I have to acquaint the House that this House has this day attended His Majesty in the House of Peers, and His Majesty was pleased to make a most Gracious Speech to both Houses of Parliament, of which, for greater accuracy, I have obtained a copy, which is as followeth:

My Lords and Members of the House of Commons,

The Conference which was held in London early in December on the subject of the payment of Reparation by Germany was resumed in Paris, in January. My Government, in their desire to hasten a complete settlement of the Reparation question, offered to the Allied Governments far-reaching concessions on Allied debts to this country. I greatly regret that it proved impossible to reach a general agreement. The French and Belgian Governments have, therefore, proceeded to put into force the plan which they favoured, and the Italian Government have counten- anced their action. My Government, while feeling unable either to concur or participate in this operation, are acting in such a way as not to add to the difficulties of their Allies.

During the past three months, the plenipotentiaries of My Government, in conjunction with those of the other Allied Powers, have been engaged at Lausanne in a sincere and patient effort to bring to a close the conditions of warfare which for over eight years have desolated the regions of the Near East.

I greatly regret that, in spite of the conciliatory spirit shown by the Allies, and of the immense concessions which they were prepared to make, the Treaty, when on the verge of signature, was declined by the Turkish Delegation. But I cherish the hope that, when a full report of the proceedings has reached the Turkish Government, the latter may still be disposed to accept the Treaty, and that the opportunity, so earnestly and laboriously prepared, of rebuilding the peace of the East and the stability of the future Turkish State, may not be sacrificed.

I welcome the prospective settlement of our War Debt to the United States of America, which reflects the determination of our people to meet their obligations .

Members of the House of Commons,

The Estimates for the public service in the coming year will be laid before you in due course.

The financial burdens of the country are heavy, and reductions in public expenditure remain essential to the well-being of the State .

My Lords and Members of the House of Commons,

The serious state of unemployment among My people causes Me the deepest concern, and must continuously engage the attention of My Ministers. The increase which has recently taken place in our oversea trade gives ground for confidence in the future, and I earnestly trust that we may anticipate a continued improvement in both our external and our home trade. I look forward more particularly to a greater development of inter-Imperial trade in co-operation with the various Governments of My Empire. Meanwhile, full effect will be given to the special measures which have been initiated to afford relief to the situation.

The condition of agriculture continues to receive the careful consideration of My Ministers. With a view to the alleviation of some of the difficulties in the industry you will be invited to consider proposals for granting credit facilities to agriculturists.

The anomalies and inequalities of the present system of local taxation have long called for reform, and My Ministers are examining the whole question. It is hoped that it may be found practicable to deal with the subject on a comprehensive basis, and, in particular, to remove some of the burdens which press on the agricultural industry.

Among the measures which will be presented for your consideration will be Bills dealing with unemployment insurance benefit, housing, trade boards and industrial assurance.

The Departmental Committee appointed to consider the operation of the Increase of Rent and Mortgage Interest (Restrictions) Act has now made its final reports, and proposals will be made to you to carry into effect certain of the Committee's recommendations. You will also be asked to deal with difficulties arising out of the legal interpretation of the Act.

Measures will be submitted to you for simplifying legal procedure, and effecting economies, especially in the County Courts, and for the consolidation of various branches of the law, particularly that relating to the Supreme Court and to Real Property and Conveyancing.

And I pray that the blessing of Almighty God may rest upon your deliberations.

( in Court dress ): I beg to move,

That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty, as followeth:

MOST GRACIOUS SOVEREIGN,

"We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects in the United Kingdom of Great Britain, in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer our humble thanks to Your Majesty for the Gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both House of Parliament."

In moving this Resolution, I should first like to say that, although I fully appreciate the great honour of having had this task assigned to me, yet at the same time I am well aware of its difficulties, difficulties which are somewhat increased by the conventions and traditions of this House and the knowledge of so many admirable speeches that have been made in the past from this place. Custom ordains that the Mover and Seconder of the Address should indicate, without definitely expressing it, a whole-hearted belief in His Majesty's Government for the time being, in its wisdom, its actions, and its policy, but yet at the same time should say nothing that would disturb what I am quite sure at the moment are the kindly feelings of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite, and I ask not only for the indulgence but also for the sympathy of the House in making the opening speech in the long battle of words that will occupy us for so many months to come.

The Gracious Speech, as is usual, opens with a reference to foreign affairs, and I can hardly think that there has been any time in the history of this country, a time nominally of peace, when foreign affairs occupied to the extent that they do now the foremost place in our minds. The difficulties and the dangers are such that it needs the greatest care on the part of every one of us in considering what words we use, knowing full well that the words of even quite unknown Members of Parliament are quoted abroad by sections of the Press hostile to this country when they think that thereby they can do anything to damage our prestige or to add to those campaigns of misrepresentation of our motives and our objects which are continually going on. But perhaps I may, with regard to the serious affairs in the West of Europe, possibly venture to say that, at any rate with regard to a very large number of the people of this country, our hearts go out to our Ally France, even if we are not quite able to follow her with our heads. I think it was only last Sunday that a leading publicist in one of the weekly papers stated that it was impossible for anyone to wish success to France unless they were either guilty of loose thoughts or of cant. I tried to understand exactly what those words meant, but I have rather failed to do so. On the Continent we are often accused of being an illogical nation. Well, cannot we be illogical in this, and cannot we wish success to a course of action from which we believe no success can come, and cannot we hope that we are wrong, even when we believe that we are right? I feel, in common with practically everybody in this House, great disappointment that the long-drawn-out negotiations at Lausanne have not at the moment achieved any definite result. Everyone sympathises with the labours and the patience of those who have represented us in this Conference, and it seems to me, if I may say so, that the Turk appears to be rather trying that old game of treading on the lion's tail, not because he thinks that the lion is asleep, but because he knows that the lion is tired and that its condition is poor. All the same, be it tired or be it poor, it is patient, it is conciliatory, it is full of the desire for peace, but at the same time it is still a lion.

In the next paragraph the Gracious Speech refers to the funding of our debt owing to the United States of America and the settlement that has recently been come to by the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I cannot help feeling that the ordinary man in this country thinks that it is rather hard that we, the only combatant nation in Europe that has been able to pay its way, meet its obligations, balance its Budget, and at a very great cost—[An HON. MEMBER: "What about the unemployed?"] At any other time I should be quite willing to enter into a rough and tumble with any hon. Members opposite, but I do not think that on this occasion it is quite appropriate—at a very great cost, at the cost of great difficulties and many burdens to practically everyone in this country, and of intolerable suffering to a very large section of the people of this country. It is also hard when we realise that that debt was incurred, not for the purpose of meeting our own obligations during the War, but mainly in order that we could finance such of our Allies as were unable to finance themselves. At the same time, it is no use complaining. It was our name on the back of the bill; the bill had to be met on demand; the demand has been made, and we are meeting it. After all, it is not such a very extraordinary thing, even in private life, for a man to meet his obligations and to pay his debts when he is not able to obtain the money that is owing to him, and from a strictly business point of view it is difficult to understand how we can complain of the bargain that has been made, especially when we consider the provisions which enable the repayment of the whole or part of the debt if at any time we are able to purchase the money in a cheaper market. Therefore it means that we are obtaining at least the best terms that can be got at the moment and that in the future it is the market price, and the market price only, that we shall pay. Further, there is this all-important point, that in the interests of the future peace of the world an absolute understanding between this country and the great Republic of the United States of America is of the utmost possible importance. Anything, therefore, we can do to clear away the differences between our people and the people of America is some great thing achieved, and I am sure we shall endeavour during the years to come to pay as cheerfully as we can and not to grumble each time when that payment has to be made.

I want to say one word upon a very short line, but one of the greatest importance, in the Gracious Speech, and that is on the question of economy, the reduction of national expenditure, and the hope that by means of that there may be a reduction of the burdens of the taxpayers of this country. I remember towards the end of last Session some hon. Member saying to me that it was almost impossible for any Parliament, when its sands were running out, really to tackle the question of economy in a full and absolute way, because, as is well known, the first fruits of economy are always unpopularity. It is quite a wrong idea, as I think all of us who were present in the last Session of Parliament realise, that economy is popular. You get far more letters and protests from people who object to economy than you do from the people who want to see economies taking place. This is a Parliament, however, which—I hope I shall not be considered to be saying anything controversial—has a long period of life in front of it, and is one in which, in course of time, economies may be made. I fully realise the great economies that have been made in the past. I think at the present time a good many people forget, or do not put sufficient emphasis on, those economies that were made in the last few years of the last Parliament. We have to remember that the nearer you get to the bone the harder it will be to find slices of meat to cut off, and I think the axe will have to be put away and the pruning knife taken up to get the economies which are now needed. I feel sure the Chancellor of the Exchequer will have the sympathy of the large majority of Members of this House in any efforts that he may make towards economy and to bring about that reduction of taxation which would be of benefit, not merely to the man who writes a cheque for his taxes, but to those who suffer from over taxation by low wages and unemployment.

In the Gracious Speech there are two paragraphs dealing with domestic affairs, both of which allude to the condition of agriculture at the present time and promise some effort to relieve the position as it is. All thinking agriculturists are prepared to accept the position that, at the time, none of those drastic remedies which might be able to bring back agriculture to a really prosperous condition are within the sphere of practical politics, but what they do ask is, that what can be done should be done, and I think this House does realise that the agricultural industry is one which at the present time has to bear its burdens all alone. There is no one on whom it can push off those burdens; it has no umbrella under which it can shelter itself from the free competition of the food-growing areas of the new world. At the present time it is being run very largely at a loss, and the workers in it, particularly those with families, have the very greatest difficulty to exist at the moment. I do not think we can contemplate a country like this allowing the land to go gradually more and more out of cultivation, allowing the rural population to dwindle away and to add to that over-population in so many of our great towns at the present time. In regard to two matters that are alluded to in the Speech from the Throne, credit facilities and local rates, I would say one word on the former. People may say, Why should credit facilities be granted to agriculture and not to any other industry? I think the answer is quite clear, that for a certain period the agriculturist thought that he had a definite guarantee of prices at least for four years. [An HON. MEMBER: "What about the miners?"] That guarantee was removed by the wisdom of Parliament. During that period there was a large number of men who had bought their holdings or taken long leases at high rents and high prices on the faith of the Act that was on the Statute Book. That being the action of Parliament, I think that Parliament has some obligation, which it is indicated here will be repaid.

With regard to local rates, it was admitted as long ago as 1896 that agriculture was then bearing a far greater proportion, a heavier burden, of local rates than any other industry. The settlement made then has become entirely out-of-date. The whole of that concession now, instead of being one-half, is looked upon only as being worth one-sixth, and, in addition to that, new burdens have been placed upon the local rates, upon agricultural land, largely by Parliament, and the farmers do not think that they are receiving value for their money. I will give only one instance in the County of Herefordshire, part of which I have the honour to represent. The rate for road-making comes to the enormous figure of 3s. 4d. in the £. The farmer does not think he needs roads of such quality. He thinks roads are being made and remade for mechanical transport which is rapidly destroying them. These Measures will need the most careful attention and consideration, and will be watched with intense anxiety by all those interested in the land, in the hope that out of them something may come to save some of those who are at the moment very near the brink of disaster.

The duty of the hon. Member who seconds this Resolution and myself is to speak, as it were, the prologue, to indicate a few of the lines of action and of thought which will occupy our time in the future. In a few minutes the curtain will ring up on a long series of acts and scenes. Some of them, I am afraid, will be rather wearisome. Some of them will be undoubtedly moments of vigorous action or intense drama, relieved, I hope, by comedy, but free, I trust, from both tragedy and farce.

( in Court dress ): I rise to second the Address that has been moved in such felicitous language by my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford (Mr. S. Roberts) in reply to the Gracious Speech from the Throne.

Unlike my hon. Friend, who has spoken in this House before, I am obliged to crave the indulgence of the House—an indulgence that is always granted with such characteristic generosity to an untried, unknown, inexperienced Member who ventures to address the House for the first time. The great compliment and honour conferred upon me in asking me to second the Address I should rather like to be understood as a compliment bestowed upon that constituency which I have the honour to represent. The people of the Peckham Division of the Borough of Camberwell will be proud of the compliment that has been conferred upon them in my person to-day. The Gracious Speech from the Throne clearly indicates that this Session is likely to be as strenuous as it will be important. My hon. Friend has touched upon some of the more important issues with which the country and the Empire are faced, and he has done so so well and so concisely, that there would really seem very little for me to add, but there are still one or two points of urgent and vital importance to the welfare of this country upon which, with the kind indulgence of the House, I should like to make a few observations. Our domestic prosperity is so intimately connected with, and so dependent upon, the success or failure of our foreign policy, that I, without any hesitation, will deal with that subject first. The friendly spirit which has existed between ourselves and France for so many years and which, in recent years has, in my humble opinion, been unnecessarily and unwisely strained, should, I submit, be seduously encouraged, and made more permanent. If we are to expect—and we all hope for—an ultimate settlement of the difficulties that face us in Europe, I think that settlement can only be brought about by the British and the French Governments working together.

In dealing with the policy of France, it seems to me that we should always keep in view two important factors. One is the great difference in the geographical position of the two countries. We are in the happy position of being separated geographically from all other nations by a stretch of the sea. Narrow though that sea may be, that sea has always been, and will continue to be, an effective barrier against aggression. With regard to France, matters are different, and, if I may use a homely phrase, a potential enemy is just beyond the garden fence so far as France is concerned. Nor is that all. If one adds to this the difference in the natural temperament of the peoples of the two countries, one will at once see what difficulties there may be in the two countries always seeing eye to eye with one another; in the people of the two countries always adopting the same international policy, and those difficulties are greatly enhanced thereby.

I am glad to observe a very sympathetic reference in the Gracious Speech from the Throne to the very serious state of unemployment in this country. It is a remarkable fact, that although in this country we are suffering from, and bearing the burdens of, a prodigious amount of taxation, and although our national credit, relatively speaking, stands higher among the countries of the world than any other, yet, at the same time, proportionately, we have a greater amount of unemployment than any other European country at the present time. In my own constituency in the South of London there is a tremendous amount of unemployment. Men and women have been out of work, not merely for a few weeks, but for several months, and during the recent winter months the hardships and the privations that they have undergone need to be witnessed in order to be properly appreciated. Of course, measures of amelioration and alleviation have been tried, and have been successful up to a certain point, but one must always remember that such measures, even at the best, are only transitory and temporary. The real and lasting remedy for unemployment is the revival of trade and commerce, and I am happy to say that there have been some slight indication during the past few months that there is, and has been, a revival in that direction. At any rate, one may safely say that there has been no deterioration, that matters are not growing worse, and if in the near future there is a movement, I trust that that movement will have an upward tendency.

There has certainly been an increase in our overseas trade, and that cannot be too carefully cultivated. We ought, I submit, to look not so much for markets for our manufactures among those European countries which have been devastated and impoverished by the War, but we should look for new markets in the Overseas Dominions and in countries which have not been similarly placed. The loss of foreign markets, upon which we were accustomed to depend in the days prior to the War, should make more urgent the study and solution of the problem of finding fresh markets. I have had the opportunity and the good fortune of travelling and living in the Overseas Dominions for many years, and I have gathered, among others, one very strong impression, which, I think, is a correct one. It is that within the four walls of the British Empire, commodities are to be found which will satisfy all the varying demands of advancing civilisation, and provide all the material prosperity of mankind, and I would strongly commend a policy which would be in the direction of cultivating those markets. Surely the business men of the Overseas Dominions and the business men of this country have the ability and the knowledge to get together in matters of this sort and see that commodities from those Dominions overseas should be used preferentially to commodities which we have been accustomed to obtain from foreign countries.

There is one matter on which, before I sit down, I should like to say a few words, and I believe I am permitted to do so on an occasion like this. It is to offer our warmest felicitations on account of that happy event which has recently occurred within the Royal Household, and, further than that, to offer our heartiest felicitations in connection with another, and, perhaps, still happier event, which is about to take place in connection with the Heir Presumptive to the Throne. We have been accustomed in this House to look to Scotland for many good things—for our Prime Minister, for our Leader of the Opposition, and, if I may say so, for the more virile part of His Majesty's Opposition, and it seems to me but a natural tendency that the King's son has turned to the North of the Tweed in searching for his bride. May I be permitted to wish him every happiness and long life after the marriage has been celebrated? It gives me much pleasure to second the Address in reply to the Gracious Speech.

It is the custom of the Leader of the Opposition to begin the long-winded warfare described by the hon. Member who moved the Address with bays in his hand, which he presents to the Mover and Seconder of the reply. I have the greatest pleasure in fulfilling that function this afternoon. We had two admirable speeches. Two hon. Members have once again gone through the very difficult task of professing their faith in the Government, without upsetting the equanimity of the Opposition. I congratulate them most heartily on the way they have done it. I am sure the House will not at all object if I say that there is a third party, whose pride and satisfaction we would like to share. I refer to the right hon. Member for the Ecclesall Division (Sir S. Roberts). The right hon. Member for Ecclesall is an old friend and colleague of ours. I am sure it must be a very pleasant and happy experience for him to listen to the hon. Member for Hereford (Mr. S. Roberts) this afternoon, demonstrating once again that, though men get old and pass away, the House of Commons is always recruited from the youth.

If I complain about anything in the King's Speech, it is that the Government has again broken its promises. We were under the impression, if there was not a pledge, that we were going to have an easy time, that we were to be sort of "idle strollers through an empty day." Lo and behold, we have got His Majesty's Speech, and in it we have difficult questions of foreign affairs. We have got the questions of War debts and of the United States, and we have got unemployment, which is going to be dealt with. There is the condition of agriculture, which is also going to be dealt with. There are new proposals to grant credit facilities to agriculturists. Local taxation is to be examined and remodelled. It is also hoped that it may be found practical to deal with the subject on a comprehensive basis, and gradually to remove some of the burdens which press on the agricultural community. Unemployment insurance benefit is to be dealt with, I suppose on a basis of insurance by industries ! Yes, and also trade boards, industrial insurance, rent and mortgage and the difficulties arising out of the interpretation put upon the law by the House of Lords, the cheapening of legal processes, and what not. This is the first production of the Government that got its majority in promising to give us an easy time ! If I were, as a cartoonist might, to portray the Prime Minister, I should give him a whole armful of squealing infants, everyone of them more troublesome than the other, rather than picture him as being responsible for a large number of little cherubs easy to manage, easy to discuss, and easy to pacify. Why, this programme we have now is a programme which will require not merely a session of ordinary length, but one of extraordinary length, and an Autumn Session as well.

Let me take the first important point—and I shall only deal with three this afternoon—I refer to the question of unemployment. The suggestion the Government makes is that if trade would only revive and if our exports would go on increasing, they would be able to say that the unemployment problem was solved. The hon. Member who seconded the Address definitely made that statement. That is the significance of the unemployment problem to-day! The significance of it is that, while the Government has been spending enormous sums of money for the temporary relief of unemployment, while it has been putting into operation the Trade Facilities Act, giving guarantees for loans and so on, while it has been putting into operation the Safeguarding of Industries Act, which was going to do so much to eliminate unemployment—all this, while exports have been increasing and while trade apparently has been going up; yet the only thing we can congratulate ourselves upon is that unemployment has fallen from 1,500,000 to 1,400,000. That is the significance of the present state of unemployment. Prof. Keynes has examined the situation, and he says that the in- creasing trade, has disappointed him in the absorption of the unemployed. He continues:

When was it otherwise?

You never expect to employ the whole population except at the top of the boom !

I am very much obliged to the hon. Member. I was approaching that point gently, but the hon. Gentleman has jumped into it. I am obliged to him. That is exactly it. The hon. Gentleman reinforces me in relation to employment in the boom state of trade. You have now to admit that you have to spend scores of millions of pounds every year in mere relief, or to starve. Is that the alternative suggested by the hon. Gentleman, or wished for by him? It must be one or the other. You cannot have it on both issues. No! This country has to take from what otherwise would be saved and invest it as industrial capital. It has got to take from that every year scores of millions of pounds in order to make good the failures of the present system! The only time it is going to enjoy the full value of this national production is in those odd years when there is a trade boom and the majority of the population can be employed. That is not a condition of things that we on this side of the House contemplate with equanimity. Further, the view that is growing in popularity now is this, that we have got a surplus population—

Always had!

Then off you go!

At each end of the list you have a surplus population. On the one hand, you have men and women who want work but cannot work. On the other, you have men and women who cannot work, but who enjoy a large amount of the things other people have produced. If there is a surplus population, well, begin, not at the end of the scale with those who are on the unemployed registers of the Employment Exchanges, but at the other end of the scale. You cannot leave it as it is. The assumption is that the surplus population is at the bottom of the scale—that is always the assumption. We have not been able to emigrate our people. Our population has increased since 1913, and the surplus is supposed to be at the bottom. That surplus is not going to starve. That surplus is not going to remain as a surplus neglected, pitched about from pillar to post, in a society which has made its members poor simply because wealth is so inequitably distributed without doing their very best, as citizens, to change a system and make it more moral, more equitable, more economic than the present state of affairs.

I should like to ask Ministers what, upon this point, they have done in the Recess. Their justification for rising in December was that, while the House was sitting, the Departments could not work at full speed. There is something to be said for that. If this House could only tell the Departments what to do and give them power to do it, and then give them the chance and the leisure to do it, I am not at all sure that the distribution of labour would not be a very equitable one. That is, at any rate, what we are told was going to happen. We would like to know what has been done in the Recess. How many of these local schemes have been rejected, or have been pigeonholed? How many have been accepted and put into operation? Another point: There is an enormous community that I am afraid we male people are always overlooking. Not that we want to overlook them, but we hurry past, sometimes in a very unjust way. What has been done for the unemployed women since we last met?

4.0 P.M.

I remember years ago representing the Local Government Board on the Central Employment Body in London when we were conducting the first experiments in regard to unemployment, the tremendous amount of care and trouble we had to take in order even to understand the problem of the unemployed. I happened to be chairman of that Inquiry and I remember the weeks and weeks we had to spend to get even a glimmering of light on the problem. Naturally we began by making a great many mistakes, but the pathetic thing is that nearly all we did at that time has since been scrapped, and the very valuable experience we then obtained has been cut off, and whoever attempts to face the problem now must start afresh just as if none of that good work had ever been done.

I want to ask what is being done for the unemployed workmen. I see in the King's Speech that there is no question of fresh legislation conferring further powers. I want to know if the Government is perfectly satisfied in regard to this question with the powers it has already got? This is a question which I think ought to be dealt with by the good will of all sides of the House because it is a tremendous problem, and it ought not to be attempted to be solved in hot blood or in passion or prejudice. The mort one views the after War aspect the more one sees the shifting tendency of this country's economic position in the world, and that is going to keep us face to face with the problem of unemployment, not only in a more severe way, but I venture to prophesy that it will be of a somewhat different character from the problems that have faced us up to the year 1914. During this Session we shall ask time and again in relation to this question and the next question for more and more information, and we shall press the Government more and more to deal with this problem in a practical way. We shall certainly not be satisfied until we get far more evidence of sincerity and a desire to solve this problem than we have had hitherto.

The second question which is prominent in the King's Speech is the question of housing. I do not want to anticipate this afternoon what is going to happen, but I can promise the Government that there will be somewhat long, and I was going to say heated Debates, but I will content myself by saying pretty strong Debates upon the policy of legislation which has been outlined in the King s Speech. After very patient waiting, we have at last had the majority and minority Reports dealing with part of this subject, and I am somewhat surprised that the majority are evidently in the frame of mind expressed by the hon. Member who moved the Address, who said in reference to France that, he would like to do a certain thing, but somehow or other sentimentally we cannot do it and that from another point of view, although we know we cannot succeed we should like to do so if we could.

In relation to certain questions we are exactly in the same frame of mind as the hon. Member has confessed he is in this afternoon. There are questions where sometimes prejudice and sometimes affection conflicts with our reason, and we find it very difficult to present a respectable appearance from the point of view of our reason, but at the same time a delightful experience from the point of view of our affection. It seems to me that the majority who have reported upon the question of housing are in that frame of mind. They know they are facing a problem much in the nature of a monopoly. They know perfectly well that owing to War conditions the housing accommodation of this country has become a monopoly. There is no freedom of competition, and there is an economic condition of things under which the landlord is able to say to the tenant, "These are my terms, and you may take them or leave them." Naturally this imposes a great injustice on the poor. There is no dispute at all on this point and the question is how is it to be solved. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) promised to solve this question by building, but he did not do it. His solution was the right one, and the only solution. It is not merely a question of right and wrong, because building is the only solution and this problem can never be solved until you get a perfectly free and open market. When you get your open market then you can talk about an economic rent, but to talk about obtaining an economic rent in a closed market is, with all due respect, to talk sheer nonsense. That is the reasoning of the majority Report, but then the affection came in and the interest and they said that the best way to solve the problem is to decontrol a certain block of middle-class tenants. In my view that will do more harm than good.

Look at what happens the moment decontrol comes. Either the rent goes up, or what is more likely the house will be sold. I do not know how many hon. Members of this House have had experience during the War as tenants of houses. I happened to have had some experience in this respect, and I know what will be the effect if legislation is passed on the lines of the majority Report when a lease falls in. Suppose under those circumstances an offer is made to renew the lease, will a statement be made that the house is to be sold and negotiations should take place about the price? Not at all, because that would be a mere waste of time and money. The owner will say, "Our price is so and so; if you like to pay it, you can have the first offer, but if you do not accept our offer somebody else will."

Can hon. Members imagine the state of things that is going to happen regarding the type of property contained in the particular block which is suggested to be decontrolled within a month or two? Instead of encouraging building and giving that sort of security which the builder requires, such a proposal is going to cause more agitation, more violence, and more opposition, and those who understand the psychology of the housing problem will at once recognise that the sense of security which the provider of houses should have will be lessened by such proposals and will see that he will be in a much worse position than he is now. You will have more pressure from the top down to the bottom because tenants will be dispossessed from the block above them. The only possible policy to effect a solution is to relieve those at the bottom and push up and up. By decontrolling the top block first you will bring the section above it in as competitors for houses. In this way you only place more pressure upon the lower blocks and cause more confusion. I have never heard of a policy more inadequate and more calculated to do harm or less calculated to achieve the end it professes than this proposal of the Committee, and I hope most sincerely that the Government will not pursue that policy in the legislation which it has promised.

Then there is another aspect of the rent problem. We have been told even by some old Ministers that when a certain Bill of 1920 was going through this House the House did not know what it was doing. The new thing on this point is that Ministers should confess it. We were told that this House did not know at the time what it was doing, that the House of Lords has given a certain decision, and the law has to be recognised. So far as I am concerned if the law has imposed a real injustice, we must rectify it, but the way to rectify it is certainly not the crude method of asking us to declare by Act of Parliament that a previous House of Commons, in passing an Act of Parliament, did not know what it was doing. The serious point is that if legislation of this character is going to pass let us admit that there has been a mistake. But if legislation of that kind is going to be passed and then when a decision has been given upon it by the highest judicial court in the land, this House, not only changes the law from the time when the change is made, but shows itself ready to say that the law is going to be changed from the time it was passed, then farewell to all sense of security in legal administration. Such a policy will bring chaos and uncertainty into every department of civic life where chaos ought most religiously to be kept out.

The third point which I must touch upon is the condition of Europe, and the first paragraph in His Majesty's Speech. I believe that an Amendment to the Address would give the House a good opportunity of discussing this question as a separate issue. Therefore the remarks I shall make this afternoon on this point will be of a very general character. We cannot approach the subject of the condition of Europe now without having in our mind some idea of the general tendency of events, and the general orientation of policy which has brought these things about. It is not merely the occupation of the Ruhr. It is not merely the pursuit of reparations. It is the whole idea that animated the victors after the Armistice—the Treaties of Peace made, the details pursued, the conception that the victors standing on one side should be able to treat the rest of Europe on the other side, carve it up, and make artificial nations, lumping together peoples of diverse religions, diverse conditions, diverse sentiments, and diverse political affinities in one unnatural political State—the way, as Signor Nitti has told us, that the victors, ignoring every economic consideration, pursued aims that no one outside a lunatic asylum would think of pursuing. It is an unfortunate thing that in this life everything that we do has its progeny. We go from event to event. First of all, there are reparations; then there are sanctions; then increased sanctions; then, as the sanctions go on, you reduce the capacity of the punished country to pay its original reparations. Meantime by your sanctions you are heaping up the amount of the reparations until at last you drift out of your policy of punishing an independent State and unconsciously you drift into a policy of Imperialism and annexation. That is what is happening in Europe today, and that is where the danger comes in. From moment to moment the meaning of our action changes, and, unless this House every now and again insists upon its right to make a complete survey, we never see it until we have taken a step upon which we cannot go back. That is what we are suffering from at the present moment.

It is very difficult, I admit, to discuss these questions quite candidly and openly, for two reasons. First, there is still a great amount of prejudice about them. I know it perfectly well. There is a great deal of prejudice and misunderstanding about them, but that is not all. The most serious thing is that we ourselves are entangled in the network. It is almost like a nightmare, one of those nightmares where we find ourselves up against some phantom or another, the only way of escape from which is by awakening in horror and terror. We say to France, as the Mover quite rightly said, "We do not think you can succeed." Nay, more: "We do not think that you are doing a wise thing." Perhaps a little more: "We really do not think that your policy is going to help to solve the condition of Europe after the War. We do not think it is going to bring peace. We do not think that it is going to bring tranquillity. We do not think that it is going to ease the situation. We believe, as a matter of fact, putting our hearts for the moment out of account, that if you pursue this policy you are going to come back to a state, first of all, of political chaos, and then of economic chaos." There are two ominous clouds, one to the north and the other to the east. The safety of Europe depends upon how far nations in the same stage of civilisation and, on the whole, with the same mentality, though with differences, can unite, not to advance their own interests through balances of power and that sort of thing, but to advance a common, moral, international policy that will defy the menaces from the north and from the east. I suggest that that ought to be our mentality. I admit the terrible position the Prime Minister is in, because he does not begin afresh. He has already the chapter half written, and he is bound to go on writing it without a break in the middle. Still, those who know Europe best, both the big Powers and the small Powers, feel that beyond a point—I emphasise that—that is a policy of destruction. Benevolent neutrality every day tends to become one of taking sides, and we have now almost reached that point.

We can perhaps do one of three things. We can either support France wholeheartedly. I do not think that is for the good of Europe or for the good of this country. I think it is one of those subjects that this House, in a very serious frame of mind, might very properly debate. If we cannot take responsibility like that upon us, then I want to know of what use we are at all? The other attitude we can take is to oppose her quite directly. I am not in favour of that. But there is a third attitude which an important French newspaper suggested that France should take towards us over Turkey. May I remind the House of it? "Le Matin" says: member of a really functioning League of Nations. Hon. Members may laugh and smile, but there is nothing more apparent in every chapter of French history. I therefore leave it there.

I would like to ask if the Prime Minister can tell us, either now or perhaps when we raise this question in the form of an Amendment to the Address, whether he propose to lay any Papers that will give us really definite information about all the points that were raised at Lausanne? I hope that that Treaty is going to be signed. It would have been better if we had taken Russia more into account in the negotiations. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] You have got to do it. I am perfectly certain that if hon. Members had heard me say this two years ago they would have been much more angry with me than I know they are when they hear me saying it now, and when they hear me saying the same thing six months from now they will be still less angry. At last the common sense of the situation will compel us to recognise Russia as we recognise other Governments without in any way making ourselves responsible for what happens in those foreign countries. The other thing that we might have done was to have approached the Turk with a little more sympathy. It is very clever and admirable, in a House of Commons or House of Lords Debate, to tell your opponent that he is practising the arts of the Bazaar. It raises a smile and it helps to pass the time, but it does not make it easy for your opponent to agree with you. I make these observations on those two points, but at the same time I hope that the Treaty will be signed. I ask the Prime Minister if he can give us Papers relating to the Conference at Lausanne, showing its issues, the various points discussed, and the implications—the territorial implications—and if he can also tell us whether there are any economic arrangements other than those that are set forth in the Treaty that was presented for signature but which up till now has not been signed.

Can the Prime Minister tell us if any communications have passed between himself and the French Government about our position in the Cologne occupied area? Has there been any suggestion that our presence in the Cologne occupied area should be used for the pur- pose of helping France in any way whatever? I will not go into details. I will just leave it there. Have any communications of that nature passed between the two Governments? Have any negotiations been opened regarding the supply of British labour for the Ruhr coalfields, the Ruhr railways, or any of the Ruhr industries that are being put out of gear on account of the unfortunate things that are happening there? I ask him publicly so that it may be known in view of certain stories that are going about, and, if the Prime Minister can answer me, I shall be much obliged to him. Moreover, has any pledge been given, or have any communications passed of a binding nature, or even of a quasi-binding nature, regarding the real purpose of France in occupying the Ruhr? Has it limited its occupation to negotiations that will be successful about reparations? Has it limited its occupation to the receipt of reparations? Or is its occupation quite indefinite, and the first step towards the proclamation of an independent Rhine Republic? What is our position now in regard to the Reparations Commission? Is Sir John Bradbury going to continue to sit there? What is the position of our representative on the Rhineland Commission? Is he to continue to sit there, and, if he does, is he going to continue to share, either actively or passively, the responsibility for what the Rhineland Commission apparently is beginning to do under instructions from the Allies acting apart from us?

Has any communication been made to France as to the payment of its debt to us. On the theory that Central Europe can pay, and on the fact that my right hon. Friend went to America to arrange that we should pay our American debt—of which there was never the least doubt—has any Note been sent to France reminding her that we have claims upon her income and upon her property and resources as we are beginning ourselves to pay our debts? With reference to the American debt, may I also ask whether any negotiations took place as to how the debt is to be paid? Is it to be paid in gold or has any arrangement been made by which it can be paid through the ordinary commercial way, as we express it, in goods. Is the tariff to be enforced in connection with the payment of that debt in goods? That is a very important point. Obviously, if payment is to be made in goods—I exclude the purchase of gold and the trans-shipment of gold, if it is to be paid by ordinary bills and transactions, which involve commercial transactions first, are these goods going to be subject to the tariff, so that we shall not only pay the debt but we shall also pay a special percentage in the form of tariff payments?

Who pays the tariff?

As to the question who pays the tariff, ultimately, of course, the consumer paye. That is a simple point, and I do not want to elaborate it. But the joke of the thing is that the American does not agree with that. He imagines that he is going to get the money and the tariff as well, and I should like to ask my hon. Friend who takes that view if he has in mind the safeguarding of the British taxpayer. These are all the large divisions of His Majesty's Speech to which I wish to draw attention this afternoon. The only consolation we have in these days of troubles at home and troubles abroad is that when one goes home and sits down at his own fireside and looks at some of the contemporary records of generations that have gone—the only consolation he finds is that every one of those writers describing their own time were profoundly convinced that their generation was the last of great generations, that the country had entered upon its twilight and that there was nothing ahead but the thickening darkness of the night. We would have been very much inclined to take that view ourselves if it had not been taken fifty or a hundred or one hundred and fifty or two hundred years ago. That has saved us from the pessimistic point of view. But it is for us all to adapt ourselves to the new conditions. Hon. Members are always telling us that it has been so and therefore it will be so. That is what is said by those who are out to fulfil pessimistic prophecies. But we stand here for changes, we stand here for fundamental changes, we stand here for a new value of human individual wealth, and if we find that the Government in front of us stands rather for the opposite, we shall oppose it and we shall do so because we believe it is wrong, and in examining the various Bills that it promotes, believe me, we shall, if we reject them, do so because we are profoundly convinced that in so doing we are acting for the welfare of the nation.

It has been usual, in fact, it has been the almost unbroken custom on the first night of the Session, after the speeches of the Mover and Seconder of the Address, for the Leader of the Opposition to be followed by the Leader of the House. I need hardly say it would have been extremely agreeable to me to have pursued that plan. It is not on my own initiative that I am transgressing what has been, I think, in the past, a uniform practice. I join very heartily with my hon. Friend who has just sat down in the well-deserved congratulations he addressed to the two hon. Gentlemen who moved and seconded the Address. I may also associate myself with him in expressing peculiar gratification that the Mover of the Address has sitting beside him one of the oldest and most respected Members of this House. I remember very well in the old days that Mr. Gladstone, on the occasion of the maiden speech of my right hon. Friend who has recently been Leader of the House, saying that nothing could be more dear to a father's heart than to see his son following in his footsteps. We all heartily hope that the same may be said of the hon. Gentleman who moved the Address.

I have read the King's Speech with the attention it deserves. It is not a prolix document, but I am bound to say it does not seem to me to be a very promising prologue to an era of Parliamentary tranquillity. In the multiplicity of topics at which it glances, and hardly more than glances, it reminds me of a famous manifesto—and I have no doubt my right hon. Friend will remember it also—framed in our political youth and issued by the Liberal party. It was described at the time as a political auctioneer's catalogue. I am referring to the Newcastle programme. There are almost as many items in this Speech as there were in that programme. It is a strange inauguration of a new era of placid tranquillity. The Leader of the Opposition spoke in the country of the party of which he is the distinguished head as being the inevitable and speedy successors of the present Government—the heir apparent, or at any rate the heir presumptive. I can almost see my hon. Friend, in the seclusion of his closet, fitting, like Henry V., the Crown upon his head. [An HON. MEMBER: "You have lost the Crown."] All I can say is, if this King's Speech represents a policy of placid tranquility, if these things are done in the dry tree, what will be done in the green tree? I am not going to dwell paragraph by paragraph on this miscellaneous series of proposals. I propose to confine myself, and I shall not detain the House more than a very few moments, to one topic, and one only, but it is one which I think at this moment is of paramount and overwhelming importance—I refer to the topic which forms the concluding part of the first paragraph of the King's Speech, in which the Government, describing what has been going on in the Ruhr, end with the sentence—a characteristic one to which I shall call attention to presently: way of making it, not a paper, but a practical obligation, the governing and limiting condition is this: Any steps that you take or propose must be of such a kind that whatever you ask or whatever you seek to enforce shall be such that it does not destroy, or even paralyse, the economic life of Germany, and thereby undermine the whole fabric of international trade.

The amount that they are called upon to pay, the method of payment—as to which my hon. Friend who has just sat down said something—and the time of payment, have all to be regarded and regulated from that point of view. Otherwise, what happens? What happens is what we now see actually confronting us. A paper liability—it does not matter in how many millions or even billions you express it upon paper—a paper liability which has no correspondence either with realities or with possibilities; a chronic uncertainty, which pervades the whole commercial, industrial, and financial world, as to when and how and by how much that paper liability will in time be reduced; and a predestined succession of failures to realise your paper programme. That I believe to be an accurate description of what has taken place during the last four years. Efforts have been made, of course—my right hon. Friend the late Prime Minister made strenuous efforts—to try and bring the Allied nations to what I may call an attitude of proper perspective, to realise things in their true proportion, to cease to juggle with figures and mistake figures for facts; but we have made no progress. I myself ventured three years ago to estimate the maximum possible sum which could be obtained from Germany, having regard to that limiting condition which governed the whole situation, at £2,000,000,000; and I have seen no reason since to think that that was too low an estimate. It is not a question of tenderness to Germany. I cannot emphasise that too much. There is no figure you can name which would really exhaust, in the shape of indemnity, the actual injury and mischief Germany has done. After wiping off from your claim every disputable category, £2,000,000,000 would do nothing of the kind.

I want, however, to impress this upon the House. The question now—it is no good going back to the past—before us and before Europe is the question of settlement, of a final settlement, of an ascertained settlement. It has become acute in the last possible degree, and nowhere more acute than in this country. It is quite true, as we are often reminded, that we here in Great Britain and in the British Empire suffered less in actual material and even personal loss—less, I mean, in proportion—than France or than Belgium. That is quite true; but at the same time I am afraid it is not sufficiently realised—certainly outside it is not—that since the War, in proportion, we have suffered much more than any other of the combatants engaged. Why? For two reasons. In the first place, we are much, more interested in and dependent upon our external trade; and, secondly, because our people have shown far more willingness than those of any other country to pay their way and tax themselves. The result of these two causes, both operating in the same direction, has been that there has been a contraction of industry and a curtailment of the field of production which is more felt here than among any of the other nations. That is the main reason why unemployment has become with us such a formidable and even menacing problem. I have pointed out these considerations, which are quite familiar to the House, because the whole world suffers with us. International trade is so interdependent in these days that, if there is vast unemployment in this country, contraction of trade, curtailment of facilities for export and import, not only the whole British Empire, but every other outlying part of the world, suffers from the repercussion. The result is that a final settlement becomes the first of all international necessities.

I come to the point which is relevant to our present situation. Why is it that the prospect of a settlement—which I confess I myself hoped, a few months ago, to be much more favourable than it had ever been before; there was a growing realisation, very slow, very difficult to bring about, but a growing realisation among all the Allies of the necessity for facing facts and no longer living in a world of chimeras and spectres—why is it that that prospect has been overclouded, and that we seem now almost as far as we ever did from a final settlement of this vital problem? The reason is plain. The Allies have failed to agree, and the acutest difference—I do not say it is a difference of principle, but it is a fundamental difference of method—unhappily has arisen between France and ourselves. I have always been, as I hope I may say without egotism, and as I can certainly say with sincerity—I have always been throughout my political life a devoted friend of France. I regard the French entente with ourselves as having been a great aid to maintaining the peace of the world for the best part of 20 years. [ Interruption. ] That is my opinion. I mention it, not because it is relevant to the argument, but simply to show that, so far as my own point of view is concerned, I start with the strongest possible prepossession in favour of the maintenance, unimpaired and intact, of our friendship with France. But when we come to the situation which has now arisen, I do not hesitate to say that in my opinion the vast majority of the people of this country, however sympathetic with the French point of view, and even however distrustful of the honesty of German intentions, approve heartily of the decision of His Majesty's Government not to associate or participate in the recent adventure in the Ruhr. Consider what has since happened, if we ever had any doubts. Two new facts have emerged since His Majesty's Government came to that decision—two facts of vital importance. The first is that the moratorium—as to the necessity of which six months ago there was practically universal agreement—the principle, I think, was accepted by France—

It is accepted now.

5.0 P.M.

Is it? A moratorium in principle, I think I can say without exaggeration, was universally accepted, but is now no more heard of. That is the first fact. The second, which is equally ominous and equally formidable, is the revival, of which there can be no doubt as far as France is concerned, as the figure at which the debt due from Germany for reparations ought to be fixed, of the assessment of 1921, which puts it at £6,600,000,000. I ask the House, is there a sane economist in any country in the whole civilised world—Europe, America, I do not care where you go—who will pledge his reputation to that figure as a possible, or as anything but a fantastic exaggeration of what can possibly be expected from Germany? There is not.

What is the purpose for which this new occupation is now maintained? The moratorium has gone. The figure of the claim is raised to an impossible height. It is no longer merely a question of a gigantic experiment of what I may call international distraint. It is imposing, or purports to impose a hanging mortgage of a gigantic and impossible claim on the whole future of Germany. I shall be glad to know if that is not so. I shall be glad to see that interpretation of it rejected, or repudiated by the leading statesmen of France. But as far as our information goes, that is the position. I know very well, because we ought always to endeavour, so far as we can, to enter into and to realise the point of view of our Allies, that there is another ground, and an entirely different ground, for which, in France, the occupation of the Ruhr is justified—the ground of security. We ought not to forget that when the Treaty of Versailles was concluded, there was in existence—not ratified, but in existence—a tripartite pact between France, America and this country which guaranteed her her boundaries, as fixed by that Treaty against future aggression. In the circumstances which followed, and for which we, at any rate, were not to blame, that pact fell through. France is now left without any such guarantee, and being, as she is, a country with only 40,000,000 inhabitants, and seeing on the other side of the Rhine a country, her secular enemy, from whom she has often suffered, with a population of 70,000,000, we cannot be surprised that she is anxious about her future security. Yes, but what worse way could there be of securing the boundaries which were fixed by the Treaty of Versailles than taking in from her Eastern frontiers and appropriating, I will not say for ever—we know how these things extend—but appropriating even for a term of years a second Alsace-Lorraine? How can security—I speak as a friend of France—be obtained in that way? For 50 years France has been restless, and justifiably restless, because a similar outrage had been perpetrated by Germany. That is not the way security must be sought. Either from the point of view of obtaining money or money's worth in the shape of repara- tions or from the point of view of safeguarding the security of her own frontier, this is, in the opinion of her old friends in this country, an ill-advised adventure.

But I do not want to leave it there. I am not altogether satisfied with the language of the King's Speech. I have quoted already the sentence in which their policy is expressed as "acting in such a way as not to add to the difficulties of our Allies." That does not seem to me to exhaust our duties. It is an excellent, even a masterly exercise in the dialect of the new gospel of tranquillity, because it is a proclamation of silent and passive standing by. I do not think we ought to content ourselves with that. I need hardly say I am not in favour, for the reasons I have given, of us associating ourselves in any way with France in her present proceeding, but I feel, indeed, I hold very strongly, that France at the present time is entitled to security, and every reasonable effort should be made to obtain from Germany what Germany ought to pay. What is the way of doing it? There is only one way. I know I shall raise a smile in some quarters of the House, but there is one way of doing it and that is that this country should formally announce and should press both upon France and upon Germany, the two parties concerned, the urgent necessity of allowing this matter, in all its aspects, to be dealt with by the League of Nations. I do not think we ought to be content with silence, passivity or academic disapproval. We ought to act. I shall be told this is a counsel of perfection. "France will not accept it, Germany will laugh at it, and you will get no good from it." But it is worth trying. Even if you fail at first it is worth persisting in, because by means of the League of Nations, if you once bring it into operative action in this domain, there are three interlocked problems which might at one and the same time, or at least as part and parcel of the same process, be solved, the problem of reparations, the problem of security for France—the security it is true, not of the Anglo-French American Pact, but a security given by the League of Nations themselves—and what, in my judgment, and I expect in the judgment of most of us, is more important than either, because it is the key to the whole future of Europe—the problem of disarmament. That is a practical policy. It may not for the moment succeed, but it is worth trying, it is worth persisting in, and I invite the House to give it its consideration.

My first duty is to associate myself with my two right hon. Friends who have spoken in the meed of praise they gave to the Mover and Seconder of the Address They have, however, done it so completely that it is not necessary for me to add to the words which they have used.

First, I shall refer to the remark of the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Asquith) who has just sat down, who rather deprecated speaking before me. I understood that that was the natural thing, because if there is an Opposition there are also Oppositions, and it seemed to me natural that both should put their questions before I was called upon to reply. I gave the third an opportunity of rising which he did not take.

I should like to say a word or two about the speech of the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. J. R. MacDonald), for I agree that the subject upon which he has just spoken is undoubtedly a vital subject at this moment, and to it I shall refer in chief. The hon. Gentleman referred to unemployment, and wished to know what had been done while the House was not sitting. A great deal has been done. A great many schemes have been put into effect, and I think it will be found when the Debate takes place that everything possible, according to our system, has been done to meet it. But I was rather disappointed that the hon. Gentleman rather minimised the very great improvement which has taken place in regard to that problem. I do not suggest for a moment that it is not a very grave one—it certainly is—but the reduction in the number of the unemployed is not 100,000. It is 25 per cent of the total figure at this time last year. It is nearly 500,000, which represents a very considerable change.

I would also point out that all the facts go to prove that trade has improved, and for the moment the prospects are better. And though it is quite true that any improvement in our overseas trade has not absorbed the number of unemployed one would have expected, yet it is still a long way below the pre-War level. There is, therefore, hope in that direction, and it is in this direction alone that there can be any real improvement.

The hon. Gentleman also referred to negotiations with the Turks. I am glad to be able to assure him that a Blue Book giving a full account of the negotiations is being prepared, and will be laid on the Table as soon as possible, but that, I am afraid, will not be for more than a week at least, and probably longer. If the hon. Member will then look at the report in the Blue Book, he will find that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has shown in all his dealings with the Turks a great amount of sympathy, and it is not by reference to single phrases which are used, as the hon. Member sometimes uses them, by way of a joke, that he is to be judged in dealing with this problem. Unfortunately, the Treaty has not been signed. I do not know the reason, nor does the Foreign Secretary. Ismet Pasha, who was there with full powers to sign, is now on his way to Angora, and when his Government has looked into this matter, and seen the extent to which Turkey has been given the opportunity of starting a new life under good conditions, it is not too much to hope that that Government may accept and sign. That, at all events, is our hope.

My hon. Friend who moved the Address spoke of "twisting the British lion's tail." I do not know whether that was done, but, undoubtedly, and I am aware that, there is a war weariness in this country. Everyone here desires above everything else to avoid the risk of war, but, if it be inevitable, it will have to take place. I sincerely trust it will not; and I do not believe that there is danger of it. Nevertheless war weariness has probably been counted upon and played upon by those who are dealing with us.

I come to the vital question at the present moment, and that is the action on the Ruhr. There has not been an opportunity since the Conference in Paris of stating the policy of His Majesty's Government, and I think, perhaps, as memories are sometimes short-lived, it will be useful if I state to the House exactly what our proposals were, and exactly what were the proposals of the French on this matter. The right hon. Gentleman who spoke last was perfectly right. There was a general feeling, which I should have thought the financial condition of Germany had made inevitable, that a moratorium of some kind was necessary. It was supposed that that feeling was almost universal. I thought it was true of the French also, but I found when we came to negotiate that by a moratorium they meant to obtain during the period of the moratorium the same reparations as our experts hoped to obtain after that period. In other words, they were willing to take the name of a moratorium, but not the reality.

Our proposals in regard to that matter were very carefully thought out. They were an attempt to deal with, the situation on the lines mentioned by my right hon. Friend, to which I do not take any exception—on the lines not of saving Germany, but of calculating what was the amount which Germany could pay, and settling on that basis. That was our proposal. It was not the case, as has been so often suggested, that we proposed to give a moratorium without any demand or any security that it would be used for the purpose for which it was to be granted. On the contrary. It is not the case that we proposed a four years' period of moratorium, after which Germany, we were told, would be at liberty to do whatever she liked, and would have become strong enough not to dream of paying any reparations.

That was not our proposal. Our proposal was from the beginning that Germany should at once attempt to stabilise her exchange, and that she should equalise her Budget. For that purpose it was proposed that a council of six people should be set up, four representing the Allies, one an American, and one a European neutral, to sit as a Commission to advise the German Government as to the best method of carrying out the policy which was desired. It was stated in our proposals that, if at any time—even in the first six months—the Germans refused to carry out the policy, we would then be prepared to join our ally, France, in any sanction which was necessary to see that the policy was carried out. That was our proposal. It was, first of all, that there should be a moratorium for four years, with power for this tribunal to reduce it two years, if the condition of Germany made it possible. On what basis? We had to consider what was the sum that Germany could probably pay. There was a great deal of light on that. There had been a Commission, invited by the German Government, of foreign experts, who visited Berlin towards the end of last year, and they laid down what they believed to be the conditions on which payment of reparations could be made. We decided, therefore, to fix the amount at very nearly the figure mentioned by my right hon. Friend, something larger, not £2,000,000,000, but £2,500,000,000, with this qualification, however, that the last £500,000,000 should depend on the decision of the Arbitration Tribunal, which would then judge whether or not Germany could meet the payment. That was our proposal. It was, I am sorry to say, rejected by France, and not even considered as forming a basis of discussion. I was sorry to find from the first meeting which I had in London with M. Poincaré that the chance of agreement was very small. He stated quite truthfully and accurately in Paris that that was so. It was obvious to the House last Session that, while discussions were going on they would not have been interrupted had there been a prospect of an agreement. There was no such prospect, and negotiations were postponed for nearly a month in the hope on both sides that something might happen to make it possible to come to an agreement.

Did the French Government give any grounds on which they rejected the proposal?

Yes. The reasons why I had no hope, or very little hope, of coming to an agreement with the French Government were that, here in London, M. Poincaré made it quite plain that there were two conditions which he considered essential. The first was one which we could not accept, not that we objected to using pressure on Germany, but because we objected to using pressure to make demands which Germany could not fulfil—namely, the occupation of the Ruhr. He was bent upon doing that. At the same time, he made it plain that he did not wish the amount payable by Germany, which was correctly put by my right hon. Friend, to be altered, except to the extent that any of the Allies might choose to disavow some of their claims. These two conditions seemed to me to make an agreement quite impossible.

Then we came to Paris. The grounds on which our proposal was rejected were, first, that it was not in accordance with the Treaty of Versailles. We answered that in a Note, which I thought was quite unanswerable, by showing that nothing that we proposed was inconsistent with the terms of that Treaty. Apart from that, we did not put down our proposals as something that could not be altered. We were ready to have them examined on their merits, and to make alterations as they might seem advisable to our Allies, as far as possible. It was rejected partly on that ground. It was rejected also—at least this argument was used in dealing with it—that we proposed that the Tribunal should have a German chairman. Perhaps that was a psychological error; I do not know.

Our point of view was that, in regard to the amount we were demanding from Germany, we must fix a sum which would seem not only to us, but to the rest of the world, which would have to lend to Germany, a reasonable amount. That seemed to us an inevitable concomitant of our proposal. This German chairman was to be the Finance Minister, and it was part of the proposal that a Council should be set up to control in some way and supervise German finance. It seemed to us obvious that the best way in which that could be done was by having the German Finance Minister as a member of that Council, and that he, by seeing and discussing the projects made, would best be able to judge what was best for the purpose in view. There were six members of that Council, four of them Allies. The chairman was to have a vote only in the event of the votes being equal. That did not mean a vote on the question whether or not coercion should be used against Germany, but only on the question as to the best financial method of dealing with the particular subject. Therefore, it seemed to us a reasonable proposal, and one to which objection could not be taken.

Our proposal was rejected, I think, in the main, on another ground. We proposed, as I said, this sum of £2,500,000,000, but it seemed to our French Allies that it might be possible for Germany in the course of 15, or perhaps 20, years to pay off the whole of this, and then be in a stronger position than she was before the War from every point of view. There comes in again the feeling to which my right hon. Friend referred, and which, in looking at this whole subject, nobody can put out of their mind—the feeling which the French have of their insecurity. It was this, I am sure, which was at the bottom of their rejection of our proposal. There was the feeling, if I may put it in this way, that they would like to obtain from Germany sums in reparation, but French statesmen, I believe, had the feeling, and ordinary Frenchmen had also the feeling, that they would not like to see Germany strong enough to pay these reparation amounts. That, I am afraid, is what influenced them.

It is all very well for hon. Gentlemen to take the view that those who fought with us and those who fought against us should be regarded in the same way now that the War is over. We do not think so, and one complaint made against the proposal by M. Poincaré was that we seemed anxious to put the position in such a way that Germany could get rid of her liabilities as soon as possible. We had no such idea. Our idea was to put the maximum amount which in our view Germany could pay. But it is quite possible, or probable, though I do not think that it is by any means so certain as our French friends believe, that Germany, if she could recover, would recover completely, and would be able to pay those demands, and in 20 or 30 years would be as strong as she was. I looked at this question merely as a reparations question. I tried to consider what was the best way of getting the greatest amount from Germany. In doing that, we fixed a sum which all the experts in this country who had examined it looked upon as rather beyond than below the proper scale. We fixed it not with the desire of letting Germany off, but with the desire of getting, as quickly as possible, the maximum amount which could be got from Germany. And I was disappointed to find that our French Allies did not take the view which I have expressed, because some time, I think in June or July last year, the reporter of the French Budget had himself given an estimate of the figure, namely, 65 milliards of gold marks putting it at the maximum and 42 milliards at the minimum. Our figure was above the minimum set by the French Finance Minister. I was disappointed that our proposal received so little consideration, but for the reason I have given I was not surprised.

Now we have to consider what was the proposal which the French themselves made. I said a few minutes ago that in theory they were in favour of a moratorium. Their proposal was that the amount should stand at the figure at which it was left in March, 1921, and that they should occupy the Ruhr, as a productive claim out of which they could get something. In addition, in the first year of the moratorium they expected to get from Germany £80,000,000 in cash and in kind, and from their pledges £20,000,000 or £30,000,000. That is to say, in the first year when, as I thought, everyone recognised that the state of German industry and finance made a moratorium necessary, the French demanded that they should have the amounts which I have mentioned. In other words they expected to get in the first year of the moratorium upwards of £100,000,000. His Majesty's Government were then faced with the problem of what they would do. It was not, if I may say so—at least I do not think so—M. Poincaré alone who was bent on receiving these large sums by this method. I felt before I went to Paris that he only represented the opinion of the Chambers in France. When I reached Paris that was evident still more. I think that I am right in saying that no Government supported by an existing French Chamber could have existed a day, and not carried out these proposals.

Why is that so? It is because in my opinion Frenchmen—politicians and the man in the street—are divided in their minds. They would like to get the money. The system of budgeting on which they have gone is dependent on their getting the money, and at the same time they are greatly afraid of a Germany strong enough to pay. That was the danger of our proposal.

I omitted to mention, but I think it very important, that we suggested that the debt of France and Italy to us should be written off, if our proposal were adopted. To secure that we took some part of the reparation—some smaller amount—but the net result if our proposals had been adopted was that the French and Italian debts would have disappeared. We should have received, both from our creditors and from Germany, a smaller sum than it would be necessary for us to pay to America. No one, I think, can deny that our proposals were not merely just, but generous, because, after all, I agree entirely with my right hon. Friend that, though our Budget position is strong, we are not so strong as that would seem to indicate. We made our Budget strong by making our taxpayers weak. I think that there is very little doubt that if we had effected our deflation at a slower rate, we should not have had this unemployment, and I think it all the more unjust that we should be punished for having made such sacrifices. If we had adopted the plan adopted by all other belligerent Governments, and postponed the balancing of our Budget, it would not have been thought that we were strong enough to pay our foreign debt. But in spite of that, I believe we were right to make these proposals.

It became evident in Paris that France was determined to try her plan. As was said to me at the time by a Frenchman—he was not a member of the Government, and therefore I can quote him—"Many of us who are recommending the adoption of the proposal to occupy the Ruhr do not believe that we can get any money out of it, but we are satisfied that French public opinion will not accept the situation until this has been tried." That was the feeling. What could we have done? We could have said to our French Allies, "If you do this, there is an end to the Entente." I do not think that it would have been wise to say that.

I began, as head of this Government, with the sincere hope that we should be able to carry through the reconstitution of Europe by the side of France. Like the right hon. Gentleman, I have always thought myself a sincere friend of France. I think so still. But I felt certain that in taking this step she was doing something which would be not only disastrous to Germany, but to France. We said at the final meeting of the Conference that, in our view, it would be dangerous, even disastrous, to the economic life of Europe. It has proved so. What has happened in consequence is exactly what I feared would happen, but that is not the end of it. It is quite true that France has got nothing out of the Ruhr, and has spent a great deal, but it is true also that the Ruhr is the jugular vein of German industry, and by cutting that vein France has done much greater harm to Germany than she has suffered herself. Now it is a struggle between wills. Whatever happens, I see no bright prospect in front of us. The French Government is committed to this policy. It is bound to see it through, and if it succeed in getting the German Government to do what I think was the expectation—accept the inevitable and come to terms—on what basis could they deal? They could not get the large sums, because the money that is demanded cannot be obtained. It is impossible.

My right hon. Friend asked whether the French Government had made any declaration as to their ultimate policy? I would reply to the Leader of the Opposition that no such proposal has been made to us. Nor has there been any suggestion that we should send workmen or others to assist in the Ruhr operations. But all this action on the part of France is due to the fact that they are afraid. That is my belief, but I am bound to say, as one who regards himself, and has always felt it so, as a sincere friend of France, that I do not see what they are going to secure by this. There is undoubtedly this danger of Germany, with a population which 20 years hence may be more than double that of France. But the danger from Germany is not immediately; it is in the future, and what our French friends have done has been put to me as creating a greater amount of unity in Germany than existed before. Suppose France does succeed in occupying the Ruhr and the left bank of the Rhine for 10 years or more, if the net result has been to intensify the feeling of German nationality, the danger will come later. I do not think that that is an advantage to the French.

Then there is another question. We still have our troops on the Rhine. I do not know whether it will be possible for them to remain there long. I knew quite well in Paris when we came to that decision that the question of their remaining there would become very difficult. Up to now it has not become acute, but after what has happened it may become acute. But I should like to say this, that either any German Government or any French Government could easily make it impossible for our troops to remain. I think that that would be a misfortune. While they are there we are at least in touch with the situation, we have at least some chance of having a say in the control of it; and though one cannot foresee any issue out of this, I think that it would be a great pity to see the Entente brought to an end—because that is what it would mean. My right hon. Friend suggests that we should appeal to the League of Nations. I think he will agree with me that there is no use doing that if you are certain that the French will not have anything to do with it. I do not think that it is any use. I am certain that that would be their view to-day. It may be that a few months hence, they might look upon that as possible. If so, that, in my view, would be the time to make the appeal, but not now. That, at all events, is our view.

I think I have dealt fairly fully with the points which have been raised. But I wish to say this before I sit down. We had to make a decision in Paris as to whether we would allow the difference of opinion, which had reached the point when there must be difference of action, to break out without any actual breach of the friendship between us. We had to decide that. We decided, I think rightly, that, since we could not prevent it, we should lose and not gain by making a breach with our French Allies. I still think so, and I have still the hope, though I cannot say that I see any ground for it, that something may happen which will make it possible for us to intervene usefully.

Would the right hon. Gentleman answer my question as to whether Sir John Bradbury is to remain a member of the Reparation Commission?

indicated assent .

I am very glad to have an opportunity of saying a word about a district which I have just visited, from which I returned only a few days ago, a district which happens to be the very centre of this vexed controversy. I would like to put before the House some considerations about the situation in the Ruhr Valley which have not even been touched upon or alluded to obscurely by any of the speakers hitherto, although they might have been thought to be matters of supreme importance. I mean the effect of the policy now pursued in the Ruhr Valley upon the people who live in the Ruhr Valley, and in particular upon the working classes who live there, of whom I have seen much in recent days, and, indeed, among whom I have lived, because I spent my time in the house of a miner in Essen in the centre of the district—people whose lives and fortunes and hopes and fears I have had an opportunity of knowing intimately, not only as they are at present, but an opportunity of contrasting them with the state of affairs two years ago when I was in the same district and living in the same family. I had rather unusual opportunities of knowing what this problem means, not from the point of view from which it has mainly been regarded this afternoon, namely, that of high politics and of the relations between Governments, but from the point of view of its effect upon flesh and blood, and upon the lives of men, women and children.

There was one aspect of the last two speeches which struck me very forcibly. Both the Prime Minister and the right hon. Member for Paisley (Mr. Asquith) pointed out that in the policy they advocated they had not the slightest desire to show any tenderness whatsoever towards Germany. The Prime Minister was very careful to tell us that the policy which he pursued, one of relative mildness, if I might say so, towards Germany on the question of Reparation, was not all due to the fact that he objected to bring pressure to bear upon Germany. Nor did he advocate those measures with the object of saving Germany. I, coming recently from the district and from among the German people, ask myself what is Germany and who is Germany? Is Germany some abstraction that has nothing to do with flesh and blood, or has it something to do with men and women? The Prime Minister has no desire to save it. When he says to "save it," I view under the name of "it" the people concerned. As a matter of fact, when he or anyone else glibly speaks of pressure, I realise that pressure means the hunger and starvation of millions of people. During the Recess we had from the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs a speech which made considerable impression when reported in the foreign Press, and particularly when reported in the Press of Germany and Austria. In that speech the hon. Gentleman said he hoped that the measures of pressure—I give only the effect, for I cannot remember the exact words—which were being brought to bear might be successful. When you consider what this pressure means, the least that could be expected of a Minister, speaking as the hon. Gentleman did, would be that he would express some regret that the success he hoped for had to be obtained, if it was obtained, over the bodies of men, women, and children.

When I turn to the speech of the right hon. Member for Paisley (Mr. Asquith), I find that there is nothing more to satisfy me in this respect. He also says that it is not a question of tenderness towards Germany. In effect he means towards the German people. But, as far as any word that fell from him is concerned, Germany might have been a mere abstraction.

Let me say a word as to what actually this means in its effect upon the German people. The first effect of the occupation upon the population in the Ruhr district was a doubling or trebling of the prices of every article of necessity. That had already occurred two or three weeks after the beginning of the French occupation, and prices have gone up very much since. One of the worst effects was on a milk supply that was already very deficient. Two years ago the milk supply of the district was deficient. Not a single soul in the town of Essen was getting any fresh milk except children under four years of age. Even the supply for invalids had been already cut off. As a result of the occupation, instead of the child in the family in which I lived, a child under four years of age, receiving three-quarters of a pint of milk a day, it received only that quantity throughout a whole week. That was the result in a typical family, comparatively well off, exceedingly careful and thrifty, and a very small family.

The result in such a case is reflected in hundreds and thousands of families in that district. In one place alone an immediate effect of the occupation was that 10 per cent. of the already deficient milk supply was requisitioned for French officers. I could give a great many other examples of the immediate effect of the occupation upon the German people. But the immediate effects were small compared with the effects later on—effects which have begun to show themselves since I was there. The leaders of the great co-operative movement in that town told me that what they feared most of all was the effect on supplies of a dislocation of the railways. They said it was absolutely impossible, if the complicated net-work of railways was interfered with, to bring food within the reach of the people. Such a state of affairs must have been reached by this time, at least in many places. There were other sides of the question which made a great impression on the people. One was the immediate occupation of a very large proportion of the elementary schools by foreign troops. Elementary schools are very highly valued by the German population, particularly by the working classes, and the utmost indignation was aroused by the action of the occupying troops.

6.0 P.M.

More serious than the immediate effects on the lives of the people are the dangers of outbreaks of violence, of which we have already had evidence and of which we shall see a great deal more in the days and weeks that are coming, for the occasions of friction leading to such violence are increasing in number every day. We have already had news of a very considerable number of innocent and unarmed civilians being killed, and the toll of the dead will mount day by day and week by week. The opportunities for such friction have been much greater since the dislocation of the railway system took place. Let me give one illustration of the kind of thing which is occurring every day and must occur when occupying troops try to run the railways. I read in a Belgian newspaper a description of how a French soldier compelled a German engine driver to couple his engine to a certain train in which French officers were travelling by holding a revolver to his head. The incident was described with pride and satisfaction. The fact is that these incidents must occur in increasing numbers. Every one of such incidents, not to speak of acts of sabotage which are bound to occur in increasing numbers, is a point of friction from which violence may arise. Let me guard myself against saying that there is any desire on the part of the population for acts of violence, if they can be prevented. The whole feeling of the working classes, particularly of the miners, was to keep the movement within the limits of passive resistance. The Socialist party of Germany has earned great credit by the efforts it has made to get that decision carried out and to prevent any use being made of this crisis for provoking international hatred. They have, in fact, gone out of their way in their endeavour to prevent it. None the less the determination to resist being forced to work by foreign bayonets was powerful and unanimous. It has been said that the strike movement in the Ruhr was promoted or instigated from without, and in particular, that it was encouraged by offers or promises of assistance from the German Government or from other sources. That statement I can emphatically contradict from my own experience. I had many discussions on the subject, and the very point upon which men's minds were most exercised, and upon which the most doubt was felt at that time, was as to whether it would be possible to get any kind of support from without. That was a matter of grave anxiety. It was recognised that the people could not go on indefinitely without wages or without support of some kind, but quite irrespective of that doubt or anxiety, the people of the district which I visited were, as far as I could judge, determined in their resolve to carry out passive resistance.

I want to say a word or two about the reasons or pretexts given for the action of the French Government. In bringing the charge that I do against the French Government, I am not for a moment acquitting our own Government of responsibility. If they have drawn back at the last moment, and I gladly recognise that they have refused to co-operate in this last and supreme example of the insolent and oppressive character of the Treaty, it is only a belated awakening. They themselves encouraged, and their predecessors encouraged, all the measures which have led up to this supreme example of the character of the Treaty. For the moment, however, we are concerned with what the French Government is doing. It is quite certain, as the Prime Minister's speech has indicated, that what they are out for at the present time is not reparation. It is not immediate reparation or even reparation in any measurable time for the French people as a whole. It has almost passed into a commonplace; it is almost generally accepted that reparation is out of the question, but I may point out—and this is an important feature of the situation—that the French people do not view the question in that way. They view it in a very different light. They have been promised reparation. They have been promised by their Government and by the organs of their Government in the Press, that they are going to get something out of this movement. Now they begin to find that instead of getting something out of it they are getting nothing or certainly getting far less than they were getting before and that the amount of coal now coming from the Ruhr is absolutely trivial compared with what they would have got, had the invasion never taken place. More than that, they are finding that the works of reconstruction which were going on in Northern France and elsewhere are being brought to a standstill.

In Belgium, on my way home, I had the experience of hearing some very interesting facts from a Belgian Labour leader, who happens to live near the frontier of Northern France. He told me that in his district there were large numbers of brick workers who organised themselves in gangs and who went over to Northern France and got work in the rebuilding of the devastated villages. He also told me that during the past week some hundreds of these men had received instructions from the contractors that they were not to go because, owing to the serious financial situation in France, the works of reconstruction on which they were to have been engaged were being suspended. So the French peasant is now seeing even the little work that was being done in the reconstruction of his villages, ceasing to be done owing to the disturbance caused by the invasion of the Ruhr.

There is not much doubt as to some at least of the motives behind the movement on the Ruhr. They have not been concealed—to do the French iron and steel industry justice. It has not concealed its ends in the matter. It has not concealed its end of controlling the coalfield of the Ruhr, in conjunction with the iron and steel works and blast furnaces of Lorraine. It has carried on a very active propaganda for years past. That propaganda has been reflected in the French Press and in the speeches of members of the Government. It is a matter of common knowledge. It is highly probable that if a solution is found of this problem at all, it will be found in some form of agreement between French and German industrials, whereby the French industrials will obtain a predominant economic control over the whole iron and coal area treated as a unit. There is little doubt that objects of this kind are behind the invasion, in addition to the military or purely strategic objects, which doubtless have their place as well.

I should like to emphasise something more than that. I should like to emphasise what are the dangers to which this policy of vacillation on the part of our Government is leading us. Either we are going to see the breakdown of social and political order in Germany, or we are going to see the predominance of certain French industries in that great industrial area. Let me expand very briefly these two alternatives. There is a very near possibility—for things are getting worse and more dangerous every day—of a real collapse, a real catastrophe, not in the sense of gradual impoverishment, but in the sense of a partial or total break up socially and politically. Violence is practically certain to grow up on an increasingly large scale. As the Prime Minister said just now, the Nationalist movement in Germany has been made stronger than it ever was since the end of the War, and measures of armed resistance, guerilla warfare, and things of that sort are extremely likely to be resorted to. Everything of that kind gives a pretext for violent measures of repression on the other side, and so things go from bad to worse. It is by no means a remote possibility that we might have within a short time the complete, destruction of central government in Germany. It is quite possible there might be a break-up whereby there would be one Government in Bavaria and another in Pomerania; perhaps a Communistic dictatorship in one place and a Junker dictatorship in another. All these things one must foresee as possibilities without in the least being an alarmist. Our Government may perhaps come to think itself to have been fortunate in having had any central Government at all to deal with in Germany, and may very much regret having a number of separate Governments and broken up States to deal with instead.

Supposing this chaos does not follow. Supposing that chaos is avoided by success on the part of the French industrials in obtaining control of the Ruhr coalfields. Would that work out to the interests of this country? I venture to think it would be a very serious blow to our iron and steel industry if the whole of this great area were placed exclusively under the control of the French iron and steel industry. Such a military and industrial predominance of the French Government in Europe would be a great blow to our position both industrially and politically on the Continent. We should largely cease to count. I am not taking an alarmist view of the matter, more than is dictated by the obvious facts of the situation, but these facts should be borne in mind.

A word as to the attitude of our own Government in this connection. We are glad, as I have said, that they are not actively co-operating, but what are they doing? They are pursuing a policy which is weak and vacillating in the extreme. The Prime Minister just now gave what I understand to be his own opinion, namely, that the policy now being pursued by the French Government was dangerous and even disastrous for the economic life of Europe and had proved itself to be so. If the right hon. Gentleman holds that opinion, how can he adopt a neutral and waiting attitude towards that policy? If the right hon. Gentleman holds the view that Europe is threatened with this danger and disaster to its economic life—not only that it is threatened but that there is actual proof that the danger and disaster is occurring, what are we to think of a Government who make no effort whatever to prevent the disaster, but stand by as though they were not sure which was the truth, as though they did not know whether the measures being taken were good or bad?

I should like the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs to explain how he reconciles his own statement with that which the Prime Minister has made to-night. If I understood the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs aright, he said that he, for his part, did not know whether the measures taken by the French Government were good or bad. I understood him to say he was uncertain whether they would prove a blessing or a curse, but he hoped they would prove a blessing and that no one would be more delighted than he if these measures of pressure succeeded. The Prime Minister does not say that he is not sure whether these measures are a blessing or a curse. He tells us that they are a curse. He tells us not only that they are going to prove a curse, but that they have already proved themselves to be a curse. I am bound to say the attitude of the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs is more easy to reconcile with the policy of the Government. If the Government really do not know what is the truth of the matter, if they do not know whether these measures are good or bad, I can understand them holding their hand and adopting a vacillating and equivocal attitude, although I do not think that is a very proud attitude to take up. I think it is a humiliating attitude for the Government of a great country like ours that it should not be able to make up its mind whether these things are good or bad. At any rate, the Prime Minister now says he has made up his mind that they are bad, that they are dangerous and disastrous, that the Ruhr is the jugular vein of German industry, and that France has done harm both to herself and to Germany. He tells us that the policy of the French Government—and I insist it is the French Government, and I am not going to place responsibility upon the French people in the matter—has created a greater amount of German unity than existed before, that its net result has been to intensify the feeling of German nationality, and that the danger will come later. Such is the Prime Minister's opinion, yet, in spite of that, we have an attitude of sheer hopelessness presented to us, and in connection with the Ruhr, we have, as I have said, adopted an equivocal, uncertain, and vacillating policy.

A question was asked by my hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition as to the Government's attitude with regard to the Rhineland Commission. I am sorry I missed hearing the answer. It is a very important point and one that should be examined. What measures have our Government taken? Are they favouring or hindering or neutral towards the action which is being taken by the French Government? From time to time we have indications that they are trying to keep out of the trouble; that they are in a humble, begging sort of way entreating the French Government not to give them trouble. At other times we find that they are taking action in the Rhineland which is obviously contributing towards helping the action of the French Government. We have the permission given for troops to pass through, and to use the railways in, the territory occupied by our troops. Only the other day it was reported that a very large number of French troops had started from Opladen, in the Cologne area, not far from Cologne, a place in which I was not long ago, and that was equivalent to the giving of facilities by the British Government for the movements that are now going on. Then we have the arrest of German officials. I do not know how far that has gone, but it is quite clear—and I do not think it can be regarded as anything but humiliating for a country like ours—that on the request or the orders of the French Government we have co-operated in the arrest of certain German officials whom we should not otherwise have arrested, that is to say, against whom we ourselves have not brought any particular charge; and on one occasion at any rate—I do not know whether it was on many occasions—the French officers who arrested the officials concerned were accompanied by British military police, according to the statements in the Press. I give the statement with care, because I have it only on the authority of the British Press. Then we have the measures taken to assist the French authorities in administering the State mines and forests in that portion of the area which is occupied by British troops. We have numerous decrees of the Rhine-land Commission issued on the request of the French authorities, presumably to assist the movements which the French authorities are carrying on, measures passed by the Rhineland Commission, on which we have a representative and for the decisions of which we are responsible.

We, on this side of the House, want to know what these measures mean. Is this benevolent neutrality in any sense real neutrality, or is it covert support of the measures that are being taken by the French Government? What does it mean? It certainly means that from time to time, if not consistently, support is given to the policy that is being carried on. It looks from the outside as if the policy pursued by this country were an awkward endeavour both to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, to try to be able to leave a loophole on either side to enable us to get out of a difficulty should one arise later on. The attitude towards the German people appears to be the one described in the familiar line of the poet: quid pro quo somewhere else in the world, if they were not getting a quid pro quo in the Near East, if they were not getting support for ends of their own, which are also Imperialistic in character, from the French Government, and while I have no evidence whatever of any definite understanding or written agreement on that matter, I am bound to say that, until some better explanation is given, I cannot resist the conclusion that the support we gain in the Near East from the French Government is very largely accountable for the so-called benevolent neutrality which we are showing towards their action in the West of Europe and on the Ruhr.

The policy which our representatives have advocated at Lausanne with regard to the settlement of the Near Eastern question is unquestionably of an Imperialistic character. We put from this side of the House in the last Session many questions to the Government as to what their policy in that matter was going to be, and we received no answer. We were told that we must not press the matter and that we must not embarrass the negotiations that were taking place, or about to take place, and we were left in total darkness as to what it was that our Government was going to put forward in the way of demands. Then we had the Recess, and our representatives at Lausanne put forward demands which had never been placed before this House, which had never been discussed by this House, and which had never been pronounced upon in any sense by the people of this country. They were demands which were very excessive in many directions, from the Turkish point of view, and excessive on points which were not of vital importance to us. I am not going into details, with regard to the frontiers of Iraq and the freedom or so-called freedom of the Straits, but demands were put forward by the Foreign Secretary, in the name of this country, at Lausanne of which I venture to say that three-fourths of the people of this country would strongly disapprove if they understood how extreme they were, and which at any rate had never been submitted either to the country or this House. I hope opportunities will occur of going further into that matter, and if the support obtained from the French Government is not the explanation of our guilty connivance with the French policy in the West of Europe, I should like to know what is the explanation, and I should like to have some account of the matter given to us in this House.

There is one other thing I should like to add with regard to the policy pursued since the last Session, and that is that not only have we, by our Imperialistic demands, made an agreement with the Turks more difficult, but we have done something which is perhaps more serious—we have bitterly antagonised Russia and the Russian Government, and very largely the Russian people, owing to the policy that has been put forward in our name at Lausanne. That is one of the most disastrous sides of the negotiations that have taken place there. I am not arguing in any sense whatever that the Treaty suggested ought not to be signed, because almost any settlement is better than no settlement at all, and there are very strong reasons why it should be signed, but, from the point of view of this House, I do complain that the negotiations there have been carried on by the representatives of this country in a style of studied contempt towards the House of Commons, and of complete indifference towards the opinions held throughout this country.

I desire, in sitting down, to emphasise the broad principle with which I began, that in this Ruhr question and in the whole of the associated questions of reparation and of the remodelling of the Peace Treaty, it is a monstrous proposition that we should be told here that we have no sympathy for the German people or that we have no desire whatever to do anything to prevent the miseries to which I have alluded. If our foreign policy is to be conducted on that principle, we might as well close our churches and chapels, and make sport of religion and humanity. But I hope as time goes on that something of a spirit of humanity may be brought into our policy, even with regard to those whom we have been considering as enemies.

For different reasons from those which have been advanced by the last speaker, I also feel somewhat disappointed with the policy which has been expressed by the Government, not only this afternoon but on previous occasions, in regard to France. In my view, no satisfactory trade or commerce can come until we in this country have a settled policy as regards Europe, until Europe settles down to a position of tranquillity, a word which is the key-note upon which this Government came into power. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Paisley (Mr. Asquith) expressed his view this afternoon that the League of Nations was the means through which this matter could be settled. I do not bow to anyone in my belief in the League of Nations, but I do not think we must merely give lip service to the League. We must not use it merely for electioneering purposes; we must try to make the League of Nations a strong instrument of peace. I believe the League must stand for those principles which bound the victorious Allies together during the last war, and I must say, frankly, that I consider that the British policy at the present moment with regard to France and the Ruhr Valley is completely wrong. If the ideal could be realised whereby the French Government, the British Government, and the American Government could all stand together on one common policy, that would be an ideal which would, more than anything else, go far to settle Europe, but that unfortunately is impossible, because America is adopting an attitude of complete contempt for the League of Nations and of contempt for our views and the French views.

Whereas France seems, as far as I can see, to stand—and hers is the only Government of the larger countries in Europe that does stand—for the strict enforcement of the Versailles Treaty, we seem to be adopting the policy of the half-way house, and when hon. and right hon. Members of this House talk about being red-hot for the League of Nations, we must remember that during the negotiations which took place a short time ago in Lausanne, the Turks scouted our idea about the League of Nations by saying the League was a mere offshoot of the British Foreign Office. It seems to me, whether we like it or not, that there is a great element of people in this country who are determined—and, if I may say so, the hon. Member for Accrington (Mr. Charles Buxton), who spoke last, is a very typical example of that view—that we must let Germany off lightly and that we must encourage Germany's trade and industry. I differ entirely from the point of view expressed, not only on this side but on that side, that it is necessary to have a recovery of German trade for the benefit of this country and in order that she may pay reparations. I believe, and I am sure that thinking people must be in agreement with me, that the recovery of Germany industrially would be fatal to the best interests of this country. We might get trifling advantages by trading with Germany, but we must realise that there are far more serious disadvantages and losses which would result from German competition, and that those losses and disadvantages would far outweigh any advantage which we should gain from trading with Germany. It is my firm belief that there can be no settlement of Europe and of this question of reparation until we stand side by side, with our troops, with France and Belgium in the Ruhr Valley.

I believe that our past policy has been entirely mistaken. It has encouraged Germany to make defaults. I am one of those people who believe that the French action should have been taken, not now, but three years ago, and that on the very first default, however trifling, that was made; we should have acted at once to see that no further defaults were made. There has been a growing tendency to regard Treaties and agreements as scraps of paper, and solemn obligations, made and signed by the leaders of the nation, as something that cannot and need not be carried out. When we allow Germany to default, we encourage others, particu- larly smaller nations, to default also. The force of example which Germany has been allowed to set has become worldwide. We have encouraged people to say that a default is of no consequence, and that England will wipe out anything, and will find the money for any particular process with which any wild people may come along. It seems to me a peurile argument which has been used so often in this House, that Germany cannot pay. It is surely absurd, seeing that we have recently contracted to pay £1,000,000,000 to the United States, to suggest that we cannot force Germany, which has twice the population, to find at least an equal sum, or, as I believe they ought to find, a much larger sum.

Every business man in this country knows perfectly well that the business men of Germany have been sending their capital abroad as fast as they can during the last four years. We know as a matter of fact that the deposits of German nationals in London banks to-day are larger than they were in 1914, and not only that, but the holdings of raw materials by German nationals abroad is colossal. I am aware, from my own knowledge, that at the present moment the largest buyers of standing timber in Poland and Latvia and the countries in the Balkan States are German nationals, who are putting their marks into standing timber and raw materials abroad, thereby defeating the object of the Allies and depreciating their own currency. There are people who ask, "How can Germany pay?" I say that that, first of all, is her problem, and not ours. She must make up her mind in what way she is going to pay. I believe she must pay and can pay, and I believe she can do so without putting one man in this country out of employment. I ventured to point out that Germany at the present time is buying standing timber in Poland and Latvia. Look at the vast amount of timber we import from the Balkan States, Finland, Archangel, Sweden and other countries. I believe that by a systematic exploitation of the German forests we could secure the timber which we import from abroad for nothing by proper methods. I am quite satisfied—and I am speaking from a practical point of view, because I know something about timber—that Germany can pay from £50,000,000 to £100,000,000 in timber, instead of it having to be bought from other countries. I do not think this amount of money can be secured if we are going to adopt chicken-hearted methods. No halfhearted, silken glove tactics, which we have seen in the past, can secure this reparation from Germany. If Germany sees we mean business, she will give in, and not indulge in these defaults.

In my opinion, the French tactics are right. I believe the German defiance will only last while we stand aloof or are lukewarm in our attitude in regard to France. There are those people who say that France is militarist in her policy, and that France intends to stay permanently in the Ruhr Valley. If that be correct—and I do not think it is—then the best way of preventing France from being militarist and remaining permanently in the Ruhr Valley, is that our troops should stand side by side with the French troops. The arguments which hon. Members use are arguments that we should go into the Ruhr Valley in order to influence French opinion, so that she may not become militarist, and to see that she does not remain permanently in that valley. I say that if we go forward with a strong policy—a policy which Benjamin Disraeli or Joseph Chamberlain would have adopted if they were in the places of my hon. and right hon. Friends on the Front Bench at the present moment, we would go far to settle the world problems at the present time. The Turks would know that Britain means what she says, the Russian madness would quickly disappear, and the world-disturbance, I believe, would quickly be settled.

I wish the last speaker had added another remark to his peroration, that if the Government, of which he is a supporter tried to fulfil their promises to the working classes of this country, their grievances might disappear. I think an eloquent peroration of that kind would have been all the better for a little rounding off, and a little looking at our own faults, and a little less looking at the alleged faults of others. I am a very warm friend indeed both of France and of the French, but I am driven to a conclusion diametrically opposite to that of the hon. Member who has just sat down. I believe that French policy is militarist, that the action in the Ruhr is not intended to get reparation, but is intended to pro- duce dislocation in Germany, and that propaganda is being pursued with, that object. I intend as I go along, if I may, to give certain details, from investigations which I have personally pursued, to prove that the French policy is bad, and that the Germans have really made a substantial effort to meet their obligations, but that that effort has been crippled by the policy hitherto pursued by the Allies. Let us take the arguments that have been used in France and in this House. Take them at their face value, and examine them one by one. We are told that Germany has made no effort. We are told that the depreciation of the exchange has been deliberate. Highly placed statesmen in France tell us that the danger is, if Germany gets the terms that Britain suggested, she would soon be the most powerful nation in Europe economically, and that in effect the proposals that were made in Paris meant the presentation to Germany of the economic hegemony of Europe, and the consequent danger to the rest of the. European nations.

Let us see what the depreciation of exchange has meant in Germany. Let us submit to the cold light of reason and of facts the position of affairs, and then ask ourselves if it be possible to believe that the Germans have deliberately produced this effect in order in some way to benefit their country. I will take, first of all, the great professional classes of Germany, and everybody knows what educated opinion is in its influence upon a country's politics. I need only call attention to the legal profession in this country, and to ask hon. and right hon. Members to think of that opinion in Germany, and its effect upon political policy. What is the position of the German professional classes? Is there any difference of opinion on the part of those who have seriously tried to understand the situation, that the present position of the professional classes in Germany is lamentable? As a matter of fact, at the present moment English scientists, forgetting altogether the enmities of the past, and thinking only of pure science, are arranging subscriptions in order that German scientists may have the opportunity of study. Everybody who has visited Germany, who has seen the people, who knows anything at all about their incomes, knows what the position of that great class is in Germany, so that we may take it for granted, I think, that if the great middle and professional classes of Germany have deliberately helped to ruin themselves, then they must be a people who are very self-sacrificing. Let us take the great property owners of Germany. Everybody knows what has taken place in this country because of an alleged foolish Act which restricted the power to raise rents, and we can take it for granted, I think, that in Germany the great property owners are just as powerful politically as they are in this country; but the fact remains that, so far as house property is concerned in Germany, the fall in the exchange and the laws passed have literally ruined the property owners. Can we imagine that the property owners have deliberately ruined themselves in order to spite France? I suggest that that is an assumption too difficult altogether to swallow.

These are facts anybody can find for himself if he cares to look at the situation. So that we have two very large and influential classes in the German State who are practically ruined, and then we are asked by our French friends, and even by hon. Members of this House, to believe that this has been deliberately done by the Germans themselves by some Machiavellian cunning, and that that Machiavellian cunning has resulted in their own ruin. Let me go further still. The French advance another argument, and this argument is also used in Britain, namely, that the policy pursued by the German Government will wipe out the German internal debt by the fall in the exchange being so colossal that the holdings of German internal debt have no value. We are asked to believe that these Machiavellian Germans, who are playing with us as cats play with mice, have deliberately wiped out the whole of their internal debt to show how clever they are. The thing is preposterous, and so absurd that I do not intend to pursue that side of the subject any further. All I ask is that, free from prejudice and with a desire only to arrive at the truth, these plain facts should be examined, and if, after that, hon. Members can declare that Germany has deliberately done this in order to gain an advantage, I will admit that we cannot, and never will be able to see things in the same light.

We have the same kind of wild and whirling statements with regard to German foreign investments. Sometimes it is hundreds of millions invested abroad, and sometimes it is thousands, all of it is from personal knowledge—with never any proof! Will somebody kindly give proof of the statements as to the exportation of thousands of millions of German capital? It is well known that a lot of German capital is held in various foreign countries, but there is absolutely nothing in it from what I have seen, that German capital has been exported in anything like the quantity which would make the difference between the French demands and the onerous conditions—I think too onerous—that were laid down by the British Government in Paris. I ask again that we should have proof instead of assertion; that we should have definite knowledge instead of assumption. Beyond all, I ask that we should have common sense in our arguments. As a matter of fact, Germany has made tremendous payments both in actual cash and in kind. The military occupation alone has cost Germany tremendous sums of money that might with advantage have been devoted to re-building the devastated areas of France and Belgium. We are told, too, that while we in this country have been suffering, there has been in Germany a wave of prosperity; that the working classes have been better off than before; that the manufacturers have made greater profits than ever. But has anybody ever taken the trouble to get down to the hard, cold figures, and to demonstrate that those statements were correct. I had the opportunity a few months ago of forming part of a Commission of Inquiry that went to Germany with the deliberate object of getting to know the truth. We did not desire to prove a case either one way or the other, but to get at the truth. These are some of the facts that that Committee of Inquiry found.

They found that in respect to a number of articles in general use, and things that were necessary to the ordinary man, including towels, tramcar fares, even shaving and the rest of it, the average increase in prices was 256 times while the wages of the workers have gone up 64 times only. Where the workman was able to buy 256 articles of the type of which I have spoken in 1914, he can buy only 64 now. The figures are at the disposal of any hon. Member who cares to have them. These are things, I think, that are typical of the whole position in Germany. We dealt with the question of recreation, and here again we found that where wages had increased 64 times, the cost of the amusements of the people had increased 159 times. We went on to the different towns in Germany. Again, we found a long list—I do not want to weary the House with figures, but the general results are the same, whether you deal with the necessaries of life, or amusements or miscellaneous articles.

So far as the working men are concerned, the railwaymen, tailors, bricklayers, engineers, and miners, while wages on an average have gone up from 1914 about 64 times, prices have gone up on an average at least 200, so that the position of the working man is infinitely worse than in 1914. In only one respect is the German worker at an advantage in comparison with 1914. The laws in regard to house rent have acted so favourably for him that, while they have ruined the property-owners, they have given the workman a house at a very low rental according to the valuation of the mark to-day. I have given these figures to the House because I want to claim that these statements that have been made about the deliberate rigging of the currency, the statements made about prosperity in Germany, are statements made without a basis of fact. Unless we get at the facts, it is an absolute impossibility to reach a wise conclusion on the matter.

Let me take the question of the coal deliveries about which principally the French occupied the Ruhr area. It is perfectly true that the actual coal deliveries were some 10 per cent. less than the amount that ought to have been delivered, but it is also true that that 10 per cent. is largely due to the fact that France herself rejected a large proportion of the coal on the ground that the quality was not high enough. It is as well that in that respect we should know where we are. My information is that Germany, for armies of occupation, actual cash, and in deliveries in kind, have paid 600 million pounds in the shape of reparations. I am speaking from memory, but I think it is three times the amount that the French paid in 1871 following the Franco-German War. Here again, when we are talking about nothing having been done, it is like the depreciation of the exchange, like the stories about prosperity, it rests on a figment of the imagination, and has no basis in actual fact.

I said a few moments ago that I believed that France is following a policy which is definitely militaristic. The Ruhr is not the only country in Europe in which we have seen France. I do not know whether I am infringing the orders of the House or not, but let it be remembered that whilst France was crying out about the difficulty of balancing her Budget she could still find the money to back up adventures against Russia, even when the rest of Europe had realised the folly of it. It is time we, as friends, spoke quite frankly to France. Everyone wants to see the Northern area of France restored and to see the Germans restore it. But I hope Britain will never be a party to a policy that is not one for reparation at all, but is openly aimed at the dismemberment of Germany. What has been done for the armies of occupation, in respect to the cost of it, is simply monstrous. The demands made on Germany for these armies of occupation include hundreds of thousands of champagne glasses, thousands of toilet sets for, ladies—officers taking their wives their uncles, aunts, and families and quartering them on the Germans. All these things are being done and the facts can be found by anyone who wants to see them. When, therefore, we talk about the barbarities of Germany, about what Germany would have done if she had won, and that we are going to do to Germany what she would have done, at least let us get rid of the hypocrisy of it. Do not let us say that the Germans were vile and that we are going to do the same. If so, let us be honest about it, and admit that we are just as bad as they, that we will do what they would have done.

There are one or two other things that I do not think any self-respecting Members of the House of Commons can look upon with equanimity. I wonder what the inhabitants of London, Manchester, or Liverpool would say if they had had black troops placed in occupation of their city. If any hon. Member of the House wishes to associate himself with that, let him do so. Personally, I, as a Briton, object to that quite positively, and as to the deliberate arrangement of brothels for these troops, that, I think, is a crime against humanity. The fact that I love France, that I am an admirer of France, does not prevent me saying to the French that I believe it is below their national dignity and ought not to be done either in their name or ours.

Is the French policy calculated to get reparation? The Prime Minister, in a very impressive speech, gave a clear indication of his opinion in the matter. He spoke of the opinion of a distinguished Frenchman, not a member of the Government. I have spoken with many Frenchmen, distinguished and otherwise, but I have never spoken to a Frenchman yet who believed that by this policy France would secure a greater sum in reparations than she had acquired up to the present. The results have already been described. France is neither getting the coal nor the money, which she would have got if her occupation had not extended into the Ruhr. The only conclusion I can come to is that there is a deliberate attempt on the part of France to dismember Germany. As a matter of fact, within the last few days in Bavaria a German has been prosecuted for accepting French bribes in order to conduct French propaganda. If hon. Members will go—it might be difficult for them to get into the Ruhr now—they would have the opportunity of seeing what things are like. But if they will go to Cologne they will be able to find in their investigation that French propaganda is a real propaganda, and that France, whilst screaming about not being able to rebuild her regions, can still find money to conduct propaganda in order to dismember the German Empire.

7.0 P.M.

In my opinion that policy is a mad policy. France's population of 40 millions cannot indefinitely hold down a population of 60 millions. It cannot indefinitely excite hatred and then remain scot free from the results of that hatred. In my opinion France is deliberately pursuing a policy which will finally bring Germany back on her shoulders with France, not with the whole world behind her as in 1914, '15, and onwards, but with France almost alone in the world. Who is then going to be responsible for the condition of Europe? People who are friends of France, people who want to see France prosperous and happy, people who desire to see the French free, and with a feeling of safety, shudder at the dangers which exist if the policy now being pursued is continued. I do not want to go too much into the details in regard to the mineral resources of the Ruhr, but it is a well-known fact that the metal in Lorraine has a need for the coke from the Ruhr. It is a fact also that with the present orientation of political power in Europe that if France seizes the Ruhr definitely, France sits astride of practically the whole mineral resources of Europe. I feel that it is very doubtful indeed whether the desires of France are desires for reparation, or desires that are really aimed at a crime as great as the crime of tearing Alsace-Lorraine from France in 1871. Destructive criticisms are very little good, and I would like to put forward what is the policy we think ought to be pursued with regard to Germany and Central Europe generally. First of all we have always held that the wrong way to get reparation is to plant expensive military bodies in the heart of the country from which you have to get the reparation. After the War it was generally agreed in Germany that as she had lost the War she ought to pay, and certain very definite steps were taken which were supported by a great many of the French people making arrangements that the Germans should begin to rebuild Northern France, and they actually agreed among the workmen's organisations as to the method of working in order to avoid friction. That would have been a real reparation and it simply amounts to this, that the people who had blown the houses down would have put them up again.

Germany was ready to do this and undertook that kind of reparation. I heard it stated the other day by a leading French politician that the French had 200,000 bricklayers minus in order to go on with the work which was necessary to rebuild Northern France, and here was the opportunity. There could have been an agreement between the two peoples amongst the workers that the scheme should be carried out in good faith, but this agreement was refused, and to-day the ruins still exist in Northern France, and instead of rebuilding being accelerated the evidence shows that what rebuilding there was going on has been stopped. That is the condition of affairs which has been brought about by the policy we are now pursuing in Germany. I agree absolutely with the view expressed by the Leader of the Opposition, that there is only one way of finding a road out of this impasse in which we find ourselves. It is apparently impossible for France and Germany, as two nations, to agree, but it may be possible for an independent body, if both France and Germany accept the position, to find a way out of the difficulty. It may be possible for the League of Nations—and I believe that is the body most fitted for the task—to act as arbitrators and settle the differences that exist. It may be possible for the League of Nations to give a better guarantee for security to France than that which can be obtained in any other way.

There is, however, one method better than all the others for the security of France, and it is that France should enlist the sympathy and help of the great organised working classes in both countries. The German workers themselves are the best guarantee for the security of France in the future. They have given proof over and over again of their intention and desire to rebuild Northern France and Belgium as quickly as possible. There is the danger in Germany of Communism on the one side and of the Nationalists on the other. It is the desire of the mass of the German people to make these reparations to Northern France and Belgium, and that position they have never departed from. If it be possible for our Government to enter into active diplomatic relations with France, and if it is possible to get America also to take part in the negotiations; if it is possible for the League of Nations to act as mediator, then there is a possibility of peace in Europe in the near future.

We must not, however, continue to foster fires of hate every day and make the German people believe that they are being treated cruelly and ruthlessly. The feeling that the only way to make the Germans understand is to treat them ruthlessly and cruelly is a theory which is absolutely without foundation. I do not believe that there is a civilised people on earth that can be ruled by ruthlessness and cruelty, for that is what brought the whole world against Germany, and it will turn the whole world against France if she pursues that policy. It is because I believe that fair play is better that any attempt at ruthlessness that I hope the Government will try and get France to negotiate on these points. If it be claimed that we in this country, who have not seen the ravages of war in France and Belgium, cannot understand what the French people think and feel, then there is some justification for the statement. It may be impossible for us to see with the same eyes that the French people see these things, but certainly it is sometimes possible for those who are to some extent on the outer edge to see more clearly than those whose feelings are inflamed and who see things in a different light. We, however, have a right to say to France that our voice ought to be heard in regard to her policy. We went into the War with France. It is quite true that we might have had to fight Germany if we had not gone into the War with France as an Ally, but the fact remains that we went into the War with France, and that fact made the future winning of the War for the Allies a certainty, and our non-entry would have placed France in an extremely desperate position. Hundreds of thousands of our men lost their lives in France, and therefore I think the French Government ought to listen to our voice and give some semblance of respect to our argument. It is not dignified for our Government to present to France carefully thought out schemes and to be told that they cannot be taken even as a basis for discussion. That is not the British idea of dignity. There are negotiations in the Far East, and if it comes to friendly action, I am aware that things can be said with great effect on the other side.

The Labour party stands for the withdrawal of all the troops from the Ruhr and for reparation to be made within the capacity of Germany, the limitation being that German workers must not be enslaved in order to pay for the reparation to be made by Germany. Reparation should be made in Northern France by arrangement with the German organised workers in a way that will not leave a sting of hatred behind. The Germans should be given to understand that so far as the Allies are concerned, the War being over, it is not our policy or principle to jump on a defeated enemy, but we desire to give them a chance. The real result we are aiming at is that France should be repaired by German efforts, and that the two countries should remain friendly. We are in favour of a great international loan and a moratorium. These things we believe in, and the Government will have our support if they adhere to these principles. On the other hand, for any militaristic aggression or any attempt to split Germany by a military policy the Labour party will not vote.

I do not propose to follow the line taken up by the hon. Member who has just sat down. I cannot say that I disagree with him altogether. I have listened with pleasure to his speech, and as a matter of fact with much of what he has said I am in accord, although I do not agree with all his deductions. When I hear the hon. Member say that he has a right to ask the French Government to come to some arrangement with us not to pursue their present policy in Germany. I would like to tell him what I was told not long ago when I was talking to a great French ship owner in the south of France. I said to this Frenchman, "Do you not think that it is very rash to go into the Ruhr as you have done, and are you right in disagreeing with our Prime Minister when he tells you that you ought not to act as you have from fear of German invasion?" He replied, "You say we ought not to fear invasion by the Germans, but I do not think you English people ought to put up such an argument. Our position is the same as yours. You even will not build the channel tunnel because you are afraid of invasion by us." I do not argue whether that point of view is right or wrong, but that is the position as put to me by a leading French commercial man, and while the French people take that view it is impossible to get them to listen to reason and come to some arrangement with Germany through the League of Nations in order to stop all this turmoil.

That, however, is not the particular point to which I desire to refer. I see my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer here, and as one connected with trade, I would like to say on my own behalf and on behalf of those colleagues who act with me in this matter how much we are indebted to the right hon. Gentleman for having come to a satisfactory arrangement with the American Government. I may say as one who was much disturbed with the thought of this big foreign Debt that I followed every word in the Press in regard to what the Chancellor of the Exchequer did in America, and his work and utterances have received our closest attention. When the right hon. Gentleman went out I hoped sincerely that he might meet with success, but I never believed that he would bring the interest down to 3 per cent. and 3½ per cent. with ½ per cent. for sinking fund, and by achieving this I think he has done better than I hoped for and more than I expected.

Why do you not bring down the interest on the War Loans at home?

We have arranged with the lenders of that money in America to lend it to us henceforward at a smaller rate and the hon. Member opposite asks why we do not bring down the rate of interest at home. We are quite willing that should be done if it be done by permission of the lenders in this country as it is being done in America. Through our Chancellor of the Exchequer we have come to an arrangement with the lenders of this money, the American Government, and they have agreed to take less. If you can come to an agreement with the English lenders to take in future a less rate of interest in a conversion scheme, that is fair dealing; but to force the lenders to take less than you bargained with them is fraud. We entered into an agreement of honour with the American Government to pay them a certain rate of interest, and that Government out of good feeling have agreed to take a less rate of interest. We meantime maintained our word of honour; the reduction was by the permission of and the concession from the American Government. When you have a bargain to start with like that into which you have entered during the War with the American people, if you break that bargain it is a despicable act. The honest thing is to make some arrangement acceptable to lenders, be they British or American. If you do not do that, it is fraud, it is dishonesty and it is repudiation. When the time comes, as it may—I hope it will not be in my time nor in that of my children—if we should have to fight for our lives again, if we have broken faith with the British investor, how shall we in future days expect him to invest his savings with the Government to pay for munitions? Good faith is the basis of all statesmanship. One of the first things to be done in dealing with all human matters is to keep your contract. That is what the British people have done with America.

Where will you get the money to lend?

The hon. Gentleman asks me where we shall get the money to lend. The Labour party should learn that the capital which people have to lend is nothing more than saved labour that we have earned and stored up. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, oh!"] These are very elementary truths which I should be foolish if I endeavoured to explain, because they are set out in Jerons' ''Money" and in Bagehot and Bastiat and Withers. They are the axioms in finance and axioms in economics. Capital is no more than saved labour. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, oh!"] You earn by labour, you expend a portion of your earnings; you save and invest the rest and it becomes capital. That is all it is.

That is not the point to which I wish to call the attention of the House. I see the Chancellor of the Exchequer is present. I am not going to deal with the question of how much we ought to have arranged to pay, for interest or principal, back to the American Government. We made the original bargain, and we had to honour our engagements. What we want to know is what is going to be the effect of our paying this money to America? At the present moment we in England are deeply concerned in seeing our sovereign worth as near $4·86 as possible—[ Interruption ]—I hope hon. Members opposite will permit me to continue. This is a point which is very difficult to disentangle. I, for example, buy raw materials for use in the business with which I am connected. The higher the American exchange is, the less sterling I have to pay for hides to turn into goods to sell in the competing markets of the world. The higher the sterling is in relation to the dollar—now about$4·68—the better it is for the poor man who buys American food, for he has to pay less money in sterling for his food. Therefore it is an advantage to the working man and to us as manufacturers to see the rise in dollars of our sterling.

I want to see the English pound up high compared with the American dollar. I want to see the English pound note as near 4.86 as possible. It is getting up to 4.70 now. The rise in sterling exchange enables me to buy raw material more cheaply. It enables the working man to buy food more cheaply, if the pound sterling has a larger dollar value. Gradually the dollar rate has risen. It has risen as the balance of trade has gone on in our favour. The balance of our American trade is very delicate. There is very little margin in the exchange balance of that trade but what would, if you upset that equilibrium, send the pound sterling down. Then you would have it of less value in dollars. Up would go the prices of our raw materials and our food. The present quotation is a result of growing equilibrium of exports and imports. I want to know what will happen if the Chancellor of the Exchequer has to ship annually £35,000,000 over to America for interest and sinking fund? He has to do it, and we shall do it. America will not take our goods, and she will not take our gold. As a matter of fact, we have not enough gold to send her; the world's annual output of gold is only some £60,000,000 or £70,000,000, one-half of which is used for the arts and dentistry. We shall therefore have to buy exchange—what exchanges I do not know for a moment. If, however, you buy £35,000,000 of exchange, you may depend upon it that this pull all one way on that American exchange will send down the pound sterling in terms of dollars.

If that happens it will be a disadvantage to this country. There is another disadvantage. How is America going to sell her cotton or her food to us if, by this pull all one way of exchange, the goods which she has to sell to us are made very dear? I cannot see where either we, or the Americans, are, and I ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what are the physical acts by which £35,000,000 will be transferred annually in dollars to the United States' credit inside United States territory? Perhaps he will refer to this matter when he replies. I cannot sec how he or the Treasury are going to get the exchange paper or other forms of payment or dollar investment securities in order to ship £35,000,000 in dollars over to America yearly for 60 years. The hon. Member for Aberavon (Mr. Ramsay MacDonald) made a point, with which I entirely agree, connected with our trade and industry. He asked what were the American Government going to do about the tariff which is shutting the door against our goods. I am not going to talk either Free Trade or Protection, but what are the American Government going to do? How are they going to take the money or value from us each year? They will not take our goods, gold is impossible and useless; they will soon export gold. They will not take services, if they can help it. Either they will get payment in these ways, or, if not, how? That is what I want to know. I am groping about to find how the payment is going to be made.

It strikes me that America has an idea that she will do it through the very intricate method of triangular exchange, and that she will compel us to send bills to her drawn by our traders on our Colonies and Dominions and on India. We shall have to buy those bills on the market and ship them over to New York, and the people liable for the acceptance of those bills will have to ship the raw material from the Dominions or India to New York for liquidation of the bills. That means that your Imperial and other raw materials, instead of coming to London, are going to New York and Boston to meet these bills. It will be the United States manufacturers there who will get those raw materials and will make them up. That, itself, will perhaps eventually be a great disadvantage, not only to our working people, but also to us as manufacturers, by shifting the manufacture of these raw materials out of England into the United States. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"] I hope hon. Gentlemen will understand that I am not arguing; I am only doing what I ought to do as a Member of this House. I am trying to ask myself where this annual tribute is going to lead us. I know we must pay the debt. I am willing to be taxed much more highly, because it is my duty to pay the obligations into which the Government have entered on my behalf. The Chancellor of the Exchequer says to the people in Washington, "We are going to behave like honest men and pay. "Has he asked: "What are you going to do on our behalf to enable us to pay? If you slam the door and boycott our goods by your Fordner tariff you have not offered us a proper chance." I appeal to the Chancellor of the Exchequer—speaking with diffidence, as I would say nothing in this House which might be regarded in any way as a condemnation of the debt arrangement, or as adverse criticism of the right hon. Gentleman, because I entirely support him—has he succeeded in getting the American people to see that their iron-bound, hostile tariff is not only an injustice to us who have no tariff against United States goods, but that it will act as a clog to prevent us paying our debt? Will they continue to exclude our goods by tariff?

One point which has been somewhat overlooked is the fact that in 1914 we were led to suppose that we went into the War because of the tearing up of a scrap of paper. It appears to me, as regards the present Treaty, that France has acted in a somewhat similar manner, and has occupied territory to which she had no right whatever. We may well ask ourselves how far this is going to lead us, and whether France, having acted in the way she has done, there is anything whatever to stop her going very much further into the heart of Germany? If she does that, where do we stand in regard to it? Would it not make us party to an act of the very greatest possible aggression? Would it not make us party to an act contrary to the Treaty for which we are responsible? In the earlier part of the afternoon the Prime Minister referred to the fact that France was largely actuated by a sense of fear. I venture to say the longer we allow matters to drift in the way they appear to be drifting, the greater will that fear become, not only in the case of France, but it will also affect the position in which we shall find ourselves.

The House sympathises to the fullest extent with the position in which France finds herself in consequence of having Germany on her flank. It was suggested in the earlier part of the Debate that it is necessary for her to set up barriers against aggression. That may have been the case many years ago, but it certainly is not so to-day when there would appear to be no barriers so far as war is concerned, because it can be carried on through the air and at very long distances. We do not know where war is coming from. We are all living more or lees—and probably more rather than less—in fear of war. Surely we ought to be able to find some way of exercising a good deal more in the direction of common sense in regard to stopping the whole business. If someone is to take the lead we may well do so. We desire to put an end to the whole trouble and we should offer every possible encouragement in the way of disarmament. We have to show there really is a better way, and we cannot do that without also showing that we ourselves really mean it. We have to get back to the old ideals of many years ago, when we really did believe that righteousness exalteth a nation. We should get rid of that lack of ideals which appears to have arisen in recent years and we should get back to our higher and better standard. If we were to endeavour to place ourselves in the position in which Germany finds herself to-day what should we see? Suppose we had been invaded. We should naturally feel quite as strongly as Germany is feeling to-day the iniquity and wrong of the whole business. We ought to look at this matter not merely from the point of view of the gains of the moment.

I do not agree with the view which has been expressed that there should be something in the nature of perpetual and eternal punishment. We are not merely seeking to punish those who were responsible for the War. We are punishing men, women, and children who toad nothing whatever to do with it. We are punishing to-day children who were unborn in 1914. We are punishing future generations, and we have no right to be parties at all to any such conduct. It does not exalt our name in the world. We want to get back to the position when we were looked up to by the other nations of the world instead of being, as now, rather looked down upon. We have been endeavouring in recent years, as far as human life is concerned, to take entirely different views with regard to the punishment of crime. We have made improvements in that direction, and so in regard to some of these national crimes we ought to bring about an entirely different state of things and to try and put matters on a better footing. Let us not continually look upon other nations in the world as being altogether separate and apart from ourselves. Let us rather look upon ourselves as part of one great people. It is ours to create that spirit which is going to make an altogether better and different world to that in which we are living, and anything that can be done in the direction of bringing about mediation and exploring every possible avenue should be undertaken by us. It has been suggested by the Prime Minister that France would not accept the mediations of the League of Nations, and therefore it is of no use offering it to them. Surely it would be better to offer it, even if we believed they would not accept it, rather than it should remain unoffered and unsuggested. I hope the Government will seriously take this whole matter into consideration with a view of bringing to an end an intolerable position.

I desire to express my surprise at the attacks which have been made on France, both in this House to-day and in the country outside, for doing something which was actually contemplated and expressed by the British Prime Minister recently in Paris, which was definitely approved by the House of Commons itself and endorsed by the late Prime Minister, by the leader of the Liberal party and by the leader of the Labour Party at that time. I am referring to what occurred in May, 1921. Until we heard the speech of the Prime Minister to-day, the only official statement we had had with regard to our differences with France was one made some weeks ago by the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in addressing his constituents at Canterbury. The Under-Secretary stated—and many of us were glad to receive the assurance at the time—that our difference with France was not one of principle, but merely as to the best method of attaining our common end. If our difference is not one of principle, may I suggest that when differences not of principle arise between individuals who are partners in a common adventure, even although one partner may not take an active part in promoting the particular adventure of which he does not approve, he still gives all possible moral support to his partners.

I venture to say that, as we are not divided from France in principle, even though we are not in a position to give her active military support, we should give her all the moral support that is in our power. I carry the point further. Are we really at variance with France as to method? The British Prime Minister, at the recent Paris Conference, definitely informed Germany, as part of the British proposals, that certain things would have to be taken in hand by her, including the stabilising of the mark and the reform of her fiscal arrangements; and in his speech to-day he said that he definitely stated, in the course of the negotiations, that if within six months Germany did not carry out our proposals we would join with our Ally, France, in enforcing them. In the course of the Conference at Paris the Prime Minister definitely said that, if it were found that Germany did not make a real attempt to fulfil the terms which he, on behalf of Great Britain, was offering, certain severe penal measures would have to be taken. Those penal measures included the seizure of German revenues and assets, the taking over of German fiscal machinery, and the military occupation of German territories outside the occupation area.

Personally, therefore, I cannot see how we are divided from France even as to method. We could only be divided from France as to method if Germany were prepared to accept the proposals which the British Prime Minister made in Paris, and I challenge anyone to show that any responsible statesman or financier in Germany ever contemplated for a moment accepting the proposals made by the British Prime Minister in Paris. So far from that, we had financier after financier in Germany, after those proposals were made, saying that the British proposals were practically as disastrous to Germany as those made by France, and could not be contemplated. If one of the methods which the Prime Minister laid down in Paris was the occupation of German territories beyond those at present occupied, if Germany did not agree to the-British proposals and did not carry them out, I cannot see what is the difference, even as to method, between ourselves and France. Let me carry this point a step further. We have heard it said to-day that this occupation of the Ruhr is a disastrous and monstrous thing for France to do. I find from the OFFICIAL REPORT that, on 5th May, 1921, the late Prime Minister came down to this House, and made this statement of one of the terms which had that day been submitted by him to the German Ambassador on behalf of the Allies— that was the 12th May, 1921—we were

As is well known, she is now, voluntarily, in default again.

I suggest that it is because of ripening experience.

I do not follow that remark. I think the experience has been very much the other way. What was the result when the British Government, the French Government and the Allies acted together and told Germany that they would occupy the Ruhr if she did not fulfil her obligations? The result was that in 1921 Germany did fulfil her obligations for a time, and did pay the sum which was then demanded. It is only now, when the Allies are divided, that Germany, like Turkey, is endeavouring to play them off one against the other. I believe that if we had stood together in 1922 and at the beginning of 1923 in making a demand upon Germany, as we did in May, 1921, the Germans would find some way of paying substantial reparations. Let me remind the House of two other statements made by the late Prime Minister in the Debate on that occasion. He said: Ruhr we should not actually get money at the moment, but we should compel Germany, by doing what has been referred to by some speakers to-day as seizing her by the jugular vein, by the arteries through which her various industries are supplied, we should make her pay, if not the large sums that have been mentioned, at any rate, substantial sums. At a time like this, when we have now, apparently, entered into an agreement with America to pay a sum of £30,000,000 a year, to pay a debt of nearly £1,000,000,000 altogether—a sum five times as much as France had to pay when she was defeated by Germany—when we are actually in process of paying this, to say that Germany should not pay something substantial to us, and that we should not join with France in insisting upon her doing so, is, I think, a course of conduct greatly to be deplored. Personally, I do not believe the Germans will ever pay until they are forced to pay. As the Prime Minister said to-day, the balancing of our Budget has only been secured by the pauperisation of our people, or words to that effect; and it has had this double disadvantage, that not only have we these tens of thousands of people unemployed and our industries distressed, but foreign nations regard us really as war profiteers, so that those who owe us money say, "We are not going to pay those people who are so very well off that they have balanced their Budget and are in such a flourishing condition," while those to whom we owe money say, "You must pay up quickly both capital and interest." At the same time Germany, by adopting the other course, has secured full employment for her nationals, and her large manufacturers have made very big profits and the money they have obtained by those profits they have either turned into improved plant or improved buildings or improvements on their railways or else they have invested it abroad. In all these ways they have prevented Great Britain and the Allies from obtaining the reparation to which they are entitled. For these reasons I hope, even though we are not able to give France active military support, we shall give her all the moral support we can, and that if she asks us to grant facilities for coal to be sent through the British occupation area on the Rhine, those facilities will be granted.

With regard to the settlement of the American loan, I am not at all satisfied with the terms which have been arranged. An hon. Member behind me has pointed out, quite rightly, that the industries, the employment and the food of this country, much of which comes from America, depend upon having the pound sterling at a high value compared with the dollar, that is to say, a parity as nearly as possible between the pound sterling and the dollar, and he expressed his pleasure that this arrangement had been arrived at with America, although he conclusively showed by the whole of his speech that one effect of it would be greatly to depreciate the pound sterling and to bring about the inconveniences, troubles and distresses which he indicated. It is also a most unfortunate thing that the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the day for the next 60 years will never know exactly what sum he has to provide, for it depends upon the fluctuation of the dollar. If the dollar exchange falls to 3.50 to the £, as it did a short time ago, it will mean that we shall be paying America 40,000,000 a. year instead of £30,000,000, as at present, and this continual uncertainty and fluctuation is, I think, greatly to be deplored. We are now bearing a burden of taxation, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer said in America, such as no country in the history of the world has ever borne, and really, so far from being surprised that there are 1,500,000 people unemployed, I think it is really a wonder that there are not more unemployed, considering that we are paying £20 a head for every man, woman, child and baby in the country in the way of taxation. It is an unbearable burden, and at the same time that we are bearing it, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, without the matter being discussed in Parliament, as I think it ought to have been, has agreed to place another £1 per head on every man, woman, child and baby for sixty years. I would rather have left it as it was. If the Americans want their pound of flesh of 5 per cent. on the money we borrowed, not for ourselves, but for the benefit of France, Italy and the Allies, and also of America, I would say: "Stick to your bond. We made the bond and we will pay if we can, but we cannot pay you at the moment." Our Budget has only been made to balance by the unemployment of our people and the distress of our businesses. We do not disclaim the debt, and as soon as we can get some money from Germany and our Allies—I put Germany first because after all the Power that we have defeated should surely pay up first—we shall be only too glad to pay what America lent us for the same purpose. But at the moment I do not think we are in a position to pay that very large sum to America with these hundreds of thousands of unemployed British citizens walking our streets.

I could not follow the logic of the hon. Baronet's argument. He told us that we were bearing a burden of something like £20 per head of our population, and it was a burden that was likely to continue for many a day. There is not a Member of the House who would dispute that point. But his argument before that was one which, if it were adopted by the Government, would probably have landed us in a much more serious burden, because we should certainly have had to embark upon many adventures with our Allies, which I believe the best opinion in this country does not approve of. My main desire in rising is to express a very fervent hope that whatever may be said or done in this House or elsewhere, it will never be felt in France that there is either a pro-French or an anti-French party in this country. Unfortunately some of us disagree with the policy which the Government of M. Poincaré is carrying out in the Ruhr. I am quite convinced that there is no man or woman who has passed through the ordeal of the War who will ever admit that that is going to affect our ultimate friendship with France. I feel that such a speech as we have just heard is apt to create an impression amongst our friends across the Channel that we are in great danger of drifting away from the Entente Cordiale. Nothing of the sort I submit. If there is pure friendship, cannot we surely indulge in expressing our different points of view? If we see France doing a thing which we feel is not in her best interests, is against the interests of our own country, and is not going ultimately to help us to arrive at a solution of the difficulties in which we are immersed, are we not, because of our supposed friendship, to be allowed to tell our friends exactly our opinion on these matters? If we are going to adopt that line, diplomacy will become hopeless. It will be impossible ever to arrive at any understanding, because we or France would be constantly being dragged at the coat tail of its Allies. I am a very strong believer in the alliance with France. I have just come back from France, and I believe we can truly say that France is not by any manner of means united as regards the policy which is being followed in the Ruhr and has very grave misgivings on the whole matter. It knows it from day to day by the depreciation of the franc, and by all the difficulties with which it is confronted. That being so, why should we in the House of Commons, where we are all friends of France in the end, not have perfect liberty to say to France that, while we cannot see eye to eye with her in the policy which her present Government is pursuing, we believe in the future of the Entente between the two countries? It is an Entente cemented by many bonds more precious than those involved in the present controversy, and it is a dangerous policy which certain important Press and political forces are pursuing in this country to make out and to represent to our Allies abroad that we are in any sense divided as to our allegiance to France. The policy of the Prime Minister is unfortunately different to some extent from that of the hon. Member for Kensington (Sir W. Davison).

I am very glad that the Prime Minister has adopted this policy. I say, with great respect, that in his action in Paris he played a very noble part, because much of the instinct of his own party would have led him to another line of action. He saw the danger and folly of that. He told the Government with which he was in negotiation that, much as we sympathise with France, we were bound to differ from her in the course she was pursuing on the Ruhr. If there is any substance whatever in the professions we make about the future peace of Europe, surely this is an occasion on which we might endeavour to apply the machinery of the League of Nations in order to secure a settlement of the present dispute. If we are going to allow ourselves simply to be dragged along the old path which led to the great War, we may bid a long farewell to all the hopes of ultimate European peace. It is amazing that at this time of day, after the experience that we have been through, a great many men in the public life of this country should be ready to allow themselves to be cajoled or coerced along the path which may lead straight to another great European conflagration. Whether we agree with the League of Nations, or whether, as I hope, through the intervention of the British Government acting as mediator in this dispute on the Ruhr, I do trust that we may find a settlement. Whatever else happens, I express this hope, that no one, whether in England or in France, will have the idea that because some of us may differ from the action of the French Government on the Ruhr we are in any sense antagonistic to France. The feeling of those who are critical of M. Poincaré's action is that it is detrimental to the ultimate interests of France, and as Allies we deplore it.

8.0 P.M.

I want to speak on the domestic question of unemployment, but before doing so I should like to say a few words on the general question that has been before the House this afternoon. We heard a good deal about the iniquity of the Germans, and what very bad people they are. Unfortunately, I lived a long while ago as a boy and as a young man during the Victorian period, and I was brought up to believe that the Germans brought virtue, honour, and goodness to the English Court, and that there was no such person ever lived as the late Prince Consort, one of the most pure-bred Germans. I do not understand hon. Members opposite. They must think that the working classes of this country are idiots when they talk as they do. They talk about "once a German always a German," and they say that the Germans only understand force, although until a few years ago they were saying that the Germans had everything to teach us in the way of life and the organisation of life. You founded the Insurance Act on German policy. You founded the Old Age Pension Act on German policy. The Government sent me as a Royal Commissioner to Germany in order to investigate how the Germans dealt with unemployment, and I am not going to believe that because hon. Members opposite have had a tremendous capitalistic quarrel as to the control of the markets of the world, that the nature of the German people has changed. The German pork butcher is as good as a German prince. I would have cut my right hand off had I been King of this country before I would have changed my name at the bidding of the late hon. Member for South Hackney.

You will never get peace in Europe, and you will never get peace in the world, until, as the Earl Balfour told you in this House, you clear your minds of cant. The French are only doing in the Ruhr what you are doing in Egypt, in India, and in Iraq. They are only doing in the Ruhr what you have been doing in Ireland for generations. It is no use thinking that the world is going to be made better by your seeing the evil in someone else and never seeing it in yourselves. I stand here as one who lived through the Franco-German war. At that time this House supported the Germans. The "Times" newspaper, the "Daily Telegraph," every English statesman, and English writers from Thomas Carlyle downwards, supported the Germans against the French, calling the French the aggressors. I have lived long enough to see the whirligig of time bring about a great change, and to sit in this House this afternoon and to hear all the tosh about the iniquity of the German race. The Germans are as good as hon. Members opposite. They are as good as me or anybody else. Many English families have sprung from the German race. Many of the most blue-blooded people in this country have a German origin.

When the Hanoverian monarchy was instituted here, it was German soldiers who came over and put your countrymen's ancestors in Scotland and here in their places, and they did the same thing in Ireland. You know well that Hanoverian troops were used over and over again. It was a Hanoverian who won the battle of Culloden, and if you have any honesty in your hearts at all, you know that the royal house of this country is a German royal house, that the aristocracy of this country is tinged right through with German blood, and I am not going to sit here and listen to all this rubbish of the Germans having a double dose of original sin any more than you or I or anybody else. I have not been waiting here all the evening to say that. I have said it because I am ashamed at the sight of Englishmen behaving as you have been behaving this afternoon about the Germans. It is a lie to say that the German people made the War. They are no more responsible for the War than you or I or any other people of this community. It is the conditions on which nations have built their civilisation that have created war, and nothing else. If those conditions remain, they will make war a thousand times worse.

Until you get rid of these conditions war will continue, and the condition precedent is to get rid of the idea that one nation or one set of people are inferior to the others. They are not. I believe in the absolute unity of the human race. I do not believe that a coloured person is any more virtuous than a French or German person, but I do not believe that the outraging of white women by black men is worse than the outraging of black women by white men. I object to the cant about brothels being established in Germany by the French. In every part of the world where you send British troops you arrange exactly the same sort of thing, only it is coloured women instead of white women. The hon. Member for Attercliffe (Mr. C. Wilson) put his finger on the whole thing. You put your trust in force. You put your trust in violence. You do not believe that it is right for the working people to trust in violence. You do not believe in the Bolshevist theory of violence, but you do believe in it for national interest.

You will never get rid of violence until you will say: "No violence shall take place in any circumstance for any material interest." If it is right for you to use violence when you want to conquer an enemy abroad, the workman has the right to say that he will use violence to conquer his enemies at home. You laugh at any man like me who says that he is a pacifist. You would have done anything with me during the war. I was a pacifist, and I wanted to end the war because I know you cannot get rid of wrong by wrong, or violence by violence. If killing would ever redeem the world, the world would have been redeemed centuries ago. You talk to us as if we were responsible. It is the people who have built their lives and civilisation in our generation on force who have created the wreck of the world as it is to-day. Until our whole minds are changed on this subject we may as well give up talking about peace, for we shall only hand on to our children a world in which horrors will take place worse than any we have ever known.

I wish to speak now of something nearer home. I spent the Recess doing my work as a Poor Law guardian. During that time we have had to face day after day not merely scores but thousands of men and women who are denied the right to live. The hon. Member for Accrington (Mr. Charles Buxton) spoke of the German children and women who are paying the price of the Ruhr invasion. We talk lightly now of a million and a half unemployed. The Prime Minister takes credit that trade is improving because there are 500,000 fewer people registered as unemployed than there were. Everyone knows that the number who are unemployed is much larger than the number who are registered as unemployed. Many will not register when there is neither a job nor any relief to be got from a dole. Everyone knows that the numbers of unemployed are always very much in excess of the numbers registered. But taking the number of 1,500,000 registered as unemployed, do you realise what it means? Most of these people have got wives and children. The King's Speech says that you are going to continue along the same lines as those on which you have been going—£1 a week for a man and his wife, and 1s. a week for a child. But if they are getting this, account is to be taken of it in any other relief which they get from the boards of guardians.

I suppose that the Minister of Health will get here some day, but if he were here I would tell him that during the last 18 months or two years the Ministry of Health has not really been a Ministry of Health but rather a Ministry of death, for the mortality figures show that what the public health authorities have been doing up to 1921 in the way of grants for taking care of women and children has all been cut off. The Minister does not issue orders direct to the boards of guardians telling them what they shall or shall not do, but he is sending round his inspectors to browbeat the clerks and officials in order to cut down the amount of public assistance which the unemployed shall receive. I do not want anybody to tell me that I am advocating that men should live without working. I want everybody who is able-bodied to work for his living, in Belgravia as well as in Bow and Bromley, but if I am told that there is no work for a man to do then I claim for him full maintenance. I claim absolute adequate maintenance, and not a dole of £1 a week for a man and his wife, for the simple reason that my wife and I could not live on £1 a week, and I am not going to ask other people to live on what I could not live on myself. The Government dare not say that that is a sum which they would lay down as sufficient for two human beings to live on, but by making such arrangements and regulations as they have been making they make it extremely difficult for the boards of guardians to administer the Poor Law in their own way.

I had a slight altercation with the Minister on this subject last Session. He took the line that the Minister of Health had no power over the boards of guardians. I maintained that he had. Directly the Session came to an end the Minister did exactly what I have said. Instead of issuing an order pure and simple so that everybody could understand it, telling the boards of guardians what they should or should not do, he sent inspectors round. That means that he has not pluck enough to put down in writing what he wants carried out. He just tells his inspectors to whisper to the clerks and the relieving officers, and so on. The case I had brought to the House with regard to the unemployed marchers was that they had been thrown out of the workhouse. The Minister told me that he had no power to interfere and that the matter was at the discretion of the guardians. But directly the House rose he sent one of his officials to every clerk of every board of guardians in London, with instructions that these men, most of them ex-soldiers, a part of the living wall that stood between you and the Germans in Flanders, men whom during the War you petted and pampered and told what heroes they were—instruction was given that they were to be treated as vagrants and casuals and must go only to the casual wards. I say that that is a disgrace to the Department and to this House for permitting the Minister to do it. I hear men use the expression "We have won the War." You did not win the War, if you won anything. It was these men who won the war, the men whom you are now chucking on to the streets, and the only thing you offer them when they come to London is the casual ward.

I notice that the Minister of Labour is to bring forward a scheme for dealing with the young people. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Sutton (Viscountess Astor) has just left the House. She is very anxious always to ask people like me to see things in a proper perspective, to give other people credit for good intentions, and so on. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and the road to hell for many of these children is paved with the good intentions of people who make easy speeches. You all sympathise with these children. You say that it is a pity that there is no work for them, no school and no maintenance. The next generation will reap what you are sowing in regard to these children, not merely in their bodies, but in their brain power and character and everything that is worth while. In the King's Speech there is not a word to indicate that anything is to be done for them; they are to be left just where they are. I read in the "Times" a long column to the effect that local authorities were to be asked to set up schools. It is no use setting up schools. You have to keep the children first. It is no use saying to boys and girls of 14 to 16, "Come into school." They will not do it. If they can earn 6d. or 1s. in some other way they will earn it, because their mothers need it for food.

Nothing is to be done for the unemployed. Yet at the end of last Session you said that you sympathised and told us all that you thought about it. I have read the result of your thoughts, and that result is absolutely nothing. The Prime Minister said that much had been done, that very much more than we thought had been done, and so on. All I can say to the Prime Minister is that he is not touching the fringe of this question. If he would tell us the number of people for whom he has found employment, the House would be amazed that he had the impudence to say that he had done anything at all. The difference in Poplar is infinitesimal. There we are being broken by our rates in dealing with the problem ourselves. Someone talked about the burden. The hon. Member is like me. He looks pretty well with the carrying of the burden. The burden does not hurt either of us, but it hurts tens of thousands of poor people in the East End to-day. You are putting that burden on us because you will not put into operation schemes that you talked about here. When are you going to electrify the South Eastern and Chatham Railway? That has been talked about for the last 18 months. When is the Port of London Dock to be cleared up—the London Dock and the East India Dock and all the roads leading up to them? The Bills were passed by this House years ago, and the work is still not being done. Now you have the impudence to tell us that this year you are to continue in the same way that you have followed hitherto. It is tranquil and placid for you. But I want to say this, and I say it to the Prime Minister. You are not going to get out of this so easily as you imagine. If Germany goes down she will pull you down too. If we go down in Poplar and in East London—your Whitehall officials do not trouble about us, because we are only Socialists and a Socialist borough a Bolshevik borough—if the East End goes down in bankruptcy we shall pull you down with us too. There is no question about that.

I charge the Ministry of Health with deliberate propaganda against the people in the East End of London. First of all, they sent to the Press all kinds of stories about us and gave documents to the Press before giving them to us. Before letters were received by us we found them in the newspapers. Then they sent their auditors down. These gentlemen instead of auditing accounts became propagandists for our political opponents and wrote opinions about us. The auditors are appointed, we are told, not because of their ability. The late Chief of the Ministry of Health put it on record before a Royal Commission of which I was a member, in answer to a question of mine as to the qualifications of an auditor, "Oh, we appoint them on the score of ability, tempered by patronage." It was not a Socialist who said that, but the Permanent Secretary of the late Local Government Board. Now you have another Minister of Health. I do not suppose he knows anything about what is going on, because he is new to the job. He has been concerned with agriculture, and so he is made Minister of Health, just as my right hon. Friend who was Secretary for Mines is now Home Secretary. The wonderful way in which gentlemen can fix themselves into all kinds of jobs passes my comprehension. The auditors come down to Poplar to audit our accounts, and because they disagreed with our methods of administration they wrote reports as to the condition of things in Poplar, of which they are absolutely ignorant.

When I rose it was to protest against the doctrine that the Germans are a bad race. Most of us have some German blood in us. Remember what Tennyson said

I do not think the hon. Member who has just spoken will expect me to follow him through the whole of his disquisition as to the relative merits of the French and the Germans. I do not wish to go fully into that matter; I will merely say that one cannot but realise there are a Very large number of people in this country who suffered during the War, and if many of us are inclined to use harsh language towards the German race and the German people, I think it is excusable. If the hon. Member and other hon. Gentlemen opposite will just realise what so many of those who use that language have suffered in the course of the War—

I do not in the least mind people using harsh language, so long as they use it to the whole of the nation—the rich plutocratic people and Germans in this country, as well as the poor persons.

I was referring to the German nation in Germany. I am not going into the question of whether France is right or not in her action on the Ruhr. The Prime Minister has dealt with that question, and it would be impertinence for me to deal with it after the right hon. Gentleman. I do think, however, that hon. Members opposite, many of whom have taken part in the War, and nearly all of whom have had relatives in the War, must realise that our minds are necessarily tempered by the fact that throughout that War France was our ally and Germany was our enemy. I do not wish to put it any further than that. The only other matter upon which I desired to speak was the attack made on my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health. I am merely here to do my best to answer upon behalf of the Minister of Health until such time as he is returned triumphantly to this House. I will put to my right hon. Friend all the points mentioned by the hon. Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury). I cannot think it is true that the Minister of Health personally, at all events, knows anything about any propaganda against the people of Poplar.

He should know.

What is he paid for?

It is a very busy office. I will report the complaints which have been made to my right hon. Friend and he will deal with them himself. There is however one point with which I wish to deal so that we may know quite clearly the facts as to the treatment of the hunger marchers in the casual ward. I think it is only fair to the hunger marchers themselves and to hon. Members opposite that I should state quite plainly what the present position is. If hon. Members opposite are not satisfied it is open to them, if they can get a majority in the House, to alter the law. So far as the law stands at present it is just as well they should clearly understand the exact position. These men have no rights at all to relief when they are marching, except as casuals—

I am sure that is wrong.

Where does the sympathy come in?

This is a matter which should not be allowed to pass without being made really clear. The law relating to boards of guardians is that if a person applies for relief the board of guardians decides how and where the person shall be relieved. There is no law to say that they must take such person into the casual ward. I do not want the hon. Baronet to lay that down as the law.

If the hon. Member would only allow me to get on, I want to put the matter quite frankly before the House. The point I want to make is that the hunger marcher, as such, has got no rights other than the rights of any other person who applies to the guardians. Anybody who is destitute is entitled to apply for relief. The guardians may put him, in the first place, into the casual ward. If he is put into the casual ward, whoever he may be and whatever his station may be, he has got to come under the regulations affecting the casual ward. Nobody knows that better than the hon. Member for Bow and Bromley. If the casual ward is full, or if the guardians think fit, they can place him in the workhouse, but that right is not in the Minister of Health, it is in the board of guardians. If the workhouse is full the board of guardians may, if they wish, take temporary premises and give such a person lodging for a night of two.

Or give relief.

Or give relief, but it is not lawful for the guardians to go beyond what is reasonable. No board of guardians can go beyond the reasonable and obvious limits of the accommodation which is to be rightfully expected in their particular district. There is no right, for instance, for a couple of thousand men to swarm down on to a small workhouse and say, "We are destitute and you must provide for us." [ Interruption. ] I am speaking with the greatest respect from authority. I have gone into the matter with the officials of the Ministry of Health and I have some knowledge of the law, though I agree that in regard to guardians' matters it is not as great as that of the hon. Member for Bow and Bromley. I ask the House to take it from me that guardians are only bound to deal with distress as it comes before them in what they consider to be a reasonable manner, having regard to normal requirements. The statement I made just now was that the guardians are not bound to provide for a sudden incursion of 2,000 men merely because those men have come from a distance.

Yes they are.

If the hon. Gentleman were right it would mean that every board of guardians in the country would have to be prepared with a workhouse or a casual ward big enough for all emergencies of this kind.

Or money.

Or money. It would mean they would have to have accommodation for any set of men who at any particular moment swarmed down on their particular district. There I differ entirely from the hon. Member for Bow and Bromley, and I am sure the House will agree that the administration of the Poor Law could not possibly be carried on in such circumstances.

Hear, hear!

If the hon. Member's idea and wish is to make the Poor Law impossible—

Hear, hear!

—then he and I differ even more strongly than I thought we did. What is the position of the hunger marchers? It is, I submit to the House, perfectly clear that it is not one of ordinary destitution. I am prepared to go so far as to say, and I do not think hon. Members opposite will deny it, that there is a definite attempt on the part of the Council of Action either to break down the Poor Law in the places through which they pass or else to take such action as would terrify this House into granting certain demands which they choose to make notwithstanding the fact that we have had a recent General Election, that everybody has been free to vote as they please and that this country in its wisdom has not returned the hon. Member and his friends to power, but has returned the Conservative party.

On the promise to tackle this problem.

And not to put ex-service men into the casual ward, or not one of you would have got in.

Hon. Members have had the same opportunity as we have had to go before their constituents. They have had the opportunity to say whatever they like, and it is perfectly impossible to carry on the government of any democratic country if, the moment an election has been held, a body of the community is entitled to say, "We do not mind the result of the election or what the electors said; we are going to have our way, and if we cannot get it we will break up things." That is not democratic government. Let us be quite clear that this is an organised attempt. This is not a body of unfortunate, destitute men who happened to find themselves at Coventry, or Buckingham, or any other place where they were on their march to London. They were deliberately got together by the Council of Action; they were deliberately summoned to march to London. I will read from the "Call for Reinforcements," which I suppose the hon. Member has seen. It is dated 17th January, and it says:

"The marchers are determined to break down this brutal attitude, and compel Bonar Law to listen to their grievances. … With this end in view, the Marchers' Council of Action call upon all branches … to raise an army of reinforcements to march to London—"

Therefore, these men knew what they were marching for.

They copied Ulster.

It goes on:

"The following are the conditions upon which men should be chosen. … All men must be members of our organisation holding a card."

They were not casuals. They were not ordinary, destitute folk found in the district. It continues:

"Only men who are class-conscious and physically fit should come."

Therefore, they were not sick, poor, and infirm people, but class-conscious and physically fit.

"Let it be quite understood that innumerable hardships will have to be endured, and no man should undertake the march unless he is fully prepared to face these hardships without grumbling."

They let the hon. Member opposite come and grumble on their behalf. They are there to do the hardships without grumbling. I will continue:

"Bonar Law must be shaken out of this attitude of callous and brutal indifference."

It was clearly an organised attempt on the part of these men, and I put it to the House, quite frankly, that it was in effect a conspiracy by the Council of Action to break down the Poor Law in this particular respect. I am fully prepared to say, on behalf of the Government, that we clearly are not inclined to take any steps whatever to compel boards of guardians on the routes by which these men march to find accommodation for them. Let us assume for the moment, that instead of 300 there was an organised march of 3,000 or 30,000. [An HON. MEMBER: "You would have to do it then!"] No, we should not. It would be physically impossible to do it. Take any small town through which these men might march. The boards of guardians act for the ratepayers. They erect workhouses and accommodation in accordance with what they believe—and they are the democratic representatives of the ratepayers—to be right and necessary for the people of their district. Does any hon. Member mean to say that any board of guardians is compelled to be prepared for an incursion of 3,000 or 30,000 marchers? The thing is quite impossible. [An HON. MEMBER: "The Government should do it!"]—No, nor would the Government be entitled to do it. There is no obligation. The only obligation is the ordinary obligation of the Poor Law. The hon. Member for Bow and Bromley complains that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health sent inspectors round to warn the guardians as to their rights. I do not dispute that he did tell his inspectors what the rights and duties of the boards of guardians are.

I know exactly what he did tell them, and he told them it was unlawful to give any relief except in the casual ward. The hon. Baronet has been arguing what I have been arguing, that the guardians have discretion. The Minister through his inspectors did not dare to do it in writing, but sent his inspectors round to tell them.

I think my hon. Friend is there mistaken.

No, I am not. I know what I am talking about.

So do I.

No, you do not. I was there.

So was I. I happen to have been a member of the Cabinet Committee on Unemployment when this came before us, and I know personally what instructions were given to these inspectors. They were not told, nor did they in any way attempt, to control the guardians.

They did.

It is no good disputing facts. If the hon. Member has any definite case, let him bring it before the House.

I will give you the Poplar case. Our clerk was told that these men were not to be relieved except in the casual ward, and he conveyed that to the meeting of the board of guardians at which I was present, and I confirmed it yesterday before I brought the matter up here.

I do not think that can have been the instruction or the information given by any inspector to the clerk of the Poplar Board of Guardians.

It is quite true.

Might it not have been possible that the inspector exceeded his duty?

I am not suggesting that. Let me put it quite clearly. The first place where any destitute man is naturally housed is the casual ward.

No.

I will put my point of view, and ask hon. Members opposite to differ once for all when I have finished.

I can shake my head, surely.

Debate would really become impossible if these interruptions were continued.

There is the casual ward, there is the workhouse, and there is alternative accommodation. The guardians have the right, first, to use the casual ward, and if it is full then they can put destitute people into the workhouse, or they can take alternative accommodation. I do not know which they did in Poplar. They have done all three in different parts of the country, through which these men have marched, and they are entitled—I do not know whether it has been done, but it is as well that they should know for the future—to compel any man who has funds on him to contribute to the cost of his own maintenance. It is only fair that anyone who is going to indulge in a hunger march in the future should know this. Many of them apparently had means, from smoking, from buying things on the road, as we know they did.

Have not they a right to smoke?

They have a right to do so, of course, but if they do it shows they have money wherewith to buy tobacco—[HON. MEMBERS: "No !"]—and I want the hunger marchers to realise their position if they are so foolish as to be duped again by any Council of Action to take this perfectly unnecessary march to London. I want the House to realise that in one or two cases—

It is my fellow countrymen that this man is talking about—talking about them smoking! Have they not a right to eat?

The hon. Member comes from North of the Tweed I am going to say something about a body of marchers who came from South of the Tweed, and I want the House to realise what is happening in regard to these marchers. A body arrived the other day near Sittingbourne, in Kent, and the master of the workhouse said he could only carry out the law. The leader of the men, one Dingley, who is chairman of the Council of Action, which summoned these unfortunate men to march, saw the clerk to the guardians, and received the same reply. Then he said to the clerk, "We are not going to be treated as casuals, and if the guardians do not give us better treatment we will raid the town." That happened last week. He was asked, "Do you mean that as a threat?" and he replied, "You can take it as such if you like, and you may expect trouble, for there are plenty of old gaol birds amongst the men, and they will not mind going again." This country is not going to be hectored or dictated to by men of this character.

Who reported that?

I have it from the guardians.

I am going to Sitting-bourne on Saturday.

These people have been brought here for no purpose whatever. They wrote to the Minister of Health, who told them in reply that it was no use their coming. The Cabinet have considered, and are considering, the whole question. Marches of this kind can do no good at any time to anybody. It only puts these unfortunate men to serious hardships, to use their own language. I think the country will fully agree with the statement I am making in this House, that while the House of Commons exists, this is the place to which to bring grievances. Nobody can say that hon. Members opposite do not have a fair share of the time of this House. No one can say that there is the least objection to listen to any claim, any grievance they have to put before the House, and I do appeal to hon. Members opposite, as gentlemen who have been elected by the votes of the democratic communities which they represent, to realise that this House is the proper place in which to make their complaints. Every man who joined that hunger march has got some Member of Parliament to represent him. Very many, I doubt not, are represented by hon. Members opposite.

Are you representing them now?

I represent quite as many working men as the hon. Member opposite.

And is that your attitude to your electors?

This is the first day of this new Session, and I do want to appeal to hon. Members opposite to use the House of Commons, as it should be used, as the great democratic forum of the nation. We are here to listen to their complaints and to give the fullest possible consideration to anything they have to put forward. I really suggest, in the interests of these unfortunate men themselves—because do not hon. Members opposite think we feel for those who are unemployed? [ Interruption. ]

I must ask hon. Members to allow the hon. Baronet to pursue his remarks.

I want to ask hon. Members opposite if they do not think we are as keen to remedy grievances as they are? There are differences of opinion as to the remedy. They have one remedy, which we think would make things worse. It is a difference of opinion. When they get a majority, they can carry their views into action, but while we have the majority, in a democratic country, we are entitled to carry out the administration of this country in accordance with what we believe to be the views of the people who placed us in power.

The hon. Baronet who has just spoken appealed to the Members on this side of the House and to the public outside to tell their grievances to this Chamber, and no doubt they would receive from those who occupy the benches on the other side the utmost consideration. I wish the public outside could be here to see those benches with only about a score of Members present. [HON. MEMBERS: "The dinner hour."] The number present now is larger by far than the average during the past two-and-a-half hours, and I have no doubt an investigation of the building would reveal a larger number of enthusiastic Conservative Members interested in the consumption of champagne in another part of the building than those who are here now studying the conditions of the people outside.

On a point of Order. Is it in order for an hon. Member to refer to fellow Members in this House and pour contempt on them in public, by suggesting that they are consuming liquor, unless he can substantiate it?

I am not prepared to say that the consumption of champagne is an indictable offence, or that the suggestion of the hon. Gentleman is a libel. But I confess I think the charge unlikely.

The point of Order comes strangely from an hon. Member who could sit silently during imputations against the most unfortunate section of the British people, and now rises in his place and questions a statement which is known to be true by nearly every Member of this House.

Nothing of the sort.

During the course of the hon. Baronet's speech, he referred to the terrible things that were being done by the hunger marchers. I wonder whether it ever occurs to hon. Members who sit opposite how much society has injured these people, and how far it has contributed to the terrible conditions which have broken these men physically, and if they are broken morally they are the victims of society. It is due to the capitalistic system of society of which hon. Members opposite are the public representatives. I wonder what a million and a half of their people would do if deprived of income for two years; if, at the beginning of the two years, they had no spare means on which to fall back, and if at the end of the two years all their furniture and little bits of property having been absorbed, they had to look forward to another winter and a continuance of the terrors of the past winter. Do they think their people, the middle classes of Britain, would sit contentedly listening to lectures on the proper way to starve? They would do more than all the hunger marchers have done. They merely threatened to hold up a town. I wish they would not threaten. I wish they would do it, because if they would do it, and make themselves uncomfortable to you all, British history teaches us you would yield; but, so long as they are quiet, and so long as they content themselves with hunger-marching, and do nothing that violates the law, you will make them the finest speeches and give them the finest lectures on how they ought to behave. I protest against the insults that have been hurled at these people. Instead of their being at fault, you are entirely at fault, and I want to say this, that if there is one set of humbugs in the whole world, if there is one unadulterated group of hypocrites, it is the British ruling-class. Here we are spending the whole of this afternoon in listening to speeches and discussing policies and programmes that we know have no reality. We know that the statements being made about the international situation are in all probability untrue. You never do tell us the truth about our relations to other people, so we are led to divine what the truth is by the economic interests in the situation that is under discussion, because we do know that wherever your economic interests are there your heart will be also. You use the British Empire, you use the British people, you use religion, and you use civilisation for the betterment of your own financial position, with no regard whatever to its effect upon the worker.

I think one of the principal curses of the capitalistic governments is that we have to spend most of our time discussing wars or the rumours of the dangers of war. If I had my way, I would consign the Ruhr and all connected with it as far as the rules of this House would allow. I think we had an excellent example this afternoon, an excellent type of the British ruling classes in the Prime Minister when he was making his speech. He came before us as one of the injured innocents. That is always the attitude in public assumed by the ruling classes. They tell us all about what they have done to prevent France getting into this position and to prevent Germany getting into the other position. Everyone was wrong but "us." The Germans were crooks because they would not pay their debts. The Americans were crooks because they would not accept payment of their debt. There was only one set of honest people in the world, and they are represented by hon. and right hon. Gentlemen who sit on the other side of the House.

I want to bring the House back to the facts of the situation. You have had during the past three months to deal with two situations that differ only very slightly. In the first case you have had to deal with Germany, with people who are unable, or unwilling, to pay their debt. You had to deal in the East End of London, and in our cities, with another set of people who were certainly unable to pay their debts. The Prime Minister, in the course of his speech, said they were not going to have more sympathy with the people who had fought against them in the War than with the people who fought with them. You have here represented these two types of people. You have in the Germans those who fought against us, and in the East End of London and in our various cities you have people who fought with you. They were both in debt. They could not pay their way. In the case of the first you had France as an ally. France proposed, by the ordinary capitalistic methods, to send in the bailiffs to the Ruhr, and if the defaulters could not pay their debts to bundle them out. You thereupon held up your hands in holy horror at the very idea, and you said: "We cannot associate ourselves with that at all. Let us have a conference. See if we cannot get a way out of the difficulty. See if we cannot reduce the debt, or have a moratorium. See if we cannot get some scheme that will put the German millionaires upon their feet so that they may be able to pay us in 25 years from now."

9.0 P.M.

France insisted on doing exactly with the German millionaire what you are doing with the British worker. Then you, who would not associate yourselves with France, turned from your action there, and what happened in the East End of London, and I have no doubt in the East End of every industrial place? We have some thousands of people who cannot pay their rents because they have not been employed for a year or two years. They are now in a destitute condition, in that condition in which they have to submit to the catigations of comfortable people like the Minister who has just spoken. They cannot pay their debts. What do you say to them? Do you approach the situation there as you did the situation in the Ruhr? Do you say to the unemployed tenant: "We will have a conference on the subject. Let us see if we cannot come to terms. Let us see if we cannot make a substantial reduction in the amount of your debt. Let us see if we cannot get a moratorium, if we cannot have the rents reduced to a standard which you can afford to pay. Let us see if we cannot do something to put you on your feet." Not at all! What do you say? Not to the enemies of Britain, but to the ex-service men who have made it possible for you to own your property? When you come to deal with now that he is scrapped, and no longer necessary for, at any rate, a German war, you do not approach him as you approached Stinnes and Company. You approach him in the character of a British capitalist. You say to him: "If you cannot pay your rent, that is your look out. It is not our fault. The law says"—and remember you must respect the law—" that if you are unable to pay your rent, that the owner of the house is entitled to enter into possession, and he cannot enter into possession without bundling you out and your wife and children." There is no talk of a moratorium, no talk of a conference to put him on his feet. No talk of the consequences. All your sympathies are always with the people who are far away. In the one case you are against eviction because it is against your economic interests. In the other case you support eviction because it is in your economic interest that the people should be forced to pay their rents.

I do not believe in your honesty at all. You are either knaves or fools, and I am not interested in considering which. Certainly, I never believed in your honesty. I do not think you will give anything to people who are prepared to go down on their knees and beg. I believe it is important that they should get out of your hands the control of this House. I believe that is very, very important. I believe while you have control of this House that they will have to make themselves uncomfortable, or it will be uncomfortable for them. Knowing that, I am going to search for the real roots of the trouble on the Ruhr, and I think I shall have no difficulty in finding them. It is a commonplace that the Ruhr Valley contains the bulk of European coal. If there was no coal in the Ruhr district there would be no dispute regarding its possession. While you have the coal deposits of Europe divided between France and Germany the British capitalist classes felt they were safe. It is in the economic interests of Britain to keep Europe divided economically between the potential opponents of Britain. The French have gone into the Ruhr and claimed the deposits of coal that were formerly in the possession of the German millionaires. As you know, if the French get control of the Ruhr permanently they control nine-tenths of the entire coal deposits of Europe. You know also that in modern wars that success will invariably go to the people who have control of the coal, and the engineering, and that an agricultural country such as Germany would be, if it is deprived of its iron and coal, would have no more chance against France than a man with ancient weapons would have against the machine gun. You know also that the German, the French and the British capitalists are always interested in fields for the investment of their surplus wealth. The hon. Member opposite spoke this afternoon about his wealth being the savings of labour. If there is anything that you do save it is your labour. I do not believe, as far as money is concerned, that you have any savings at all. Savings consist of sacrificing something to-day to ensure the necessaries of to-morrow, and therefore you never sacrifice anything. Whatever wealth you have is your leavings and not your savings, and your leavings are the accumulations of money which ought to have been paid in wages to those employed by the capitalists of this country. You are always requiring abroad a field for the investment of your surplus wealth.

You come here and talk about the poverty of Great Britain, but I have it on the authority of one of the leading capitalists of Britain that you have, after disposing of a large volume of securities during the War, no less than £3,000,000,000 invested abroad. You are investing abroad, not because of any great desire to promote the interests of foreign places, but because you are always on the look out for cheap labour. In India you are now engaged constructing steel works and cotton mills, and you are taking technical experts from this country to teach the Indians how to make steel and cotton goods. The market for the products of such labour being limited, and the world and the capitalists not being able to consume all the goods which are being produced, you then go to Italy and elsewhere in neutral markets with these products of cheap labour made in India. You go to Italy and sell steel and cotton goods cheaper than they can be made in this country, and having put, by this policy, the steel workers and the calico workers of this country on to the streets, you set about giving them these hypocritical lectures in which you tell them that the reason they are undercut in the markets is because the cost of production has risen, and is relatively too high, and you tell them that, as the larger part of the cost of production consists of wages, it is necessary to bring wages down.

You talk of relativity in wages, and you say it is impossible for workers here to be paid decent wages when workers abroad are prepared to work for what I may call indecent wages. When you have got the British workers far enough down in the social scale, even below the hunger line, in order that you may undercut the Indian and every foreign producer, then you put the Indian workers on the dole instead of paying them a proper wage. Then you say to the Indian, "Do you not see what is happening? The cost of production in India is too high, and you must be content with half a handful of rice less in order that you can cut out the wicked British people." Then, having got the Indian down again, you will put the British workers on the queue for the dole, and there is no limit to that process. You are the enemies of civilisation. You are not merely the enemies of Britain and the British Empire, but you are the enemies of civilisation, and, unfortunately for civilisation, you control one-fourth of the population of the globe, and your influence is far greater than that. If you can bring down the wages of that one-fourth of the people, then the decline of British civilisation is likely to bring down the world civilisation, and the only thing to save civilisation is the smashing of you and the system of which you are the defenders.

You are the greatest enemies of the human race, and for hon. Members opposite, who are responsible for the ruin of Britain to-day, to come forward and to have the cheek through the representative of the Treasury Bench to talk about the character of the hunger marchers and the wicked persons who smoke when they are looking for work, to throw accusations of that kind against your fellow countrymen seems to me to be the most unadulterated impudence of which it is possible to be guilty. I can see no hope for this country or for our people unless we can reach the people and get them to overthrow your system. Again, you hypocritically talk about referring the question of the Ruhr to the League of Nations. You know that is humbug, and you know all the time that there is no League of Nations. You know very well that modern government rests on force, and any League of Nations which is not stronger than its constituent parts is doomed to failure. Are you prepared to hand over the control of your Army, Navy and Air Force to the League of Nations? Unless you are prepared to do that, it is no use talking about referring this matter to that tribunal.

Here we are, at the beginning of another Session, discussing war and the dangers and rumours of war when half our people are quite outside the ordinary means of life, and when five hundred thousand families outside are waiting for housing accommodation; when we have destitution everywhere and a system of society which gives us a country stocked with goods in abundance. All our markets and all our stores are bulging with goods, and our people are starving in the midst of it all, and there only stands between our people and plenty the destruction of you on the other side of this House and the system for which you stand.

I wish to refer to two subjects to which reference is made in the King's Speech. One is the settlement of our debt to America and the other is the condition of agriculture in this country. I think there is one satisfactory thing about the imminent settlement of our debt to America, and it is that from it we may hope that there will follow not merely a final settlement of our debt in that country, but a settlement of the whole of the debts of Europe upon a permanent and a lasting basis. If it were not for the fact that at this time Congress in America is considering the final acceptance of our terms, I should have liked to have suggested that the amount might in all fairness and in full consideration of everything that is due to America, have been lessened. I should have liked to have suggested that the terms might have been in various ways altered, but it is so important to make a beginning with something which looks to be final and permanent as between some of the countries in the world that, even if the terms are not such as we should have liked and even if they seem to be somewhat hard, I am convinced that a real service has been done the world in our coming to a final agreement with America. When one looks round at the world to-day and tries to measure the comparative strength of other countries compared with a few years ago, and when one considers the anxieties of the present position, one cannot but be very thankful that the peoples of the British Empire and the great people in the United States, the only two stable countries in the world, have come to a final agreement between themselves, not merely as to their own debts, but as to the position which they will take up with reference to the settlement of debts between all countries.

When one listens to such a speech as that of the hon. Gentleman who has just finished, one realises that there are disruptive forces in the world and perhaps greater dangers if that sort of speech is popular in any part of the country. I do not know what constituency the hon. Gentleman sits for, but it must be acceptable there. It was a very interesting experience for me to hear such a speech. I found myself probably for the first time in sympathy with many hon. Members opposite when I heard that they were the enemies of society, the despoilers of people, and a menace to civilisation. The hon. Member does not seem to know that the whole basis of civilisation is the recognition of private property. Civilisation is due not to the proletariat but to the aristocracy, and the very best service the hon. Member can render to those whose lot we genuinely and honestly regret, and with whom we sympathise equally with the hon. Member, is to assist to uphold the institutions upon which the great industries of this country are based, and which when they function again will give those men the employment which they need.

I wanted to say a word with reference to the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham (Mr. A. M. Samuel), who seems to be very anxious as to how we shall manage to make these payments, in view of the fact that we have to make repayment on a dollar basis. It does seem to me, though again I do not want to go into the details of the settlement, that it was most unfortunate that those who negotiated for us did not press for, or, if they did press, that they did not succeed in reaching an agreement between ourselves and the United States as to a fixed rate of exchange from the time we begin to make payments and the last payment. It is, as the hon. Member pointed out, a very disturbing thought that, owing to the increase in the United States tariff and the lessened amount of our exports to America if we had the gold we could not force it upon them without there being such a depreciation of the pound sterling in relation to the dollar that it would mean that we should pay 20 or 30 per cent. more. I think we all agree that this week at least, when a final settlement is being reached in an atmosphere of much acrimony and difficulty in the United States, it is perhaps enough that expressions should go forth from this House as to our great satisfaction that as between the peoples of Great Britain and the United States we have disposed of anything in the nature of an influence which would disturb that friendliness which we honestly feel and wish to see more deeply established.

I want to make one reference to agriculture. There are in the King's Speech two paragraphs, one in which there is something in the nature of a definite promise that some legislation shall be introduced with reference to agriculture, and the other a reference to the question of rating. It is "hoped" that it may be found practicable to deal with the subject of rating during this Session. The condition of agriculture is so grave at this time—I speak as one who represents an agricultural constituency and lives in his constituency—that it is surely not too much to expect that the hopes of the farmers that this Government will in this Session bring forth a Bill of genuine relief to agriculture shall not be disappointed. We know perfectly well that the Government can really do very little. The Prime Minister was right when he said last Session that we can in this country have as much agriculture as we care to pay for. But that does not alter the fact that there are certain practical things which can be done at once, and I put the readjustment of the rating of agricultural values as the first of those things which can be done at once to bring immediate relief and to assist an industry, which owes its present misfortunes to a political betrayal of the last Government more than any industry which has ever suffered from any single act of any Government. We are told not to be impatient. If any section of our community were entitled to be impatient at generalities in the way of promised relief, surely it is the agriculturists of this country, in view of the fact that they have been reduced to a condition of distress worse than agriculture has known since the seventies. I rise therefore to say that I hope the Government are going to introduce a real and valuable Bill containing those recommendations which have been made by the unanimous voice of farmers throughout the country as represented by the Farmers' Union—a Bill which will give relief to agriculture and also help to lessen agricultural unemployment. I am much obliged for the opportunity of speaking on these two points. I will bring my remarks to a close, because I know there are many Members waiting to speak, and, if I speak at any further length on the question of the American Loan, I shall say things which I might regret, and, if I try to say all that I want to say on behalf of agriculture which I represent, I shall say more than the House will listen to with patience.

May I bring the attention of the House back again for a few moments to the question of the Ruhr? I heard a powerful speech made some two hours ago by the hon. Member for Preston (Mr. T. Shaw), who I believe was speaking on behalf of, and echoed the views of, the Labour Party. I listened to that speech with very great interest and attention, because it was a very well-reasoned speech and showed that he had given considerable thought to the matter and had formed the definite view that the policy of France was wrong. One respects a man who thinks a matter out, although one may differ from his conclusions. I differ entirely from the hon. Member's conclusions, but I respect his reasoning, and I can see the force of it. With reference to the policy of France, I want the House to listen to me for a moment, because I speak with some knowledge upon the matter, and I know what part the Labour party, or the working-class, played in the Great War. Perhaps no Member of this House is more often reminded of the great part they played in the War than I am. As a member of the Imperial War Graves Commission, I travel frequently over the North of France and I see the monuments in our silent cities reminding one of the great sacrifices that were made by all classes during the Great War. Therefore I have the matter constantly before me. [An HON. MEMBER: "There are living monuments in this country!"] Yes. In addition to that, I get a very fair idea of French opinion. I was there only two or three days ago and let me tell the House that, quite outside feeling in Paris, going throughout the country districts one gets the real voice of France. It is in the towns and villages you hear what they say. I tell the House in all seriousness that there is no value to be attached to its criticisms of France. France is. pledged to her policy, and France will go through with it. That is definite.

That is not to say the policy is right.

I am not prepared to say it is right, but if the hon. Member will allow me to develop my argument, I will put my point. France is pledged to that policy and if we criticise her we are not helping the matter on at all. When once it is known that a country is pledged to carry through a definite policy, it appears to me it is a waste of time to express opinions deprecating what that country is doing. What effect will it have? What effect can our criticisms here have on France? Would any hon. Member of this House risk a rupture of the relations that exist between England and France? Would he carry the matter to its logical conclusion? When we have made our protest in a formal manner to France, and France has declined to recognise our right to dictate to her in the matter, what is the logical conclusion? What are you going to do? There is only one thing, and it is to resort to force. It would be unthinkable for this country to resort to force against France in order to compel her to desist for exacting reparations from Germany. That being so it is no use our criticising the policy of France, and it is our duty, in my opinion, to reserve our criticisms whether we think she is right or wrong, and to leave her to follow out the policy she has decided on.

May I look for a moment at the merits of the matter quite apart from the attitude that France has taken up? After the Armistice there was a long period of time during which British experts were making enquiries into the ability of Germany to pay. They spent months and months in ascertaining what capacity Germany had to pay. They made their Report. Upon that Report this country acted, and certain reparations were made payable by Germany, not only to ourselves but to France. What has become of the Report of those experts? We were led to assume that they had all the material before them for judging of the capacity of Germany. We were led to assume that they allowed Germany a very great margin for contingencies. But when the first instalment became due, under their award, Germany defaulted! This has a bearing on the attitude of France. France loyally stood by her Allies and stood by us when we attempted a policy of peaceful persuasion. She did not agree with us, but she stood by us. Three years have elapsed, and what have we done? Nothing at all. Three years have elapsed. When you have given an extension of time for payment and payment has not been made, you then enquire into the bona fides of the debtor. If you find he has honest excuses for not paying, you grant a further extension of time. At any rate, a wise man would probably do that. But if, on the other hand, after granting time to the debtor, you find your sympathy has been misplaced and that the fraudulent debtor has utilised the extension of time granted to him to place his securities outside your reach—to place them in other countries where they cannot be got at—when you find he has deliberately depreciated his own currency so that payment could not be made because of the hugeness of the amount, when you find the debtor has allowed rich men, manufacturers, mineowners and others to deliberately defraud their Government for the purpose of cheating other countries, what more can be said on the question of prolonging or extending the time for payment? I say nothing more could be said by a sensible man than that you have tried all you legitimately can by way of extending sympathy, to help the debtor, and if you do not now take another attitude, you are a fool.

That is the way this question presents itself to the French mind. The mentality of the French people is different in many ways to our own. It is very difficult to get an accurate view of the French perspective, but if the view I am putting forward is right, if it is the case that Germany has used the extended time in order to do as I have mentioned, I ask would any member of the working classes, would any member of the Labour party say he is not entirely in agreement with France in trying another method in order to get reparation. An hon. Member says that is not the case. I cannot enter into arguments on that point now, but if I may digress for one moment I would like to say that, although I have not had the opportunity of knowing what some Members here know about what Germany does with her money, one does come across people occasionally in a position to give information. I met a man the other day who has had business transactions with Germany. He told me he was executing a very large German order, and he assured me that he was being paid for it in New York, and that as all the securities were in New York the Germans were invariably paying through that source. I may be right or I may be wrong, I may or may not be misinformed, but, at any rate, assuming it to be right, it looks as though Germany were taking advantage of our easiness, our sympathy and acquiescence, in order to defraud France and ourselves. Even looking at it from our point of view, apart from the French point of view, if that be so I do submit that the French view is right, and that they should have the sympathy, if not the assistance, of this country in carrying out their policy in regard to reparations. I have the greatest respect for my hon. Friends opposite, many of whom I know personally, but I quite fail to understand their anxiety that Germany should be lightly dealt with. No doubt they have very good reasons, and I may be wrong, but I cannot understand it—

It is just the word "Peace."

I cannot see why, looking at it from an economic point of view, my hon. Friends should be so anxious. So far as I can see—my horizon is very limited—looking at the shops during the last three or four months, it will be found that British articles are being supplanted by cheap German articles. I do not know who brought them in, but if my hon. Friends are so anxious to put Germany on her feet, to let her off paying her debts, then, if she is to be forgiven hundreds of millions of pounds, she will be given that money to use in competition with the British working man. Looking at it, as I do, from the business point of view, I fail to understand why the British working man should want to take Germany by the hand.

May I touch just for a moment on the question of sentiment? When all is said and done, sentiment rules very largely in this world. You can go to the devastated areas of France and look at those devastated areas; you can stand on Vimy Ridge and look across the valley at the devastation that is still there. They have no money to build up their villages—some of them still marked with a couple of sticks to show that there once was a village there. The money that they must get to rebuild those towns or villages must come from their Government, and I think I am right in saying—I hope I shall be corrected if I am wrong—that their Government, in advancing that money, advance it out of a different Budget from the general Budget of the country, so that, while France has one general Budget, there is also the War Reparations Budget, which is millions of pounds on the deficit side, and that has to be made up by German reparations, if at all. Let me revert once more to the question of sentiment. If you go into the cemeteries in which France is so rich, you will find in those cemeteries over 490,000 of our own soldiers; and in the French cemeteries you will find a greater number than that of French soldiers. When you look at the monuments as they stand there in those silent cities, ask yourselves whether, if you have to choose between backing up the Allies, between backing up France, between backing up the nation whose men lie side by side with your own in those cemeteries, and if you are asked to quarrel with that nation in order to put on its feet the country that has been guilty of the devastation that you see before you, will any one of you, whether of the Labour party or any other party, if you have a spark of manhood in you, say, "We will desert our Allies and quarrel with them in order to give further time to a country that showed itself guilty of that"? This may not appeal to my hon. Friends opposite. If it does not, I am sorry. I have put my reasons forward. I heard the reasons given by the hon. Member for Preston (Mr. T. Shaw), and they impressed me. My reasons may not appeal to hon. Members opposite, but, believe me, I am honest in saying this, and I know what I am saying when I say it.

France is committed to the policy upon which she has started, and she will not be deterred, although we do not agree with her. The British working man has a very great interest in France, and it is up to him to say that, although we may hold ourselves aloof, at any rate she stood by us while we tried what we could do, and now we will preserve a friendly neutrality while France tries to get her money in her way.

Considerable emphasis has been placed during the course of this Debate on the position of Central Europe and, while it is not my intention to develop that line of argument, there are one or two predominant aspects that must undoubtedly be in the minds of the majority of the House during this Sitting. The first aspect that strikes me rather forcibly is that, while we are generally deploring the fact of what might be termed the invasion of France into German territory, we ignore to a great extent the fact that it is due almost entirely to the lack of foresight of our statesmen in the past. We can go back very easily to the Versailles Treaty, and the various reparation agreements that were entered into, to get at the real cause of what has actually happened in the Ruhr Valley, and obviously, therefore, no excuses can be made by statesmen unless for the purpose of covering up their own faults. My intention, however, is rather to take the Debate into channels dealing with some of our own domestic difficulties. Important as the question of foreign discussion may be, and we anticipate that it will be continued during the next few days, I want to call the special attention of the House to the very slight recognition that has been given in His Majesty's speech to the question of unemployment. It is merely passed over with the slightest reference. The question of unemployment causes the deepest concern. During the course of the Debate in its early stages, the Prime Minister himself questioned the figure given by the Leader of the Opposition, showing that the decrease in the number of unemployed was only 100,000. The figure given by the Prime Minister was approximately 500,000. It is, of course, quite possible that, if we merely accept the figures of our Employment Exchanges, they will, according to the latest returns, show some variation from that which was originally in our minds; but surely some consideration must be given to the methods of our existing machinery as established under the Employment Exchanges; and there has to be some allowance made for the fact that every possible effort is made in the Employment Exchanges to diminish the actual numbers of the unemployed. We have time and time again cases of men who are being asked to go from one district to fill situations in another where actually men in the same occupation are unemployed, and upon their refusal, which to a very large extent is justified, because to take a situation many miles from their habitation means that it is impossible to pay for lodgings and to save sufficient to keep the home exchequer in something like financial condition, their benefits are taken from them, and as a result they discontinue signing at the Exchange. Many other instances could be given of a similar character in which the numbers of unemployed registered at the Exchanges is no accurate criterion of the actual volume of unemployment.

During the period that this question of unemployment has been under discussion, and particularly during the Recess, when the unemployed have been demonstrating, it is somewhat interesting to note the actions of some of our Departments dealing with this question of marchers, and I propose to read an extract from a circular, sent to at least one board of guardians dealing with this question of unemployed marchers. Clause three of the circular states: of us on these benches do, what unemployment and its consequent destitution and poverty mean? Are we to be asked that they should simply remain silent without a protest of any kind? The Government's proposals evidently, according to the Speech from the Throne, are merely an extension of the previous schemes which have been in operation and they are only subject to slight development in the future. We on these benches may be inclined to put forward what in our judgment is the only possible remedy for unemployment, that of a drastic alteration in our social and industrial system, but yet we are content in these days to impress upon the Government time and time again that what we are pleading for is merely an amelioration of the conditions that the unemployed are suffering from, that we are merely asking you to establish schemes of employment which are going to absorb not merely the labour of the lowest section of the community but the skill and the intelligence of the higher graded workers equally, and that such schemes of employment would be not merely in the interests of the nation as a whole, but of the human beings who are dependent upon them. We have repeated time and time again from these benches that it is essential for the Government to realise that something more should be done immediately in the interest of the unemployed workers.

Reference is made in the Speech to agriculture, and we are to have outlined, by the method of credit facilities, measures dealing with the agricultural situation. There is one section of the agricultural population, however, for which I desire to claim consideration, which includes men who were trained under Government schemes so that they might be fitted to take their place as smallholders, and following upon that training they might have opportunities of assisting the country in its agricultural difficulties. I have met some of these smallholders in my own constituency and discussed the deplorable condition they are placed in to-day. They have been placed upon their holdings under county council and borough schemes, and it is quite impossible that they can either make a living or be in a position to develop from the exceptionally small holdings now in their possession. I have had cases brought to my attention in which, under a borough council, they have been placed on allotments of 8 to 10 acres and, owing to the fact that they have had no possible means of using machinery that was likely to be of advantage in cultivating the land, and owing to the fact that no opportunities had been afforded them for the collective purchase of their seeds, or a collective method of disposing of their marketable produce, these men have been, month after month, getting into greater financial liabilities, and are head over ears in debt to-day. In some cases, the council under whose authority they are holding the allotments have actually given notice that they are to leave the holdings, simply because they have allowed a few months of rent to get into arrears. That is the encouragement the Government is giving to those ex-service men who have made some little effort to get an honest living, and to assist in the development of the principle of small holdings in the interests of the country itself.

When we speak of the larger question of the difficulties of agriculture, it is interesting to note that there have been a considerable number of speeches made throughout the country upon the difficulty of the present position of the farmers. These speeches have been delivered, in the main, as after-dinner speeches. I am not going to say that the practice has been carried out extensively, but I have in my possession a menu card of a farmers' dinner which was held during the Recess, and the price of the menu was 17s. 6d. per head. Perhaps that is some reflection of the poverty-stricken state of agriculture today The prosperous farmers who can afford 17s. 6d. for one dinner evidently forget that that amount has to keep a farm labourer and his wife and children for almost a week in breakfasts, dinners and teas. They managed to cloak the 17s. 6d. per head dinner, without liquors, by stating that the surplus proceeds would be given to charity. It is somewhat interesting to find that the agricultural interests who are so charitable to outsiders forget their charity when it comes to 25s. per week for an agricultural labourer's wages.

10.0 P.M.

If we can have an assurance that whatever credit facilities are given to the farming community will very largely come down to the agricultural worker, complete support will be given from the Labour party. Reference was made by the Mover of the Address to the difficulty in agriculture, and he said it was due to the fact that many farmers had bought their land during a period when prices were high. That is true, and many of them have their liabilities to meet; but the argument may be carried a little further. Is there nothing to be said against the exploiting landowners who insisted upon these terms and placed agriculture in that position? If credit facilities are going to be directed in that avenue and the landowner is to have the greater slice of these credits, then, obviously, there can be no support from this section of the House to any expenditure or guarantees on that account.

The industrial questions that we are to discuss this Session are such that the Government may be assured of every possible support, provided that the measures are of a character likely to be of advantage to the working-class community generally. The questions of unemployment insurance, housing, trade boards and industrial assurance will, at least, have support from the Labour party, provided the Government are going to deal with these very important industrial and social questions in the direction of reforms which are necessary. If the Government's intention is merely to deal with such a question as that of trade boards by limiting the machinery of the existing boards or by suppressing the activities of the existing trade boards, they will meet with our opposition. Whilst we recognise that the trade boards in existence at the present time are entirely inadequate to meet the industrial situation, we recognise that just as trade boards were necessary in 1910–11 to prevent unscrupulous employers from crushing down the women workers engaged in many industries, they are equally as necessary to-day for the same reason. Rather than trying to curb the development of the trade boards, it ought to be the intention of the Government to develop them, and extend them to every industry where they are essential.

If we can be satisfied that the main consideration of the Government in bringing in a Measure to deal with industrial assurance is that they are going to consider, first of all, the policy holder and, secondly, those who are directly employed in industrial assurance, there will be no need for us to question the Government in dealing with the matter, but if it is the Government's intention to bolster up the assurance companies, to give them greater powers than they possess to-day, to take advantage of the policy holders, and still further to exploit the assurance agents, the opposition on this side of the House will not only be active but insistent. Until we can have these assurances we are simply dealing in a general way with these problems. We have every faith in the Government assurance of sympathy with us in these matters, but if those on the Government Benches claim that they represent the workers equally as much as we represent them, and if there is any justification in their argument and they insist on giving advice to the workers, it is equally logical for us to insist that we represent the rich in our constituencies and that we are entitled to say occasionally what is good for the rich and the wealthy. The logic of that argument is that we should settle down and legislate and carry out the administration of this country in the interests of the mass of the people of the country. We on these benches will support the Government to the extent to which they are prepared to legislate for the mass of the people of the country. But we will give persistent opposition to any proposals to confer greater powers and privileges on the wealthier classes, and we ask that we shall have indulgence in opposing such measures as these.

I have listened carefully to the speech of the hon. Member for Can-nock (Mr. W. M. Adamson) and am not sure as to what conclusion he desires us to arrive at. Referring to those unemployed who were not registered, he told us, and I thought there was great truth in it, that married men who are offered work at a distance do not wish to go there on account of their families and the difficulty of removal. Still I think that it would be better in many ways to go. That was the old rule of the trade unions which required their men to go from one place to another in search of work. But having adopted the rule that they should not go from one place to another the hon. Member proceeded to vindicate the conduct of the hunger marchers. Surely that is inconsistent. He condemned the conduct of the Minister of Health who had issued a circular to the guardians saying that they should discourage hunger marching. This seems to me to be inconsistent. But he knows that this hunger marching has no honesty in it. At the last Election hunger marchers were sent to my constituency. They were received by the Socialist members of the trades council, and were made the centre of a demonstration. I am no believer in hunger marchers. I do not think that they are honest. In my judgment they are pure Socialist propaganda. I understand that in my constituency last Saturday they were to be received—I do not know whether as casuals or not—by the guardians, but however they were received, I believe that the guardians are stirred deeply in this matter. It is part of the Socialist propaganda.

The hon. Member was good enough to tell us his proposals, which are the Socialist doctrine. The Socialist doctrine is the upheaval of the whole of society. He says, "Annihilate all those on these benches." I do not know that he used the word "annihilate," but we are not going unless they do annihilate us. If the hon. Member wants to be useful in this Parliament, which I hope will endure for five years, he had better apply his mind to some doctrine which is held on this side of the House. The hon. Member talks about Government schemes in agriculture having been a failure. You cannot teach a man to be an agriculturist and understand practical dealing in stock in a matter of months or even in three years. The men who follow agriculture are exceedingly shrewd and live very hard lives. I do not understand his point when he says euphemistically, that the tenants of borough annals were ejected because they were in arrear with their rent for a few months. He did not condescend to tell us how many months or how long they were to continue paying no rent at the expense of the ratepayers. Does he know anything about agriculture in this country? Is he aware that the fall in prices which has gone on steadily is the greatest disaster to agricultural interests that has taken place since the War? In my humble judgment a more disconnected, useless speech I never heard. I listened with great interest to the speech of the hon. Member for Poplar (Mr. Lansbury), and I congratulate him on his moderation. There has been a great improvement since 1911 or 1912 when he walked from his seat and shook his fist in the nose of the then Prime Minister. His moderation now is beyond all words. The hon. Member with eloquent alliteration referred to the pork butcher and a prince or something of that kind, and I fully appreciated it. I thought it was a kind of street corner utterance.

We do not hear you.

The hon. Member himself has interrupted repeatedly this evening, but it is my misfortune that his utterance is such that I can never hear what he says. I intend in future to address Mr. Speaker, who will never say anything in reply. What has the hon. Member for Poplar done for unemployment? He has had long office. Has he not been the Chairman of the Board of Guardians or of the Borough Council of Poplar?

I have been the Mayor.

That accounts for the moderation of the hon. Member's speech to-day. May I remind the hon. Member what he has done for Poplar? Am I not right in thinking that under his rule the rates of Poplar were raised to 27s. in the £? I believe he got them up to the highest figure in the country. He was not content with that. The council was called upon to make a rate to pay the precept of the London County Council. What did the hon. Member do?

Went to "quod."

That I did not object to. What I do object to is that he went to law and incurred heavy costs. I wonder what they cost the Council. I suppose it was to help unemployment. My only regret was that I was not engaged in the case. The hon. Member for Poplar spoke to the Lord Chief Justice at a length and with an eloquence that makes me say that he ought to have been at the Bar. Hon. Members on the Labour Benches all tell us that we must deal with unemployment. They put up the rates. On what? On the poorest of the poor.

I put a shilling on Westminster, anyhow.

Who paid this 27s. in the £ in Poplar? The poorest of the poor in Poplar. The hon. Member may have squeezed a shilling out of someone else, but he got the Poplar rates up to the highest figure in the country.

The hon. and learned Member is talking mere balderdash. The rates in Poplar were never the highest in the country. I cannot remember what were the highest, but they were some shillings ahead of anything that Poplar approached, and at all events we in Poplar, by going to prison, compelled this House to pass a Bill which enabled us to get from the whole of London between £100,000 and £150,000 a year in relief of the rates. That is what we did for Poplar.

I understand that my hon. Friend is quite pleased with what he did, but the truth is that he got the rates up so high that the people could not pay them any longer. To talk about compelling this House to pass a Bill is mere nonsense. Hon. Members who have spoken to-day as representative of the Labour party or Socialist party have not referred once to the immense expenditure, unparalleled in the history of the world, of the late Government and of this Government on unemployment. Hon. Members have referred to the various schemes issued for the relief of unemployment, but not one of them has suggested a scheme. The poverty of their minds is such that they cannot find a scheme. The hon. Member for Bow and Bromley referred to the proposal for the electrification of the South Eastern and Chatham Railway. That is not a matter which the Government can take out of the hands of the railway company. The hon. Member also spoke about the extension of the London docks. I understand there is a dock company which can deal with that matter in the proper way when the time comes. Yet although we have had all these speeches and have heard much vituperation from hon. Members opposite, not one single useful suggestion has been made. It is true they have the proposal of Socialism—to break down the existing state of things and build up something else. Well, one or two hon. Members opposite including the Leader of the Opposition have some knowledge of what has happened in Russia. If that is the best they have got to offer then I think it will be a very long time before this country will accept it. You may try to exploit the times through which we are passing and the unparalleled distress which we experiencing, but you are doing nothing to help matters. You are only trying to inflame feeling by your hunger marchers and the like. [HON. MEMBERS: "We are not the Government!"] You are doing nothing but exploiting and inflaming feeling. Do you consider that when you are increasing these rates you are putting up the cost of living and making it more difficult for the unemployed to secure employment? There is no more crying need than houses. What did the late Government do? They gave a grant of as much as £250 per house, and what did it come to? You have got the houses and the tenants cannot pay the rents. By running up prices you are only increasing unemployment, and you forget the fact that we are suffering from unparalleled taxation. I am satisfied that if anything is to be done for this country you will do it, not by attempting to create bad feeling between class and class, but by creating good feeling. That is the very last thing hon. Members opposite are trying to do. At least half a dozen, or, at any rate, four of the speakers from opposite Benches, have got up to preach doctrines of hatred. You seem to forget that we are workers just as much as you are, and though you may say this and that about landlords and the like—

The hon. Member is following a bad example, if I may say so, in not addressing himself to the Chair. I deprecate the use of the word "you" on every occasion. If remarks are addressed to me, I fancy they may be a little more temperate.

Mr. Speaker, I receive with all humility and with the hope of reformation what you have told me, and I feel it was thoroughly justified. I was replying to an interruption from the other side, and that is my excuse. I am satisfied nothing can be done to help the country by the doctrines which are being promulgated by certain hon. Members. I ask the House to remember that not only are we passing through a period of unemployment but so are other nations of the world. We have to contend with the inevitable difficulty which is the aftermath of a great war. That difficulty is aggravated by the fact that young men who went to the War, have been taught no trade and that we have also got to absorb the increase in population. I venture to think that, notwithstanding the state in which we stand, deplorable as it is—and I admit it, and think everything should be done to cure it—I am satisfied that no solution can be found in the solution that is offered, of the annihilation of one class for the assumed benefit of the other. I know perfectly well that I speak for many of every class working in my constituency, and it is a purely working-class constituency. Hon. Members opposite may claim them, but I have as many workers on my side in my constituency as anybody else, and more, and when it is said that the Government have done nothing, I at least am grateful to them for what they have done in Gillingham, and that is that they have employed on emergency works some 500 workers, and I submit that the attack made on the Government here is unwarrantable and unfounded.

It was very interesting indeed to have a lecture delivered to us, those of us who happen to be members of the so-called Socialist and Labour party, by a pre-historic politician of the type we have just listened to. I venture to suggest that we are not in need of that kind of lecture. We know exactly the difference between the classes in the community. They are not differences by wish, but by accident and circumstance. We do not want to see two classes, but only one class, and that is the class which renders useful service in return for what they take. All the others we look upon as parasites, however respectable they may imagine themselves to be. We believe— tion by doling out a few more shillings a week for the unemployed worker. I have heard a great deal of talk about the money that is being spent on the unemployed. That ought not to be a testimonial, but a verdict of guilty against the people who form such a Government, paying hundreds of millions out for people to do nothing, and practically doing nothing to bring about the reorganisation of our industrial affairs, spending money all over the world to maintain in safety people in other countries, and at the same time neglecting opportunities to make things safe at home.

I do not want to argue against anybody's nationality, but I want to suggest that we are face to face with circumstances similar to which we have never found ourselves faced with before. We have gone to America with our caps in our hands, asking the capitalists of America to let us down lightly. We have not borrowed money from the people of America; we have borrowed money from Pierpont Morgan and his friends. We have not borrowed money from the people of Great Britain, but from the bankers, and they have all got us round the neck. The Americans say, "You have got to deliver the bond; you have got to pay up and look pleasant." If it is good enough for us to ask America to take half the rate of interest, it is good enough for our capitalists and our bankers here to take half the rate of interest, and if we can afford to spend £151,000,000 in 18 months in trying to make the East safe for democracy, or for the people who have money in the oil wells—I do not know which—it is time we began to realise exactly where we are. I am interested in the housing question more than any other, because I happen to be still living in the same kind of house that I lived in long before I ever thought of becoming a Member of this House—in one of those brick boxes with a slate top, in which people are accustomed to live. We build them in rows, because we cannot trust them to stand separately. sent to gaol for asking for it and taking rent for rabbit hutches, where disease and death permanently promenade. Two hundred out of every thousand children born in my constituency die before reaching the age of twelve months. That is not the will of God; that is the work of man. That is the kind of thing we ought to be out to put an end to. We are to have an Amending Bill to give the landlords greater power to exploit people, so that they can have the law of demand and supply operating to their advantage—the law of the Medes and Persians—no, the law of the Dick Turpins and Bill Sikes. So far as we are concerned, we want the housing question lifted right into the forefront of national politics, because, after all, it depends to a very large extent on the kind of house people have to live in what kind of mentality they will have. The hon. Member who spoke last, who is, I believe, a great ornament of the legal profession, evidently knows nothing at all about working-class life. If he had lived as I have lived, he would talk like I talk. If he had to go through the mill I have had to go through, he would talk far more revolutionary than I am talking now, because he would understand what it means to struggle for a crust of bread and not know what is going to happen the next day. It is because we have gone through this that we are talking the way we do. There are Members of our party who have not gone through it, but they have been convinced by facts and circumstances, and have come to help us in the fight. Therefore, you cannot start lecturing us in the way we have been lectured this evening.

We do not ask you to bring about the social revolution. I am a Socialist, and proud of it. I was brought up in the Socialist and Labour movement from a boy. I am a democrat in politics, and a Socialist in economics, and proud I am to say so. I do not want to rob you, or to take from you anything that you are entitled to possess. I only want to stop the robbery now going on from the great mass of people in every country under the sun. Men are out of work. Are they out of employment because they are unable to produce if they get the opportunity? No. They are out of work because we cannot make a profit by letting them work. No other reason has ever been given. Profit is the basis of industry under present conditions, and if the people who own the means of production cannot make a profit, work automatically ceases, and however useful you may be, however capable of producing wealth, you will be automatically thrown on the scrap-heap for the time being. We have criticised the system under which we are living. I am a trade union official in addition to my other crimes—and we have sacrificed £600,000,000 in wages. The theory advanced by the people who are supposed to be able to instruct us in these matters is that if we sacrificed this trade would get better and everything in the garden would be lovely. We made the sacrifice. Some of us resisted. We were defeated. Some made the surrender voluntarily; some compulsorily. Where are we now? We are £600,000,000 down in wages, while capital has gone up by £700,000,000, and we have had £200,000,000 to spare to invest in foreign fields. This has happened, and some people have got better off while others are down and out and continue to be so. What are we going to get? We are getting talk. But I should like to do some talking in some of the constituencies of hon. Members opposite. I do not care where such a constituency might be, whether in the east or in the west; if you gave me the opportunity of addressing an audience of working men in any constituency that some hon. Members opposite represent, I will put the matter forward on behalf of the working classes in an ordinary fashion, and I will get the audience against you. Physical influence is a different matter. I cannot buy votes. We hear a great deal on questions of politics. I am a constitutionalist because I believe the worst thing you can do to a man is to kill him. It is far better to save his life and to let him do something useful. We stand for production for use against production for profit; the organisation of industry in the interests of the people.

Hundreds of millions of money were taken in 1921 in rent and profit by people who did not turn a hair to get it. Seventy-five per cent. of the industry in the country to-day is managed by men who receive salaries while the real owners never go near the places; do not in some cases know where they are. But it is not necessary for them to know where they are. In 1921 such people took £1,860,000,000 in the form of rent, interest, and profit—the Holy Trinity!—the only Trinity they know anything about. They will have inscribed on their tombstones the letters R.I.P. That does not mean "rest in peace." It means "return if possible." We want you to realise, after all, that we are not going to be managed by people on the other side, whatever they may think. We are going to tell you straight here that if politics mean anything at all, they mean that we shall have the right to come here from the slums of the East End of London, and put our case before the people and organise and legislate in the interests of the people, as you have come from your benches and your Universities, or wherever else you have come from. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"] Yes, but do not put on airs of superiority in talking to us, because we can say to you that, good as you are and bad as we are, we are as good as you are, bad as we may be.

The hon. Member had perhaps better address that to me.

I accept your kind warning, Mr. Speaker, but I want to say that I would be afraid to say the things to you that I say to hon. Members opposite.

That is just why I make the suggestion which I do to the hon. Member.

The real matter is what Cromwell describes as the "condition of the people question." That is a national and not a local question. The Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury) has been twitted about his work, but the best judges of that are the people whom he represents. I stood by him in that fight. Even in West Ham we have had to go through it. We are snowed under in apparatus for relief and our rates are 26s. 1d. in the £. We have borrowed £1,250,000 during the period of depression, and I want to know how long we are to go on like this because we must come to the breaking point. Even hon. Members opposite will have to face the music. We have to face millions of starving men, women and children, and I want to ask what are hon. Members opposite going to do? You are responsible. You are in power and we have a right to ask for something more than the mere expressions of pious hopes. We want these people to have a steaming dish on their table on Sunday. We want, "One man, one dinner."

You must realise that every human being is entitled to live a decent life, and we appeal to hon. Members that they should get down to the business which the nation expects from them, and we can only solve this question by a complete change. Hon. Members opposite would try to solve this question by putting sticking plaster on a wooden leg, but we want to do it by a reorganisation of our industrial affairs. We say that you must change your point of view instead of asking us to change ours. Every man who is able to work should be provided with the opportunity of being employed or else he should be guaranteed a reasonable existence. I was not fortunate enough to be out of work when the Unemployment Insurance Act was in operation, but I was out of work before it was passed, when we got nothing a week and when there were no Labour Exchanges. I admit that we have made considerable advances since that time. I admit all the things which have been done, and some of them I have done my best to force upon you. Statesmanship is only a matter of waiting to see which way the cat jumps, and when the circumstances are powerful enough, then you get something done, and they do as little as possible under the circumstances. We are putting matter before politics, and we wish to use the power of the State to anticipate these difficulties. If real statesmanship had been operating during the last 10 years, we should have been ready for the present condition of things, instead of which we have kept on hoping that something would turn up and that things would be better after Christmas.

We have recently been told by the President of the Federation of British Industries that the winter of 1923 is likely to be worse than the winter of 1922, and he ought to know something about it because he is connected with one of the biggest capital organisations in this country. What are you going to do to meet this situation? Mere declarations of sympathy will not solve it. On the Labour Benches we are prepared to support any policy worthy of our support and it is not a question of party We are ready to back up any party which brings forward proposals for the good of the people. On the other hand if your proposals are not sufficient to meet the demand, we shall fight them for all we, are worth whatever the result may be to ourselves, because we are passionately burning with a desire to see these problems remedied so that we can go on to brighter and better times.

I have listened with very great interest to the Debate, and I have been very much impressed by the various suggestions that have been made, but I have been astonished at the complete absence of any appreciation on the part of hon. Members of what has happened in past history. We speak now as if this were the only time that this country has been through a period of unemployment. We talk as if the present condition of affairs was absolutely without parallel, and yet when one comes to read history one finds that there were two periods at least when we were faced with vast unemployment and great misery. One was when Elizabeth was on the Throne, and another time was in the early part of the 19th century, just after the Napoleonic Wars. Cannot we learn something that we can apply to our present conditions from the way that our ancestors dealt with the conditions then? Personally, I believe that we can learn a good deal, and I am surprised that the lessons that can be drawn from history have not been drawn, and that so little reference has been made to those times. During the Elizabethan times the statesmen set themselves to deal with the great problem of unemployment. They pursued two policies. One was a temporary policy. They decided that every parish should provide material in order to set the unemployed to work and that each parish should be answerable for the poor in that district. But they also pursued a much vaster policy, a policy which undoubtedly was ultimately successful. They said: "We must introduce new industries into the country," and they did introduce many new industries. When you get a period of unemployment, the existing industries frequently cannot absorb all those who are thrown out of work. New industries can find new work. It is interesting to read how Elizabeth invited foreigners who practised arts and trades which were new to us and induced them to come here and take English apprentices by offering them monopolies for varying periods, but rarely for more than ten years. In that way many new industries were localised in this country, and a large amount of new employment was provided. The next period when there was great unemployment was after the Napoleonic Wars, and it is very interesting to note that again the same methods were successful.

There was, however, this essential difference, that, whereas the Elizabethan statesman thought the problem carefully out, and knowingly and of set purpose devised and applied the remedy, in the 19th century a great new industry arose, as it were, fortuitously without the active intervention of our statesmen; I refer, of course, to the introduction of railways. Nobody who reads the history of the latter twenties, thirties and early forties of the 19th century can fail to be impressed by the amount of unemployment and misery that existed then, nor, once attention has been directed to the point, can help noticing how this disappeared with the extension of the railway system.

We, who are accustomed to regard the railways as part and parcel of every-day life, often do not think of the vast amount of labour that was required to produce them. It has been estimated that more men were engaged during their construction on the railways alone than in all the other industries of England at that time put together, with the exception, of course, of agriculture. In other words, during the early days of the 19th century, unemployment was enormous, but a great new industry arose which necessitated railways being planned, bridges being constructed, embankments being thrown up, rails being rolled and all the other incidental works required being undertaken: as a result, unemployment was undoubtedly stopped and prosperity brought about.

If we are now to alleviate unemployment I suggest we should take a lesson from the past, and thereby encourage trade. By all means relieve urgent wants, but remember always that the dole is a demoralising expedient. I have heard hon. Members opposite point out most justly that the system of doles ultimately makes the man who receives the money unfit for work, and those who have pointed this out have done good service [An HON. MEMBER: "Because they are too small!"] Whether the dole is small or large it is demoralising. The proper way to relieve unemployment is to find employment—not to give doles. Cannot we avail ourselves of the wisdom of our ancestors? If the money spent on doles were spent on promoting new industries it would go much further in the relief of unemployment. We are all anxious to relieve unemployment.

I am going to say something which I know many hon. Members will disapprove, yet I feel I cannot sit here through this Debate without giving expression to it. There is one way in which we can encourage new industries, and that is by a system of bounties and by methods of Protection. I cannot understand why we should hesitate to apply bounties and methods of Protection in the present crisis and thus encourage industry. I know it will be said it is against Free Trade and that it may give rise to prospects of a tariff war. But at any rate it would cost us far less than we are spending in doles. Frankly, my sympathies are with many of the speakers on the Labour Benches, but really I cannot understand why they do not definitely support something which would relieve unemployment. Cannot hon. Members help to evolve some scheme by which new industries such as sugar-growing in this country and the like may be encouraged and extended?

Motion made, and Question, "That the Debate be now adjourned," put, and agreed to.—[ Colonel Leslie Wilson. ]

Debate to be resumed To-morrow.

I wish to raise a point which is now causing some considerable interest in Scotland at the present time. A great deal of newspaper discussion and a great deal of public resentment has arisen through the imposition, by a Scottish Judge of the High Court, of a sentence of five years' penal servitude on a boy 17 years of age, for his first offence—a boy who bears a very fine record, and is the son of a widowed mother; a boy who, previous to this offence, bore an excellent record as a worker, and who, although only an apprentice joiner, had been entrusted for several periods with the collection of large sums of rent, running into several hundreds of pounds. Coming to a sudden temptation, this boy ran off with his employer's rents for that particular period. He came from Edinburgh to Glasgow, and indulged in a foolish escapade in a dancing hall in Glasgow. In the prosecution of the lad it was described as the hold-up of a dancing hall with a loaded revolver, but information would lead one to believe that the hold-up was brought about with a toy pistol. For this offence he was sentenced to five years' penal servitude by a Judge of the High Court, who, until a few months ago, was occupying the honourable position of Secretary for Scotland. He was Secretary for Scotland in the last Government. At the same sitting of the High Court, this Judge sentenced a fully grown man—a man, perhaps, of somewhat better social position than the young boy—a man who took the life of a fellow man by the reckless driving of a motor car—to nine months.

As a result of the agitation which has taken place in Scotland, and the great outcry that has arisen from all sections of the community and from people of very varying political opinions, the boy has been removed from the ordinary prison into a Borstal institution; but the sentence of five years still remains, and as far as we know no attempt has been made to bring to book the judge who was responsible for passing it.

I rather gather that the hon. Member is raising the question of the conduct of one of His Majesty's judges. That cannot be done on a Motion of this kind. It can only be done on a special Motion, of which notice has been given.

Perhaps the tenor of my speech may have led you to that conclusion, Sir, but what I am anxious to raise is not the conduct of the judge, but the fact of the boy's five years' imprisonment; and I am hopeful that the Scottish Office will see their way, not merely to removing the boy to a Borstal institution—which, in essence, is not very different from being shut up in an ordinary prison—but to reducing his sentence, and, perhaps, to putting him in charge of some responsible person on a period of probation. I am sure if the Scottish Office would take this line no one would regard it as a vote of censure upon the judge concerned and it would be highly appreciated by a large volume of public opinion in Scotland.

It being Eleven of the Clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[ Colonel Leslie Wilson. ]

I must apologise for not having further details in connection with this case, but I have not received any notice that it was to be raised, nor has the Scottish Whip received notice.

That was done in ignorance, and not of malice aforethought, but I am sure if our new Member of the Government—and we are glad to see a Scotsman from a Scottish constituency on the Front Bench—has been in his native land during the Recess, he is conversant with all the facts.

I did not intend to impute malice or any such thing. I was merely apologising in advance for being unable to give as full details as I should have been able to do if I had had the opportunity of consulting the Department. It is true that it has excited great interest in Scotland. The hon. Member is raising it, I understand, with a view of eliciting further information than that which is already in the Press, and I am sorry I am not able to give it this evening. There are several features connected with it, the case of the removal to a Borstal Institution, for instance, has raised, I understand, no protest from the person who, next to the boy himself, is most closely connected with him, and is most closely concerned with seeing that he recovers from this career in which he has unfortunately started—I mean the boy's own mother. We have not received any protest about the removal to a Borstal Institution.

We are not objecting to his removal. We are pressing for his removal from the Borstal Institution to his home.

But we have not received any suggestion from the boy's own mother that he should be removed to his home, and it is impossible for me at this late hour and at such short notice to say more than that the case has been under the very close consideration of the Secretary for Scotland in conjunction with the learned Judge who passed sentence upon him. The sentence has already been revised and the case is receiving close attention, and no doubt the Secretary for Scotland will, if he sees fit, take further steps in the matter. Further than that it is not possible for me to go except to assure the hon. Member that we are keeping the matter under close observation.

May I first congratulate the hon. and gallant Gentleman, on his appointment? Regarding the statement that the mother has not complained, that may be accounted for by the fact that the mother since the sentence has been in extremely bad health. When in Edinburgh, I visited her and found her in such a state that she could not possibly write a letter to the Secretary for Scotland. Even from that point of view, there may be additional ground for the Scottish Office thinking over this matter. From the outset, the Scottish Office delayed their action too long. Even in regard to the removal to a Borstal institution. I hope that the Scottish Office, free from any red tape, will at least use their clemency and their power in liberating the boy. It is a first offence. He had an excellent character from the church people with whom he was associated, people who hold public positions in Edinburgh, men who knew him from his early boyhood. I do not know of any case where all shades of religious and political thought have been so united in Edinburgh as to a boy's character and model behaviour, and yet the Scottish Office have only seen fit to remove him to a Borstal institution, without any decrease of sentence. It would not be censuring the Judge, and would not ill-befit the Scottish Office if the boy were released. The sentence was wrong, and could never have been defended. Only one who had been a member of a brutal Government would have been guilty of such a brutal sentence. Only his association with brutal comrades in the last Government could be largely responsible for his brutal attitude.

This case has caused considerable agitation in Scotland. The Parliamentary Under-Secre- tary for Health complains that he has not received notice. If that question is raised to-morrow, can he assure the House that that will give him sufficient time to get the necessary information after consultation with the other Members of the Scottish Office, and will he be able to give the House a statement as to any further intentions of the Scottish Office for reducing the period of sentence during which the boy is to remain in the Borstal institution, or of releasing him entirely?

I do not think that I can give such an assurance off-hand, because obviously we have to consult the Department, not merely here, but also in Edinburgh, and there would not be time for us to get full details by to-morrow night. Therefore it would be unwise for me to give any such assurance. I can, however, give the assurance that I will consult with the Secretary for Scotland to-morrow, and if he can see him privately I will give the hon. Member every facility for discussing the matter with the Secretary for Scotland tomorrow.

Already all the details of this case have been before the Scottish Department and you have taken a certain decision on the matter. The lad has been removed from penal servitude to a Borstal institution. All we press is that you should go further with your clemency and take him out of the Borstal institution and place him on probation, and I am convinced that if this is done he will become a good citizen.

The hon. Member must realise that the conduct of the boy recently would have to be reviewed. The hon. Member for Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan) already has brought up new facts in the case with which the Office may or may not be conversant. These are facts which need to be taken into consideration before I could take what might be a wrong step in sending the boy back to his home. I do not think the hon. Member would expect me to say that I should take any further decision merely on the facts brought out so far, without taking into account these other matters.

I have put down a question on this subject to the Secretary for Scotland, but it will not be on till next Tuesday, and I thought I might raise the matter now.

At the close of last Session, the Prime Minister gave us a pledge that before the House met again steps would be taken to have the Lord Advocate present in this House. This question to-night has made it more apparent than ever that the absence of the Lord Advocate creates a great want as far as Scottish Members are concerned. The Prime Minister gave us a definite promise. I do not know whether we should regard it as a political promise that is not of any great importance, such as the right hon. Member gave in connection with making unemployment the first business of his Government, I would like some information on this most important matter. We in Scotland feel that this is a matter of supreme importance. There is an agitation which is growing in vigour in favour of self determination for Scotland. Those of us who feel that our country was neglected last Session by the Government are determined that this Session we are not going on in the same fashion, and that we must have responsible Members of the Government present to deal with Scottish questions. The constituency which I represent is next in point of location to that of the Prime Minister in Glasgow and is one with a great amount of distress. Thousands of people are unemployed, and we feel we ought to have some Scottish Ministers in the House to whom Members can go with regard to the people whom they represent in order that there may be decent treatment of these people in their hard circumstances. A promise such as that which the Prime Minister made is one to which when speaking to-day he should have made some reference. I feel that we have been treated with scant courtesy in this respect. I would like to hear any Member of the Government on the subject. Possibly they may send for the Prime Minister to give the answer. We are here attending to the duties that we came to do. Very evidently, however, the desire for tranquillity, or somnolence, has made it impossible for us to get an answer to-night. However, the Government made the promise last Session. The Prime Minister, speaking of his relationship to the Members of his Government, gave us the translation of a Latin quotation, Primus inter pares. He did not give us the Latin because we ignorant people on the Labour benches might not be able to understand what he meant. Possibly one of the pares will be able to reply, and give us some assurances with regard to the return of the Lord Advocate to the House. We want to get Scottish affairs decently administered. We are members of a constitutional party believing in constitutional methods, and we say that it is not in accordance with constitutional methods for the Government to go on treating Scotland in the way it is doing.

I know that rumours do count for much, but it has been suggested that a scat may be found for the Lord Advocate in an English constituency. That is about the worst thing that the Government could do. We cannot rely on Press rumours. We have had experience of even Government statements that are not strictly accurate being sent to the Press. It has been said that there have been wild men sent from the Clyde, but if the Government took this step, I can assure them that there would be an upheaval later on. We do not mind Scotsmen coming to England and representing English constituencies, so long as they are not to be called upon to answer questions affecting Scotland, but when it is a question of vital Scottish matters, we object, and particularly when there is a growing demand for Scottish Home Rule. We want to have as many Members as possible with the experience which Government office will give them for the Scottish Parliament when we get it. We would like to have an indication that the Government are prepared to face a Scottish constituency for the Lord Advocate and to try their fortune there. We can assure them they will be welcome. Nothing will suit us better than to test the mettle of the Scottish constituencies against the Lord Advocate if the Government are prepared to find anyone on their own side who thinks he has a safe seat to offer. I trust, in addition to telling us whether a seat is likely to be found, the Government will give us an assurance that any such seat will be a Scottish seat.

I regret I cannot quite agree with the view taken by my hon. Friend who has just spoken. The absence of the Lord Advocate from these benches does not cause me any grief. Indeed, if it were impossible to find a seat for every Government representative I would be more pleased than grieved. When we understand the reason why it is impossible to find a seat in Scotland for the Lord Advocate I cannot see why we should press upon His Majesty's Government the advisability or the necessity of introducing to this House another representative of the legal profession. We have plenty of them in this House already. I can see no necessity for introducing the Lord Advocate here, particularly when all the political omens go to show that he is not wanted in any constituency in Scotland.

Question put, and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at Twenty-two Minutes after Eleven o'Cclock.