxes, including Customs and Excise and Income Tax in the North of Ireland, but there will be no method whatsoever of dividing them between the North and the South, and therefore the whole basis of the 1920 Act will fall to the ground. That is a matter that requires serious consideration. Ever since last May, when the Parliament in Northern Ireland was opened, you have been absolutely retarding and hindering its progress by not settling these various matters.
I will also refer to another vital matter. There is a Council for the whole of Ireland in the 1920 Act. That has a number of matters to deal with, including railways and fisheries, and other things that are common both to the North and South. If you are going to hand over those powers to the Provisional Government what is going to become of them so far as concerns the North of Ireland? It is only through the Council that they operate there, and, under your scheme, there will be no Council in the South and West of Ireland as provided by the 1920 Act. The whole of that matter, therefore, as far as I can see, will remain in chaos.
May I make an appeal to the noble Viscount? Whatever may be the Government's policy towards the South and West, which I am not now criticizing, the Government having set up a Parliament in the North of Ireland—a Parliament which the North were asked to take and which they did take loyally—really have some obligation to see that that Parliament is allowed to function, and is not hampered and kept in a state of suspended animation, such as that in which it is at the present moment, and is not thrown, as it probably will be by this latest policy, into a state of chaos after you have set up the Pro-
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visional Government. I can assure your Lordships that the course the Government is taking in relation to the Northern Ireland Parliament is one that is seriously hampering the restoration of peace in that part of Ireland. So long as these questions are left open and outstanding you leave the people in a condition of doubt, danger and difficulty which prevents them from settling down to what they want, to do that is, to work the Parliament which you have put upon them.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: My Lords, I think the thanks of the House are due to my noble friend on the front bench opposite for having raised this debate. We have obtained a certain amount of information, not perhaps a great deal, but still some, upon a number of points which have exercised our minds a good deal of late in connection with this Bill, and observations such as those which have just been addressed to us by the noble and learned Lord on the back bench (Lord Carson) will certainly demand the attentive consideration of His Majesty's Government during the interval which must elapse between this evening and the full discussion of the matter in Committee. What I wanted to say in particular was this. I conceive that we are all interested' in two points. In the first place, we want to have a definite idea of the series of measures—subsidiary measures was, I. think, the expression used by my noble friend—which are to follow upon this Bill.
But what is even more important than that is that we desire to know a little more precisely what real opportunities are going to be offered to this House for debating and, if necessary, amending the proposals contained in the scheme of His Majesty's Government. Up to the present I have seen no indication of any real desire on the part of His Majesty's Government to give us such opportunities. We certainly had no such opportunity when the Treaty came before us in December last. It was thrown at our heads to take or to leave, and with plain indications of what might happen if we did not choose to take it.
With regard to this Bill like the noble and learned Lord, have been attempting to follow the discussions in another place, and I have gathered fromlie reports of those discussions that we are to understand distinctly, so far as His Majesty's

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Government are concerned, that no kind of Amendment can be accepted by His Majesty's Government which might have the effect of altering, amplifying, explaining, or even elucidating the Bill before the House. That was the formula used by the distinguished colleague, of the noble and learned Viscount upon the Woolsack in another place. Therefore, as far as this Bill is concerned, I gather that any proposals of ours will be met by a blank and peremptory refusal on the part of His Majesty's Government. Very well. Then there remains in the background that other Bill which is to come before Parliament, the Bill which will embody the new Constitution of the Irish Free State. I wish I felt sure that even when that Bill comes to us we shall have a real opportunity of criticising it, or, if necessary, of procuring alteration in it. I think I recall a passage in a speech made by the Secretary of State for the Colonies in which he indicated very unobscurely that that. Bill was to be regarded as, I think he said, sacrosanct. The noble Viscount on the front bench said something to the effect that so long as the Bill remained within the four corners of the Treaty—I think that was what he said—no changes in it could possibly be entertained.
It comes then to this, my Lords, that Parliament is to have no chance of making its wishes fell in regard to these proposals. I find a very slender ray of hope in something that was said by the Secretary of State for the Colonies as to yet a further Bill, which was to be of the nature of an excrescence on the Constitution Bill and which was to be used for the purpose of introducing necessary modifications. I think that something was said about "consequent reactions," whatever they may be. But I rose really for the purpose of expressing a hope that, in spite of these discouraging and almost sinister omens, we may yet be told by His Majesty's Government that at sonic stage we shall be given a chance of criticising the proposals of His Majesty's Government, and of criticising them usefully. By that I mean that if we make a criticism and establish it, show that it is sound, His Majesty's Government will not shelter themselves behind what I may call the chose jugée argument, but will take their courage in both hands, listen to what we have to say, and if it is really an improvement in the measure, insist upon its addition to the scheme of the Bill.
VISCOUNT PEEL: My Lords, your Lordships will realise that I am in sonic difficulty in answering all the questions that have been put to me, because I have only had recent notice of the question put by the noble Marquess and have had no notice of the others. But I will endeavour to answer the points put by the noble and learned Lord and by the noble Marquess who has just spoken. The first point raised by the noble and learned Lord was from which Bill does what is called the "Ulster month" begin to run. He said that this is a matter of great importance in Ireland and that having examined the matter himself he was clearly of the opinion that, as this was a ratifying Act, under its strict reading the month ought to run from the period when this Bill becomes an Act. It is not remarkable that he should have taken that view because the same view has been taken already in certain quarters. It was taken by the Irish Ministers, though the opposite view was taken by the Attorney-General here. It is essential, certainly, that the point should be most definitely established, and in answer to the question I have to say that the month will run not from the crate when this Bill becomes an Act but from the date the second Bill establishing the Irish Constitution becomes an Act. The matter has been under discussion with the Irish Ministers and, although they took a different view themselves, it has been definitely agreed that the month should run from the date of the Act of Parliament establishing the Constitution.
LORD CARSON: May I ask the noble Viscount a question? I do not expect him to be so well acquainted with the law as I am. When he says it has been agreed that this is to be the construction, it does not make it the construction. The construction is what the Bill means, and, therefore, what I want to know is, if this has been agreed upon—I do not know between whom-will it be made clear upon the face of the Bill? Otherwise, there is no protection.
VISCOUNT PEEL: I should have thought that if the only parties who can act upon the Bill were agreed upon its construction it would settle the matter, but I will consider the point as to the possibility of dealing with it by way of Amendment. The second point raises a rather more difficult matter. It raises the question

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as to whether the Constitution, when it has been drawn up by the Provisional Government, should be presented in the first instance to the Irish electorate or to the British Parliament. The noble and learned Lord said we should be in great difficulties if it is accepted by the Irish electorate and then comes here and this Parliament amends it. He asked whether there would not be difficulties and friction between the Parliament there and the Parliament here, and knowing that country as well as he does, the noble and learned Lord suggests that there will be great difficulties if a Constitution so drawn up and so accepted is modified here.
There are difficulties both ways. Let me put the other alternative, which is to present this Constitution to the Parliament here before it has been submitted for approval to the electorate in Ireland. I ask the noble and learned Lord whether he thinks that the fact that it has been previously approved by the Parliament here before having been submitted to the Irish electorate will greatly recommend it to that electorate, or whether they will be more likely to accept a Constitution coming from this country, something in the nature of a British manufactured Constitution rather than one they had accepted already themselves. I point out that difficulty to the noble and learned Lord. Obviously, it must go here first or there first, and surely the noble and learned Lord will think that on the balance it has probably a better chance of passing if it does not come first from here as a British made Constitution.
LORD CARSON: The noble Viscount has asked me a question, and I am bound to say that once the Irish electorate have adopted the Bill I believe that if this Parliament attempts to alter it in the slightest degree you will have the whole thing repudiated.
VISCOUNT PEEL: The noble and learned Lord, however, has not answered the question, the alternative question, I put to him, as to whether, if it is brought here first and accepted here, it will make it more acceptable to the Irish electorate?
LORD CARSON: It is difficult to consider this subject by way of question and answer. But if the Bill is brought in here before it goes to the electorate, there is an opportunity of trying to come to
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terms with whoever is promoting it in Ireland, and then going to the electorate afterwards for their adoption of it.
VISCOUNT PEEL: The noble and learned Lord complains that it is rather difficult to give answers to these questions without notice. I find myself under exactly the same difficulty as I had no notice of the questions that were to be raised. The noble and learned Lord also raised the question as to the position of Ulster under the Act of 1920 when the Provisional Government is set up and clothed with these powers. The Act of 1920 remains in force so far as the North of Ireland is concerned even when the Free State is established, assuming, as we do, that Northern Ireland will decide to withdraw itself from the Government of Ireland. With regard to the question about the Council—
LORD CARSON: A more important point is finance. Will the noble Viscount tell us something about that?
VISCOUNT PEEL: I cannot tell your Lordships anything about finance, but I understand that special arrangements are being made with regard to it. As regards the Council, that is one of the points which will have to be dealt with by consequential legislation. I turn to the other very important point raised by the noble Marquess—namely, that he had noticed in the discussion in another place that the Minister there in charge of the Bill was extremely unwilling to accept any Amendments proposed by honourable members in that House. He stated very fully his reasons therefor. The noble Marquess asked me, I think, whether greater latitude could be given to this House when the subject was discussed here.
I have generally noticed that far greater latitude is not allowed but taken in this House, in the discussion of various subjects, than in another place, and I can only answer his question, I am afraid, in a general form by saying that he himself—so conversant as he is with all these grave matters, and closely conversant as he is also with the difficult state of affairs at present obtaining in Ireland—will be almost a better judge, I think, than anybody in this House as to the risk or danger of a general repudiation of an Agreement of this kind if Amendments explaining, or, adding or taking away, are introduced into

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that Agreement. He will not fail to observe, moreover, that if these Amendments are introduced here, other Amendments might be introduced there, and that under an arrangement of that kind there might be no finality at all. I think, therefore, I must leave the reply to that question to the great knowledge which the noble Marquess possesses of these very difficult affairs, and of the effect which Amendments might have on the relations between the two countries and the general acceptance of the Agreement.
LORD SYDENHAM: May I ask the noble Viscount one question? Can he tell me whether the new Parliament of Southern Ireland, when it is elected, will at once be able to exercise full Dominion powers of legislation before the Bill dealing with the Constitution is passed by Parliament?
VISCOUNT PEEL: I think I did answer that. I said that this Parliament, when elected and before the Free State is fully set up, will be able to exercise those legislative powers.
On Question, Bill read 1ª, and to be printed.

MAGUIRE'S DIVORCE BILL. [H.L.]
Read 3ª (according to Order), and passed, and sent to the Commons.
BLACK COUNTRY TRAMWAYS AND LIGHT RAILWAYS BILL. [H.L.]
Read 2ª, and committed.
YORKSHIRE ELECTRIC POWER BILL. [H.L.]
Read 2ª, and committed.

DARTMOUTH HARBOUR COMMISSIONERS (RECONSTITUTION) BILL. [H.L.]
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORE): My Lords, I beg to move that Standing Order No. 92 be considered in order to its being dispensed with with regard to a Petition of the Dartmouth Harbour Commissioners.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to: Leave given to present the Petition.

KILMARNOCK GAS PROVISIONAL ORDER BILL.
Read 3ª, and passed.

SUMMER TIME 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, the principle involved in this Bill is one so familiar to your Lordships that I need not take up any time in discussing it. The Bill provides that Summer Time shall begin from the night of the last Saturday in March—or, when that Saturday is the one preceding Easter Day, the last Saturday but one in March— and shall end on the first Saturday in October. The reason why it has been decided not to begin on the Saturday immediately preceding Easter is that many Church Services on Easter Sunday begin very early, and if the introduction of Summer Time coincided with Easter Sunday it would make a very short night for those who wished to attend those services. I may say that the fixation of this date had been arranged in conference with France and Belgium, and I think it is obvious that it is a great advantage that our time arrangements and those of our next neighbours should coincide.
I do not think I need say any more about the Bill itself, but I will endeavour to address myself to two objections which have been raised. The first concerns the education question. I may say that very careful examination has been made into this matter by the Board of Education, and reports have been asked for from all the local education authorities, numbering 299 all told. Of these, a majority of two to one have reported in favour of the retention of Summer Time, and I may add, perhaps, that the inspectors of schools endorsed this opinion of the local education authorities. Consequently, I venture to think that there is but little to be said for the contention that the adoption of Summer Time is prejudicial to the health or the education of children.
I turn to another objection, the arguments in respect of which are, I think, more serious; I refer to the agricultural objection. It must be admitted, of course, that some inconvenience to agriculture has been caused by the operation of Summer Time, and this has been particularly felt during the harvest. In mentioning this, I should

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say that I do not refer to allotments. I think that allotment holders throughout the country have supported the introduction of Summer Time, for obvious reasons. But as regards the objection from the agricultural community, I cannot help thinking that the difficulties which are experienced in this connection could be met by an alteration in the hours of work on the farms in summer and in winter. After all, it is not a new idea that the hours of labour in winter and summer should vary, and if the difficulty which is experienced by certain of the agricultural community in observing Summer Time could be met, at any rate to a considerable extent, in this way, it seems to me that an arrangement of the kind I have suggested would not present an insuperable objection.
But, apart from the agricultural objection, I think I am right in saying that the vast majority of the people of this country are strongly in favour of the retention of Summer Time. There is no doubt—and we have had now some considerable number of years' experience of Summer Time—that it has proved to be a very considerable boon to those who live in urban districts, and especially to those who are occupied all day indoors. It gives these people an opportunity of enjoying fresh air and exercise out of doors which, under previous circumstances, was not open to them. I am sure that the abandonment of Summer Time would be a great disappointment to the vast majority of the community, and I do not think—I am giving every consideration to the objections raised by certain of the agricultural community—that the inconvenience to them is so great as to justify the abolition of Summer Time, which is so much favoured by most of the community. I may add that the Home Office and my right honourable friend the Secretary of State, all through the preparation of this Bill and all through the discussions, have been in close co-operation and consultation with the Department of Agriculture in Scotland and with the Ministry of Agriculture in this country, and both those Departments are in agreement with the view that the inconvenience to agriculture is not such as can balance the great advantage which Summer Time confers upon the population as a whole. I hope, therefore, your Lordships will give, this Bill a Second Reading this afternoon.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2ª.—(The Earl of Onslow.)
THE MARQUESS OF CREWE: My Lords, I do not rise to offer opposition in any sense to the Second Reading of this Bill. On the general proposition of the noble Earl, I quite agree that a great majority of the people of this country do welcome the invention of Summer Time as a principle. We have all, I think, felt at different times the convenience and attraction of it ourselves, and what the noble Earl has said about the urban community as a rule cannot, I think, be disputed. It is also true that workers on allotments unquestionably find this extra hour at certain times of the year a great convenience and advantage.
I would also say that, personally, never have been one of those who have attached much weight to the so-called educational objections. I know on what grounds they have been made, and in some cases there may be a certain foundation for them, but, speaking generally, I question if any material harm is done to the children by the institution of this change. When, however, you come to the agricultural question the matter is, I think, on a different footing. I can hardly believe what the noble Earl told ns—namely, that the Home Office bad been in perpetual communication on this subject with the Ministry of Agriculture, and that they found the Ministry of Agriculture cordially agreed with that essentially urban bureau, the Home Office, that it was quite a simple thing for agriculturists to alter their hours.
THE EARL OF ONSLOW: I did not quite say that. I said that my Department had been in communication with the Ministry of Agriculture, and that they were of opinion that the inconvenience caused was not so serious as to justify, on the balance, the discontinuance of Summer Time.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWE: I stand corrected if I misrepresented the noble Earl. I did not mean to do so, and I do not think I did, because he gave us the impression of more agreement on the part of the Ministry of Agriculture than I should have thought was possible. However, there is the noble Earl who represents agriculture, and we can ask him what he thinks. If the Ministry of Agriculture said that the agricultural objection was not such as to justify the rejection of the Bill, because a great majority of the people of this country-prefer Summer Time to not having Summer

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Time, there, I think, we all agree. It is one of those cases in which minorities must suffer. But there is one particular matter which I should like to put before the noble Earl and I should be almost inclined to hope for the agreement of the noble Earl, the Parliamentary Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, on this point. In certain parts of England immense inconvenience is caused by the prolongation of the term so late as October 1. I think that if the term ended on September 1, although the agricultural community would not be pleased, because all the important agricultural bodies have passed resolutions asking to have Summer Time done away with altogether—I think if that concession could be made a great part of their objection would disappear.
The noble Earl himself lives in the South of England. If he lived north of the Trent he would realise that in September, by the use of Summer Time, the agricultural operations during harvest are sometimes reduced almost to a farce. Very often work cannot be begun to any purpose until noon or thereabouts on a farm, and for many reasons it is totally impracticable to change the hours of the operations on a farm in consideration of Summer Time. For one reason, in all dairying districts the morning's milk has to be sent away by train. The trains pay no attention to the supposed alteration of hours on a farm, and farm hours and the morning's milking have to be fitted in to suit Summer Time. That is found to be a most serious grievance in many parts of England, and I would beg the noble Earl to consider it. Although we all understand that he intends to proceed with the Bill, I would ask whether it would not be possible to restrict the operation of Summer Time by a month. I have no doubt that some other noble Lord will move an Amendment to that effect during the Committee stage, and I should like the noble Earl to consider whether such a very large proportion of the population which is affected by the actual terms of the Bill could not be conciliated, as they would be, by the alteration I have suggested.
LORD BLEDISLOE: My Lords, the subject has been so exhaustively dealt with by the noble Marquess that there is little left to be said, but I should like to add that I am certain that agricultural opinion, so far from abating in intensity on this subject, is hardening with the passage of time; and the noble Earl
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opposite, I am quite sure, was in error when he suggested that you could have one set of hours of labour in the country and another in the towns. The two are too far intermingled, especially with the train and railway elements taken into account. The noble Earl suggested just now that we were in accord with France in this matter. I hope that is so, but I think I am right in saying that the Senate in France has turned down this very same scheme in the last fortnight. Apparently, in France there is not that unanimity of opinion which there appears to be in this preponderatingly urban country of ours. Just as it has been found by the Government to be impossible to impose inexorable economic laws, so I believe, in the long run, it will be found to be inadvisable to stand out against the laws of nature, and it is obviously intended by a kind Providence or by Dame Nature that we should recognise the hours which the various seasons provide for us, in the way of light and darkness. One thing is quite clear. Nothing which the Government can possibly do can remove the dew from a ripened crop of corn, and that being so it is bound to curtail, at a most critical time of the year, the hours which are available for gathering in the harvest. For this reason I have always been against the adoption of this unnatural scheme.
On Question, Bill read 2ª, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

GOVERNMENT'S LAND POLICY.
THE MARQUESS OF LINCOLNSHIRE THE MARQUESS OF LINCOLNSHIRE had given Notice to call attention to the general agricultural and land policy of the Coalition Government, and to a statement made by the Minister of Agriculture in the House of Commons on February 10, 1922, namely, "We are getting rid of Government estates and Government farms as quickly as ever we can"; and to ask His Majesty's Government the following questions—

1. Do the Government estates and Government farms referred to form any part of the hereditary estates of the Crown now under the control and management of His Majesty's Government?

2. If the estates and farms referred to are not Crown estates, when and for what purpose were they bought by the Government?

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3. What is the acreage?

4. What was the cost?

5. How much money has been expended upon these Government estates and farms since bought?

6. What income has been derived from them?

7. What are they expected to realise when sold?

8. What number of tenants are there on the land, and what is to become of them if the land is sold?

The noble Marquess said: My Lords, I should like to ask whether it would be for the convenience of the House, and would shorten proceedings, if the noble Earl opposite gave me the answers to my Questions first, and then, if necessary, whether he would allow me to make any remark in answer; or whether the noble Earl would desire me to say what I have to say first.
THE EARL OF ANCASTER: My Lords, I am not very well acquainted with the procedure of the House. I can, of course, answer the Questions which the noble Marquess has put on the Paper, but I think that, if the noble Marquess then desires to make certain observations on my answers, with the courtesy of the House I should be allowed to make some reply to his criticisms, because the Questions are rather vague, and wide in terms, and I do not quite know what ground the noble Marquess intends to cover.
THE MARQUESS OF LINCOLNSHIRE: I am in rather a difficulty. I am afraid I am a little bit inquisitive, but I asked eight Questions, to which I do not get any answer. Slay I ask the noble Earl, at any rate, this? Does he intend to reverse the policy as regards Crown Lands and to go on with the sale of the Crown Lands, or shall we confine the remarks that we have to make simply to small holdings?
THE EARL OF ANCASTER: I think I may tell the noble Marquess at once that at the present moment it is not contemplated to sell any of the Crown Lands.
THE MARQUESS OF LINCOLNSHIRE: That clears the ground, and makes it very much easier. In consequence of the answer given by the noble Earl I may confine myself entirely to the question of small
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holdings and settling soldiers on the land. Perhaps I might be forgiven if I made a comparison with regard to the settlement on the land of persons who required small holdings before the war, and the numbers so settled since the war. It will be remembered that in 1907 the Liberal Government of the day brought in an Allotment Bill, which was passed and blessed by your Lordships' House, and which I think, on the whole, had very satisfactory results. The Report for 1914, which was published in 1915, gave the following figures. The total loss for the seven years on those small holdings, for remission of rent and loss of rent, was a little over £700, and included in that £700 there was a, sum of nearly £400 which had to he paid in 1912 to the Norfolk County Council to recoup some small holders who, by something like a visitation of God, had all their small holdings washed out by a waterspout. In that period of seven years the total cost to the Suite was £44,000 a year.
Then in 1914 the war broke out and the County Council bought no more land, and it was not till 1918, when the war came happily to au end, that it seemed necessary to meet the great demand which we understood existed for land among men who had been fighting at the front. These men wished to raise themselves from the rank of agricultural labourers, and to have some sort of stake in the land, which, as Lord Northcliffe said, they were determined to fashion and to share. Therefore, Lord Ernie, whom I am very glad to see in his place, very wisely determined to start some sort of scheme so as to get these men put upon the land. I believe it was started in 1918, and I am not aware of what those proposals were, or to how great an extent the noble Lord was connected with them. I think he resigned in 1919, and was succeeded by Lord Lee of Fareham, on whom, I think I may fairly say, the whole working of the measure rested. I do not wish to lay any censure of any sort upon him, or upon the present Minister of Agriculture, or upon the permanent officials of the Department, with which I was so long and so happily connected. All they had to do was to carry out their orders. They did so to the best of their abilities, but I honestly think that the scheme was a very had one, and that the responsibility really rests on the persons who were responsible for carrying it Out.
I am in some difficulty because I have asked eight Questions, and I have not

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had an answer to any of them. I asked what is the acreage of these lands, what was the cost; how much money has been expended on these Government estates; what income has been derived from them, and what they are expected to realise when sold; and I am absolutely in the dark. So the only thing I can possibly do is to take the particulars from the Geddes Report. They are practically the same, and they perhaps have the advantage that they can be verified. If, by any accident, I make a mistake or a misstatement I can at once be called over the coals. In the Second Geddes Report we are told that £20,000,000 was voted by the Government for this scheme. I believe that is absolutely right. At the present moment 260,000 acres have been provided, that is, about 50,000 acres more than were provided before the war. The number of small holdings covered by commitments at the present moment is 17,297; the number of soldiers already settled is 14,200, and there are not yet provided for about 21,000 more, consisting of ex-Service men, civilians, and others who are awaiting interviews. So that out of the hundreds of thousands of agricultural labourers who went out to fight for the country only 14,000 have been settled on the land; and out of the 21,000 now waiting to be provided for the effective number which according to the Geddes Report it is anticipated will be provided for is only 7,000.
I think that is a very remarkable thing. Why is it anticipated that only 7,000 will be provided for? People say there is the shrinkage. No doubt there is. But it seems to me that this terrible shrinkage is accounted for by the disappointment that these good fellows have had. They go time after time trying to get land, they are refused and refused, and they lose heart. On page 37 of the Geddes Report some illuminating and somewhat alarming figures appear. The House will understand that there are 250,000 acres of land purchased or leased by the Government.
THE EARL OF ANCASTER: That 250,000 acres includes the county councils' land.
THE MARQUESS OF LINCOLNSHIRE: Yes; but there are 21,000 that come straight through your Department, are there not?
THE EARL OF ANCASTER: Yes, I think that is so.
THE MARQUESS OF LINCOLNSHIRE: And the rest out of the county councils. That is right, is it not?
THE EARL OF ANCASTER: Yes, that is correct.
THE MARQUESS OF LINCOLNSHIRE: Very well; altogether, then, there are 250,000 acres purchased or leased by the Government, and the result is an annual loss of £2 per acre all round—that is to say, on approximately a quarter of a million acres of selected land—and the House will allow me to say that this is not heath land but selected land, the best land in England that they can get—the annual loss to the State is half a million sterling. In Sir Eric Geddes' Report the loss for 1922–1923 is stated to be not less than three-quarters of a million sterling. Apart from this, the cost of what they call the headquarters administration (I suppose that is G.H.Q. or a sort of Directors' fees and so on, for the management of the thing) is stated to be £75,000 a year—£75,000 a year!—which is very nearly twice as much as the whole cost to the country of the 200,000 acres which were obtained for small holdings between 1907 and 1914 before the war. Your Lordships know what I am talking about. This House is a house of landlords, and in the good old days it was always supposed that the House of Lords owned either one-third or one-fifth, I forget which, of the whole of the land of England.
Can your Lordships imagine any of your estates, which may consist of a quarter of a million acres (and there were several estates in England of that size and larger still) of selected land not only bringing in no income at all, but entailing a loss to the owner of £500,000 a year. If your Lordships will refer to page 37 of the Geddes Report you will see that is accurate, and that is apart, as I said before, from the cost of headquarters administration which is £75,000 a year. People would say, I suppose: "That is all very well, but you cannot possibly compare the two things. You cannot compare things before the war with the state of affairs at present."
THE EARL OF ANCASTER: Hear, hear.
THE MARQUESS OF LINCOLNSHIRE: The noble Earl applauds that statement and I admit that I quite agree; every sensible man must see it, and every sensible

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man must agree to it. But supposing we say that everything has increased three times over, because we are told that everything is three times as expensive as it was before the war, that means a loss of £750,000. If you take the £40,000 that the whole management of 200,000 acres cost before the war and multiply it by four it comes to £160,000. Then subtract £160,000 from £750,000 and what remains? About £600,000. That is to say, there is a loss of £600,000 annually. Where has it gone? Who has it? Have the men got it? Where, on earth, has all that money gone? I think we are perfectly justified in saying—and I only hope that the noble Earl will be able to reassure us on the point—that £600,000 has disappeared and nobody knows where it has gone.
The only solution of this problem that I am able to discover is in a Report on the working of the Small Holding Colonies Act. I dare say the noble Lord, Lord. Ernle, will be able to tell us what that is, but there was a Small Holding Colonies Act. There has been some delay, I believe, in printing the Report of the Ministry on the small holdings colonies for which the Ministry are entirely responsible. The last published Annual Report only carries us up to March, 1920, but the facts contained in that Report are stupendously alarming. Particulars are there given of thirteen settlements, with a total area of 24,000 acres of land. Six of these are described as profit-sharing settlements, and the farming accounts show a loss of £39,000 on those profit-sharing settlements.
I am very grateful to the House for allowing me to go into these figures. I do not propose to take up time by dealing with all the settlements; I desire to refer very briefly to three of them. This is what is to he found in the Geddes Report. There is the Pembray Farm Settlement which comprises 1,340 acres. It was purchased for £30,000, and £24,000 has been spent on it, making a total expenditure of £54,000. What does it do? It provides for twenty—twenty!—ex-Service men, two land army women and, with twenty civilian skilled workers to help, it lost on the cultivation of the land £12,000 in the first eighteen months farming. That is almost half as much as the whole cost of the property, and this was at practically war prices. Then there is Roleston. I do not know where that is, but 34,000 acres were purchased there for £47,000. An additional
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expenditure of £32,000 was incurred, making a total of about £80,000. For how many men does that place provide? For twenty-eight ox-Service men and ten civilians, and there was a loss of £8,000 on the first twelve months' farming. I am speaking under correction here, but I have tried to work it out and I believe I am right that it cost £2,106 to put each man on the land.
The last one with which I shall trouble your Lordships is Sutton Bridge in Lincolnshire. There, 6,500 acres were purchased at a fixed annual rent charge of £18,500, and it is stated that it is proposed to expend £287,000 on this settlement. These figures are terrible. As I had to bring this forward I wrote to the noble Lord, Lord Lee of Fareham, telling him that I was going to do so, and asking him whether it would not be wise for him to be in his place to explain to some extent these frightful figures. I was unfortunate enough to receive no reply of arty sort, and the noble Lord is not in his place. But I must, as well as I can, explain to your Lordships from the Report how and why all this happened. The Director-General of the Land Supply Department, which, I believe, is a new Department of the Ministry of Agriculture, and was invented by the noble Lord, states that the situation is regrettable. I should think it was! But he pleads that his undertakings were only of an experimental character. If this is done in the green, what on earth is going to be done in the dry? He adds that there has been some loss of public money in conducting these experiments, but he is satisfied that so far as small holding settlements are concerned "the operations by the Ministry have given a new tone and a new direction to the whole policy of land settlement in this country."
Then comes the most astounding statement that "they will be abundantly justified." I shall feel very much surprised if any unfortunate ratepayer in this country will find any justification for the ghastly loss of money entailed by the carrying out of these schemes. The Director-General of Land Supply points out that there is one factor in justification for all this. And this is the justification. He says:—
"There is, however, one aspect of the Ministry's administration of them to which it is impossible to attach too great importance."
And what do your Lordships think that is?
"The work was begun when the philosophy of small holdings was incomplete."

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What on earth is the philosophy of smallholdings? From Diogenes downwards can anybody explain the philosophy of small holdings?
Consider for one moment what happened. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Ernie, had anything to do with this, but the noble Lord, when be began these operations, was assisted by an old friend and colleague of mine, Sir Richard Winfrey, who at one time was my Parliamentary unpaid private secretary. This shows the impossibility of Coalition administration. It is a most wonderful exposure of it. This is the kind of thing that happened. A man who had been over the top four or five times, an agricultural labourer in the county in which I live—for almost every agricultural labourer went to the war—comes back with four or five chevrons—a red chevron, and wound stripes, and probably a Military medal—and he goes to his county council and says: "I want a bit of land." What happens? The county council, with the fear of Lord Ernie before their eyes, say: "Oh, we are in a great state of philosophic doubt as to whether you are the right sort of man to put on the land, and at the present moment we are not quite certain that we have the land that would suit you. Therefore, you must wait and see whether in time, sonic months hence, we shall be able to meet your request." What would that wretched man say? He would say what the lovesick Romeo said to Friar Laurence—"'Hang up philosophy!' It helps not, it prevails not; talk no more, but give me the small holding that I am absolutely justified in asking from you by the law of the land."
Put it the other way—Sir Richard Winfrey's way. Sir Richard is a man of action. He goes to the county council and he says: "We must have land. We are going to have it. Never mind the expense; we must have the land." What happened in many cases was this. They went to the county council and said: "You must get the land, never mind what it will cost or whether it will pay or not; we must have the land on which to put the people." I heard of a terrible case of that sort in Radnorshire. Then the poor county council had to do what they were told. They would have been well advised to think of the advice that St. Paul offered to the Colossians. In one of his Epistles he said, "Remember this, my brethren.
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Beware lest any man despoil you through philosophy." There is no exaggeration in any of the figures that I have quoted, nor. I hope, in anything I have said.
That is the position in which we now find ourselves. What is to be done? What on earth is to be done face to face with stick figures as these? Mercifully, in the Coalition Government, we have in the Agricultural Ministry two men who, if I may be permitted to say so, are in the same stable. We have Sir Arthur Griffith-Boscawen, a man of great courage, who scrapped Lord Lee's rotten Agriculture Bill within six months after it became law. He also knocked on the head what I may call Lord Lee's Runnymede policy of selling the Crown Lands. We now look to him, and to the noble Lord opposite (the Earl of Ancaster), who has a great knowledge of farming and is the owner of a very large estate which is most admirably managed, to come to our rescue.
I most respectfully suggest to these two Ministers that they should scrap entirely the Land Settlement Scheme, which is only a deplorable sequel to the sound and practical Act of 1907, and put the whole thing hack again from where it never ought to have been taken—namely, under the control of the eight small holding commissioners who were appointed in 1911. Those eight men were practical men. We divided England into eight districts, as in the case of Lord Haldane's territorial scheme. Every man knew his own district, knew what land was fit for small holdings and what was not. A great difficulty in life is not so much to know what to do but what not to do. Each commissioner knew what sort of people to put on the land, and if these commissioners had been entrusted to go on with the work which they had done so well before the war I do not think there would have been this dreadful chaos and extravagance now. This proposal I know is but a drop in the ocean. It may be said: "Why all this cry about so little wool? After all, it cannot be more than £20,000,000." I know that £20,000,000 is nothing to a man of fashion, but I suggest that this will he an example to other Departments, a tacit recognition that all this post-war unpardonable wastefulness has got to stop and that the public will no longer tolerate this orgy of extraordinary and frenzied finance which is rapidly draining the life-blood of the country.
LORD ERNLE: My Lords, we have listened to a most interesting speech from the noble Marquess and I should not have intervened in the debate except for one reason. The noble Marquess has invited us to a war dance around the mangled corpse of Lord Lee of Fareham. I rather gathered he has invited me to hold hands with him and join in that war dance, but I regret to say that, in the main, it is my corpse that ought to be lying in the middle of the ring. It is very difficult to disentangle the various statements which the noble Marquess has drawn from various Reports, and, of course, he is a past master in choosing the point from which he will attack. You never know from which side of the cover he is going to break, but when he does make his onslaught it is a formidable thing. It is made not only with weapons of precision but with jingalls, stinkpots, trombones, tom-toms and cleavers, and all sorts of barbarous weapons of warfare; and at the end the corpse of the Minister is left lying on the ground.
Let me try to make certain points clear, if I can. In 1918, and also in 1919, there was a wave of what I at the time thought was sentimental imagination that an enormous number of men wanted to come back from the front and go on the land. We sent out a Commission to the Western Front to inquire what the numbers were. We were told that there were something like 345,000 men who wanted, in some form or other, to come back to the land. I have had a great deal to do with creating small holdings. With the exception of the noble Marquess himself I probably have created as many as any one in this House, but I long ago came to the conclusion that this was a matter which requires extreme care; that they did not answer in every case, but that with land in the right hands, land of the right quality and in the right locality, then small holdings are an economic, social, and moral boon to the country.
I confess, and I say it openly, that I am strongly opposed to the attempt to flood this country with men on the land irrespective of the locality and irrespective of the quality of the land. After all, the quantity of the land which is fitted for small holdings in this country is limited. I said so again and again, and in the Press at the time I was severely criticised. I met a deputation from the Parliamentary Committee of
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the Trade Union Congress who came to appeal for all these men to be put on the land. I told them quite frankly that I thought there would be such a slump in prices in two or three years that the men put on the land would be ruined. I added that at the present prices we had to pity not for the land—that is a matter really of infinitesimal importance, it is the least thing that matters in putting men on the land—but for the cost of equipment, and the rate of interest they would have to pay, it was absolutely impossible to put a single man on the land as an economic proposition. And I maintain that it was.
At that time it required an expenditure of £1,800 to equip a man in a small holding of fifteen acres; and you had to pay six per cent. on your money. Conceive the proposition of putting a man, however experienced and however good the land, on fifteen acres, and charging hint £108 per year. He could not pay it, and no human being could have paid it. I resisted as strongly as I could what appeared to me to be a perfectly mad proposition. Many of these men were inexperienced, many without capital; but the country had made up its mind that it was a national duty, a kind of a great national war memorial, to put men on t he land. I told the Government at the time that it would cost £20,000,000 to put 20,000 men on the land. I said it would cost at least £1,000 per man at the prices we were then paying, and I also said that. at the end of it they must expect a loss of forty per cent.; that is to say, they must expect to lose £8,000,000 on the transaction.
That is what I told the Government. That was the recognised principle, and the Small Holdings (Facilities) Bill, which was brought before your Lordships' House in 1919, about a week after I had resigned, was framed upon that principle, and it was explained in the White Paper that accompanied it that that was the principle. Therefore, when Sir Eric Geddes, in his Report, tells this story of £20,000,000 being expended you must remember that that was the identical arrangement made; and my estimate, according to the figures of the noble Marquess, was most singularly accurate. According to the figures he read they have put on the land something like 15,000 soldiers at a cost at the present moment of £5,000,000. That is exactly what. I said.

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Out of curiosity I asked at the Ministry of Agriculture on my way here to-day at what rate of sacrifice they calculated they had got out of certain small holdings, and they told me that it was 39·7 per cent. of the capital. I had told them that it would be 40 per cent. As to my objection to small holdings, on the ground of a coming slump in prices, on the ground that you could not put them on land at any economic rate, and that if you did it, you must do it as a war memorial, and must expect to lose £8,000,000 over the transaction, the whole of England knows, for it is an old story, that the Bill in which this plan was adopted was before your Lordships' House two and a half years ago with full details, and your Lordships accepted it. Therefore Sir Eric Geddes' proposition, in spite of what the noble Marquess appears to think, is no new discovery, and on the whole I think that the Government may congratulate itself that it did not allow itself to be carried away by a sweep of sentimental imagination and put on the land an enormous number of unfortunate men who would have been assuredly ruined by the recent slump. It is the weakest who first go to the wall, and the man at the bottom of the scale on the agricultural ladder is the man who feels the fall in prices first.
The noble Marquess alluded to certain small holding settlements and certain profit-sharing farms which were run by the Ministry of Agriculture. I should like, if I may, to say a word upon that. The scheme of small holdings, or what were called—I think, mistakenly—colonies, was started by the Government in 1916, on the Report of Sir Harry Verney's Committee, of which a prominent member of this House, Lord Northbrook, was a member, and it was in deference to their opinion that in 1916, before I was in office, the Government were empowered to buy 6,000 acres of land, I think, for these small holding groups. I call them groups because if you call them colonies in the country districts you set the agricultural labourers against them at once, because they think a colony means something penal or connected with inebriates or epileptics. So let us call them groups. They were grouped together around a central farm, which was a supply farm, providing ploughs, horses and such machinery as was wanted at an economic rent, and helping group settlers to develop their small holdings, the object being to obtain a unit in which you could start co-operative buying and selling and co-
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operative treatment of the land. Those settlements are the ones to which I think the gentleman who drew up that report, the Director-General—I never knew him by that name—referred with sonic satisfaction.
The other system was that by which experimental farms were made on an ordinary bit of land and worked under a skilled director as an ordinary farm by men who earned the standard rates of wages of the district, who were totally inexperienced, but who, while they were earning wages, could learn the practice of farming, and ultimately dribble off into small holdings. They were educational, and they were devised to be carried on as cheaply as possible, though, as the noble Marquess has implied, they did not turn out to be very cheap. Up to the end of October, 1918—I am not sure of the exact date—one of these farms made a profit of £11,000 on eighteen months' working, and another made a profit of £7,000 in the same period. Then came a collapse, and they lost their gains.
I believe that in three years one of them showed a profit of £600 and another a loss of £300. What is the explanation? So long as we were running them with skilled labour, such as was left in this country during the war, they made a profit. I venture to say they were very well run then, and I dare say they were equally well run afterwards. The reason they did not make a profit afterwards, or at any rate the main reason, was that you had a number of inexperienced men whom you were bound to pay the standard wages of the district, wages that had to be paid to the skilled man who could do farm work which the others had not yet learnt to do. You were trying to make these men better equipped small holders, so that they might pass on into small holdings.
The noble Marquess referred to an old colleague of mine, and a most staunch henchman of his own, Sir Richard Winfrey. Sir Richard Winfrey was keenly interested in small holdings and in these colonies, and when I was at the Board of Agriculture and he was Parliamentary Secretary, I told him that I would entrust him with finding the land which we were ordered to get under the Act of Parliament. He took the utmost pains to get it, as I am sure the noble Marquess will agree with me lie was likely to do. He made—or rather I made, for I think it was my responsibility

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—one very bad shot. We bought in Wales a farm which was a very great failure. I can only say that we took the advice of the Welsh Agricultural Committee, that the thing was discussed up hill and down dale, that we had the fullest reports. But it was a very great failure. I have my own view about it to this day. I do not think it need have been such a bad purchase as has been thought if the right measures had been taken. But I do not defend it; it was a bad purchase. We were ill-advised in buying it, but it was the one piece of land, apparently, upon which North and South Wales could agree. We lost a great deal of money upon it.
As to this enormous loss of £730,000 that appears in the accounts, what that means is that the cottages which are necessary for these small holdings are being built, and that this represents a gradual building of cottages for the small holders. As soon as these cottages are built, the land is, of course, divided up more and more among the small holders, and the fact to which the noble Marquess quite rightly draws attention—that there are so few on the land at present—is due to the fact that the building of cottages is a very slow process even now. The enormous expense of these cottages is the reason in the main why the cost to the State is so high. It has not reached within three millions of the amount that, with your eyes open, your Lordships agreed the Government should spend upon the small-holding system, but above all things I think it is essential that we should take Provision to get back to proper economic rents.
I think in 1926 all properties devoted to small holdings are to be valued, one by one, at what they are worth, irrespective of the cost of their creation. Supposing you have had to spend in these abnormal times £1,500 upon equipment, where in normal times you would only have had to spend £700, the valuation will be only what it is worth in 1926 to the county councils, and it will be let at the economic rent which the land is able to fetch in that year. They were very difficult times. I do not profess that the scheme which we put forward might not have been better, but it was frank, open and above-board. The country insists upon having these men on the land. The Minister of Agriculture thinks it is a mistake; that it is a time when no man in his senses would try to put men on the land as an economic proposition. The
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money you have to spend is so much. Very well, if you wish to have them on the land you must be prepared to spend the money as a war memorial of national demand. I could answer sonic of the noble Marquess's Questions, but I think have made far too long a speech already, especially as I know the Government want votes rather than speeches.
LORD BUCKMASTER: My Lords, it is no artificial expression of courtesy if I say that I never hear the noble Lord who has just sat down without the greatest interest, and also without acquiring very considerable information. Certainly, it would be most unbecoming of me to attempt to criticise what he has said; nor do I desire to do so, because, so far as I can follow his argument, I am entirely in agreement with him; but what I have risen for is to ask your Lordships to see what is the position that his speech has disclosed. It is this. A scheme is being put forward, he says, as a national demand. How do you know that? All von know is that certain newspapers say, from morning to morning, that you have got to put the men on the land. It may represent nothing but the opinion of a group of people in Fleet Street, who have never muddied their feet with clay in their lives. That is the national demand.
You then go to the man who knows and he says to the Government: "This is a profound blunder; you cannot provide for men in, this way, and it is your duty to say so." What does the Government do? The Government says: "No, there is this paper and that paper that is attacking us, day after day, because we are not going to do it. We are going to spend the nation's money and waste it, although we know that what you say is true and no profit of any kind can come out of it." Then the noble Lord says: "You regard it as a war memorial! "As a war memorial erected to whom? To 20,000 selected men out of a demobilised total of between three and five millions. It really is ridiculous to attempt to deal with the waste and havoc of the war in that way. It would be infinitely better if, instead of spending at the rate of £1,000 per head on these men, there hail been sonic attempt to instruct them in industries in which they might find a more profitable outlet for their energies.
The noble Lord then says: "How can you complain? You passed the Bill."

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We have passed many Bills in this House, some after great protest from your Lordships, but we have passed them at the urgent request of the Government, who entreated us not to put our opinions against the fulfilment of what they regarded as a great national purpose. This Bill, no doubt, was one, and the Agriculture Bill was another. At the end of it all, when these Bills result in disaster, the Government come down and, instead of accepting the blame themselves, attempt to put it upon your Lordships, because they say you ought to have stopped it. All I can say is that to the best of my humble power I have tried, and always without success, to stop lots of their Bills, and I believe that we should be in a much better position if 75 per cent. of the Government's Bills had been refused by this House. I regret exceedingly that the Government did not think fit to accept the advice of somebody who knew, and preferred to yield to the clamour of men who did not know. They neither knew history nor cared for instruction, otherwise they would know that Augustus Caesar tried precisely this same experiment in the early years of Christianity, and met with precisely the same disastrous results.
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY OF THE MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES (THE EARL OF ANCASTER): My Lords, this has been a somewhat longer debate than I had anticipated, and I think that my best course will be to reply to the Questions which the noble Marquess has placed upon the Paper. In order to do that I shall have to make a little explanation, to amplify what has already been said by Lord Ernle. In the first instance, I may repeat that the Minister for Agriculture, when he made his statement that he was getting rid of Government farms, did not refer to the Crown estates but to a large part of the land which was acquired under the Small Holding Colonies Acts of 1916 and 1918, of which Lord Ernie has given you a rather long description.
In amplification of that I may say that the land acquired under those Acts may be divided into two categories: (1) land intended to be sub-divided into small holdings, and cases of That kind, found at Holbeach and Sutton Bridge, and (2) land not suitable for cultivation as small holdings, but intended to be farmed as profit-sharing settlements, such as Patrington
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and Amesbury. Those estates which have been divided into small holdings and are still managed by the Ministry compare very favourably with the small holdings which have been provided by the county councils. With regard to the profit-sharing settlements, Lord Ernie has spoken at such great length upon the subject that I do not intend to delay you any further upon it. There was a big demand at the time for poor people to go on the land, and it was thought that this was a good way, as Lord Ernie said, of getting men interested in the land and teaching ex-Service men the cultivation of the land. Unfortunately, most of these profit-sharing schemes and farms have turned out a loss to the State. The noble Marquess read from a Report with great effect, but I do not think the Ministry have ever attempted to mislead the public, and to make out that they were any better than they were, because undoubtedly there was a very big loss.
Now, I will deal with the policy of the Government with regard to this land purchased under the farm settlement scheme. We intend to retain the profit-sharing settlements of Patrington and Amesbury, at which 102 ex-Service men are employed as settlers. These two settlements show every prospect of developing into self-supporting enterprises, creditable to the ex-Service men settled there, and to the Ministry itself. We intend to dispose of all other lands acquired for the purpose of creating profit-sharing settlements. This process has been in operation for some time, and already 5,679 acres of such land have been disposed of. We propose to transfer, wherever practicable, small holding settlements to the neighbouring county councils, as soon as the land is equipped and let. This process has also been in operation for some time, and 1,809 acres have been so transferred. That is land which was purchased by the Government, and run by the Ministry, and which is now being gradually transferred to the county councils of the areas in which the property is situated. There may be cases in which, for one reason or another, the neighbouring county council is not prepared to take over the land acquired by the Ministry as small holdings, and where those small holders have remained we intend to keep the holdings.
Now I will answer the noble Marquess's Questions categorically:—

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(1) The Minister in the sentence quoted was not referring to the hereditary estates of the Crown.

(2) The estates and farms referred to by the Minister were acquired, some by purchase, some by lease, under the Small Holding Colonies Acts, 1916–1918.

(3) The total area so acquired was 24,836 acres, but of these 7,188 are no longer under the direct control of the Ministry, disposals having been made as follows:—(a) Taken over by county councils as part of their small holding undertakings, 1,809 acres; (b) leased by the Ministry as large farms, 2,395 acres; (c) sold by the Ministry, 3,284 acres; making a total of 7,488 acres.

(4) Of the total area acquired 12,287 acres were purchased for £346,91.6, and, in addition, 8,681 acres were acquired in consideration of perpetual rent charges amounting to £17,350, rising to £20,350 per annum. The remaining area, which was very small, was taken on lease.

(5) Since these properties have been acquired by the Ministry the total amount expended on their development and equipment is £433,911.

THE MARQUESS OF LINCOLNSHIRE: What was the cost?
THE EARL OF ANCASTER: The total area acquired was 12,287 acres, for £346,913.
THE MARQUESS on LINCOLNSHIRE: The question I want answered is: How many millions did the whole acreage cost? The total acreage obtained is 230,000 acres. What is the cost of that?
THE EARL OF ANCASTER: That is quite a different question.
THE MARQLTESS OF LINCOLNSHIRE: That is the Question on the Paper.
THE EARL OF ANCASTER: No, the noble Marquess asks about these lands which the Minister was talking of disposing of. What lie is referring to now is the acreage acquired by the county councils.
THE MARQUESS OF LINCOLNSHIRE: Very well.
THE EARL OF ANCASTER: But I will deal with the whole matter. The answers to the remaining Questions are as follow:—
(6) The gross annual income being received by the Ministry from these properties is approximately £45,000.
(7) It is impossible to reply to Question 7, because it will be seen from the above statement that the Minister's policy is not to sell all these estates.
(8) As already explained, the acreage which remains under the Ministry's control is now 17,318, but the Ministry has not obtained possession of the whole of this acreage, as it comprises several large farms which were let on leases at the date of acquisition by the Ministry. The actual area, therefore, let in small holdings, or carried on as profit-sharing farms, is 14,565 acres, on which 512 persons have been settled, of whom 450 are ex-Service men. Of these 450 ex-Service men, 315 are in possession of small holdings and allotments, and the remaining 135 are working as wage earners on profit-sharing farms.
I must try to make it quite clear that I am now dealing with the land which is the specific property of the Ministry, and which was run from Whitehall. We heard a great deal about farming from Whitehall, and it is of that that we are trying to get rid. As we stand at present, we estimate that, including what we have paid for the land, what we spent on equipment, and all the rest, a profit of 2 per cent. on the capital is being returned. We make out that the net income we are receiving is £14,000, after making deductions for upkeep and management, and that represents a profit of 2 per cent. Considering everything, I do not think that that is very bad, and it may improve. There have been big losses, and some of this land was bought at a high price.
LORD BUCKMASTER: That represents a capital loss of about 60 per cent?
THE EARL OF ANCASTER: Yes. Of course, everything was working on a 6 per cent. basis when this was done, if not 64 per cent.
LORD BUCKMASTER: That is more, of course.
THE EARL OF ANCASTER: That, of course, has always been one of the great troubles of this land settlement question—that it had to be done on a basis of 6½ per cent. Money was very dear at that

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time. I do not know whether the noble Lord opposite is really indignant about the loss, but I am afraid that some of us who are landowners are quite content when we get a return of 2 per cent. on our property. I expect his retort will be that we ought to be more careful with the taxpayers' money, and that, perhaps, was rather why Sir Arthur Griffith-Boscawen, in another place, suggested that the State was not always the best of landlords and that it was to be regretted that the large landowners of the country were dying out. My own experience has been the same as that of very many people—that you were very lucky, as a landowner, if you got 4 per cent. on the money you spent in equipping a farm.
In regard to the figures, I should be very pleased to give them to the noble Marquess in full if he would like to examine them, because they are interesting. He travelled over a great deal of ground in the course of his speech and, quite rightly, flattered himself over the success of his small holdings scheme, which was started, I think, in 1908, and compared that with what he professes to regard as the great failure of the Government small holdings scheme of later years. The noble Marquess is perfectly correct in saying that his small holdings were a success. He told your Lordships, quite honestly, that they were not entirely self-supporting. I think his figures were practically correct and that something like £300,000 has been paid out in respect of them.
THE MARQUESS OF LINCOLNSHIRE: £40,000 for seven years.
THE EARL OF ANCASTER: That is right; that is nearly £300,000; and I think it can be said that they have proved a great boon to the country. But to compare small holdings started in 1908 with small holdings started in 1919–20 is impossible; they are absolutely not comparable and, as the noble Marquess himself said, it is not a fair comparison. May I, as a farmer, say something that we all know—namely, that in 1908, and subsequently, land was on the rise and farmers were making better profits. I know it myself. In 1909, 1910, 1911 and 1912, so far as my own experience goes, each year showed a little improvement on its predecessor. That went on until last year, practically, and, as a rule, there was a steady rise in farmers' profits.
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Consequently, it would be a very extraordinary thing if small holders—I am speaking of them now in the bulk—who were put on the land in 1908 had not done pretty well by 1919 or 1920. Some of them, as we know, have gone out; but a great many of them remain and have done exceedingly well. Everything was much cheaper in 1908 and every small holder who started then and carried on right up to 1914 or 1915 got the benefit of improving conditions and rising prices. Therefore, as I have said, it would have been strange if the noble Marquess's scheme had not been a success. I can assure him that I do not wish to belittle his efforts, because his was a very excellent Bill and it has been appreciated by thousands of people in the country who obtained small holdings under it.
Having said that, I must add one word in defence of the present condition of things. The two schemes are absolutely not comparable. To start with, the cost of buying the land differs enormously. In addition to that the cost of houses, fences and equipment went up to three times its pre-war value and, as the noble Lord, Lord Ernie, said, it became an absolute impossibility to put men on the land, as an economic proposition. As the noble and learned Lord opposite has said, every one of these men who have been settled on the land has been given an absolute gift from the State there is no getting over that fact, and I hope they are thankful. But when he goes on to say that it ought never to have beta done, that, of course, is a question of policy for which he is not responsible. It was done by the responsible Government of the day, and I do not believe—and I say this with the very greatest confidence—that there was in another place, and I am very doubtful whether there was in your Lordships' House, a single man belonging to the Party to which the two noble Lords opposite adhere, who, when this proposition came forward, got up and protested against it.
LORD BUCKMASTER: There were only sixteen there.
THE EARL OF ANCASTER: That may he; but I think it is putting them a little low, from what I know of them, to suppose that they would not have protested had they thought it necessary. But when Lord Ernie brought forward this proposal there

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was no pretence that it was going to be an economic scheme. There was at that time an enormous public demand that ex-soldiers should be put on the land. I was not a member of the Government then. I must say that I did not think the country could afford it and I was very doutbful about the whole thing. However, it has been done, and I think it has been done well. Certainly, the, figures are bad, and I do not wish to gloss over them for a moment.
The Geddes Report says exactly what Lord Ernle has said—that the scheme will cost £20,000,000, and that it is probable that when the county councils take over the whole business of the small holdings of ex-soldiers settled on the land, we shall lose £8,000,000 of capital, and I anticipate that those figures are somewhere near the mark. At the same time it must be remembered that there was a strong demand for the settlement of these ex-Service men on the land and, though I am pleased to say that prices are falling and these men cart be settled now at a lower cost and with less loss, I make bold to say that he would be a very rash man who would get up in another place and demand that the settlement of ex-Service men on the land should be stopped and that no more money should be spent upon it. I am very doubtful whether the friends of the noble and learned Lord would agree to the suggestion that the whole thing should be stopped.
There is another point on which I should like to say a few words. These men were undoubtedly settled on the laud at the most expensive moment one could have chosen for the purpose. It could be done now for much less money. We could buy land more cheaply; we could build cottages more cheaply, and we could purchase fencing and other things more cheaply. The noble Marquess says that when these men came back from the war they wanted land. What happened? Every single member in another place was continually asking the Minister of Agriculture: "How are you getting on with this land settlement?" They were always saying:
"Never mind what you spend upon it; go on settling these men on the land." It is only in the last three months that we have had this very determined opposition to that policy, or that people have been saying: "You must not go on with it." When it was a question of settling these
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men on the land the cry everywhere was: "You are going too slow; get on with the settlement of these men as quickly as you can." I agree that had this settlement been carried out and managed on business lines, and not under such pressure as I have indicated, it could have been done more cheaply. At the present time a great settlement scheme would cost much less. But, as I have said, it was pressed on us by public opinion at the most expensive time one could select.
The only other thing I wish to say is this. As regards the management and the working of the settlements of ex-soldiers, having had a year's experience of working with them, I believe there are as capable and devoted a body of men at headquarters of the Ministry trying to work this scheme economically as could possibly be found. The noble Marquess says: "Why have you gone in for these land schemes? Why did you not go on as you were? Look how well it was done in 1908 by my eight commissioners." I assure the noble Marquess that that is what we have done. It is true that Sir Erie Geddes' Committee, in their Report, say: "Here we see the evil system of the taxpayer finding the money, and the representative of the ratepayers spending it." That, of course, means that you must have someone at headquarters to check the expenditure in the interests of the taxpayer.
I admit that is not an ideal scheme, but let me point out to he noble Marquess that it follows his own scheme. Under his scheme in 1908 the county councils became the people to establish the small holdings, and the eight commissioners were the persons he appointed to ginger the authorities. I believe every one of those eight commissioners, whose work, I agree, is so excellent, is now working at the Ministry of Agriculture, and helping the county councils to acquire land for ex-soldiers. Instead: therefore, of setting aside the scheme of the noble Marquess, we are, as regards the great bulk of the £20,000,000, following the lines of his own scheme.
THE MARQUESS OF LINCOLNSHIRE: My Lords, I will not detain the House longer than a few minutes, but. I cannot allow the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Ernle, to pass without some little comment. There is no man in this House who is a greater admirer of the noble Lord than I

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am, and no one in this House was more ready to support him than I when he and the late Lord Rhondda saved the country in a most terrible and critical time. Having this great admiration for him, and for his great knowledge and eloquence, I listened with the greatest pain, astonishment and regret to the speech which he has made to your Lordships to-night. Let me in the first place put myself right. I say to the noble Lord that he was quite right in putting these soldiers on the land. What I maintain, and what I think I have proved—because none of my figures has been shaken—is that he did what was right in the wrong way. He told us that he went into this business with his eyes open, and that everything was known. He told us that he knew there would be a loss of £8,000,000 out of the £20,000,000 voted for this purpose, and the excuse he gave for going into the business was that it was a frank, fair, and straightforward example of sentimental imagination. He then went on to tell us that in his opinion no man could be put on 15 acres of land under a cost of £1,000. I absolutely deny that.
Loan ERNLE: May I suggest to the noble Marquess that at that date it would cost that sum, and that it involved, what was not involved in his Act, the building of a house and buildings.
THE MARQUESS OF LINCOLNSHIRE: I will accept then the noble Lord's figure that you could not put a man on 15 acres of land under a cost of £1,000, and I will most respectfully ask him how it is in the case of the Pembray settlement that every man cost £2,106? If it is true that you cannot put a man on 15 acres under £1,000—which I absolutely deny—why, under his scheme, does that man cost, not £1,000 but £2,106? I will go further and say that from my experience I am certain that you can provide the men with land without this most terrible expenditure. I end as I began. I regret very much to have heard the speech of the noble Lord this afternoon, as it was an absolute confession, and a terrible and humiliating exposure, of mismanagement and failure in putting soldiers on the land.

RULE FOR PEDESTRIANS
LORD NEWTON: My Lords, I desire to ask His Majesty's Government if, in order to diminish the danger to pedestrians in crowded thoroughfares, the police authori-
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ties will consider the advisability of directing them to keep to the left. This Question contains a very simple suggestion which must have occurred to many millions of persons besides myself. I can best illustrate the advantage of what I propose over the present system by citing a crowded street like the Strand. Take the north side of the Strand. The foot passengers, according to the present practice, pass each other to the right. The consequence is that if the pavement is congested they are driven into the roadway, and, therefore, the traffic is behind them, and they are in danger of accident. If a contrary practice were adopted, and they passed each other on the left, the traffic would always be facing them, and therefore the danger would be considerably minimised.
So far as I know there is no law whatever for pedestrians in this country. It is all merely a matter of practice. I am not suggesting that there should be any legislation, but only that directions, or, if you prefer the word, invitations should he issued. I am equally well aware that in certain quarters it would not be of the slightest use to make suggestions or offer invitations. If you take the solid blocks of females of all ages who congregate in certain thoroughfares, and pass hours gazing into shop windows, I can quite imagine that no arguments would have any effect upon them, and that it would be necessary to employ force against them in order to reduce them to some kind of order. I shall probably be told that, in view of the practice that has so long prevailed, it would be useless to issue directions of a contrary character. On the other hand, I have recently noticed directions in the tube inviting people to keep to the left, and, that being so, I imagine there is no intrinsic objection to what I propose. There is no particular reason, so far as I know, why people should not be induced to pass each other in a different manner from that which now prevails. In any case, I presume this is a question which must have exercised many people besides myself, and I shall be interested to hear whether the matter has been considered, and whether it will be further considered in the light of the suggestion that I have put forward.
LORD BEARSTED: My Lords, I think it may interest your Lordships to know that this matter has been very deeply and recently considered by the Corporation

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of the City of London. They referred this question to a committee, with instructions to consult; with the Commissioner of Police. Their report is so recent as February 17, 1922, and was presented to the Court of Common Council on March 2. It answers the noble Lord's question as to whether and how far this matter has been considered. The Commissioner of the City Police reported fully on the matter, but will not weary your Lordships by reading his recommendations. He summed up by saying that he felt bound, on behalf of the City Police, to protest against any such rule being suggested to the City. The unanimous view of every police officer of experience in the City, an experience of traffic conditions probably unequalled, was strongly opposed to it. He also stated that about five years ago 150 traffic authorities in different parts of the country were communicated with on the subject. To this 20 did not reply, 28 were in favour of the change, and 102 opposed it.
Very earnest consideration has been given to the matter by responsible officers of the City Corporation and in their opinion it is essential to the convenience and safety of pedestrians that the custom of keeping to the right should not be altered. The Police Committee in their report to the Common Council say:
"Having regard to the very strong views advanced by the Commissioner against making any alteration in the existing practice in the City of pedestrians keeping to the right, which has been the established custom from time immemorial, and to the great danger involved in stepping off the kerb into the roadway to meet vehicles corning in the opposite direction, we are of the opinion that no action should be taken in the direction suggested."
I have ventured to give your Lordships the experience of the City because it is very much up to date.
THE EARL OF ONSLOW: My Lords, the Government recognise that this Question is one of some importance and that it would be desirable to have some general custom throughout the country to form a guide to pedestrians, especially in crowded thoroughfares. The custom of keeping to the right dates back, I believe, for 300 years, and originated from the necessity of having your sword free in case you happened to meet some one with whom you had a difference of opinion.
During the war an unofficial body known as the Safety First Council started a
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crusade in favour of keeping to the left. They were of opinion that a substantial proportion of the accidents to pedestrians were caused by keeping to the right and then stepping off into the roadway. It must, be said, however, that an analysis made by the Metropolitan Police of the number of London accidents did not produce any substantial support of the theory advanced by the Safety First Council. In support of the theory of keeping to the right it was pointed out that there were many roads in the country—this does not apply to crowded thoroughfares—which have no footpath, and on such roads the only safe plan for the pedestrian is to keep to the right and face the traffic.
In 1920 the matter was considered by the Advisory Committee on London Traffic, and they formed the opinion that the institution of a left-hand rule, to be confirmed later by Regulation, would be preferable to the existing custom. They communicated with various councils and other bodies, and I am told that in July, 1921, the Minister of Transport, having received this Report, told the Safety First Council that there would be no objection to their recommending the municipalities to accept notices to "Keep to the left" of the footpath. That was the opinion of the Advisory Committee on London Traffic. To-day we have had the advantage of listening to Lord Bearsted, for the first time I believe, and he tells us that the view of the City of London is different from that of the Advisory Committee. However, the Safety First Council, in accordance with what the Minister of Transport had said, communicated with various districts, and certain of them adopted its advice of keeping to the left whilst others maintained the old custom. This has led to considerable confusion and it is clearly undesirable that the matter should be left in this uncertain state.
The question of a remedy presents very great difficulty. Even if you could arrive at sonic definite opinion in favour either of the right or the left, it would be difficult to establish a rule without enforcing sonic penalty, and, obviously, there are great objections to imposing a penalty in such a matter. As the noble Lord has pointed out, at a place like Swan and Edgar's, in Piccadilly, you meet a large crowd of ladies who would be very averse from accepting any suggestion of this kind. However, I think I can tell the noble Lord that the Home

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Office recognises that some steps should be taken with a view of securing uniformity of practice and the matter will not be lost sight of.
LORD NEWTON: My Lords, I cannot help remarking that I have never heard a more unconvincing statement than that made by the noble Lord, Lord Bearsted, and I attribute it to the fact that he must indulge very little in pedestrian exercises. If he did, he would realise the dangers I have endeavoured to point out. It is gratifying, however, to learn that the noble Earl who represents the official Department in this matter is not disposed to take the same conservative view of this particular question, and that the Department is prepared to consider the matter in an impartial manner. I cannot see that it is more difficult, or more expensive, to put up a notice exhorting people to keep to the left than it is to put up a notice saying they are to keep to the right.

JEWISH IMMIGRATION INTO PALESTINE.
LORD RAGLAN: My Lords, I beg to ask His Majesty's Government whether they can give statistics of Jewish immigration into Palestine month by month since July 1, 1921, specifying those immigrants for whom employment was guaranteed by the Zionist Organisation and those for whom there was no such guarantee.
LORD STANMORE: My Lords, I have been asked to reply to this Question. The figures are as follows:—

Total Number of Jewish immigrants.

Number not guaranteed.

Number guaranteed by Zionist Commission.

1921.

July

572

208

364

August

616

279

337

September

833

367

466

October

815

611

204

November

746

743

3

December

1,202

1202

Nil.

Total for six months

4,784

3,410

1,374

All immigrants, whether guaranteed by the Zionist Organisation or not, enter the country in one or other of seven categories, all of which are designed to provide that each immigrant shall have definite means of subsistence in Palestine. Avenues are
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being explored with a view to finding a means of giving the inhabitants of Palestine a voice in the policy of immigration so that the number of immigrants shall be always in closest relation with the economic factors of the country. As, however, this matter is still under consideration, I am afraid that I cannot go into details.

NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE KING OF THE HEJAZ.
LORD RAGLAN: My Lords, I rise to ask His Majesty's Government what is the present situation in the Hejaz, and whether the Government are still, as stated in the House on February 14, engaged in negotiating a treaty of friendship with King Hussein. When I put this Question on the Paper I had no intention of making any speech, but the telegram of the Government of India, which was referred to earlier this afternoon, has changed the situation slightly with regard to the Hejaz. When I asked a Question on this subject some weeks ago I was told that the Government were engaged in negotiating a Treaty of friendship with King Hussein, and I ventured to express my opinion that King Hussein was an object of hatred to his subjects and contempt to the rest of the Mahomedan world. This opinion has been strengthened since.
Even if King Hussein were a desirable ally, which he is not, I do not think that at the present moment it is desirable to conclude a Treaty of friendship with him. Such a Treaty could have only two results. In the first place, it would prejudice our chances of making a satisfactory peace with the Turks, and in the second place, it would make further difficulties for the Government of India. In these circumstances I venture to urge upon the Government the desirability of a postponement of these negotiations sine die—that is, of course, unless they have already done so.
THE FIRST COMMISSIONER OF WORKS (THE EARL OF CRAWFORD): My Lords, since the pilgrimage of last summer, which His Majesty's representative at Jeddah reported to have been on the whole one of the most successful for many years past no event of importance to the outside world has occurred in the Hejaz. The apprehensions felt in some quarters as to trouble between the Hejaz and Nejd resulting from Sultan Bin Saud's capture of Hail have fortunately proved groundless.

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It is understood, however, that these apprehensions, combined with a financial crisis from which the Hejaz is no more immune than other countries, have led to certain measures of taxation and recruitment which have apparently not proved popular among King Hussein's subjects.
With regard to the second part of the Question it is regretted that King Hussein
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has not yet seen his way to conclude the negotiations to which I referred in reply to the noble Lord's Question on this subject on February 14, but His Majesty's Government still hope for a favourable issue.
House adjourned at a quarter past seven o'clock.

HUNTINGFIELD (CLAIM TO VOTE).
Committee for Privileges met: Counsel heard to open the case on behalf of the Claimant: Witnesses examined: Evidence put in: Claim considered: Then it was resolved that the Petitioner, William Charles Arcedeckne, Baron Huntingfield, in the Peerage of Ireland, hath made out his claim to vote at the elections of representative Peers for Ireland; the report thereof to be made to the House.

EARLDOMS OF SALISBURY AND WARWICK.
Committee for Privileges met: Petitions of James Marquess of Salisbury and Earl of Salisbury, Viscount Cranborne and Baron Cecil, and of Francis, Earl Brooke of Warwick Castle, Earl of Warwick and Baron Brooke of Beauchamp's Court (presented on Friday last) considered, and Counsel heard thereon: Then the Committee resolved that the said James Marquess of Salisbury, and the said Francis, Earl Brooke of Warwick Castle should be allowed to appear jointly and be heard before the Committee for Privileges by their Counsel and Agents, in opposition to the claim of Edith Maud, Countess of Loudoun, and Elizabeth Frances, Viscountess St. Davids, and that they should be at liberty to cross-examine such witnesses as the said claimants may produce and to lodge jointly a printed case, and to produce such evidence in contradiction of any evidence that may be produced by the said claimants, and also such evidence as will support their right and title to the said Earldoms of Warwick and Salisbury as they may be advised to be material for the protection of their rights and interests; and that the said Marquess of Salisbury, and the said Earl of Warwick should be allowed to refer in their joint case to the documentary proofs produced in evidence by the Duke of Norfolk, in opposition to the claim of Charles Botolph Joseph, Lord Mowbray, to the dignity of Earl of Norfolk, and to the documentary proofs offered by the Duke of Atholl in his claim to the Earldom of Oxford; and the Committee further resolved that the said Marquess of Salisbury should not be required to prove that he is the rightful bolder of the title
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of Earl of Salisbury, granted in 1605, and that the said Earl Brooke of Warwick should not be required to prove that he is the rightful holder of the title of Earl of Warwick, granted in 1759; and Report of the said Resolution to be made to the House: Committee adjourned sine die.

CROFTS' DIVORCE BILL. [H.L.]
A Bill to dissolve the marriage of Violet Emily Crofts with Christopher Nason Crofts, her present husband, and to enable her to marry again, and for other purposes: Presented, on Petition, and a copy of the Proceedings in, and of the Decree of Divorce of, the King's Bench Matrimonial Division of the High Court of Justice in Ireland: Delivered (on oath): Bill read 1ª.
IRISH FREE STATE (AGREEMENT) BILL.
To be read 2ª on Wednesday next, March 15.
MARRIAGES PROVISIONAL ORDER BILL.
Brought from the Commons; to be printed; and referred to the Examiners.
HOUSE OF LORDS OFFICES.
Second Report from the Select Committee made, and to be printed.

PRIVATE LEGISLATION PROCEDURE (SCOTLAND) ACT, 1899.
Report from the Committee of Selection, that the Lords following be proposed to the House as the panel of Lords to act as Commissioners under the Act, namely—

L. Oranmore and Browne,

L. Meston:

Agreed to; and the said Lords appointed accordingly.
[From Minutes of Judicial Sitting, March 10.]

RHONDDA (PETITION FOR WRIT OF SUMMONS).
Consideration of the Report of the Committee for Privileges (which stands appointed for Wednesday next) put off to Wednesday, March 22.

BARONY OF CROMWELL.
Report made from the Committee for Privileges—
That the Barony of Cromwell is an ancient Barony in fee.
That it is proved by the Writ of Summons 28th December, in the 49th year of King Edward III. and by other evidence adduced by the Petitioner that Ralph de Cromwell, Lord Cromwell was summoned to Parliament and sat in Parliament as a Peer of the Realm.
That the Barony of Cromwell fell into abeyance on the death without issue of Ralph, third Lord Cromwell about the year 1455 between his nieces and co-heirs Maud, widow of Robert, Lord Willoughby de Eresby and loan, wife of Sir Humphrey-Bourchier
That after the death of Joan without issue 10th March, 1190, Maud succeeded in her own right as Baroness Cromwell and died without issue 30th August, 1497.
That the Barony of Cromwell then fell into abeyance between co-heirs, being the heirs respectively of the daughters of Ralph, first Lord Cromwell.
That William FitzWilliam of Sprotborough in the County of York was one of the aforesaid co-heirs being the sole heir of Maud, wife of Sir William FitzWilliam of Sprotborough and a daughter of Ralph first Lord Cromwell.
That James Duke of Abercorn, Dame Selina Frances Bewicke-Copley of Sprotborough (the Petitioner), Charles john Peebles Chaplin, Mrs. Amabel Jemima Somers-Cocks, and the heir or heirs, if any, of Dame Elizabeth Savile, wife of Sir Henry Savile of Thornhill and Tankersley, are now the co-heirs of William FitzWilliam of Sprotborough, and are co-heirs of the Barony of Cromwell, now in abeyance.
That the Barony of Cromwell is now in abeyance between the co-heirs aforesaid and the other co-heirs, if any, of Ralph first Lord Cromwell, and is now at His Majesty's disposal.
Read; and agreed to; and resolved and adjudged accordingly; and Resolution and Judgment to be laid before His Majesty by the Lords with White Staves.
Ordered, That all deeds, documents and papers produced on behalf of the Claimant by her agents, be delivered to the said agents.

BOLINGBROKE PEERAGE.
Report made from the Committee for Privileges, That the Claimant, Vernon Henry St. John, has made out his claim to the titles, honours and dignities of Viscount Bolingbroke and Viscount St. John, Baron St. John of Lydiard Tregoze, and. Baron of Battersea, all in the Peerage of Great Britain: Bead, and agreed to; and resolved and adjudged accordingly and Resolution and Judgment to be laid before His Majesty by the Lords with White Staves.
Ordered, That all deeds, documents and papers produced on behalf of the Claimant by his agents, be delivered to the said agents.

BARONY OF LE POWER AND COROGHAIORE.
Report made from the Committee for Privileges—

1. That Sir Richard Power, Knight, was in the year 1535 created by Letters Patent of King Henry VIII. Baron of Le Power and Coroghmore, in the Peerage of Ireland, to him and the heirs male of his body.

2. That the said Barony in the year 1704 devolved on John Power, who was then under outlawry and therefore incapable of succession, and that the said outlawry still subsists.

3. That the Petitioner, John William Rivallon de la Poer, is the heir male of the body of Sir Richard Power, Knight, first Baron Le Power and Coroglimore, and that there exists no corruption of blood in the direct line of his descent.

4. That but for the outlawry of John Power, the predecessor in title of the Petitioner, the Barony of Le Power and Coroghmore would now be vested in the Petitioner as the heir male of the body of Sir Richard Power, Knight, the first Baron.

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Read, and agreed to: and resolved and adjudged accordingly; and Resolution and Judgment to be laid before His Majesty by the Lords with White Staves.
Ordered, That all deeds, documents and papers produced on behalf of the Claimant by his agents, be delivered to the said agents.

EARLDOMS OF SALISBURY AND WARWICK.
  PETITIONS TO BE HEARD IN OPPOSITION.
  Report made from the Committee for Privileges: Read, and agreed to; and ordered to lie on the Table.

HUNTINGFIELD (CLAIM TO VOTE).
Report from the Committee for Privileges that William Charles Arcedeckne, Baron Huntingfield, in the Peerage of Ireland, has made out his claim to vote at the elections of Representative Peers for Ireland; read, and agreed to; and resolved and adjudged accordingly.
Ordered, That all deeds, documents, and papers produced on behalf of the Petitioner by his agent, be delivered to the said agent.

CROFTS' DIVORCE BILL. [H.L.]
To be read 2ª on Thursday, March 23: The usual Orders made.
BABINGTON'S DIVORCE BILL. [H.L.]
The Lord Speaker acquainted the House that the Clerk of the Parliaments had received by post from the Lord Justice of the King's Bench Division of the High Court of Justice in Ireland, a Report of the Proceedings upon the inquiry before him in the case Babington v. D'Alton. The same was ordered to lie on the Table.