asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he will consider the desirability of the preparation of a summarised edition of the fourth volume of the Reports of the Departmental Committee on Trade and Industry which could be made available for the public at a nominal price; and if he will arrange for the separate publication at a small price of the chapter dealing with costs of industrial production and distribution?

The price of this volume is already a low one, and I doubt whether it would be well to attempt to prepare any summary other than the existing introduction to the volume. The question of publishing separately individual chapters hardly appears to arise at present.

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this chapter referred to is the clearest statement we have yet had of the cost of production and distribution and that it is very important for the public to have it in some simple form?

The whole volume only costs 3s. 6d., and probably those interested will require the whole volume.

asked the President of Board of Trade whether he has given consideration to the figures published in the Board of Trade Journal of 29th March, showing the production of pig-iron in the United Kingdom and certain foreign countries; whether the low average output per furnace in blast in the United Kingdom, as compared with France, Belgium and Germany, is due to higher cost of production; and if he contemplates any action which may improve the outlook of the iron and steel trade in this country?

I understand that the lower average output per furnace in blast in the United Kingdom is due to the fact that the furnaces now working here are, on the average, smaller than those working on the Continent.

Does that mean that the low iron ore used in this country makes all the difference?

I think there are smaller furnaces in this country because we turn out a number of grades of pig iron to meet a number of orders of different kinds. I think that really accounts for the difference between the comparatively small furnaces here and the larger furnaces abroad.

Is it not a fact that if you want to get the proper position you have to find out the class of coal, the class of coke, the class of iron ore and the class of limestone?

I am not sure that that is necessary in order to find out the position in different countries. I do not think it would be necessary.

Are we to believe that the men working in the blast furnaces in France, Belgium and Germany are superior workmen to those in this country?

No, there would be no ground for any such suggestion or reflection.

asked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury the number of companies in the artificial silk industry which have made use of the Trade Facilities Acts, and to what extent?

One such guarantee has been given in respect of a loan of £85,000. Particulars of this guarantee were given in House of Commons Paper 14 of 1926.

asked the Secretary for Mines if he will give a list of the pits in the South Wales coalfield at which work has totally ceased, naming their location and the collieries to which they belong; and how many and which of the pits are considered to be permanently uneconomic?

I will send to the hon. Member a list of the pits closed in South Wales, but I regret I am unable to give the information asked for in the last part of the question.

Is the hon. and gallant Gentleman now in a position to give the figures for Scotland, which he was unable to give before the Adjournment?

Not without notice.

Are we to understand that there are no means of ascertaining which pits have gone out of production because they are not economic?

Those that are abandoned are reported each week to the Mines Department.

Will the hon. and gallant Gentleman make inquiries as to which of the pits are permanently uneconomic?

There are nearly 200 pits, and the work of finding out which are permanently closed would be too great.

Does the hon. and gallant Gentleman not realise that it is very important to ascertain this?

It depends on the state of the market whether pits will be economic or not.

Is the hon. and gallant Gentleman aware that the Prime Minister, in passing the Eight Hours Act, suggested that it was put in operation to prevent the going out of production of pits, and, in view of that fact, is it not necessary that we should have this knowledge?

I cannot agree that he said that.

The hon. and gallant Gentleman himself gave that answer to a question a few days ago.

Are the hon. and gallant Gentleman's officers still investigating and preparing a catalogue of these mines?

Yes, my Department is constantly keeping in touch and making out a catalogue of abandoned mines, but abandoned mines only.

Is it not a fact that more mines have gone out of action since the Eight Hours Act than in the same length of period before the passing of that Act?

asked the Secretary for Mines if he is aware of the damage to house property and other property in Abertillery and other mining areas caused by mining subsidence; and, in view of the publication of the Report last year of the Royal Commission on Mining Subsidence, will he bring in legislation at the earliest date to deal with this grievance?

I would refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave to the hon. Member for Consett (Mr. Dunnico) on 3rd April, to which I can add nothing.

Are the Government going to take action on the question, in view of the fact that a Report has been given by the Committee that has been investigating it?

If the hon. Member refers to the OFFICIAL REPORT, he will see the reply.

asked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether the Board will consider requiring 24 hours' notice of courts of inquiry being given to any man whose career may be gravely affected; and whether it is proposed to place witnesses at courts of inquiry on oath in the way practised at military courts of inquiry?

As my honourable and gallant Friend is aware, Naval Courts of Inquiry are not judicial bodies, and in view of their wide objects as set forth in the King's Regulations it is considered that their usefulness could be reduced rather than increased by applying the restrictions proper to a Court of Law. My honourable and gallant Friend is incorrect in stating that it is the practice at Military Courts of Inquiry, other than those held on recovered prisoners of war or as to illegal absence of soldiers, to place witnesses on oath. The convening authority is legally empowered to order sworn evidence to be taken, but the power is only used in exceptional circumstances. The question of obtaining statutory authority for conferring the same power on the authority convening a Naval Court of Inquiry has often been considered, but no sufficient reason for changing the existing law has been found.

Is my right hon. Friend aware that Commander Daniel stated in evidence that he had only 10 minutes' time in which to collect his evidence and that that was responsible for his reading of portions of Captain Dewar's letter in the ward room which led to a very serious state of affairs?

I am quite aware of that, but I am going to make a statement on the whole subject later on.

asked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he has any statement to make with reference to the courts-martial on Captain Dewar, C.B.E., and Commander Daniel, D.S.O., late of His Majesty's Ship "Royal Oak"; and whether these officers have received other appointments?

The Board of Admiralty have now had an opportunity of reviewing the Proceedings of the Courts-Martial on Captain Dewar and Commander Daniel, at which Rear-Admiral Collard gave evidence. They have also received a letter from the Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean, fully explaining the events which led up to and resulted in the suspension from duty of these three officers.

At about 10.30 a.m. on Saturday the 10th March, the Vice-Admiral Commanding the First Battle Squadron brought to the Commander-in-Chief the letters from Captain Dewar and Commander Daniel which formed the subject of the charges at the Courts-Martial, and which he had received from Rear-Admiral Collard an hour previously. They had been left with Rear-Admiral Collard by Captain Dewar the previous afternoon.

The lack of time available for dealing with the situation was partly due to the fact that, though Commander Daniel was ordered to send in his reasons regarding the incident on the 5th March, it was not until four days later that the letter from Captain Dewar, enclosing that from Commander Daniel, was given to Rear-Admiral Collard.

It was clear to the Commander-in-Chief from the terms of these letters, which alleged a state of indiscipline in the "Royal Oak," that an immediate inquiry was necessary. A very serious and difficult situation was thus created in view of the fact that the Fleet was due to sail at 4 p.m. on the next day, Sunday, for the most important exercises of the year.

The Commander-in-Chief immediately convened a Court of Inquiry, the members of which were three Flag Officers. It commenced its sitting at 1.30 p.m. on Saturday and sat continuously until 8 p.m., when the three Flag Officers, having arrived at their finding, at once reported the result verbally to the Commander-in-Chief, but all the shorthand evidence was not available for the Commander-in-Chief until about midday on Sunday. It was impossible to delay the departure of the Fleet beyond Monday morning, and immediate action was therefore necessary. The Commander-in-Chief considered it clearly undesirable that the "Royal Oak" should sail with the three officers on board, and, as has already been announced, he ordered the Rear-Admiral to strike his flag and superseded the other two officers.

In taking this action on his own responsibility, the Commander-in-Chief reported that he considered it impracticable to put into a telegraphic summary all the evidence, facts and considerations which guided him, that any abbreviated account would be liable to misinterpretation and would be insufficient to enable the Board to make a decision. In any case, such a telegraphic report, which must have consisted of several hundred groups of cypher, could not have been despatched by him before Sunday evening, and a reply could not possibly have been received before the departure of the Fleet at 6 a.m. on Monday. He therefore felt it to be his duty to take the responsibility on his own shoulders and to issue the orders he did, without submission of proposals to the Board.

Unavoidably, Commander-in-Chief's action gave the incident publicity at Malta, and statements gained currency which magnified the situation that had arisen in the "Royal Oak." The Board, however, consider that, in the peculiar circumstances existing at the moment, the action of the Commander-in-Chief was correct, the position in which he was placed being due to the time at which it had been thought fit to put forward the complaint and to the exaggerated picture presented of the state of discipline in the ship.

On this question of discipline, time was obviously required to check the real facts. The Commander-in-Chief reported on the 19th March that after a week's careful consideration and observation he believed that the impression conveyed by Captain Dewar and Commander Daniel as to the bad effect upon the discipline and moral of the ship caused by the incidents complained of was greatly exaggerated, and he has since reported that he is entirely satisfied that the discipline and moral are excellent.

It is also made clear by the evidence given at the courts-martial that these incidents were in no way indicative of any systematic want of consideration or habitual fault finding in the "Royal Oak" on the part of the Rear-Admiral but were simply isolated occurrences. The matters on which they arose should have been quite easily settled had there not been an unaccountable failure amongst these three officers of high rank to show the good temper and common sense normally found amongst all ranks and ratings.

The Board are of opinion that the initial blame for what has happened lies with Rear-Admiral Collard, who dealt with trivial causes for dissatisfaction in a manner unbecoming his position, and showed himself unfit for further high command. As already stated, he has been deprived of his command, and the Board with regret have now decided, in spite of his good services in the past, to place him on the Retired List under Order-in-Council of the 21st April, 1922, which authorises the Admiralty to retire officers of any rank in such cases.

The other two officers have been tried by Court-Martial, and in each case have been sentenced to be severely reprimanded and dismissed their ship. The Board have decided to confirm the sentences, though they are of opinion that in Commander Daniel's case no offence was proved under the second charge based on Article 11 of the King's Regulations and Admiralty Instructions. The sentence inflicted by the Court in his case, however, was justified by his conviction on the other three charges on which he was tried.

As it has been suggested that the offences committed by these officers were more or less technical in character, the Board think it necessary to say that they have taken a grave view of their conduct. Commander Daniel, having been ordered to make a report to the Captain in writing on certain events connected with the departure of the Rear-Admiral from the ship on the 5th March, supplemented the paragraphs complying with that order by additional paragraphs partly containing unnecessary comment on the Rear-Admiral based on hearsay, and partly making criticisms of an improper nature. The Board are of opinion that an officer of his experience must have been well aware that the procedure for making complaints, which is a most important and essential safeguard, must not be used as a vehicle for using language subversive of discipline about the superior officer complained of. Captain Dewar, in a case in which he was intending to make complaints of his own, should have deterred his junior officer from going beyond the formal report of the facts which he had been ordered to prepare, or alternatively should have used his experience to advise his junior officer to put into a respectful Service form any complaint which he intended to forward. In fact, he did not discourage Commander Daniel in the course which he actually took, but accepted his report. The conduct of both officers was contrary to the traditions and best interests of the Service.

The Board by their confirmation of the Court-Martial sentences on these two officers have sufficiently marked their sense of disapproval of their conduct, and have therefore decided that these sentences shall not preclude them from further employment in due course when suitable vacancies occur.

Finally, although it is clear that in this case the officers concerned should, from their position in the Service, have had no doubts as to the proper manner in which to bring forward complaints, the Board are making a careful review of the relevant Articles of the King's Regulations and Admiralty Instructions in order to ascertain whether there are any grounds for the suggestion that officers and men of less experience may be uncertain how to act if they have a complaint to bring against anyone of superior rank.

When the First Lord speaks of "further employment," am I to understand that that means further employment at sea; and is he aware that in the case of an officer of the rank of Captain Dewar, unless he gets in his sea time, further promotion in the Service as an Admiral is denied him, and that it would, therefore, be possible for the Admiralty, while employing him on shore, to cut short his further career in a higher rank? May I be reassured on that point?

I am quite aware of these circumstances, but I cannot give the hon. and gallant Gentleman an undertaking that he will be employed, because the number of vacancies is limited, and I must wait until a suitable one occurs. We never make it a practice in advance to undertake to give such employment.

Will the right hon. Gentleman follow the course which has always been taken in the case of previous Courts-Martial, and publish as a Blue Book the whole of the evidence, and include in the Blue Book the Report of the Commander-in-Chief, which he has paraphrased in stating it to the House?

Does the right hon. Gentleman think that any good can possibly be done by publishing the whole of the evidence? Is it not a great deal better that we should leave the matter where it is, relying upon the sympathy which has been expressed by my right hon. Friend, and at the same time adding the hope that it will be in the very near future that these two officers will regain employment?

I am heartily in agreement with what my hon. and gallant Friend (Sir F. Hall) has said. With regard to publishing the whole of the proceedings of the Courts-Martial, I must say, without giving a definite refusal, that I see no great advantage to be gained by doing it. There are very few people who, like myself, have read through the whole of the evidence of the Courts-Martial, five hundred or so pages of folios, closely typewritten, and I am sure that publishing the whole of it would be a very extravagant thing to do. Considering that a great deal of the evidence at the Courts-Martial was a constant repetition of the same point, and that all the facts, certainly the facts of any importance, have appeared in the public Press, I do not think that the House would wish large expense to be incurred for so doubtful a result.

Arising out of the right hon. Gentleman's previous reply with regard to the re-employment of these officers, does the First Lord realise that what he has told the House is that Captain Dewar, who is a senior captain, has lost his turn through being superseded? Is it the intention of the Admiralty to give him further employment at sea before his time for retirement is reached?

I have told the hon. and gallant Member that I cannot give a more conclusive statement. I think it is perfectly clear from what I have said what the wish of the Admiralty is, but these things cannot be promised in advance.

I was given an undertaking by the Admiralty that Commander Daniel and Captain Dewar would he acquainted with the charges before they left for Gibraltar. I want to know who was responsible for framing two fresh charges and for postponing the Courts-Martial after their arrival at Gibraltar. Was it the Admiralty or the Commander-in-Chief?

I should like notice of that question. As regards the postponement of the Courts-Martial, that was to meet the very point on which the hon. and gallant Member asked a question a moment ago. He asked why they were not given more notice. The gallant officers had to be given due notice of the new charges.

Was it fair to frame new charges at the last moment and postpone the Courts-Martial? That is not recognised by English law.

asked the Minister of Health what reports have been received as to the effects on health of artificial silk manufacture on the people resident in the neighbourhood of such factories?

I would refer the hon. Member to the reply given to his question on the 29th March, and to the reply to the hon. Member for Newton (Mr. R. Young) on the 3rd instant, and would add that enquiries into this question are proceeding.

Is there any likelihood of an early report being presented to us on the subject?

I cannot say.

asked the Minister of Health whether recent consideration has been given to the necessity for a ruling for the standard of temperature of chilled beef and frozen beef, respectively; and what is the attitude of his Department towards the proposal that so-called chilled beef should be carried at a temperature whereby the liquid content is not frozen?

My right hon. Friend has not received any representations on the subject. He is advised that there is no public health consideration involved in the question of the temperature at which chilled beef should be imported.

asked the Minister of Health the total sum which local authorities in England have been authorised to borrow for the provision of cemeteries and burial grounds since 11th November, 1918?

The total sum is £1,578,860.

(for Mr. BUCHANAN) asked the Secretary of State for Scotland the number of towns in Scotland of a population of 10,000 and over which have no voluntary clinics for dealing with the problem of venereal disease; if he can give the names of these towns; and if he is at present taking any steps to urge those local authorities to set up clinics?

As the answer is a long one I propose, with the hon. Member's consent, to circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Perhaps you will be good enough, Mr. Deputy-Chairman, to give the Committee the benefit of your guidance in regard to the series of Amendments to this Clause which are on the Paper. The first four deal with the proposed abolition of capital punishment, and I shall be glad—and I am sure the Committee will be pleased—if you will express a desire whether you wish each Amendment to be moved and debated separately or whether we should take a discussion on the first four Amendments and then take a vote at the end of the discussion, it being understood, of course, that, after the main question has been disposed of, there would he no further Debate on the other Amendments.

The first four Amendments on the Order Paper deal with the same subject, and undoubtedly it would be to the convenience of the Committee to deal with it in one Debate, and then, if it were thought fit, the Committee could divide on the question. I should like to point out to the hon. Member for Tottenham North (Mr. R. Morrison) that his first Amendment on the Paper does not seem to be necessary.

The first Amendment deals with a somewhat narrow point which will be involved in the subsequent discussion. We on these benches do not desire to see any punishment inflicted on actice service which is not equally applicable to ordinary peace time.

The hon. Member in the first Amendment proposes in page 3, line 34, to leave out the words "committed on active service." It does not appear to be necessary to carry out what the hon. Member desires.

I beg to move, in page 3, line 36, at the end, to insert the words:

"(1) In Section four, paragraphs (1), (2), (6), and (7) shall be omitted.

(2) In Section five the following paragraphs shall be inserted after paragraph (6):

(7) Shamefully abandons or delivers up any garrison, place, post, or guard, or uses any means to compel or induce any governor, commanding officer, or other person shamefully to abandon or deliver up any garrison, place, post or guard which it was the duty of such governor or person to defend;

(8) Shamefully casts away his arms, ammunition, or tools in the presence of the enemy;

(9) Knowingly does when on active service any act calculated to imperil the success of His Majesty's Forces or any part thereof;

(10) Misbehaves or induces others to misbehave before the enemy in such manner as to show cowardice."

I have no doubt that every newspaper that thinks it worth while to make any reference to this discussion to-morrow will use two words that I might as well use myself at the beginning. Those two words are "hardy annual." We on the Labour benches make no apology for the fact that this Debate may be regarded as to some extent a hardy annual. What the words mean is that some of us on the Labour benches, reinforced by Members of other parties, have for several years past been making efforts to bring about the abolition of capital punishment in the Army for a number of offences for which capital punishment at present exists. We have stated our case for several years; we have argued it as Teasonably as we can; and the Secretary for War has replied, as I have no doubt he will reply to-day. What has been his reply? Summarised, it has been that without the death penalty in the Army discipline on active service would be jeopardised; that we must retain the right on active service to order a man to be shot in cold blood by a firing party of his comrades for an offence for which he would not be condemned to death in peace time; that we must retain the penalty, not so much from the point of view that the crime merits death, but as a deterrent to others, and to keep up the fighting moral of the troops. Finally, the right hon. Gentleman will probably assure us that the greatest care is taken to avoid miscarriages of justice, and he will probably quote again, as he has done in past years, the fact of which most of us are aware, that of the sentences to death in the Great War only 11 per cent. were carried into effect.

The Committee will agree, I think, that that is a fair statement of the case against the abolition of capital punishment in the Army. From our point of view we have put the case for the abolition of capital punishment for certain offences. Our case has been almost entirely based on four points. First of all, we have said that under the Army Act there are many crimes which ought not to be punishable by death. Some of these crimes have been abolished, and some are to be abolished by the present Bill. We still, like Oliver Twist, are asking for more, and are hoping that some other crimes will be abolished this afternoon. The second point that we have urged is, that the very fact that the Secretary for War has always said, "You are making a lot of fuss about this, and 89 per cent. of the men sentenced in the Great War were not in fact executed: their sentences were commuted, and in only 11 per cent. of the cases were the sentences carried out," is proof that those who are finally responsible realised that death sentences ought not to have been passed in those cases. Our third point is that the death sentence is not a deterrent and that there is no evidence that it is a deterrent. In all the Debates that we have had on this subject no right hon. or hon. Member in any quarter of the House has brought forward any evidence that the death sentence is a deterrent. Fourthly, we maintain that discipline would not be adversely affected by the abolition of the death penalty for the offences I shall indicate. We are told that its abolition would affect the fighting moral of the Service. Where is the evidence? We shall probably be told that again this afternoon.

We have a right, after having debated this hardy annual for all these years, to ask what is the evidence on these two points—first that the death sentence is a deterrent; and, secondly, that its abolition would affect the fighting moral of the Forces? I submit that that is a fair statement of the case for the retention of the death penalty and of the case against it. When these Debates end, when the wordy warfare is over and Members go into the Division lobbies, I think it will be agreed that there is no Division in the whole of our Parliamentary year in which Members go so reluctantly into the Lobby as they do against the abolition of the death penalty. If it were possible to leave the decision to a free vote of Members, without the Whips being put on, the death penalty would be abolished in almost every case. To-day we are making a still further effort. On this occasion we are considerably encouraged, because we can see that we are making progress and that our hardy annual efforts are bearing fruit.

I notice that in the Memorandum of the Bill, in "Notes on Clauses." there is the following reference to Clause 4.

"The effect of this Clause is to abolish the death penalty on active service for—

(1) leaving a commanding officer to go in search of plunder;

(2) forcing a safeguard;

(3) forcing or striking a sentinel;

(4) breaking into any house or other place in search of plunder;

(5) when acting as a sentinel sleeping or being drunk on a post;

(6) striking or using or offering violence to a superior officer in the execution of his office;

(7) disobeying in such manner as to show a wilful defiance of authority any lawful command given personally by a superior officer in the execution of his office;

(8) altering or interfering with any air signal without authority.

The only military offences on active service which will remain punishable with death will be mutiny, treachery, cowardice, desertion and leaving a guard, etc., without orders, or in the case of a sentinel leaving a post without being regularly relieved."

I would like to congratulate the Government on having gone so far in the direction for which we have been striving for many years. Some of us in the past have been inclined to be dispirited and to think that we were not making any headway, but apparently at times we were making progress when we least anticipated it. We see as a preface to the Bill a list of offences for which the death penalty is now to be abolished. Yet we have been told in past Debates that the abolition of the death penalty in such cases would have been prejudicial to discipline, that it would injure the fighting moral, and that these offences had to be retained as a deterrent. Now the Government come along and themselves propose to abolish eight of the offences altogether. The Interdepartmental Committee which has been quoted in previous Debates and which was composed largely of officers of the higher command, did not recommend the abolition of the death penalty for the offences which are now to be excluded. The only offences for which that Committee recommended that the death penalty should be abolished were two, and in Army parlance they were, interfering with the Prevost-Marshal, and "pinching" the rations. The interdepartmental Committee recommended that the death penalty should be abolished in respect of these two offences and that was done, I think in 1925.

Let us take the case of the offence of sleeping while on sentry duty. Hon. and right hon. Gentlemen, not only on the Government side but in the Liberal party, in previous Debates waxed eloquent about the impossibility of maintaining discipline if we abolished the death penalty for this offence. Now the Government recommend that the death penalty can, with safety, be abolished in respect of this offence. We thank the Government for the concessions contained in the Bill, but there are still some offences to which the death penalty attaches and in connection with which we think it ought to go, particularly those under the headings of cowardice and desertion. As years go past and as the memories of the War become fainter, it is more and more difficult to get the proper atmosphere in this House for the discussion of these questions. Circumstances have changed considerably.

One only needs to compare the position to-day with the position of 10 years ago to realise how entirely different is the atmosphere. I read, to my surprise, in the papers yesterday that a member of the Cabinet, the Earl of Birkenhead, had been making speeches in Germany in which he congratulated the Germans on their great courage and bravery during the War. What sort of reception would have been given 10 or 12 years ago to Lord Birkenhead, or anybody else, who had dared to say, not that the Germans as a people were brave people, but that any one single German had any bravery in his composition? Times have changed, however, and Lord Birkenhead to-day can make that statement. It may be argued that Lord Birkenhead is different from ordinary people. That of course, we all admit. Man of us in this House were civilians in pence time and soldiers in war time. Lord Birkenhead was a soldier in peace time and a civilian in war time.

This Bill provides that the only offences which remain punishable by death are treachery, mutiny, cowardice and desertion. There are members of all parties in this House who believe in the entire abolition of capital punishment, not only in regard to the fighting forces but in record to the civilian population. They do not believe in capital punishment at all, under any conditions, and I have every respect for them, but that is not our case to-day. We are not here arguing for the general abolition of capital punishment and, from these benches, we do not desire to challenge the first two offences mentioned here as punishable by death, namely, treachery and mutiny. But we think it is high time that the death penalty was abolished in respect of the others. Take the ease of cowardice. The question has been asked several times in these Debates but has never yet been answered: "What is cowardice?" Nobody has yet ventured on a definition. At the end of the original Act there are no fewer than 39 definitions of terms used in the Act but there is no definition of cowardice. For example, we find that the expression "decoration" means

"any medal, clasp, goods conduct badge or decoration.

The expression "enemy" includes

"all armed mutineer, armed rebels, armed raiders and pirates."

The expression "constable" includes

"a high constable or commissioner."

The expression "carriages" means

"a vehicle for carriage or haulage."

The expression "horse" includes

"a mule."

The framers of the original Act were so tremendously careful as to give 39 definitions. Could they not have made the number up to 40, by inserting a definition of cowardice? They have not done so, however, and in my difficulty I turned to Webster's Dictionary and I find the expression "coward" defined as

"a person who wants courage to meet danger; a timid man; destitute of courage; timid; base."

The only comment I have to offer is that many timid people during the great War voluntarily joined the Army and a great many more were conscripted. The same dictionary defines "cowardice" as

"want of courage to face danger; timidity; the fear of exposing one's person to danger."

That is the offence for which we seek to impose the death penalty in this Bill as in London on leave on the morning after a serious air raid in the vicinity of Paddington Station. I saw a queue of motor-cars, piled high with luggage and containing men as well as women who were afraid of exposing themselves to danger and were getting away from London as fast as they could, leaving their homes and their businesses. Those people were guilty of cowardice and desertion, or as the dictionary mercifully puts it, "of timidity." Those of us who were in London for brief periods during the War are familiar with the fact that thousands of people used to dive into the tubes like rabbits into holes when there was danger and it was frequently difficult for the authorities to get them up again. This applied not only to women and children, but to men. They were timid people, but they were guilty of "cowardice and desertion." They deserted their businesses because they were afraid of exposing themselves to danger. We say it is not right that for an offence of that sort the death penalty should be imposed even on active service.

In modern warfare, with its shell fire, bombing and poison gas, it is impossible to isolate from mental and physical breakdown a particular vice and call it cowardice. Why should we shoot the man who has been unable to disguise his fear? The same remark applies to desertion. I have seen men desert under the ordeal of heavy shell fire. Men are not normal at such a time and frequently are unable to control their actions. It is easy for us to sit comfortably here and lay down the law that these men mast be steady and courageous under fire and under all conditions or run the risk of being shot like dogs. Let us exercise our imaginations. Supposing while this Debate is going on somebody were to drop a bomb in the House of Commons.

I hope it will not drop near me.

We already see the psychological effect, even of imagining such an occurrence. It gives one an idea of what the reality would be like. Supposing a bomb were to be dropped on this House, Members would not all act in the same way. Some of them would, with as much dignity as possible, get under the seats, and others would sit so quietly that you would not be able to tell by looking at them whether or not they were frightened. Supposing one or two Members were killed and there was some blood about, and supposing everybody knew there were several other bombs about to follow, what would happen Some Members would probably dash about this Chamber, all round the place, not knowing what they were doing at all, and the probability is that the Members who would do that and get the most demented would be those with the longest experience of active service. I think it has been generally accepted in these Debates that when a soldier came under fire first he was the least afraid, and that as time went on he became more and more afraid as his nerves got more and more shattered with the ordeal. You cannot always tell from a man's behaviour whether he is a brave man or a coward. Probably the man who sits patiently, displaying no emotion at all, is trembling with fear, like anybody else.

I think it is simply a problem of psychology. Some people are able to disguise their fears better than others, and it is easy for us to sit comfortably in our places here and lay down the law that men must be steady and courageous under these conditions. I have tried to picture a bomb dropping on this House, but let us go a little further and picture bombs dropping week after week, day after day, with men scarcely getting any proper sleep, and then imagine in what condition Members of this august Assembly would find themselves. We shall then get an idea of what some of the men who were charged with the offence of cowardice during the War were like. It may be asked, "What qualifications have we, in this House, to decide this question?" This is an argument that has been used in almost all the Debates in which I have taken part, that we are not really in a position to decide this question, and that those who should decide it are those in command—the higher command. I say that this is a problem of psychology, and in a problem of psychology the higher command are not able—they may be very capable strategists and know all about warfare—to know enough to decide this question.

The higher command opposed in this House, year after year, the abolition of field punishment No. 1, which was known among the soldiers for so many years as "crucifixion." Year after year in this House Secretaries of State for War—not the present right hon. Gentleman, but some of his predecessors—got up and said they were assured by the officers of the higher command that it would be detrimental to the discipline of the Army to abolish field punishment No. 1, and that the fighting moral of the troops could not possibly be maintained if it were abolished. Read the Debates, and you will find, year after year, Liberal and Conservative Ministers of War explaining that those responsible were convinced that it could not be abolished without serious results.

And Labour. Why leave out Labour?

Those things were abolished, I suggest, by the pressure of public opinion. The pressure of public opinion, through this House in Debates year after year, succeeded in abolishing field punishment No. 1, against the advice of the higher command of the Army. Year after year we have urged the abolition of the death penalty for these offences, and we have had the same reply. The Inter-departmental Committee which was the last organised effort to go into this question stated that the officers of the higher command opposed the proposal to abolish the death penalty for cowardice and desertion. To-day, in spite of them, of the recommendations of the Inter-departmental Committee, of the opposition of the higher command, and of the speeches from retired Army officers in this House year after year, we have come to the position when field punishment No. 1 has been abolished, when two offences, the penalty for which was death, were abolished in 1925, and when eight further offences punishable by death are proposed to be abolished to-clay; and we ask the Government to go further and complete the job. Sooner or later they will have to do so. I would remind the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War that if he does not accept this Amendment to-day and abolish the sentence of death for the offences of cowardice and desertion, he will have only one more chance, and that will be on the Army and Air Force (Annual) Bill next year. If he does not take it next year, it will be left to another Government to carry out this long-overdue reform.

I rise to support the Amendment, and I should like at the outset to congratulate the Government on the abolition of the death penalty for certain offences which they have themselves proposed in this Clause. It relieves me of the burden of a great deal of argument. It is no longer necessary to tread the old tracks dealing with questions of moral and discipline, because when you look at these offences in regard to which it is proposed to abolish the death penalty, and then look at those in our Amendment, you will be struck with the difficulty of separating them. Some have a degree of moral turpitude; others in each case are offences simply due to our ordinary human frailty. Take the case of sleeping at the post of duty. I have heard arguments put up over and over again to the effect that it was absolutely necessary to have the death penalty enforced there, because the man was responsible for the lives of his comrades and, therefore, it was right that, if he fell asleep, he should know he was liable to be shot. That has gone. We have passed the time when cowardice was regarded merely as a moral offence. It is now recognised that cowardice is a physical defect rather than a matter of moral turpitude. It is impossible to put one in and leave the other out or to put them in separate categories. Take the question of breaking into a house for purposes of plunder. That is a moral offence, but we all perhaps remember having committed something of the nature of plunder in days gone by. Take the case of shamefully casting away arms. There is some degree of moral turpitude there, but you cannot put these in separate categories.

4.0 p.m.

There is one great difference, however, between the offences for which the death penalty is to be abolished and those for which it is to be retained. There is a degree of certainty about the offences in the Bill. You can ascertain whether a man leaves his commanding officer to go in search of plunder, forces a safeguard, strikes a sentinel or is asleep on his post. They are quite definite acts. The other offences, however, are all in a different category. Take the paragraph which says:

"Shamefully abandons or delivers up any garrison, place, post, or guard."

Who is to judge whether or not a garrison or post has been delivered up shamefully? It may be said, "The man on the spot," but people who try the case are not on the spot. Supposing men are tried for abandoning a certain trench. It is quite possible that it is necessary to make an example in order to encourage the others, but everyone knows that it is a most difficult task to decide whether to hang on to a post or give it up. I can remember quite well having to take over a certain position, and asking the General what were my orders. He said, "You must hang on to the last." I said, "Thank God! I shall not have to take a decision whether to clear out or not." It is on such a decision—made, perhaps, by a corporal, lance-corporal or even a private—whether to hang on to a post or to deliver it up, that a man has possibly to be shot, in order to encourage the others. Read any military history, and it will be found that the most celebrated generals in history have been blamed in some cases for shamefully abandoning posts and in other cases for hanging on too long. The offence in paragraph (7) is an entirely doubtful point. Paragraph (8) is in the same sort of category. With regard to paragraph (9):

"Knowingly does when on active service any act calculated to imperil the success of His Majesty's Forces or any part thereof."

I am always very suspicious of the word "calculated." It is the kind of word used in D.O.R.A. or the Trade Disputes Act—a word used in order to catch some- body when there is no real offence. We do not quite know who calculates. A man may calculate something and find that it is wrong, but really his act is calculated. Where that word comes in, it always awakens my suspicions.

Finally, we come to the question of cowardice. Everyone now knows that the line dividing the coward from the hero is extremely small. We all know something to-day with regard to the psychology of persons under the strain of active service, and I think, possibly, the only argument that can be brought forward with regard to cowardice is that it is absolutely necessary to have the terror of death before one. That does not work at all satisfactorily. The penalty which has been taken away with regard to sleeping should also be taken away with regard to cowardice. It has been said that if you did not have the death penalty, many would commit these offences in order to get 10 years' penal servitude, and so escape further active service. It does not work in that way. A man is sent back to the line, and has to serve his sentence at the conclusion of the war.

Then it was said that it was absolutely necessary to keep up the moral. I entirely deny that. I never knew of any troops being kept to their duty by the fear of something behind. I do not believe it is of any use trying to keep men to their work by fear. If you are going to have war, let the people fight who want to fight. The idea that you can make people fight by some sort of penalty is, I believe, entirely false psychology. I would ask anyone in this House who served in the War to think of any occasion on which he had some unpleasant job to do, when he said to himself, "If I do not go through with this, I shall he shot." Of course, it never occurred to him, and in these days there is something extraordinarily mean in the idea that you must retain this punishment. Courage is another uncertainty. We know that a man all his life is not a coward. Many men are brave at one time and are cowards at another. It is a mere chance whether a man is a coward or is brave on any occasion.

The four offences for which we want to see the death penalty taken away are, in their very nature, uncertain, and it is of the essence that offences for which there is this punishment should be certain. I am glad that the Government are taking away the death penalty for some offences, but they are certain, whereas the others are uncertain. Whatever reason there is—and I think there is very strong reason—for taking out those offences, there are ten times as much reason for taking out those in our Amendment. I do not know quite why it should be necessary to yield so very slowly on these points. It took years and years of hard work to abolish flogging. It has taken years of work gradually to cut down the number of offences for which the death penalty is imposed. There is a fight all the time, although all the basis of argument for retaining the death penalty has gone. We do not hear any of those old pleas made year after year from Liberal and Conservative Governments—[Interruption.] The Labour Government were in a different position. We are not blaming in the least either the Liberal or Conservative Governments, because they have always been advised by their technical advisers.

May I ask the hon. Gentleman whether he and his colleague the right hon. Member for Ince (Mr. Walsh), when they were at the War Office, altered a single line of the law affecting the death penalty?

As a matter of fact, we were in for a very short time, and the Army (Annual) Act came on very early when we were in office. We submitted the whole question at once to a committee to inquire into the whole question and bring up a report. The right hon. Gentleman and his friends were so eager to put a Conservative Government in power, that we were only a short time in office.

Was it not the fact that the hon. Member for Shoreditch (Mr. Thurtle) proposed an Amendment to the Army (Annual) Act when the right. hon. Member for Ince (Mr. Walsh) was in charge, and that the Government turned the Amendment down?

We were not prepared to make piecemeal alterations at the moment when the whole matter was under discussion by a Committee. The point I was making was that Liberals and Conservatives were, no doubt, influenced by the technical opinion of their military advisers. Well, the opinion of their military advisers is steadily changing, and this Bill shows that. I agree with the hon. Member who moved this Amendment in suggesting to the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War that he should take his chance of making a clean sweep, and of going down to history as the Minister of War who abolished the death penalty, rather than do this thing piecemeal. I say, again, that the case we have put forward on behalf of this Amendment is even stronger than the case put forward by the Government for their own Amendment of the Act.

I want to congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War on the Amendment that he is making in the Army (Annual) Act. I have on more than one occasion pleaded for some alteration of the death penalty, and now, under the Amendments which the Government are making in the Act, the only offences punishable with death are mutiny, treachery, cowardice, desertion and leaving a guard. The only one about which I feel any doubt now is the question of cowardice. I do not think that any of us would want to abolish the penalty for desertion or leaving a guard, and, of course, that makes it quite impossible for me to support the Amendment now before the Committee. If you abolished the death penalty in the case set out in paragraph (9)—

"Knowingly does when on active service any act calculated to imperil the success of His Majesty's Forces or any part thereof."

then you would abolish the death penalty for treachery or mutiny, and, therefore, I cannot support the Amendment. But, on the question of cowardice, I have always felt very great difficulty. You shoot a man for cowardice, but you do not make that man any braver, for he is dead. Do you make his comrades any braver? I agree with the hon. Member for Limehouse (Mr. Attlee), that men on active service are not kept up to the mark by the thought that they will be shot. Many Members of this House know what it is just before the zero hour—just before going over the top. I am perfectly certain that no man says to "I must go forward, or else I shall be shot," and I rather mistrust the argument that you make men brave by that threat. I do not think you do, and if you do not make the man himself brave, and you do not make his comrades brave if you shoot him, whom have you left I believe the only case in which it would be justifiable in the sense that it would effect the object it is supposed to effect, would be in the case of a broken force or broken army—men breaking away in flight—and then I can imagine that shooting some men might stop the rout. I can imagine that, but, except for that, I am very doubtful about the effect of the death penalty for cowardice. My experience of life, and such experience as I had in the War, have shown me that the bravest men are afraid of something, and that the greatest cowards are brave under some conditions.

Cowardice is a matter of the greatest difficulty. Some people, fortunately, were not afraid of shells, but they might have been afraid of something else; and a man might be shot just because the special sort of danger of which he was afraid was one which he could not resist. Perhaps the greatest argument which I have against it is this. It is all very well to have a death penalty when you have a professional Army, and men enlist on terms which they know, but if we were, unfortunately, at war again, our Army would not be a professional Army, but an Army of all the manhood of the nation. What right have we to take a man from the shop or the office and, if his nerves failed under the strain of war, to shoot him? I do not think that we have that right, and I do not think that it would do any good, or make the Army braver. I believe that I voice what all men who were in my position would say, when I state that among the people who went to the War from quite peaceful pursuits, and into whose thoughts the idea of fighting in the Army had never entered, the standard of courage was much greater and higher than people suppose. I cannot imagine anything higher than the courage shown by many of the units in the Great War; that courage is something in the man himself, and is not put into him by the idea of any punishment such as death. For these reasons I welcome the concessions which the Government have made. I am very glad that they have made them, and I look forward to the time when cowardice will be added to the crimes for which a man is not shot.

I was very glad to hear the hon. and gallant Gentleman who has just spoken say that he had very serious doubts about the propriety of retaining cowardice as something for which to impose the death penalty. He has a logical mind, and I should like him to consider further the distinction he has made between cowardice in the field and desertion. He said that he would like to see the death penalty for cowardice abolished, but not the death penalty for desertion. I submit that, in fact, cowardice in the field and desertion are very largely manifestations of the same nerve failure. If he cares to study the records of the number of people who were shot for desertion, he will find that most of the desertions took place when the battalion was actually moving up the line. There is a steady pressure on the nerves all the time that one is on the battlefield, and it is quite conceivable that the breaking point occurs in some cases, not when a man actually gets upon the field, but before he actually reaches the field; yet it is still manifestly a nerve failure and nothing else. If the hon. and gallant Gentleman admits that we are justified in asking for the abolition of the death penalty for cowardice in the field, he will, if he thinks the matter over in the light of his own experience and knowledge of active service conditions, be inclined, I think, to come down on our side in regard to the penalty for desertion.

Let me say a word about, the concessions which are being offered to us by the Government. I welcome these concessions, but I would like to point out how paltry they are. I guarantee to say that for the eight crimes for which the death penalty is being abolished, there were not five executions during the whole of the War. Of that five, two were for the offence of sleeping on post, so that, if you take the others, the Army have practically not been exercising their powers. They did not exercise them even in the time of the tremendous test of the Great War. What the War Office are doing, therefore, and taking great credit for doing, is like formally abolishing the death penalty for sheep stealing 50 years after the practice of imposing that penalty had been discontinued. There is only one material concession in this list of concessions, and I am prepared to concede that. This is the abolition of the death penalty for sleeping on post. It is a real concession on the part of the War Office, but I would invite the House to take this concession as an illustration of the way in which the mind of the War Office operates. When the Departmental Committee considered this matter four years ago, they specifically declared that they went particularly into the question whether the death penalty could be abolished for sleeping on post, and, after the most careful consideration, they came to the conclusion that the penalty could not be dispensed with. The right hon. Gentleman, the Secretary of State for War himself, speaking on that point, said this:

"It may mean the lives of tens, even of hundreds of his comrades; it may mean the difference between success and failure of a large operation, which may re-act upon thousands of lives."

He went on to say that he did not want the sleeping sentry shot, but there was no alternative. I do not want to score cheap debating points, or to exult over the fact that the War Office had gone back on their original contention, but I do want the Committee to direct their attention to this change of front by the War Office, so that, when they are considering the position which the War Office now takes up, namely, that the death penalty may not be abolished for desertion and cowardice because of its dreadful reaction upon discipline in the Army, they will realise that this is not necessarily the final word. If they have been wrong, or if they have shifted their ground with regard to material matters like sleeping on post and Field Punishment No. 1, it is conceivable that they are wrong with regard to desertion and cowardice. We do not want to argue the question of cowardice and desertion. As Members know, it is largely a psychological and neurological question. We have discussed it in the past very fully, and I claim that the weight of argument has been heavily on our side. The Government have not been able to show that the men who are convicted of these offences are culpable or criminal in any real sense of the word. They have fallen because of the imperfections of their nervous and physical endowment, and enlightened public opinion to-day does not regard that as sufficient reason for imposing the death penalty.

The great thing about the death penalty, which the House must not forget, is that it is irrevocable. Once you have killed the man, you cannot bring him back to life. We have read terrible stories of what happened in the French Army. On two separate occasions, the French Army have held an inquiry into the executions which took place during the War, going carefully into the facts in a dispassionate manner and examining all the records. They came to the conclusion that these two sets of men were executed by a mistake, and that they ought never to have been executed and their characters have been rehabilitated. I do not know how many of the 260 odd men and lads who were executed during the War might, on a careful examination, be found to have been executed in error. The fact of the matter is that, once you execute a man, you punish him beyond recall, and I do ask the Committee to bear that fact very strongly in mind when they vote on this issue.

I have spoken at great length on this question before, and I have probably bored the House, and I do not want to bore the Committee any more, but I would like to say this. The Labour party, of which I am a member, have pledged themselves to the abolition of the death penalty except for the offences of mutiny and treachery. If the Government do not abolish it for cowardice or desertion, we shall abolish it if we get an opportunity, as I hope we may, but I would prefer this not to be a party issue, would like to think that the British House of Commons, in 1928, had a sufficiently keen sense of human justice to realise that this kind of penalty has become a barbarous anachronism, and took the necessary steps to get rid of it. I want to say this final word. There is a suggestion that the Labour party are making the question of Army discipline a matter of party politics. I do not believe that to be true. We in the Labour party believe that, involved in this question of the death penalty, is the great question of human justice. There is the great question of seeing that the weak brother, who is weak through no fault of his own, shall not be dealt with unjustly; and, if our opponents force us to make this a party issue and if they will not see the great humanitarian impulse behind this demand, the responsibility will be theirs and not ours.

I am sorry if I shall have to approach the question from another point of view. I think my right hon. Friend on the Front Bench ought to be very grateful for the response with which his so-called concessions have been received by the Opposition. While, however, he is making these concessions, has he not been giving away something of the rights and safety of the Army in war? I know there are different points of view, and I would like to put mine, and I hope the Committee will not think that I am any more hard-hearted than hon. Members who take a different view. I see their point of view. I realise their sympathy for the man who in the field has, perhaps through lack of nerve, been condemned to death, but I will ask them to believe me when I say that it is necessary to hold this fear of the death penalty over men whenever they go forward to face frightful risks. An hon. Member in this discussion asked what evidence there was of any army going to pieces because of the lack of the death penalty. In the War I served during the whole time in Russia. I can say without fear of contradiction, I believe, that the Russian Army went to pieces after the first revolution, the Kerensky revolution, owing to the abolition of the death penalty, owing to the consistent refusal of Kerensky to sign any death warrant. I do not want to go into personal reminiscences, but I would like to tell the House that I was in Galicia at the great so-called offensive of the Kerensky Army which began on 1st July, 1917. There was really no fighting at all on the part of the Russians. A few officers went forward, accompanied by a few non-commissioned officers, and here and there an odd man or two, but there was really no fighting, and the number of casualties was infinitesimal.

After two days I decided to go back to report to the Government at home what had happened. I interviewed the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army, General Gutor, who is now, I believe, serving with the Bolshevists, and I asked him to say from his professional experience what measures it was necessary to take in order to restore the fighting efficiency of the Russian Army. The first thing he said was. "You must press furiously to restore the death penalty. You must press Kerensky to restore the death penalty." My hon. Friend who spoke from these benches said the death penalty was required more after an army had gone to pieces, in order to restore discipline. I beg to disagree. When General Kornilov took charge of the Russian Army he was allowed to restore the death penalty, but it was then too late; the rot had set in and there was no possibility of restoring discipline. If it had been possible to retain the death penalty in the Russian Army I am certain that it would have kept that army in fighting trim for a longer period.

Is it not fair to assume that their illusions had been dispelled by that time?

There are always a certain number of men in any army who are not courageous, who do not want to fight, and I think it is necessary to hold some threat over those men to force them to go forward. The difference between the point of view of hon. Gentlemen opposite and myself is that they think chiefly of the man who has to suffer the death penalty, while I think of his comrades, whose lives are risked by some failure of his. I have one or two questions to ask my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War about some of these so-called concessions which he has seen fit to make to the Opposition. They are called concessions to the Opposition. Are they not concessions at the expense of the British Army? There is Number 5, which says that in future a man who when acting as a sentinel goes to sleep or is drunk at his post, is not to suffer the death penalty. The hon. Member for Shoreditch (Mr. Thurtle) quoted the findings of the Commission on this point, showing that they were strongly of opinion that it was impossible to introduce this change owing to the danger to thousands of that sentinel's comrades, and I thoroughly agree with that view. Then there is Number 6, which deals with the case of a man striking or using or offering violence to a superior officer. In future, if any man wants to get sent to the rear all he has to do is to go and hit his commanding officer in the eye. Supposing there is a "push" coming on, and a man does not want to go over the top. All he has to do is to hit his commanding officer, and he will be sent back to the rear; he will return to the battalion after a few weeks, perhaps, by which time the "push" will be over and the battalion will be resting—those that are left, because perhaps 60 or 70 per cent. will have been killed. That is one of the possible dangers arising from this concession.

I wish to know definitely whether before making these so-called concessions the right hon. Gentleman got the considered agreement of the Army Council. I would like to ask further, though I do not suppose it will be possible for him to tell me, what correspondence took place in the War Office before this agreement was arrived at? Where did the suggestion start? Was it a suggestion of the politicians, in order to make concessions to the opposite benches, and so to get a pleasant Debate, or did the military Members start this idea? I only rose to ask those questions. If the Army Council, with their far greater experience, see fit to support these recommendations, it is not for me to say anything against them. But if I thought these were mere sentimental political concessions, I should oppose them in the interests of the Army and of the country.

As the last speaker has had considerable experience in these matters, I would like to ask him whether it was the belief that if Kerensky—who, I believe, followed Allied advisers against the opinion of his own experts—had shot Russian soldiers by their thousands, he could have kept them in that war in which they had lost all belief? Kerensky's army could not be made to fight, because they did not any longer believe in the war. I am not speaking in any political sense, but one has only to compare the actions and the attitude of that army, which believed it was being forced forward not in Russia's interests, with the attitude of the army when it had been reorganised after the second revolution. Then there was a smaller army, but it was an army of men who believed in what they were fighting for, believed they were fighting For the safety of the Revolution.

I would like to ask the bon. Member whether she does not think the difference may lie in the fact that after the second revolution the first thing they did was to reintroduce the death penalty Did not that make all the difference?

In arguing a subject like this you can, of course, pick out one thing and say that that was the cause; but anyone who has read the history of those times and tries to say that the difference between the Kerensky army and the Bolshevik army was simply due to the reintroduction of the death penalty is really—I say it with all respect—talking nonsense. It was evident that the whole moral of the army had been changed by the propaganda which was carried on amongst the men in the army. From the point of view of the hon. and gallant Member for Wycombe (Sir A. Knox) it may have been misguided propaganda, but you cannot get away from the fact that what the Bolsheviks did in order to restore the moral of the army—apart from the reintroduction of the death penalty—was to institute a terrific propaganda in the ranks in order to make the soldiers believe in what they were fighting for. If the deserters from the Kerensky army had been shot—I am quoting now from Kerensky's own book—they would have had to shoot something like one-fifth of the entire army, because the men were floating away in troops. The real difference between those two armies was that one army wanted to fight and the other did not.

Feeling that I know nothing whatever of what happened on active service during the War I should not have intervened in this Debate but for one incident which has always stood out in my mind. I believe that if the hon. Members who are going to vote against our amendment could have witnessed that incident their views might have been altered. I was in the house of a widowed mother who had just received the news that her boy had been shot for cowardice. She did not get that news from the Army, of course—the Army notice was merciful; apparently she had learned it accidently from men who knew what had happened. I shall never forget the anguish of that mother, and the anguish of that home. The news certainly killed the mother within a very few weeks. I cannot help feeling that if an army is to be kept together by shooting men whose nerves fail under the terrible conditions of modern warfare, then no cause is worth fighting for. Hon. Members will recall how during the War public feeling was stirred to its depths by news of the shooting of young men at dawn—because their nerves had failed. It was amongst the most horrible things of that horrible War—the feeling that those who were going through all that the men in the fighting line had to endure might be shot because their nerves failed, especially when it was a case of young officers condemned by older officers whom they might have displeased in some way, so that the latter could not take the calm and balanced view they ought to have done. I know, of course, that no one who was the immediate superior officer of another officer could sit on a court which was judging him, but the evidence of that superior officer would, of course, be taken in such a case. Surely before the death penalty is inflicted in a case like that one ought to take the whole trial right away not only from the immediate scene of action—which, I understand, is already done, because the highest officer commanding has to put his signature to the death warrant before it can be carried out—but, in addition, we ought to get right out of the temper of war before deciding to take away a man's life.

I want to ask how many of the 260 men who are said to have been executed would have been executed if the actual carrying out of the sentence had been postponed until after the Armistice? How many would have been felt to have sinned so terribly, to have risked the lives of their comrades so fatally, that when the heat of the war had died down it was still necessary that they should pay the extreme penalty? That is the test question of whether a man ought to have been executed for cowardice. We know that these cases of cowardice are often a matter of the imagination. There is the phlegmatic type of soldier, the type of Tommy whom Bairnsfather drew for us during the War, the man who went through the War with a shrug of his shoulders, hardly troubling to imagine it, realising that it was his duty and just going on with it. On the other hand, there was the man of the type of the son of a young poet, whose name I will not mention, of the most intense imagina- tion. Though he was a man of extraordinary physical courage, yet his nerve failed because his imagination al one moment got the better of him. These are not cases which ought to be decided in the heat of battle. Surely they ought only to be decided when passions have died down. Those of us who have heard men talk long afterwards of what happened at the front know that if at times there had been a sympathetic officer or a sympathetic comrade near by to carry the man through the dreadful moment when his nerve had gone, he might at some time afterwards have been the bravest of the brave.

I speak as a woman who was very far from the tiring line, and I feel that it is difficult for us who are in this quiet atmosphere, and who were in comparative quiet during the War, to realise the intense strain which was placed upon our men. I know that I myself only realised something of the conditions when seeing quite recently that marvellous play "The Unknown Warrior," which was staged in London. It was not concerned with this, particular matter, but I think nothing could bring before an audience so vividly the intense strain which was put upon our men. I wish that play could have been witnessed by the many thousands of people who shout for the death penalty, and who say we cannot keep an army together without it. I hate war, and everything connected with war. I believe that war is the last blasphemy. I believe there is no cause the winning of which can be worth war and the killing of other people. If we are to have war, then it must be fought by men who believe in it, and not those whose nerves fail them, who have been taken from the purposes of peace and put in a position which involves an almost unbearable strain. How can such men be expected to act coolly and without fear in face of such tremendous dangers which they have never faced before? Very often these men have been placed in the field after only a few weeks' training. I want a pledge that, as the Government have now gone so far, they will go one step further, and decide to wipe out cowardice as one of the things for which the death penalty will be abolished.

One would think from some of the remarks that have been made in this Debate that a considerable number of men were shot during the late War. When we reflect that we had some 5,000,000 or 6,000,000 men engaged in the War, I think it shows the greatest credit to those engaged that it was found necessary to inflict the death penalty on such a small number of occasions. I would like to remind hon. Members that before a death sentence is carried out it receives the most careful consideration. I agree with what the hon. and gallant Member for Wycombe (Sir A. Knox) said upon this point, and I congratulate the Government upon having gone such a long way by making concessions. This is not a question of political expediency or anything of that kind, and I am sure that the Secretary of State for War, in conjunction with the Army Council, has given this matter the most careful consideration. I trust that in the near future my right hon. Friend will be able to see his way to go one step further and abolish the death penalty as applied to cowardice. I cannot possibly support this Amendment., but I am entirely in sympathy with it as far as it affects the question of cowardice.

I do not know where cowardice starts or where it finishes, but I remember that during the War this point was brought home to me most vividly in the case of a schoolmaster upon whom devolved a rather difficulty duty which required a certain amount of courage to be shown. I believe that that man had as much courage as many of those who did not show any fear under similar circumstances. I have yet to learn that there is any man from the highest to the lowest degree who served in the important danger zones during the War who did not experience some fear come upon him not once or twice or thrice, but very often. It was not a question of the death penalty that kept men from showing fear. The men felt that they had a job to carry out. I do not think that fear of the death penalty affects the soldier at all; he does his job because he think it is his job, and I do not think any fear of the death penalty enters his head. When the schoolmaster have alluded to came to me and told me the condition he was in, I saw the medical officer, and I got him sent back to the base. A week or two after he came hack, and I am sure that man was no more desirous of showing cowardice than any other soldier, but fear was in his nervous system. He had been brought up in quite a different life, and he possessed the scholastic mind. I told this man what it meant if be acted nervously, and I pointed out to him that his actions might place others in a most difficult position. I want. hon. Members to realise that this kind of thing deflects upon the men themselves, although I cannot say where cowardice starts or where it finishes.

As the Secretary of State for War has been so magnanimous and has gone such a long way to meet the views of those who want to see the death penalty abolished as applied to active service, hope he will give this point further consideration, and, if he will agree to abolish the death penalty as applied to cowardice, I think it will be a very good thing for the Army as a whole. I am sure it would be a good thing for the officers as well, because, when they are called upon to decide whether a certain action is an act of cowardice or not they naturally turn to themselves and ask: "Have I always been particularly brave when facing the enemy; have I ever been a coward? Perhaps I have not shown it, but the chances are that I may have been as great a coward as the man who is being charged with cowardice." If my right hon. Friend can go one step further on this point in the near future, I am sure many of us will be extremely grateful to him.

I was a member of the Committee which inquired into the subject now under discussion, and, in view of the experience I gained during that inquiry, I rise to make one or two observations. I was very strongly convinced from the evidence placed before that Committee that no one was ever shot during the War for losing his nerve. The death sentence was seldom enforced, although there were a considerable number of people who were condemned to death. Only in a comparatively small number of cases was the death sentence actually carried out. It was only carried out, as far as I recollect, where there was what may be called wilful and deliberate cowardice in cases where there was plenty of time for them to think over what they were doing before they took part in some act of desertion by which they were deliberately avoiding the dangers of war.

In such cases, there was no question about the loss of nerve. I do not say that such a man deserves to be shot, and in the narrow sense a person should only be punished for what he is actually doing. The only consideration of justice that comes before the court is: Has the person charged done that of which he is accused? Whether the punishment is or is not ultimately the equivalent in suffering for the small wrong which the person has committed is obviously beyond all human investigation. It is necessary to realise that these very lamentable punishments are inflicted from motives of expediency. A man is shot because it is considered expedient that he should be shot; that is the only element which enters into the question, and the man has been told beforehand that if he did what he was charged with he would be shot. The man has done this with his eyes open, and therefore it is not unjust in the public interest that he should be shot. The man has been fully warned of the position in which he would find himself if he did such an act. The reason why such a thing has to be done is that it is necessary for the efficient conduct of the war. The reason why we hang murderers is that it is necessary for the peaceful and social order of the state.

The death penalty in the case of the Army on active service has an important effect, not perhaps directly as a deterrent, because where you are dealing with the danger of death, where the motive for the crime for which the death penalty is inflicted is cowardice, it is obvious that deterrents must act in a very peculiar way. The fear of being shot, after trial by a court-martial, overcomes the fear of being shot by the enemy. There is a much more important thing in all court-martial punishment influences, and that is in making everyone think gravely about the crime committed. If you shoot a soldier for cowardice, that makes the whole Army think that it is a shocking thing. The penalty of death has quite an unique quality of setting up a particular offence, and making people think that that is a thing which no one should do, not mainly from the fear of the actual penalty hut because it sets a stigma upon the offence which nothing else can do.

While I am delighted that the Government are going so far in diminishing the number of offences to be punishable by death, I should be entirely guided by the advice of distinguished officers. I hope it will not be felt that by abandoning the death penalty in these cases there is anything wrong in enforcing that penalty in time of war where the successful conduct of the war requires it. This is a matter essentially to be decided in the light of that expediency. I am certain if you make war—I heartily agree with what was said by the hon. Member for East Middlesbrough (Miss Wilkinson) about the horrors of war—nothing is more foolish or less humane than to make it without the sincere purpose of carrying it through. You must achieve success, and to do that, having given everyone fair warning, you must put to death those who imperil the success of the war by demoralising the Army, their own comrades.

I apologise for continuing this discussion, but I think all parties in the Committee will agree that in consequence of the concessions which have been put forward by the Secretary of State for War the discussion on this subject has been much less acrimonious than it has been in former Debates, Until the speech of the Noble Lord the Member for Oxford University (Lord H. Cecil), one almost felt happy in the knowledge that at last we were dealing with this matter in a civilised way and not in a manner reminiscent of the Middle Ages. When I was serving in the War, I do not remember, although I was in the ranks, ever feeling in the slightest degree anything but friendship, and in many cases affection, for those who were serving in the Army in superior positions to myself and whom I had to obey; and I never felt anything but affection for the majority of the people at home in England; but I remember that when I used to read in the English papers some of the speeches of old men with landed estates, who sat in armchairs and gloated over youth weltering, I used to feel that the War was a waste of time, and that, if it had only been a war to take away those reactionary old men and make the world a little more comfortable, we should have been in a much better position.

The Noble Lord's statement this afternoon would have been all right if this House and those who are going to vote against this Amendment were prepared to accept the theory that wars should be fought by people who believed in them, that wars should be fought by people who wanted to fight them, that wars should be fought by the people whose intrigues and greediness and selfishness had caused them, and that there should be no conscript element of any kind in connection with war. When you conscript a man to defend a country that does not belong to him, when you send him into the trenches to face the most infernal horrors, and when you tell him that, because you have told him that if he does not do what you tell him he will be shot, you are entitled to shoot him when he becomes, what it is so easy to call from the benches of this House, a deliberate coward, I cannot understand it. What is a deliberate coward? I am perfectly certain that the hon. and gallant Gentleman who, I believe, is going to reply to this Debate would not be able to define what is a deliberate coward, nor can any Member of this House define it, and certainly not in connection with the subject that we are discussing. The Noble Lord went on to say that he could not understand the mind of a man who would face being shot by his own people rather than face the risk of being shot by the enemy; but the deliberate coward, the sneak, the skulker, the little tiny minority of riff-raff and dregs which I agree you always get in any large gathering of men, will not play that game at all. The men who suffer are not men of that kind at all; they are those who are not cunning enough to hide their fear in a nice sheltered job at home, or in a comfortable job a good many miles from the work that has to be done.

I wish the benches opposite had been much fuller during the straightforward and manly speech of the hon. and gallant Member for Dulwich (Sir F. Hall). I do not think that anyone would describe him as addicted to sloppy sentimentalism. I have heard his speeches and know his views on many subjects, and I should describe him as a very hard and practical man. I have heard him speak and seen hi n vote in support of things which, in my opinion—perhaps he would describe me as a sloppy sentimentalist—were going to cause much more hardship than this death penalty, but the difference is that in this case he has come up against instances of it. He referred to the case of a man he knew who had actually fallen into this weakness that we are now discussing. He did not have to use his imagination, because the case was brought under Ins immediate notice, and, because he was in touch with it, he understood it, as other hon. Members opposite would understand it if they were in the same position. This comfortable theory under which we sit here and condemn to death men who are not brave enough to defend our property, and paint ourselves as Spartan fathers who sacrifice our own sons for the sake of our country, is all right in the abstract, but that is not the cause of the attitude of the majority of the people who disagree with us. It is that they do not see how unfair and cruel this penalty is, and, when one of the most practical and hard-headed of them comes into actual touch with it, he takes practically the line that we take, and says he cannot define cowardice, while men who never saw anything of the War, unless it were by way of a privileged tour at the hack of the lines, speak of men being deliberate cowards. We ought not in this House, if we are going to war at all, which God forbid, to say that we value our property, our comfort and our homes so highly that we are prepared to shoot men whose nerve fails in the effort to protect us in the comfort and security that we enjoy.

I beg to move, as an Amendment to the proposed Amend-merit, in line 1, to leave out the words "paragraphs (1), (2), (6), and," and to insert instead thereof the word "paragraph."

This has been a deeply impressive Debate. It is a Debate in which there is a possible temptation to be sentimental and abstract, but I think it will be generally admitted that the speeches, whatever may have been the point of view expressed, have been made with a desire to face facts as they are, to accept the necessity of administering an Army in the field by an iron rule, and at the same time to recognise that the rules by which the British Army has been administered in the past are not necessarily in all respects the rules which Parliament should approve for the future. It certainly is a most significant thing that the Government of the day, no doubt after most careful investigation and expert advice, should have been prepared in the name of the country to abandon the death penalty in respect of a number of grave breaches of discipline which time after time have been declared from the Government Bench to be, in the opinion of the advisers of the Government, absolutely necessary cases for the preservation of the death penalty.

I listened with great attention to what the Noble Lord the Member for Oxford University (Lord H. Cecil) said, and, if he will allow me to say so, I think his argument was more ingenious than convincing. No doubt it is true that in any civilised system of punishment you ought to give public notice of what the punishment is going to be before you can fairly condemn the man who has committed the crime and impose the punishment upon him. That was one of the principal points made by the Noble Lord, but it seems to me to be a very long way from proving the only proposition that matters, namely, that at this time of day the punishment of death, not as a necessary consequence but as a contemplated consequence, of the crime of cowardice in the field, should be preserved. You do not in the least prove that proposition by saying that, after all, you give public notice to men in uniform that such is the consequence which may follow if they exhibit this failing, and that, that being so, there is nothing more to complain of. That, I am sure, is not the point.

The main practical consideration, I should have thought, was whether the preservation of the death penalty in this particular case of cowardice does, as a matter of fact and experience, secure that men who would otherwise be overwhelmed by the terror in front of them and desert their duty will not do so. Does the fact that this penalty may be waiting for them, if they so act, in fact cause them to persist in their duty? If it did so, that, no doubt, would be a strong argument for maintaining it. That is the old argument which has been used in many cases in reference to the death penalty, but I would ask the House to observe that no single speaker in this Debate, from any quarter of the House, has suggested that as a matter of fact the death penalty for cowardice is a practical influence in keeping men to their duty. No one says that the fact that the death penalty is waiting for a man if he breaks ranks is the thing that makes him act in a more courageous manner. There is no gallant gentleman opposite who will say that of the men whom he may have led; there is no serving soldier in this House who would say that of his comrades; and it will be a very strange thing if the Secretary of State for War tells us that a view which is entertained in no quarter of the House—and the House contains many men who have had practical experience of this matter—is the view which has compelled the War Office none the less to preserve the death penalty for this particular offence.

I am not in the least desiring to do more than sum up the effect of the Debate on my own mind, but its effect on my mind is, frankly, this. I feel, first of all, that the War Office, after full consideration, has come to the conclusion that the old rule of the Army Act can be quite substantially changed with safety and with public advantage. I am very glad that that is so, and they are entitled to our full gratitude and congratulations. But now comes the next question: Have they drawn the line at the right place? I feel, after listening to this Debate, that the Amendment moved from the Labour benches, which seeks to strike out paragraphs (1), (2), (6) and (7) from Section 4 of the Army Act, has in fact led to a Debate about, for all practical purposes, one only of these four paragraphs. There is a good deal that might be said on both sides with regard, for instance, to paragraph (6):

"Knowingly does when on active service any act calculated to imperil the success of His Majesty's Forces or any part thereof."

It seems to me that it would be taking a very large responsibility, on the material at present before us, to say that the offence which is defined in those words is one which should be removed from the death penalty Section to the penal servitude Section. That was the point made by the hon. and gallant Member for Dulwich (Sir F. Hall), in a speech which, if he will allow me to say so, many of us will long remember, because of its obvious sincerity and simplicity.

I should have thought that it was desirable for the Committee of the House of Commons to have the opportunity of expressing its views on this simple question of whether the offence of cowardice, of "misbehaving before the enemy in such manner as to show cowardice," was, in the view of the Committee of the House, an offence which ought to be removed from the death penalty Section to the penal servitude Section. I should have thought that it was desirable that we should have that isolated question before us, and it is for that reason that I have moved my Amendment to the proposed Amendment. The result would be that the Amendment, if thus altered, would read:

"(1) In section four, paragraph (7) shall be omitted,"

paragraph (7) being the one which deals with the case of cowardice. I am not seeking to prejudge the other cases; they are, no doubt, less in the public eye, and have been only very cursorily referred to in this Debate; but manifestly the offence of

"Knowingly doing an act calculated to imperil the success of His Majesty's Forces,"

is an offence which may take many forms, and some forms of which may, for aught that I know, justify the preservation of the death penalty, if anything justifies it. I have already drawn up the supplementary Amendment, which, if my Amendment were agreed to, would have to be made in line 2 of the proposed Amendment, namely, to leave out the word "paragraphs" and insert the word "paragraph," so as to make the consequential alteration. We have no desire to be ingenious, or to draw distinctions that ought not to be drawn. It is for the purpose of raising a perfectly plain issue. For myself, speaking, of course, without the knowledge which, no doubt, may be derived from expert opinion inside the War Office, this Debate convinces me that the case for moving the offence of cowardice into a lower category appears to be made out. It is surely a most significant fact that no one, whatever his experience of war, is to be found to stand up and say that by preserving the penalty of death as a possible punishment for those guilty of this offence you are causing people to exhibit courage that they would not otherwise show, and I am glad of it, for, whatever may be said about the horrors of war, it is, after all, a fine thing that by the common experience and consent of the British people, after what the British people have passed through in these late years, the thing that keeps the British soldier to his duty is not the fear of being shot by his own comrades if he fails to show courage.

The situation has been made more clear and simple by the speech of the right hon. and learned Member for Spen Valley (Sir J. Simon), whom we are all glad to see back. We have the question narrowed down to cowardice and nothing else. Speaking on behalf of the Government, we are only too ready to deal with the situation from that point of view, but, before doing so, I should like to say a word with regard to the congratulations which we have received from hon. Members opposite. It is always pleasant to be congratulated, and it is an ungrateful task sometimes to have to point out to those who congratulate you that you are not in any way deserving of the congratulations you receive, and to offer no thanks, because your conduct, and the motives that inspired it, have been entirely misunderstood. The hon. and gallant Member for Wycombe (Sir A. Knox) referred bitterly to the so-called concessions we have made to opinion opposite. It would clear the atmosphere if I said at once that these alterations in the Army Act are not made at all as a concession to public opinion, or to any change of public opinion, and I should like to reassure the hon. and gallant Gentleman on the point as to whether the military members of the Army Council were in favour of the changes or not. They have been recommended entirely by the military members. It is upon their unanimous advice that we are bringing these proposals before the Committee. In effect, they are to remove from the Act certain Sections which have hitherto cumbered it and have not been of any real service in carrying out the purposes of the Act or maintaining discipline in the Army. They have been removed because they were useless, because they were not practicable, and because to a large extent it was realised that their presence led to misunderstanding as to the object for which the death penalty is maintained, and assisted those who were inclined to make mischievous propaganda—I am not referring to any hon. Members opposite, but to an entirely different type of agitation from the Communist party—out of the presence of some of these Sections. That is the reason why they have been removed, because the military members of the Army Council, and the civil members as well, feel convinced that the discipline of the Army will not in any way be endangered by removing them. In that view we have the co-operation and agreement both of the Air Force and of the Admiralty.

The hon. Member for Tottenham North (Mr. R. Morrison), who always figures on these occasions and who made, as usual, a very interesting and suggestive speech, asked first and foremost for any evidence that the death penalty acts as a deterrent. That same question was put more forcibly by the right hon. and learned Member for Spen Valley, who defied anyone to say the presence of the death penalty was any deterrent to a man committing the crime of running away in battle or that it was in any way necessary to maintain discipline. It is obvious that no Member, especially no ex-service Member, would like to use the words the right hon. and learned Gentleman attempted to put into someone's mouth and say, "My fellow soldiers, the people who served with me, or under me, were only kept to their posts by the fear of being shot if they ran away." That is not a pleasant statement to make, and from a debating point of view the right hon. and learned Gentleman put it in the most disagreeable form possible and in words which no one would like to use. But I think it is equally true that there is hardly a military Member of the House who has had long experience of military discipline and warfare who will not say it is the prevalent opinion of all ranks that the continuance of the death penalty is necessary for the maintenance of discipline in time of war.

The hon. Member for Tottenham North referred more than once, as did the hon. Member for Shoreditch (Mr. Thurtle), to the higher command, and the suggestion is always put forward that it is the old officers, the retired generals sitting at home, and they alone, who desire the retention of the death penalty. Consider the state of mind in a battalion, in a company or in a platoon, among, not the officers but the men, when they see one man whom they all knew to be a shirker and a coward—and everyone realises that there must exist characters of that kind in any vast concourse of people—after having deliberately let down his comrades, turned tail and deserted his post and placed them in the greatest possible danger, going happily down to the rear the next morning to be tried and sentenced to penal servitude, a man no doubt to whom penal servitude has little terror, a man of criminal antecedents who has betrayed his comrades and is leaving them to face greater dangers while he is going to complete safety, r think the greatest and the strongest feeling in favour of the retention of the death penalties in those circumstances would come, not from the upper ranks, but from the men themselves. It has been found, in forces where the death penalty has not been exacted for crimes of this kind, that the men took the law into their own hands and dealt with a situation of that kind in a way they thought just and fair, either upon the spot or by waiting until the next action, and then carrying out their own rude justice. That may have been just, but I am sure no one would admit that that is a solution of the question.

The hon. Member for East Middlesbrough (Miss Wilkinson) pressed very strongly for allowing these things to be considered in the cold atmosphere of peace and not on the battlefield. Under the existing law, they are examined far from the seat of war. They are examined by one authority after another. They are examined in a quiet Government office by legal experts. All that series of examinations has to be gone through before any sentence is carried out. The suggestion that they should be postponed until after the Armistice is one which I am sure the hon. Member will agree on reflection no one could possibly entertain. The sole object of carrying out the sentence is to maintain and strengthen discipline during the war, and it would be worse than folly, it, would be wicked, to carry them out after the war was over when no purpose whatever could be served, except that of revenge. After all, the object of every form of punishment in every legal system, is not to punish people for being wicked but for being dangerous. There are many people who never come within the law, who never commit any breach of the law, but who are among the most wicked people in the world. If they do not interfere with their fellow beings in a way that leaves them open to danger, there is no right to interfere with them.

The question of moral turpitude which the hon. Member for Tottenham North referred to does not arise. It is a question of the harm that may be done to the community. During the War, at one time it was made a crime for which people could be sent to prison to take matches into a munitions factory. Some careless young employé, some girl perhaps under 20, forgetting the importance of that rule, would take a box of matches into a munitions factory. No moral turpitude whatever was involved in it, and yet people were sent to prison for doing it, and rightly, because it was only by putting upon them some terrible penalty that you could make people realise the seriousness of the act they were carrying out. In the same way, in time of war, when one man's action may betray so many others and may lead to such great disaster, you attach a penalty to it such as we are asking the Committee to pass to-day.

The hon. Member for Limehouse (Mr. Attlee) spoke of the record of the Labour party with regard to this matter and what they had done when in office. He defended them for refusing to abolish the death penalty and for turning down an Amendment that was moved when they were in office on the ground that the whole matter was then being gone into and that they had set up a Commission to inquire into it. But how did that Commission report? Did it report in favour of abolishing the death penalty? Certainly not. It reported strongly in favour of its retention. Therefore, if the hon. Member is logical, he must surely admit that if his excuse at that time for not abolishing it was the existence of the Commission, the only result would be that he would have stood by the recommendation of that Commission next year and again refused to abolish it.

Does the hon. Gentleman really mean to say that Governments always accept the recommendations of Commissions?

No, they do not, but, if the reason for not doing a certain thing is that you have set up a Com- mission, that is not a very good defence for refusing to carry out their proposals. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Ripon (Major Hills), who feels strongly upon all humanitarian subjects, said he would not vote for the original Amendment because, while in favour of the abolition of the death penalty for cowardice, he would like to see it retained for desertion. That argument was largely answered by the hon. Member for Shoreditch, who showed that it is impossible to distinguish between cowardice and desertion and to weigh in the balance the evil of the two acts. The answer, however, was unnecessary because the hon. and gallant Member for Ripon really answered himself when he said that the retention of the death penalty might be necessary in time of great crisis. That is the whole case for the death penalty. When everything is going well, when victory is following upon victory, when your Army is advancing, when the spirits of the men are up and the moral is sound these cases do not occur, or if one man loses his nerve the matter is of no immediate importance and can probably be overlooked. The moments of great danger are the only moments when the retention of the death penalty is necessary. If the hon. Member admits as much as that, I do not see how he can ever support the abolition of the death penalty.

I have been asked and challenged by many Members opposite to define cowardice. Of course, it is impossible to define cowardice. It is very difficult to define anything, but many things we cannot define we all can recognise when we see them. Although I think it is a rare thing, we can see a coward and know him. Though I am not prepared to give an actual definition, my understanding of the meaning of the word differs profoundly from that which seems to be held by my hon. and gallant. Friend the Member for Dulwich (Sir F. Hall), when he says that many a man would hesitate to condemn another man for cowardice, knowing in his heart that he felt just as much a coward himself. What a man feels in his heart has nothing to do with the subject. The man who is most likely to feel the greatest terrors in his heart and yet walks on is often the bravest man. This story is told of a senior officer. A subaltern, shortly before an action commenced. seeing this officer nervous, hesitating, said, "Why, Colonel, I believe you are afraid." The Colonel replied, "'I am afraid, and if you were half as much afraid as I am you would turn your horse and ride to the rear." Any further definition is really impossible.

Why do we retain the death penalty Because as long as we have an army, it must be a disciplined army. We have heard some denouncements of the horrors of war. With all of these I agree completely, but if you have an army—no hon. Member will disagree with me in this—you must have discipline. The better the discipline, the better the army. We believe that in certain circumstances, rare as they may be, the retention of the death penalty is essential for the retention of the discipline of the forces, because the action of one man may produce, not the defeat of a small company or of a platoon, but the defeat of the whole army. We have heard a, great deal of modern psychology this afternoon. There is a branch of that subject which has been called mob psychology. One of the best known factors of that is, that any emotion is contagious and no emotion is more contagious than fear. One man by fear can lead a dozen after him, a dozen who would never have gone before. We believe that while it is no grateful task for anybody to have to defend the retention of one of the many horrors of war, we only do so because we believe we are convinced that it is necessary in certain cases to maintain the moral of the army.

May I ask the hon. Gentleman whether this Regulation exists in the Australian army?

I only rise to make a few remarks upon the speech we have just heard. I think the House will agree that there may be a difference in the meaning of the word "coward" and that real courage is shown most by those who are tempted to run away, and do not. I have read somewhere a definition of a coward to the effect that a brave man is not one who fears no danger, bat one who shows a noble soul and bravely bears what another shrinks from. I think that is a true definition, but it still leaves untouched the real point raised by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Sir J. Simon). In my view cowardice is a state of mind for which we are not responsible. If it could be shown that the death penalty for acts of cowardice would create a noble soul that was not there before, then something could be said for it. It was said by the Financial Secretary to the War Office that it was impossible to draw a distinction between cowardice and desertion. I would submit that it might be put in this way. As long as your cowardice is accompanied by some overt act, such as desertion, for which a person can fairly be held to be responsible, the penalty might be applied, but when cowardice stands alone, not accompanied by anything that indicates that a person can control it, it should not fall within the category of cowardice.

I wish to give two practical answers to the Financial Secretary to the War Office. He has rightly raised the issue of the danger of the man who is a coward. May I point out to him, that in the ease of the individual who may turn his back towards the enemy the decision to inflict the death penalty is not waited for. The man in charge of the platoon or the company, or whatever it is, in war takes the law into his own hands, and the Financial Secretary to the War Office must, of course, know this, and some of us, unfortunately, have seen it done. There is no need to wait for the death penalty until after the unfortunate individual has been sent to court-martial. The officer responsible takes the law into his own hands. In the last war he took the law into his own hands.

The other class of case to which I want to refer is that which was raised by the hon. and gallant Member for Ripon (Major Hills) when he talked about "a break" on a large scale. My answer about the individual case of a soldier who is seized by cowardice and retreats in front of the enemy applies in the ease of a large "break." For instance, there was no more difficult period in the late war, except the actual break in 1918, than the period two months after that, when the Germans made another attack. There must be many Members in this House who were in charge of companies, platoons or battalions who know perfectly well that orders were given to machine gun corps that if any men were found deserting their posts they were to be shot down. That is to say, the death penalty was to be executed not by courts-martial but by those responsible for discipline in the field. With regard to cowardice, I think the case has fully been made out and that the Financial Secretary to the War Office, in his most able speech, has not met this point, because he must know that in individual cases or for a