asked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury the number of Irish hospital sweepstakes tickets that have been intercepted by the Customs authorities?

I regret that I am not able to give my hon. Friend this information.

Can my hon. Friend say whether he has any information as to the amount of money that has been intercepted?

No, I am afraid I must have notice of that question.

asked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury if any inquiries are made and information is available regarding the allocation to various faculties and departments of universities of the grants made by His Majesty's Treasury to the universities?

These grants are annual block grants in aid of the general maintenance of the Universities, and no part of them is earmarked for specific purposes. Information is not available as to the manner in which the grants are allocated by the Universities as between the various faculties or departments.

asked the Minister of Transport if he is now in a position to make any further statement as to the electrification of the main line railways?

No, Sir.

asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he is now in a position to make a statement on the confiscation of British travellers' money under the currency regulations introduced by the Russian Government in March last?

I would refer the right hon. Gentleman to the answer returned by my hon. Friend on Wednesday last to a similar question by the hon. Member for South Kensington (Sir W. Davison).

asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department why permission has been granted by him for the use of rifles by cadets in camp this summer; and whether this has the approval of the War Office?

The hon. Member appears to be under some misapprehension. Possibly he has in mind the facilities allowed by-Section 1 (8) (e) of the Firearms Act, 1920, to Cadet Corps approved under that provision. The withdrawal of War Office recognition of Cadet Corps was not intended to preclude them from being granted such facilities in the future, under the Section referred to, as are enjoyed by other similar civilian organisations.

Are not rifles allowed to be used in the Portuguese Army?

asked the Home Secretary the number of police officers of the Metropolitan Police district that have been suspended during the 12 months ended to the last convenient date?

In the 12 months to 28th instant the number was 109.

Were any women police included in these suspensions?

I am unable to say without notice.

asked the Home Secretary whether any of the expenses of the defence of William Gordon Baldwin, who was found guilty of the murder of a woman in Richmond Park on the 6th April, have been borne out of public funds; whether he has made further inquiries into the circumstances under which a solicitor stated he had been instructed to defend the prisoner, whereas the prisoner himself informed the magistrates that he did not understand he would have to pay the solicitor who had been so instructed and that he had not sent for him; and, if so, whether he intends taking any action in the matter?

I understand that the expenses of the defence in this case were defrayed from private sources. The usual allowances for witnesses under the Cost in Criminal Cases Act would be payable from local funds. As regards the latter part of the question, I would refer the hon. Member to what my right hon. Friend said in answer to a Question by the hon. Member for North Newcastle (Sir N. Grattan-Doyle) on the 23rd April last. My right hon. Friend does not propose to take any action in the matter.

Is the Home Office empowered to take action should future cases arise of solicitors representing that they had been asked by prisoners to defend them when such instructions have not in fact been given them?

My right hon. Friend indicated that, if that was the point at issue, it was not a matter for him but rather for the Law Society.

asked the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs which of the Dominions have, up to the present, adopted the Statute of Westminster, and forwarded a request for legislation in this House?

Though formal communications have not yet been received in all cases, the position is that resolutions in the sense of the recommendations of the Imperial Conference of 1930 regarding the proposed Statute of Westminster, have been passed in all the Dominion Parliaments.

asked the President of the Board of Trade the number of exhibitors or renters that have been prosecuted for not complying with the quota provisions of the Cinematograph Films Act, 1927; and will he give particulars?

The number of exhibitors who have been prosecuted for non-compliance with the quota provisions is 40, and the number of renters 7. In addition, proceedings against 5 exhibitors are pending. Of the 40 prosecutions of exhibitors 35 resulted in convictions and 5 were dismissed, 2 under the Probation of Offenders Act. Of the 7 prosecutions of renters 5 resulted in convictions; the other 2 were dismissed under the Probation of Offenders Act.

Can my right hon. Friend say whether applications were made by these persons to the Board of Trade for exemption certificates before the prosecutions were instituted?

I should require notice of that question.

asked the President of the Board of Trade (1) if, when setting up the departmental committee for the amendment of the Companies Act, 1929, he will include in the terms of reference power to consider the proposal that in the half-yearly statement exhibited in its place of business by every limited banking company the amount of its published reserves shall be shown as represented entirely either by gold or foreign liquid resources representing gold, in accordance with paragraphs 354 and 370 of the Macmillan Report;

(2) whether, when setting up the departmental committee for the amendment of the Companies Act, 1929, he will include in the terms of reference power to consider proposals to give effect to paragraphs 365 to 374 of the Macmillan Report, relating to English and Scottish limited banks, so as to provide that their future expenditure under premises account shall be made out of profits?

There is no present intention of setting up a committee to consider the amendment of the Companies Act, and in any case such a body is not likely to be concerned with the recommendations of the Macmillan Committee which are rather a matter for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Is any consideration being given to the point raised in these two questions, asking that information of this kind should be at the disposal of those who are concerned?

Oh yes, I have no doubt that all these points will be considered when the Macmillan Committee's Report is analysed, but this matter is one rather for my Tight hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

asked the Postmaster-General whether he is aware that

It is not necessary to take a telephone instrument to pieces in order to maintain it in a hygienic condition. Dismantling is very liable to damage the delicate parts of the instrument, and it is undesirable to facilitate such action.

asked the First Commissioner of Works the nature and cost of the operations at present in progress on the upper committee floor of this House?

The work at present in progress in the Upper Committee floor consists of the renewal of the electric wiring in the corridors and in certain adjoining rooms. The estimated cost of this work is £100.

asked the Minister of Health what action he proposes to take with further reference to the representations made to him by municipal authorities respecting the question of inspection and control of premises where the manufacture of icecream is carried on?

I would refer the hon. Member to the answer given to the hon. Member for the Isle of Ely (Mr. de Rothschild) on this subject on the 23rd July which shows that local authorities already have powers for the inspection and control of premises where the manufacture of ice-cream is carried on.

asked the Minister of Health if he would have inquiries made into the reasons why the Royal Seamen's Pension Fund Committee are refusing to grant pensions to fishermen during 1931?

I have been informed by the Secretary to the Governing Body of the Royal Seamen's Pension Fund that up to date 396 pensions have been granted to fishermen this year.

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that letters have been sent from the Committee stating that no further pensions will be granted to fishermen this year, and will he have inquiries made as to the reason, bearing in mind the fact that it was a definite resolution of the Committee that one-third of the pensions granted should be given to fishermen?

I will inquire into it,

asked the hon. Member for Houghton-le-Spring (Mr. Robert Richardson), as representing the Charity Commissioners, the number of schemes involving the alteration or amendment of a charitable trust which have been submitted to the Commissioners within the last 12 months, and the number of such schemes which have been approved by the Commissioners?

All schemes of the nature described are drafted in the office of the Charity Commissioners on the application of the trustees or other persons qualified by the Charitable Trusts Acts to make an application. No record is kept of the number of such, applications, but during the twelve months ending 30th June, 1931, the number of schemes established by the Commissioners upon such applications was 48G.

asked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he can assure the House that the consumption of the alcoholic beverage known as red biddy is still on the decrease in Scotland?

I am making inquiries into this matter, and I will communicate with the hon. Member when these inquiries are completed.

Will the right hon. Gentleman keep the Chancellor of the Exchequer in touch with the amount which is consumed, for excise purposes?

Will the right hon. Gentleman's inquiries be completed by the end of the year?

I think so.

asked the Secretary to the Overseas Trade Department by whom and when the decision was reached to pay commission to brokers and agents for introducing business to the Export Credits Guarantee Department; the amount of business introduced; and the amount of commission paid out?

The decision to pay commission to approved brokers and agents introducing business to the Export Credits Guarantee Department was made by the Executive Committee of that Department at the end of 1930 to take effect as from 1st January, 1931.

Will the hon. Gentleman answer the question as to the amount of business introduced?

There has been a certain amount of business, but it is not in the public interest to give the exact figures.

asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies if he is aware that land has recently been alienated from the Kikuyu tribe, Kenya, in the Kiambu district, to the extent of 145 acres at Fort Smith, 1,141 acres at Limuru, 849 acres near North-West Nairobi township, and 1,201 acres in South-East Limuru; and whether His Majesty's Government will give instructions that this land be returned, or adequate compensation paid, or land of equal value in some other convenient part of the Colony be given to the Kikuyu who have been dispossessed?

My Noble Friend has no information regarding the alienations of land which are alleged to have taken place, but he is making enquiry of the Governor of Kenya. I would point out, however, that if the land in question is within a native reserve no alienation could take place except in accordance with the terms of the Native Lands Trust Ordinance under which native interests are fully safeguarded.

asked the Prime Minister whether he can state when he expects to receive a report from the Committee appointed to consider the legislative and judicial powers of Departments?

I have been asked by my right hon. Friend to reply to this question. I am informed that the Committee have finished the work of taking evidence, and have made considerable progress in the preparation of their report, but I cannot state on what date it is likely that they will be in a position to present it.

asked the Prime Minister if he can make a statement on his recent visit to Berlin?

A communique has already been issued and was published in the newspapers in this country on Wednesday morning. The House will remember that this visit was originally arranged purely as a return to that paid by the German Ministers from the 4th to the 9th June. An opportunity, however, was taken to pursue the conversations which were begun at Chequers and to examine the financial position of Germany in relation to the work done at the London Conference. As the result of these conversations we were further convinced that the action proposed at that Conference should relieve the immediate financial difficulties of Germany, and enable a considered judgment to be formed as to whether Germany required further credits, and in what form they should be supplied. The committee set up by the Bank for International Settlements on the suggestion of the London Conference to report upon this is now at work and it will come to its conclusions without delay. During our stay in Berlin we also reviewed the more important questions in which the two countries are interested, such as Disarmament and the Geneva Convention on Hours to be worked in Coal Mines. We have to assure the House that the welcome we received from the public and the Press, as well as from the Government, was of the most cordial nature.

Is the Prime Minister in a position to say anything about the reported conversations about tariffs which received wide publicity in the English newspapers?

I was not aware of it.

(By Private Notice) asked the Minister of Health whether he can state what action the Government propose to take in regard to the Rent Restrictions Acts?

It is the intention of the Government to propose to Parliament in due course to extend the existing Acts by means of the Expiring Laws Continuance Act.

Does that mean that the right hon. Gentleman does not propose to take into consideration, so far as early legislation is concerned, any of the recommendations in the report of the Inter-Departmental Committee?

It means that to be on the safe side we are going to extend the existing law.

I do not desire to raise any large question of national policy on this Bill, but one particular point; but it is one of much more than merely departmental importance. Included in the Schedule to this Bill is an amount of £2,375,000 for a subsidy on sugar and molasses extracted from beet grown in Great Britain, including a supplementary sum of £225,000. It must not be supposed that these are the only amounts which the House is called upon to provide in respect of this industry in the course of this year. There has already been a Consolidated Fund Bill giving certain amounts on account, and there is, in addition, a very large rebate of the taxation imposed upon sugar in general in respect of sugar produced in this country. That abatement amounts to no less than 5s. 10d. on every hundredweight. While foreign sugar has to pay 11s. 8d., British sugar and Empire sugar pay 5s. 10d., and in the current year that amount of benefit given to the industry is equivalent to a total of £2,670,000. On every hundredweight of sugar the State therefore provides in subsidy at the present time 6s. 6d. and in rebate 5s. 10d., a total of 12s. 4d. The value of sugar last year, apart from the duty, was only 12s. per cwt., and State assistance to the extent of 12s. 4d. to secure the production of a commodity worth 12s. is somewhat extravagant. This year the Minister of Agriculture has come to Parliament for a sum over and above that which we covenanted to give to this industry under the Sugar Beet Act a few years ago, which is estimated to cost £225,000.

I have a great respect for the work of the right hon. Gentleman as Minister of Agriculture. He is, I think, by common consent, a most active and successful Minister, and he has rendered great services to the industry and to the State, but there is this one blemish upon his escutcheon, and I feel I must draw attention to it. The industry came to him in the course of this year and said that owing to the low price of sugar they were unable to offer a remunerative price to the farmers and must apply to the State for even more assistance than they had received hitherto. Although Parliament has already provided £30,000,000 for this industry—up to the end of this year—with a prospect of a further sum which may amount to £6,000,000, £8,000,000 or £10,000,000, according to the amount of sugar produced during the remainder of the subsidy, the right hon. Gentleman's heart was touched, and he acceded to their request.

One can imagine what had happened prior to the deputation being received. The National Farmers' Union, on behalf of the producers, and the manufacturers' association, on behalf of the companies, probably met round a table, as they have done every year, to decide what should be the price paid to the farmers for then-sugar beet, and found they could not come to terms. The manufacturers offered so much, the farmers said they could not accept less than had been paid, and there was a deadlock. Whereupon, I imagine, some bright spirit present at the table had an ingenious idea, and said "As we cannot come to terms on this question let us go to the Government and ask that the taxpayer should make up the difference." I can imagine someone at the table saying, "Oh, but there is no chance that the Government will give us more than we are getting already. We are already having £30,000,000 and, after all, there is a Labour Government in power. Are they likely to accede to this request?" Someone else would probably reply "Well, there can be no harm in asking. The worst that can happen is that we are refused." So the deputation went to the right hon. Gentleman, and after hearing their case he determined to represent it to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

I can imagine the Chancellor of the Exchequer putting the question which Chancellors of the Exchequer always put in the circumstances "How much will it cost?" No doubt the right hon. Gentle- man answered "Well, it may be £200,000, or £300,000, but there is a chance that if the price of sugar rises we may be able to arrange that some of it shall be returned; in any case it will not go to the companies, it will go to the growers, and, after all, we have done very little indeed—"

Hear, hear!

Apparently this is exactly the conversation which took place. I note that I have the assent of the right hon. Gentleman.

You said it goes to the growers, and that is perfectly correct.

It saves the companies from the necessity of paying a remunerative price to the growers for the sugar beet which they need for their industry. He will have said that to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and he will have said further, "After all, we have done very little so far for the arable farmers. We are being pressed to subsidise or to assist wheat, which would cost ever so much more. This £200,000 or £300,000 will sweeten things in the agricultural industry, and I hope I may have your assent." Then the Chancellor of the Exchequer probably said, "But what will the House of Commons say?" and the Minister of Agriculture was in a position to reply "Oh, the Conservatives will vote for it as a matter of course, and our own party will probably not oppose it if we propose it to the House; and as for the Liberals, there are at all events three of four Members representing agricultural constituencies in the Eastern counties who would not be very keen in opposition to it, and no doubt it will easily go through the House of Commons, possibly without discussion." So the Chancellor of the Exchequer gave his assent, the Cabinet did not demur, it was brought before the House of Commons in a Supplementary Estimate, and through it went. And now in the Appropriation Bill we are asked to confirm and appropriate that sum.

When the industry came to the right hon. Gentleman did he ask them, "Why is it that British growers of sugar-beet should receive, as they have received, twice as much per ton for their beet as the Continental growers receive, although"—he could have quoted from the report that has been published by the Ministry of Agriculture itself—"the costs of cultivation in Great Britain are roughly the same as the costs of cultivation on the Continent?" Why should they receive twice as much as their Continental competitors? Did the right hon. Gentleman ask them how it comes about that the amount of the sugar produced per acre on the Continent is half as much again as the sugar produced per acre in this country. The amount of sugar produced on the Continent is 3,602 lbs. per acre while in this country the total is 2,493. Did the President of the Board of Agriculture ask them why farmers have been growing beet in this country at a distance from the factories which is on the average double the distance on the Continent? That is a most important consideration for a bulky crop of this character, because it means that the cost of transport is nearly three times as much here as it is on the Continent. Did the right hon. Gentleman ask them how it comes about that the cost of manufacture in this country is half as high again as the cost of manufacture in the beet-sugar factories on the Continent? The cost is 6s. 7d. per cwt. of sugar here and 4s. 3d. per cwt. for the same process on the Continent. Of course, it does not matter, because the British taxpayer has to make it good.

I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman put these questions and what replies he received before coming to Parliament asking for another £200,000. Of course, the right hon. Gentleman would be told that without this employment the agricultural districts would be very much affected. We have had some remarkable figures given of the amount of employment that is being provided in this industry, remarkable not only in extent but also in the very distant relation which they bear to the actual facts. We have been told that 40,000 persons are employed in this industry as a consequence of the subsidy which has been given, and the impression is conveyed that those 40,000 are whole-time workers'. May I point out that this 40,000 is simply the figure which includes farmers, workers on smallholdings, and labourers who may have some connection with beet growing. If a smallholder has a patch under beet, or if a farmer has a single field or a few acres devoted to the cultivation of beet, they are all included in the 40,000. Furthermore, most of this estimate of the employment devoted to beet-sugar on the farms is additional employment, and, if the beet crop was not grown, another crop would be grown. This point is shown quite clearly by the statistics.

The right hon. Gentleman seems to be going into the whole question of the production of beet sugar, and he is only entitled to deal with the extra sum of money which is now being asked for.

That is precisely my point. The Minister of Agriculture has been persuaded to come to Parliament for this extra sum precisely for the reason that it must be given to the farmers in order to keep these people in employment. That is the whole of the right hon. Gentleman's case, and probably when he replies he will say that if he had refused, or Parliament had refused, to adopt this proposition a large number of persons would be thrown out of work. I feel sure that that is the point upon which the right hon. Gentleman will base his case, and, in criticising him, I submit that I am entitled to show that the amount of employment given by this industry has been enormously exaggerated, and, as a matter of fact, you cannot credit the subsidy with all the employment given, because, if the subsidy was not given, the farmers would revert to the cultivation of other crops which they had previously grown, and consequently the amount of unemployment caused would be very much less. I do not wish to pursue that point, and I will conclude it by saying that as the statistics for sugar-beet cultivation in relation to employment have gone up, the statistics of the acreage under other roots and potato crops have gone down, not in the same proportion, but very considerably. Furthermore, the report states that a very large number of farmers, especially small farmers, are able to produce a sugar-beet crop without increasing the number of hands they employed previously, and they do this with their regular staff. I have made a calculation giving the utmost credit to the industry for employment. Assuming that the people in the factories would be out of work, and assuming half the people employed on the farms would be out of work without this subsidy, the cost works out at 25s. per man employed for every day those men are set to work. So much with regard to employment.

The right hon. Gentleman was persuaded by the companies that they could not afford to pay a remunerative price this year for sugar-beet, and he asked the Anglo-Dutch Companies to enter into this scheme, but they refused to do so and preferred to make their own arrangements. The right hon. Gentleman has expressed regret that the Anglo-Dutch Companies have not come in, and, as a consequence, there is less work for our farmers. Why should not the Anglo-Dutch Companies have paid the farmers a remunerative price without further State assistance? I will give some facts taken from an answer given to me by the Minister of Agriculture in reply to a question which I addressed to him on 17th July last which show that this group has a capital of £2,006,000, and that they have already in seven years put aside for depreciation and reserve £2,460,000. They come now to the right hon. Gentleman and ask him to grant them a further sum of money on the plea that they cannot afford to pay a remunerative price, although in seven years they have replaced the whole of their capital and have a bonus of nearly £500,000. At any moment that firm could close their factories and allow them to fall down to ruin, and they would still be able to replace the whole of their original capital and go away with an additional bonus of £500,000 which they have derived from the subsidies. The English Beet Sugar Company, so-called although it is Anglo-Dutch, has 38 shareholders. That company paid 12½ per cent. dividend free of tax for the first two years, and 20 per cent. dividend tax free for the last five years, an equivalent of 26 per cent. I do not think that is bad in these hard times. The right hon. Gentleman has spoken of the "enormous profits" made by the companies, and yet they have persuaded him to grant this further sum, and he has now asked the House of Commons to vote this further subsidy on their behalf.

It is paid to the growers.

The factories receive a very large subsidy, and they have to buy their raw material from the farmers, and they sell the product to the public. Our concern is not to pay the difference when the farmers say they are receiving too little and the companies say they are paying too much. Companies which are making these enormous profits can well afford to pay the farmers a remunerative price, particularly when many of those farmers ought not to be cultivating beet at all, because the report says that much of the land is unsuitable and that new and inexperienced growers are coming forward who have to be nursed, and the cost of all this has to be met by subsidies of this character. That is not all. These are not the only companies which are receiving the money provided for in the Bill that is before the House to-day. Many of them are equally prosperous. Here is an extract from the speech made by Lord Weir at the meeting of some of these companies, reported in the "Times" of the 6th July of this year, in the course of which he says to one company, which appears to be a holding company:

"Your associated companies, the West Midland Company and the Second Anglo-Scottish Beet Sugar Company, have had a comparatively prosperous year. The West Midland Company is to pay a dividend of 10 per cent. free of tax, while the manufacturing profits of the Second Anglo-Scottish Company have risen from £66,492 last year to the satisfactory figure of £149,480."

This company has 12 shareholders—the minimum number. The capital of this company, which we are now asked to assist by means of this provision, was £240,000 in ordinary shares, and the Government guaranteed 5 per cent. debentures to the extent of £865,000. Of that amount, £124,000 has been repaid, leaving £741,000 outstanding. I asked the right hon. Gentleman not long ago if he would give the House the dividends that had been declared in each of the subsidy years by the companies receiving subsidies. Surely we are entitled to know what the dividends are of these bodies which are paid by public funds. But the right hon. Gentleman answered that some of the companies were private companies, and he could not disclose the dividends; and that, as to the others, I could find the information in the balance sheets of the companies, but that the total dividends paid by them all amalgamated together were given in the report that has been issued by the Ministry of Agriculture.

This particular company is a private company; we do not know what its dividend is; but we do know that it made a profit of £149,000 last year, and that the interest on the Government debentures was £37,000, and, therefore, that there was a trading profit for the year of £110,000, which, again, is not so bad on a capital of £240,000. This is the company which comes to Parliament and says it cannot afford to pay the Scottish farmers a sum which would enable them to produce their sugar beet without a loss, and we, out of the taxpayers' pockets in this year, have to vote an additional £225,000. Taking all the companies together, the Minister tells us that they expended a capital of £8,700,000 in seven years, and they have been able to put by for depreciation, reserves, and unappropriated balances, £4,494,000. The Anglo-Dutch group has done much better than the others, but, taking them all together, they have been able to replace more than half their capital, and, in the last year for which figures are given, they declared, taken as a whole, dividends averaging 13 per cent., or 10 per cent. free of Income Tax.

The right hon. Gentleman, in his defence, says that this sum may perhaps be repaid. He has made an arrangement that, if the prices of sugar rise, this additional amount may be repaid in the future. It may be, or it may not be; it depends upon the prices of sugar. But do not let the House imagine that this sum will flow back into the Exchequer. Far from it. Money that goes out from the Exchequer very seldom comes back again. All that will happen will be that a deduction will be made from the still further payments which, under the commitments already entered into, the Exchequer has to make to these sugar companies; for the subsidies and rebates of taxation are not at an end. Before the subsidy period ends, there will be another sum of, as I have said, possibly of £6,000,000, £8,000,000, or £10,000,000, according to the amount of sugar produced, still to be paid from the public purse to these private interests, and from that sum it may be, if we are fortunate, that a deduction will be made in regard to the increased amount this year.

There is another item in the Appropriation Bill which has a bearing on this subject. Hon. Members will find, on page 24:

"For sundry Colonial and Middle Eastern Services under His Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonies, including certain non-effective services and grants-in-aid, including a supplementary sum of £105,000 … £1,715,716."

Those are grants to the West Indies. While the right hon. Gentleman has been persuading Parliament to give £200,000 to British sugar growers to induce them to grow more sugar for the British market, his colleague the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies has been persuading Parliament to give £200,000 as a grant to the West Indies on account of depression in the sugar industry caused by the over-production of sugar. On the 19th February of this year, the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies said:

"I have to ask the Committee to approve of a Supplementary Estimate for £400,000, the items of which Members have before them. The first item is for a grant in aid of expenses of the local administrations and of unemployment relief grants for certain West Indian Colonies. The necessity for these grants arises mainly as a consequence of the serious depression in the sugar industry."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 19th February, 1931; col. 1483, Vol. 248.]

This House has received petitions from the legislatures of Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados and the Leeward Islands, complaining that the beet sugar subsidies which we have granted here have seriously affected their production, caused unemployment, and aggravated their depression; so we have granted this year, partly for purposes of loans and partly for out-and-out grants, nearly £200,000. The Government with one hand gives £200,000 to the British sugar growers to induce them to grow more, and with the other hand £200,000 to the West Indian sugar growers to compensate them for the consequent loss. Its right hand doth not know what its left hand doeth.

For years past, efforts have been made by the sugar-growing industry all over the world to stop excessive production of sugar. There is a glut in the world's market; production has increased by 50 per cent. since the War; and yet the right hon. Gentleman comes this year to Parliament for this sum of £225,000 to make sure that British farmers shall not revert from growing sugar beet to growing the turnips, mangolds, potatoes and other commodities which they have been producing in previous years. An agreement has been adopted by the sugar industry of the world—what is called the Chadbourne plan—to secure the restriction of sugar-growing. That is an agreement between the representatives of all the sugar producing countries to persuade their growers to grow less; and yet here today we are asked to vote money to persuade our farmers to grow more.

What is to be the attitude of the House of Commons, now and in the future, towards this policy? I had the honour, in the last two years of the War, to be the chairman of a Select Committee of this House on national expenditure. We examined very many cases of wastefulness, but never in my experience have I found any expenditure so lavish, so extravagant for its purposes, so enormous in proportion to the advantages that have been achieved, as this expenditure which we have been discussing, and which we are now asked this year to increase. What is going to be the attitude on this matter of hon. Members opposite? Their voices have seldom been raised in criticism. It is true that one hon. Member did speak in that sense the other day on the Supplementary Estimate—the hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede). He spoke more in sorrow than in anger, and protested against this expenditure. But hon. Members above the Gangway, who warned us in such solemn terms of the necessity, in the present grave financial position of the country, for restricting every expenditure to the lowest possible limit—what attitude are they going to take? Only yesterday, from that bench, the right hon. Gentleman, the Member for Edgbaston (Mr. Chamberlain), in the most solemn terms declared that we must stop expenditures, however popular they may be, unless their absolute necessity can be proved. One Member only has spoken on this from those benches in criticism, the hon. Member for North Paddington (Mr. Bracken), and he spoke more in anger than in sorrow. In language more terse, more colloquial and more effective than the language that I am accustomed to use he declared this to be the greatest ramp of modern times. What are hon. Members above the Gangway going to say to-day, in the light of what was said by their spokesman yesterday, when he repeated the old truism, none the less true for that, that in this House general expressions in favour of economy are always popular but the particular application of individual economies is seldom acceptable? Will the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Sparkbrook (Mr. Amery) act upon that maxim of his colleague from Birmingham.

Where are to be heard these watchdogs who are to safeguard the public purse and who on public platforms say that national economy is the greatest need of the present day and that they themselves can be trusted to be the most scrupulous guardians of the public purse? The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bewdley (Mr. Baldwin) has declared in a public speech that not only should this experiment be continued but that measures should be adopted by the State to secure a doubling of the acreage under sugar beet. If this acreage is to cost us £30,000,000, soon to be £40,000,000, what will his double acreage cost us? The voices of these watchdogs are silent. The kennels are empty to-day. When it is a question of £20,000 as a subsidy for opera, they make the neighbourhood ring with alarmed and angry barkings, but when it is a question of £200,000 for beet sugar, on top of £30,000,000, the watchdogs are found on the side of the foxes. I hope the House of Commons will make it clear that it has had enough of these grants for this industry. If we have £30,000,000 to spare, and another £200,000, there are plenty of other industries, very depressed, not making profits and declaring dividends of 10 and 20 per cent. free of tax, which could give far more employment to the people of the country than this industry. It is a strange inverted alchemy that we are asked to practise, turning gold into sugar and then watching it slowly dissolve. Let the House of Commons make it clear that it has had enough of these demands and that it will be no use next year for the right hon. Gentleman to come forward with a similar plea but that we wish these grants, subject to existing commitments from which we cannot escape, cut down at the earliest possible moment.

Sugar, Mr. Speaker, is, I believe, regarded as one of the most nourishing and stimulating of all foods; and certainly it has very successfully nourished the eloquence and stimulated the statistical fancy of the right hon. Gentleman. His case began with what I regard as a complete fallacy, by attempting to object to the whole principle underlying this grant on the basis that the amount of it is wholly disproportionate to the value of the article itself. He pointed out that this added expenditure makes the total subsidy equal to more than the price of the sugar itself. That may be true but he assumes that the market price is a normal and fair price based on the cost of production. It is nothing of the kind. It is a price the result of artificial measures in other countries and far below the level of cost at which sugar could be produced under natural conditions in most parts of the world. The right hon. Gentleman, the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George), whose absence we all regret, told the House not long ago, in this very connection of agricultural production, that he was opposed to dumping. In his opinion dumping was a monster which Free Trade could not be expected to carry on its back. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Darwen (Sir H. Samuel) does not look upon it as a monster. He, like a fond mother, would welcome the infant to his breast whether it be one of saccharin or one covered with Asiatic ticks. He welcomes dumping. He is an out and out Free Trader. He asks himself no questions as to the permanent welfare of agriculture or industry. All he goes to is the price figures. On his principle, we ought to have rejected every measure that has been taken in recent years of which one condition was the direct encouragement of British production. The condition imposed in all our unemployment work, the use of British goods—that is a fallacy from his point of view.

He pointed out, what is undoubtedly the case that at this moment, that the cost of beet sugar production, both the cost of producing the beet on the land and the cost in the factory, is higher than on the Continent. The whole case for this special legislation is that experience on the Continent has shown that the beet sugar crop is one of immense value to the whole structure of agriculture. Its importance has been recognised, not in the amount of sugar produced alone or in the value of that sugar, but in the effect of sugar beet production upon the whole rotation of crops, upon the fertilisation of the soil, upon the provision of cheap foodstuffs for animals, and upon the provision of varied employment in agricultural centres. From all these points of view every great progressive country on the Continent has thought it well worth while incurring heavy initial expenditure on getting that industry started and on giving it national support afterwards. We are still in the stage of the heavy initial expenditure, and I hope the Minister will be able to show that that heavy initial expenditure is getting lower and that we are nearing the time when sugar can subsist, I will not say against dumping, but can subsist with a steady and moderate measure of protection in whatever way afforded.

The right hon. Gentleman made great play of the profits of individual companies. He laid great emphasis on the ordinary shareholding capital, rather slurring over the amount of borrowed capital; but, after all, the interest on borrowed capital, whether guaranteed or not, has to be found, and it would be very much fairer if these profits were given in relation to the total capital employed and if we had had, not the profits of individual companies, but some idea of the total amount of profit in regard to the total amount of capital invested in the whole of this industry. Personally, I believe that this industry is well worth encouraging, and that in order to encourage it you have to give good profits to the most efficient and most capable pioneers. The right hon. Gentleman went on to suggest that not only had this money been wasted in regard to the expenditure created, but that it actually caused a decrease of employment in one direction corresponding with the employment given in the other.

I did not say "corresponding."

Not corresponding. At any rate, he drew attention to the fact that there had been a decrease in our root crops, and the inference was that they had been displaced by sugar-beet. There has been a lamentable decrease in every form of arable cultivation in this country, but I should have thought that that decrease was due, not to the fact that sugar-beet growing was more profitable, but to the fact that none of those crops were profitable. I should have thought that we could congratulate ourselves, in the present desperate plight of agriculture, that at any rate one crop is being carried on with some measure of success, and, by this success, contributing to the maintenance of other crops. It would be very interesting to consider how much arable land would go to grass altogether if those who are now growing beet as part of their crops were not in a position to grow it.

That same answer applies to his appeal on behalf of Colonial sugar. If ever the right hon. Gentleman had done anything that would have helped Colonial sugar, I should have been more interested in his opinion. I see no reason whatever—and I have studied the position of the Colonial sugar industry pretty closely—to suppose that the West Indies in particular, or Mauritius, would have derived the slightest benefit if we had made no attempt to encourage the beet-sugar industry in this country. Their difficulty is the difficulty of many agricultural producers, that they cannot grow their sugar at a price comparable with the present dumping or residual world price. If British sugar-beet were not supported within these islands, it is not British Guiana or Mauritius sugar that would take its place, but the dumped sugar which is already selling in every market at a price of some pounds a ton below Colonial sugar. I say that we certainly should do more than we have done to help Colonial sugar, but the last way that I suggest that help should be given or can be given is by neglecting the interests of the British farmer and the prospects of agriculture in this country. That is all I need say with regard to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman on the merits of the sugar question.

The minister of Agriculture will no doubt reply much more fully and adequately. But the right hon. Gentleman has challenged me on the issue of economy. Undoubtedly, we are in favour of every form of economy, but above all in favour of economy on unproductive expenditure. Here at least is a form of expenditure that is directly productive. It is not the form of expenditure which I should have chosen. I should not be in place here in discussing other methods of helping the beet-sugar industry which would not involve expenditure but would bring in revenue. All that I say is that the object itself is a good one. We support it for itself, and we believe that, though we could support it on much better lines than the support given by the present Government, we are not prepared at this moment to withdraw this support.

I must thank the right hon. Gentleman for the very kindly references to myself, and it makes it the more regrettable that there is this blot on my escutcheon. I have been asking myself all the time when listening to the right hon. Gentleman, "I wonder what he would have done if he had been in my place?" How would he have dealt with the situation with which I was confronted? I do not know, of course. He is perhaps a better Free Trader than I; all the same I am not so bad. He is perhaps more steeped in the doctrine than I have ever been, but I have had at the back of my mind all the time the fact that, notwithstanding all his prejudices and all his past, he might have been driven into doing the same thing as I am doing.

What is the position? The position is not what it was at the time of the British Sugar (Subsidy) Act of 1925. I was not responsible for that. I agree with the statement he makes that some of these companies have made prodigious profits. They have made those profits out of the subsidies provided under that Act, and I am not responsible for that. The only point of the criticism of the right hon. Gentleman is that by some means or other I ought to have compelled the companies to pay this extra price out of their profits and not dealt with the matter in this way. That is the only point. There can be no other point in it, because I am not responsible for the arrangements that were made years before I came into office. We have simply inherited them.

But he failed to point out one or two very important collateral circumstances which, I think, would have pressed hardly upon his conscience if he had been in my place. The first is that the subsidy drops this year 6s. 6d. a cwt. and that the drop coincides with the unprecedented low price of sugar resulting from over production. Those two things happen to coincide. Those two drops, compared with pre-war prices, are about 11s. or 12s. a cwt., a sudden drop. It is true that I am not concerned with the balance sheets of the companies. I am concerned with something quite different, and, with the greatest possible respect to the right hon. Gentleman, if he had been in my place, he would have been unable to escape from those other considerations. I think that I asked the factories every one of the questions which he addressed to me and which, he said, I ought to have asked the factories. We pressed that kind of inquiry for a considerable time. What were the facts with regard to the position? The weeks, and later the months, drifted on until it became the time of the year when it had to be decided by the farmers whether or not they were going to grow beet on this land. The issue was not some transient one which entered into consideration affecting the principle of Free Trade. The point was whether the farmers were going to plough the fields for beet or not, and, if not, what were they going to do? That was the question. I had to do the best I could in the interests of agriculture in those desperate circumstances.

What is the other circumstance? During the past year there has been a greater decline in arable cultivation than has been recorded previously in any year. The fall in arable cultivation this year is 250,000 acres. It is a desperate situation. At that time I had not the exact figures, but I know there had been a great decline in employment. Since then the figures have emerged, and show that there has been a fall in employment in agriculture of not less than 25,000 workers. If the right hon. Member for Darwen (Sir H. Samuel) had presented me in his speech with any suggestion as to how I could have made the companies pay adequate prices to the growers, I should have listened to it gladly, but it was entirely absent. I can assure him that, for weeks, almost for months, we have kept this back and have insisted upon negotia- tion between the parties, because of our reluctance to be drawn into it. It was only when it got to the last available fortnight, and we were confronted with a prospect of a vast area of land not being cultivated, that we had to step in. Proof of the efficiency of the measures of which I secured adoption will be given by me presently in figures. Let me make it clear. The right hon. Gentleman gave us figures as to the profits of these companies. I am not responsible for those.

The agreement which we are now being asked to make does not present the factories with a single sixpence. The whole of this money is conditional upon no profits being made, upon nothing being put to reserve, and nothing being contributed for depreciation. It is a very hard bargain, and, whoever may be responsible for enhancing the profits of the factories, it is not us. Not a sixpence goes in any of those directions. Every penny of it has to go to the grower. We had to do it this way, because we found that no prices could be arranged, and we had the prospect, in addition, of this desolate fall in cultivation of a large amount of land.

The position is not quite clear. In his previous speech, the Minister, when introducing the Supplementary Estimate, said that the factories were to make no profits and nothing was to be allowed for reserves or depreciation, until the figure as paid to the grower reached a certain figure. That is to say, if they paid 38s. to the grower, then they could take profits and depreciation. I understand now that it is not the case that, having received this sum, there are to be declared no profits and depreciation for the year, but only if they paid 38s. Since they have been paying 45s., the position does not seem such a very hard one.

So far as that money is concerned, it has all to go to the grower, but as soon as ever a company begins to make a profit, or a profit could be made, which might be theoretical, and after that price has been paid to the grower, another clause in the agreement comes into operation, which provides that profits can only be made after sugar reaches a certain price. You cannot make profits under this arrangement with sugar at its present price. It is estimated by us that no profit is made until sugar reaches 7s. 9d. per cwt. As soon as that figure is reached, repayment of this advance is to begin. The right hon. Gentleman has not quite done justice to the arrangement to that extent. In so far as the price of sugar rises above 6s. 6d. per cwt., for every penny it rises above that figure, so much is deducted from this present advance. That is to say, if the price of sugar were 7s. 9d. per cwt., lone of this money would be granted at all. It is fifteen pennies per cwt.; that is what it comes to. The fifteen pennies is the difference between as. 6d. and 7s. 9d., and for every penny rise in price an equivalent amount is deducted from the advance. If sugar reaches 7s. 9d. per cwt., nothing will be advanced.

I did mention that, if the price of sugar rises, this sum would be repaid.

Yes, but, if the price of sugar rises sufficiently the sum will not be paid at all. The point is, if the price of sugar rises, so far as it rises above 6s. 6d. per cwt., this advance will never be made, so that repayment will never be required. Supposing the price of sugar is 6s. 8d., it means that 2d. per cwt. will be deducted from the advance; the figure is calculated each week on the price of sugar. In common justice to me, the right hon. Gentleman should take into account this very important consideration. The money will be repaid, in so far as, not only this year, but any time during the next two years thereafter the price of sugar rises above 7s. 9d. per cwt. plus an allowance for depreciation, which ought to be made, but nothing for profits. This money has got to be repaid any time within the next two years.

Deducted from future payments?

Yes. I should like to show what I secured in this very ingenious arrangement, and under this hard bargain. Here is the justification for it—and I agree with all the animadversions of the right hon. Gentleman as I think the companies ought to have given the growers a decent price, but I found myself faced with the threat of the great decline in the cultivation of our arable acreage, and I had to prevent some of that. Last year the acreage grown for the group of factories who have not accepted this arrangement was 140,000 acres, and this year the acreage is 80,000. In other words, there is a reduction of 60,000 acres in the arable cultivation of the area, or 43 per cent. For the factories that have accepted the arrangement, the acreage last year was 185,000, and this year it is 152,000. In other words, the drop of acreage of the factories who had not accepted the arrangement is 43 per cent., and the drop of acreage in the factories that have, is only 18. It means that I have secured a continuance of cultivation and consequent employment in those areas, in return for something which might cost the taxpayers nothing at all. The right hon. Gentleman did not give us full credit for the employment that is provided. There is a large amount of employment created, and it is well to remember that 5,000,000 tons of coal and other material are required to be transported, thereby finding additional employment. There is also other ancillary employment to be considered. Neither did the right hon. Gentleman give us full credit for the immense value of the residual materials. He suggested that because there would be a surplus of sugar in the West Indies, I should have done nothing. If he did not mean that, I do not know what he did mean. He must have meant that. I cannot understand why he should have gone so far as to say that. Supposing there is a surplus of apples in the world. Are we to grow no apples here?

You ought not to pay large sums from the public purse to induce people to grow more apples.

The right hon. Gentleman was contending that because there was a surplus of sugar in the world, it was a mistake for us to make these arrangements. I cannot understand that. He might apply that argument to dozens of commodities, and it would mean that we could do nothing. If the land is suitable for growing sugar beet, why not grow it and compete in the world market? We must not fold our hands and do nothing. As a good Free Trader and an enthusiast for efficient production, I should have thought that that would have been the last thing that the right hon. Gentleman would have wished to do. I am not now dealing with the question of subsidy, but trying to ascertain what the right hon. Gentleman really meant about surplus. I am quite sure that when the facts of the case are understood, when hon. Members realise the situation with which I was confronted, and taking into account the fact that not one penny of this subsidy is to go into the pockets of the factories, whom I am not in the least concerned to defend, I think they will agree that, on the whole, in the difficult circumstances, we have made an ingenious and successful arrangement.

If any justification was needed for my intervention, it has been provided by the speech of the right hon. Gentleman. He is in the position of having the latest available figures in regard to arable cultivation, and I understand that for the last year they show an alarming decrease on the figures of last year. One of the things that the right hon. Gentleman said when he became Minister of Agriculture and one of the pledges that he has made was that the Government were going to do something to help the arable farmers. Those of us who have arable cultivation at heart thank him for what he has done this year in regard to sugar beet, but in regard to cereal agriculture he has failed lamentably to do anything at all, and I would ask him, before the House adjourns for a period of months, if he considers it fair and just to allow the farmers to go without any statement from him as to the intention of the Government in regard to that arable crop. If the right hon. Gentleman and his Department can do nothing at all, it is fair to say so and to allow those in the industry to know what their liabilities are going to be.

The price that world cereals are fetching, I refer in particular to the wheat crop, having regard to the present cost of production, means that there is going to be a definite loss this season of over £6,000,000 to agriculture. Six million pounds on one particular crop. It surely is even more important that subsidising sugar beet or helping in other ways, to assist agriculture to tackle at once in some reasonable way the problem of making this crop economic to the farmer. I would appeal to the Minister not only from the farmers' point of view but from the point of view of the agricultural workers. We have 40,000 agricultural workers out of employment in arable agricutlure. Those men are not receiving any dole. When they come out of work they go straight on to the Poor Law. And yet they are paying rates and taxes, indirect taxation which is being used by the Government to subsidise unemployment pay for factory workers in the towns, and yet we find the House prepared to adjourn without any statement of any sort from the Ministry.

It is only through agriculture, with arable agriculture as the base, that we are ever going to get back to any reasonable semblance of prosperity in Great Britain. I would ask the right hon. Gentleman what the Government meant and what the Minister meant when he made a statement after the Conference convened by the Minister in 1929. That was before he was the Minister. The Conference agreed that the key of the agricultural problem was the profitableness of cereal growing, and at a meeting on the 28th February, the Conference passed unanimously a resolution, which was subsequently published by the Ministry of Agriculture, which said:

"The economic condition of arable agriculture is accentuating the gravity of the unemployment problem, and, in order to avert further deterioration, there is an urgent need for an immediate pronouncement calculated to restore confidence in the industry in the meantime."

Does not some announcement of that kind entail legislation?

I do not think it entails legislation. It was a statement of the Minister's intention that was needed at that time. It was a question of the Minister making a statement that this crop was going to be put on an economic basis.

Would not that need legislation on the part of the Government?

I will not pursue the point if you rule that it is out of Order. I do not want to do anything which is contrary to the rules of Debate, but I do want to appeal to the Minister, before we go away, and to ask him if he can say something which would be of a reassuring nature to the agricultural community, to say it. If he has nothing to say, if the Government do not intend to do anything, it would be fairer and more just to the farmers that he should let them know so at the present time.

I desire to turn the attention of the House for a few moments to a subject of supreme importance—namely, the fate of 300,000,000 of the subjects of Great Britain in India. During the debate on India which took place some weeks ago I rose ten times but was never called. Any remarks which I wanted to make on that occasion have been considerably strengthened by what has happened in India during the past few weeks. When I reminded the Secretary of State during that debate of the atrocious events which were happening in India, he was good enough to ask me to stop licking my chops for blood. It was true that the right hon. Gentleman withdrew that insulting remark, but there is a quotation which I think is infinitely more appropriate to the Secretary of State for India than was his remark to mo, and that is "woe unto those that cry peace where there is no peace." There is no peace in India. The right hon. Gentleman has asked us not to talk about trouble, and has said that those who talked about trouble were provoking further trouble. It is not in the least necessary to talk about trouble in India, because India is talking about her trouble in a far louder tone than we are. I have letters in my postbag from various people in India pointing out the dreadful condition of affairs that prevails there owing to the way affairs have been conducted by the present Government, and by the Government of India presumably under the pressure of the Government at home.

The whole Moslem community is riven by fear. They believe that they are going to be handed over to a new Government which is altogether alien to them, the Government of a hated majority. I cannot read all my letters, but there is one from an important member of the Legislative Council of one of the Provinces of India saying that "if these things go on, if there are more Cawnpores, there is no room for the Moslems in India any more than there is any room for the English." The saintly Mr. Gandhi observed that there are minority problems in India which may be ended by the disappearance of the minorities. Think how comforting that is to a Moslem. There we have Mr. Gandhi at his best. The saintliness of Mr. Gandhi is very puzzling. It partly consists, as far as I can make out, in having adopted a primitive form of dress. He has thrown off the European garments which used to cover him when he was a student at the Temple and has renounced a meat diet for a vegetarian diet. This seems to be no more than the saintliness referred to in the famous verses of Lear on the old man who took off his boots and subsisted on roots. But in addition to this ostentatious reversion to very scanty costume, there is his continual statement that there must be no violence. His no violence slogan would be much more convincing if, when his followers practice violence, he did as he has promised to do, withdraw permanently from politics. Up to the present he shows no signs of doing that.

Does the hon. Member recall the circumstances of some years ago—

Order, order!

Mr. Gandhi always deprecates violence—

Will the hon. Member allow me?

If the hon. Member does not give way the hon. Member for South Nottingham (Mr. Knight) cannot interrupt him.

On a point of Order. May I ask whether it is possible to conduct this debate if the Secretary of State for India has not the courtesy to be present in the House?

That is no point of Order. It is a matter with which I have nothing to do.

Mr. Gandhi has always deprecated violence. In fact, he reminds me of that famous character in Pickwick, who when his political opponent was being mishandled by the mob hovered on the edge of the mob crying, "do not put him under the pump." Mr. Gandhi's whole policy is to say to his followers, "abstain from violence," but when an Indian magistrate was burnt alive by his followers he contented himself by saying that if that sort of thing went on he must think of withdrawing from politics. It has gone on. We have had Cawnpore. Would not anyone think that Cawnpore was a big enough example of what his followers can do to induce Mr. Gandhi to say to his unhappy children, as he sometimes calls them, these too energetic persons, that he is going to withdraw his support from them? Not a bit. What is he doing at the present time? He has written some words of wonder on that extraordinary document which has been produced by the Congress National Council, trying to prove that England owes India, I forget how many thousands of millions of pounds, for the privilege of having ruled India for the last 150 years. It includes the price of the old wars of Clive, of Lord Lake and Sir Arthur Wellesley, and the Indian Mutiny. The whole charge of the Indian Mutiny is to be put down to England.

The Indian Mutiny, as everybody knows except a few Members of the Liberal and Labour parties who spoke during the last Debate, was not, as one of them called it, the last attempt of India to^* free herself, but an attempt of the Bengal Sepoy army to establish a hegemony in Northern India, using the name of the defunct Mogul Power as a cover for its ambitions. Not one-sixth part of India was affected by the Indian Mutiny. It may be said that practically the whole of the Bombay and Madras Presidencies were untouched by it. Of the Princes, only two or three persons, discontented for particular reasons, had anything to do with the rising, which was essentially a military rising. As a matter of fact, the Mutiny, so far from being the last attempt of India to make itself free, was put down by an army, the greater part of which was composed of the inhabitants of India—mainly from the newly-annexed Punjab.

I am very sorry that the Secretary of State for India has not been here to hear the beginning of my speech, but now that he has entered the House I may remind him that I have been putting to him the problem of what Holy Writ says about those who "cry peace when there is no peace." I consider that there is no peace in India, that India is quaking from end to end. India's present state is very far worse than anything else we have known even in recent years. Cases have been cited in support of the statement that communal friction always existed. There was the Moplah Rebellion; there was the sacking of 122 Mohammedan villages in the United Provinces in three days. That is so, but proves nothing. The true point of view is that at the present time the State of tension in India is far worse than anything we can remember in recent times.

Let me mention two facts which show what is the state of tension. They are very deplorable facts. The Secretary of State for India knows that during the last two days two young Mohammedans have been condemned to death for falling upon and slaying a Hindu publisher and his two assistants, for publishing an illustrated life of Mohammed, which, among other things, sinned against the Mohammedan view by having pictures of Mohammed and unappreciative remarks on him. There were the awful riots in Kashmir. The allegation there was that a Hindu had torn up and spat upon a copy of the Koran. Seven thousand people at once began a riot and there were many deaths. A similar state of affairs is prevalent all over India. I have already referred to a letter from a gentleman who is serving on a Legislative Council. He stated: "We Moslems feel that we are in danger. We are as doomed as you Europeans." If that is the state of feeling of one of the great sections of Indian life, is it any use thinking that a little question of whether there shall be a certain percentage or a larger percentage of Moslem or non-Hindu representatives in legislative assemblies will settle fundamental and ancient enmities which to-day have cropped up worse than ever? They are very fundamental enmities indeed. They started a thousand years ago.

1.0 p.m.

The Hindu population of India cannot forget even now the first conquest of India by the Moslems. They cannot forget how Mahmud of Ghuzni went through India breaking the temples and smashing the Hindu idols. They cannot forget the attempts at forcible proselytism of Aurungzebe and Tippoo Sahib. If that is the feeling between the two religions, is it any use whatever to think that it can be cured by small concessions as to the number of deputies or Government representatives, or anything of that kind, in Provincial legislatures? What you have to face is an entire recrudescence of the old time-honoured or time-cursed hatred between the monotheists and the polytheists.

When that most revered interruption occurred, I was about to quote, in support of what I had been saying about fundamental feuds, the words said to me by a prominent Trans-Indus Mohammedan, which have a bearing on the hopeless incompatibilities of the situation. This Chief said to me, "I am a monotheist; I believe in one God. It is repulsive to me to be handed over to be governed by people who are polytheists, people who believe in some 3,700,000 of gods, some of them horrible. I am a habitual beef-eater, living in a high and healthy district, and it is repulsive to me to be governed by a mass of people who, when I have descended to the plains, I find worshipping that stupid animal, the cow." That is fundamental. You cannot persuade a Mohammedan to look at the idea of being governed by polytheists with any pleasure. He regards Christianity as a faith sanctioned by Providence originally, but now superseded by the later faith of Mohammedanism, and be calls Christians and Jews "the People of the Book," who have not progressed to the third stage of divine revelation, the dispensation announced by Mohammed. It is possible for a conscientious Mohammedan to sit down to be governed by "the People of the Book," but impossible for him to believe that he ought to be governed by idol-worshipping polytheists. Does the House know that the sacred goddess of the Indian Congress is Kali, with her girdle of skulls and her scimitars dripping blood) to whom the Congress-wallahs sing their hymns, and for whom they express their veneration?

My next point is that we for the most part took India over from the old Mohammedan rulers, from the Nawabs of the Carnatic, of Bengal and Bahar, from the King of Oudh, and the Ameers of Sind. We inherited the shattered remains of whatever reverence the old Mogul dynasty possessed. We are responsible for the Moslems, that they shall not be handed over to be governed by those who never governed them before, whom they in their day governed. We now owe their submission to our rule to the fact that we are regarded by them as impartial rulers, who at least preserve them from being swamped by the heathen. Till the last few years the position in India was due to the strong hand of the British Government, which for more than 100 years kept such a peace in India as India never knew before between the Mussulman and the Hindu. The moment that that strong hand is relaxed, what will happen? Cawnpore is an example, where a local Hindu majority proceeded to exterminate what the official report calls hundreds, but what my local informant tells me was more like thousands of the unhappy minority. Here is a joyous fact to remember, that in Cawnpore at the time of that hideous massacre, when the Mussulmans were being exterminated, there was actually a British battalion stationed consisting of some 960 British rifles. Was that massacre stopped? No. Was one rioter shot by that British battalion? I believe not. And why? Here we get to the bottom of things, because, the shadow of General Dyer is before the eyes of every commander of a British unit in India. General Dyer put an end to the beginnings of a most dangerous insurrection by firing. General Dyer was censured, deprived of command, and put on half-pay for life. Every British officer in India has that before him, and he knows that if he shoots he is doomed. If he does not shoot he may have some chance of escape with a reprimand. There is a most unhappy general impression that at all costs repression by force must be avoided, as it will be fatal to an officer's career. Those who ought to know tell me that the idea that repression must be avoided has been inspired from above. The idea that all sorts of insurrections, riots and troubles must not get into the newspapers was, as I have been told, the inspiration from high quarters. I shall be glad to hear that this view, which reached me on good authority, has no foundation. But I am bound to say, looking at the actual facts, that even carefully worded denials cannot altogether be convincing.

The only peace that India has ever known is the peace that Great Britain gave her, by giving equal, just, impartial control to all the races and creeds which we were governing. If that is removed, when so-called self-government comes, I shudder to think what will happen. The right hon. Gentleman must know the popular Liberal slogan "good government is no substitute for self-government." I hand the epigram back as "self government is no substitute for good government." Let those who sweep away good government beware of their awful moral responsibility.

The hon. Gentleman the Member for Oxford University (Sir C. Oman) has devoted many years to scholarship, and I venture to hope that in the coming great transactions with regard to India, the country may have the advantage of his scholarship and such guidance as he can provide. I would venture to correct a mere question of fact in regard to something that he said. He suggested that Mr. Gandhi was a person who advised his followers to be non-violent, but that if they ceased to be non-violent he paid no attention to their actions and stood aside.

I say that he verbally reproved them very much when they burned native magistrates or massacred quantities of Mohammedans.

I think that the hon. Gentleman will find, when he reads his observations in the OFFICIAL REPORT, that his reference to Mr. Gandhi went further than that. I recall a circumstance which I want to bring to the mind of the House, that in 1920, when the non-violence campaign was started, Mr. Gandhi publicly told his followers that if they departed from that non-violence campaign he would go into retreat for a year as a penance, and, in fact, he did. Therefore, any suggestion that Mr. Gandhi is that sort of person who gives injunctions and acquiesces in their being disregarded, is a statement of error which is likely to do very serious damage at this time. I appreciate with the hon. Gentleman the difficulties under which Mr. Gandhi embarked on his campaign, and 10 years ago I ventured to say to him that while he and men of his capacity and attainments would be able to restrict themselves to non-violence, what would be the effect on the great hillsides and in the cities on the poor people who had not his feeling of restraint. It was then that he said to me, "If they do not abide by my word, I shall go into retreat as a penance." He repeated that subsequently in public, and he did go into retreat and abstained from activity for a whole year. In fact, subsequent incidents of a similar character have occurred. That is a minor matter, however.

There was a distinguished Member in this House who in our day and generation did more for India than anybody else. He was the late Secretary of State, Mr. Montagu. I remember him saying to me that India was the passion of his life and his public career exemplifies the truth of that. I have always been intensely interested in India, and I desire to remind the House that before we reassemble, that great conference in which the question of India is to be considered will also have reassembled, and it will be deplorable if any expressions were used here to-day which might have the effect in India or in this land of hindering those great transactions. The hon. Gentleman has referred to the unhappy differences in India which are only too true, but it must be remembered that these difficulties have from time to time been allayed. They were allayed and almost passed away several years ago. The improvement began in the friendship of those eminent Indians, the late Mr. Gokhale and the late Right Honourable Ameer Ali. In 1920 at Nagpur I attended two conferences, a Hindu conference and a Moslem conference, in the presence of a feeling which united all ranks and classes and creeds. There was a unity of purpose then, and it is possible for that unity of the two great communities to be attained again. The hope of the Government and of their suppor- ters, and indeed of the major part of the two Oppositions, is that that unity shall be achieved again.

How is it to be achieved? What is the task which is to be resumed before we reassemble? It is the task of applying to India the principles and policy which, as successfully applied to the various British Dominions, have contributed to the strength and unity of the great federation of nations which we represent. Is it conceivable that, having successfully-carried through these great tasks in the past, we are going to fail before the Indian task? I cannot believe it. I have been astounded when I have watched the part played by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill) in this Indian transaction, and recall how nearly 30 years ago his first considerable piece of public business was to carry through, as Under-Secretary for the Colonies, the great Government of South Africa Bill, which was the very foundation of our present confederation of nations, and the result of which had a considerable bearing upon the success and unity achieved in the late dreadful years.

I am astounded when I reflect that the right hon. Member for Epping, who began his official career by undertaking that great task with enormous distinction—I invite hon. Members to read his speech at the time—should himself take a considerable part in a campaign which, as I understand it, is intended to reverse the process which he took such a part in initiating. That may be his will, but I hope it is not the will of this House, and I rejoice to think that in a few minutes my right hon. Friend who now fills with such distinction the post of Secretary of State will say the necessary word which will show that whatever the difficulties, whatever the doubts and hesitations of hon. Gentlemen opposite as to this great Indian business, the Government and its associates will go forward with this great task in the hope of bringing it to a successful conclusion. The deliberations will have proceeded a certain stage before we re-assemble. In undertaking that work they are going forward with the good will of the bulk of this House as representing, as we believe, the overwhelming vote of the people of this country. I cannot doubt that that task can be successfully pursued and achieved, but it can only be done, as those old tasks were accomplished, by going forward in the good old British spirit of fair play and willingness to see the point of view of the other fellow. Do hon. Gentlemen who recall, as I do, the dreadful days in the early years of this century, when we had to compose our differences with our enemies in South Africa, think that if the right hon. Member for Epping had gone forward with that task in the spirit which he shows today towards India that he would have succeeded? History and all intelligent opinion knows the answer to that query.

The spirit which we showed in connection with South Africa and Canada, and in which we have dealt with the like problems which have occurred in respect of all the Dominions which now are included in this confederation, we must show in the case of India, and notwithstanding their hard words I myself have never doubted that right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite who are very critical of these proceedings desire to display that spirit themselves. Their observations in this House and in the country are not always well advised, if they will allow me to say so with respect, though I am aware that they proceed from considerable experience in Indian affairs. But notwithstanding the course that they have taken hitherto, cannot we as a House re-echo the famous words of the Duke of Connaught when he opened the Indian Parliament in 1920. Having concluded his official declaration on behalf of His Majesty's Government, he said to the assembled representatives in India, "Gentlemen, allow me as an old friend and soldier, with long service in India, to step aside as an official and to say a friendly word. Cannot we let bygones be bygones?" It seems to me the only way in which we can hope to bring about this great transaction is for those on the Indian side and on the British side to say to each other, "Gentlemen, whatever our shortcomings have been, whatever our difficulties, let us, in the endeavour to achieve this great transaction, set aside the difficulties of the past, and go forward, as our forefathers did in similar transactions, to complete another great chapter in the history of this great nation."

I do not propose to follow the hon. and learned Member in the remarks he has addressed to the House, except to point out that though Mr. Gandhi, after having raised the storm, said he would go and do penance when the natural results of the agitation began to take effect, that action does not much help the victims. I know perfectly well that on former occasions he did go and do penance, and he has a good deal to do now if he keeps in touch with the situation in India, as no doubt he does. Regarding what the hon. and learned Member said about the right hon. Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill), it is not fair to compare the settlement in India with the settlement in South Africa, because the circumstances are entirely different. I do not propose to go into that aspect of the matter, as I do not believe it is strictly in order on the Motion for the Adjournment. My object in rising is to draw attention to what I call the running down of the machinery of government in India in the last two years. If any justification were required for raising this subject to-day, we have it in a telegram from Allahabad which appears in the "Times" newspaper this morning. As the House knows, on this question the "Times" has really been a very strenuous and consistent supporter of the right hon. Gentleman's policy. The telegram Teports a meeting of Europeans in Cawnpore yesterday. This meeting stated that the Government was going from bad to worse, and that unless steps were soon taken to mend matters there would be a disaster of the first magnitude.

I could not help remembering, when I read that telegram, being present in Moscow with the late Sir Henry Wilson in January, 1917. We were interviewing certain bourgeois munition makers in Moscow. It was some two or three months before the first revolution in Russia. One of those men ran after me as we left the room—he selected me because I was the only one among the Englishmen who knew Russian—and told me, "Something terrible is going to happen in this country. If something is not done soon, something in Russia is going to happen that the world has never seen before." The remarks telegraphed yesterday from Allahabad read like that to me. My charge against the right hon. Gentleman or the Government of India—I do not care who it is—is that in the last two years we have allowed our prestige in India to go into the dust. I know they have had a difficult task, but, after all, this campaign of civil disobedience is no new phenomenon. Gandhi started it in 1920. The whole of India was in disorder in 1921; I was out there and I remember it. There was the Moplah rebellion, which started because the Moplahs were virile people, and thought our government was absolutely effete and that they could do what they liked. That rebellion was not put down until 5,000 lives had been sacrificed. On the day the Prince of Wales landed in Bombay there were riots and 53 persons were killed and 403 were wounded. In the United Provinces 21 constables were dragged out and murdered by the mob. Lord Reading restored order some months later, but communal differences arose because each community was playing up to attract attention to itself in view of the promise of the coming Utopia. The real trouble began in 1929 when Congress pulled down the Union Jack and trampled it in the dust, but the Government of India did nothing in the matter.

Now I come to Peshawar, a city with many thousands of inhabitants of the most excitable material. There we had such a paralysis of government that has never been known before during the last 100 years. Bound about Peshawar you have a greater accumulation of British troops than in any other station in India. What would Nicholson or Henry Lawrence have done in a case like that? The British soldiers were driven out, and afterwards they crept back and re-occupied the city without bloodshed. It was only by chance that the whole English community there was not massacred. At Shalapur people were soaked in petrol and burnt alive. After the Shalapur disturbances a leaflet was circulated in Bombay in which the following passage appeared:

"Shakespeare has said a life for a life, an eye for an eye. Remember the Shalapur martyrs and vow that henceforth you will take two English lives for one Indian. Let your claws and beaks be sharpened so as to tear to pieces any Englishman that dares to raise his hand against a single countryman of yours."

That leaflet was circulated in Bombay. At length Gandhi was arrested and put into prison. The Round Table Conference was coming on here, and the Viceroy sent emissaries to consult Gandhi and ask him if he would come to the Round Table Conference. Congress turned down the proposal of the representative of the King Emperor, and what did Congress say about that? I will read their bulletin of the 12th November, 1930:

"British Imperialism, bewildered, beaten at every step, their trade greatly broken their moral credit completely destroyed internationally, made abject overtures to the Congress loaders in gaol which wore promptly repudiated."

We had a Round Table Conference here, and British politicians sat at the feet of these Indian delegates, and, because they were all politicians, they learned to like each other, and they began to think that they really represented India. As a matter of fact, they were only the nominees of the Viceroy. After that Round Table Conference when the delegates went back, the Viceroy once more entered into negotiations with Gandhi who is responsible more than any other man for all the disorders of the last ten years. Gandhi was called from prison, and the representative of the King was in daily conclave with him, and then the agreement came out. What did the great Moslem community think of those conversations? One of them, who is a member of one of the legislative council in India, wrote a letter in these terms:

"The Hindu is flushed with victory. He dictates to a hopelessly invertebrate Viceroy, who is honoured for his goodness, instead of being impeached for losing India."

Then the news came that an agreement had been reached, and there was great jubilation among all the leading parties in India. One of them said that a miracle had happened, and many Members of this House telegraphed their congratulations to the Viceroy. The Viceroy replied that we were not yet out of the wood, and that there were many difficulties ahead although he said there is no doubt that the atmosphere is much sweeter now. That message from the Viceroy was sent on the 19th of March, and on the 25th of March the massacres at Cawnpore began. I will not refer to the historical researches of the hon. Member for Oxford University (Sir C. Oman), but I should like to mention that at Cawnpore in 1857 250 Britishers defended 375 British women and children until they could hold out no longer. After losing a large number of men from disease and shooting, at length they surrendered under a promise of safe conduct, but no sooner had they surrendered than the rebel guns were turned on them, and they were all massacred. That is a page of Indian history which we do not want to look back upon except to admire the remarkable bravery of that handful of British soldiers. The Chairman of the Congress Reception Committee at Cawnpore said:

"Cawnpore played an important part in 1857, and Cawnpore will not be behind this time."

Eleven months after that there was another massacre at Cawnpore. There is no doubt that there was a movement against Government policy and our prestige, and we never interfered as we ought to have done. Though the House is familiar with the details of Cawnpore, I would like to read a letter from a European in that City It is dated the 29th March, towards the end of the riots. He writes:

"Of course you must be very anxious to know what is happening here—the worst that has ever happened since the Mutiny. Mohammedans and Hindus have been butchering each other—women and children burned alive, throats cut, people half dead thrown down the sewers; night and day, shooting, burning, killing. No servants; no meals, bread, or foodstuffs of any sort. We cannot move out of the place. I heard that every shop-window in the Mall had been smashed. If only the Government"—

and here comes an epithet, which although I agree with it, I cannot mention now, because if I did I should be called to order—

"If only the Government would do something! But they say it is not serious enough for martial law. I wonder when they will do something. Even the natives are asking for martial law but our milksop of a collector is just an old woman. So far they have loft the Europeans alone, but, with the inflammatory speeches that Lal Nehru made at Calcutta, when he practically told them to kill us and follow Bhagat Singh's example, we are off the beaten track, and sleep with a revolver and shotgun near us."

Do you know the writer of that letter? Can you vouch for it?

Yes. Cawnpore is the largest manufacturing city in Northern India. Many of us have slept with guns and revolvers by our sides. I have done it on the higher frontiers in India. But that is in the day's work. I slept in the Embassy at Petrograd, after the first revolution, with a rifle at my side. No one complains of that. One expects that on the frontier. But, in a manufacturing city in the heart of British India, what is to be thought of a Government which allows things to get to that pass? Here is a man and his family sleeping and living in terror of their lives from a crowd who may kill them at any moment.

What is the cause of all this? I will quote from the evidence—we have not the whole of the evidence—of Mr. Gavin Jones, who was a delegate to the Round Table Conference. He was a resident of Cawnpore, and was there at the time of the riots, being managing director of a chemical company there, in his evidence he said that the tension between the Moslem and Hindu communities had become more and more strained after each hartal. The police had difficulty in dealing with civil disobedience, being obliged by strict orders to deal leniently with pickets, and the authority of the police was thus undermined. The attitude of lawlessness among followers of Congress, and of resentment by Moslems, was aggravated by the prolonged conversations with Gandhi at Delhi, which enhanced the prestige of the Congress, and correspondingly depressed Moslems and other minority communities. The witness traced the root cause of the outbreak to the Central Government's conciliatory attitude towards provocative Congress activities which were demoralising administration.

After Cawnpore, I would like to mention Karachi. At Karachi there was the opening of what are called the Lloyd Steps, really a new wharf. The Governor of Bombay came down to open those steps, and the British officers and their wives were invited—indeed, practically ordered—to attend the demonstration. After the ceremony, the Governor's car went rapidly away, and, as the others were going away in slow procession, a large number of people wearing Gandhi caps crowded in on them and started spitting at them, throwing mud, and insulting them. I have been told that British officers in uniform were dripping with spittle from these people. I have raised the question in this House, and the right hon. Gentleman said that I had not got the facts right. A gentleman who was present at Karachi on that occasion has written to me since, saying that in many particulars the reply of the right hon. Gentleman was not accurate. He says that to begin with there was full warning of this occurrence, that the attitude of the Congress people when they were going down to the opening was very marked in its hostility, and that it was untrue to say that it was a narrow space—there is a wide open space, where the police, if they had been properly handled and if proper preparations had been made, could have controlled the situation. What can the prestige of Great. Britain have fallen to in India in the last two years when things of this sort are allowed to happen? I contend that in the last two years we have lost all the prestige that we had gained in the preceding 150 years.

What do you suggest?

There will be time enough to deal with that; I should not be in Order in doing so now. Three reasons have been given why our prestige has gone down. The first is, that it was due to the Japanese beating the Russians in 1904 and 1905; the second is, that Indian troops were employed against white troops in the Great War; and, thirdly, it is attributed to the cinema. I served in India for several years after the Japanese War, and I do not believe that that has had the slightest effect. The Russians were always looked down upon by the Indian troops. Whether they are right or wrong in that is another question, but it is a fact. The question of the cinema is purely a question of the Viceroy's ordinance. If the cinema were doing harm to our prestige it ought to be controlled. I contend that these doings at Lahore, Peshawar. Chanderanagore, Cawnpore and Karachi have done far more harm to our prestige than anything that has been done by cinema performances in India, or any victory in the Japanese War, or Indian troops having been seen fighting in France. If anything, the mere fact of our troops in France having been seen by Indian troops has added to our prestige in India.

There is another question to which I desire to refer, and that is the incitement to murder which is going on in India to-day. I put down a question to the right hon. Gentleman about this matter last month, asking if anything had been done to put a stop to incitements to murder on the platform and in the Press. His reply, in effect, was that incitement to murder is dealt with under the Indian Penal Code, and action is taken when necessary under its provisions, and that the Government are fully alive to their responsibility for the safety of the people. That is a very poor satisfaction to the relatives of those who have been murdered in India recently. What help is it to the husband of Mrs. Curtis, who was hacked to pieces at Lahore? What help is it to the relatives of Colonel Simpson, who was shot in his office at Calcutta; or to the widow of Judge Garlick, who was murdered only the other day; or to the mother of Lieut. Hext, who was stabbed in the train. The murderers of these people, if they are caught, and no doubt they will be caught, will be hanged undoubtedly, but are they the real people to blame? The real people to blame are the agitators who incited these people, and the Government that allows that agitation to be carried on.

The Government has shut its eyes to this incitement to murder. What is the glorification of convicted murderers who are executed but an incitement to weak-minded people to go and do likewise? Take the case of that poor young policeman, Mr. Saunders, who was foully murdered at Lahore? It was four o'clock on the afternoon of the 17th December, 1928. This boy left his office, having finished his work for the day, as hundreds of boys all over India were doing at about the same time. He got on his motor-cycle and went slowly down the street. One of these murderers gave a signal to a second, Shrivram Rajguru, who edged up close to Mr. Saunders and shot him with his revolver. He fell with one leg under his motor-bicycle, and, as he was lying there, Bhagat Singh, the third murderer, came up and emptied his revolver into his body. That man has been made a hero throughout India. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman might not interrupt me. When I have finished my speech, no doubt he will reply to everything I have said. The Nationalist Party in the Legislative Assembly walked out in memory of Bhagat Singh after he had been executed. When Colonel Simpson was shot in Calcutta, the Municipal Council of Calcutta adjourned as a mark of respect to his murderer.

When that sort of thing is going on, I would ask the right hon. Gentleman, what is he going to do—what steps is he going to take to protect our people in India? I do not speak so much of my friends and comrades on the frontier. Soldiers are out for risk. It is our life. But what about civilians in isolated districts all over India? I have read a letter from Cawnpore, which is a big City with a whole regiment of 900 rifles, but what about a district magistrate in a village, probably without a European near? Think of his situation. Think of the feelings of his people in this country. Can the right hon. Gentleman take some real step to protect these people who are doing their duty and who are in the firing line? They may be small people to the Viceroy or to the Secretary of State. He is only dimly aware of their presence. But they are trying to carry out an impossible policy. I implore him to do something to protect them and to save their lives. The great Disraeli in the last speech he made in the House of Lords before his death said:

"The keys of India are in England. The majesty of sovereignty, the spirit and the vigour of your Parliament, the illimitable resources and the ingenuity and determination of your people—these are the keys of India."

If this Parliament lacks vigour, or lacks spirit, our only recourse is to the people of this country, and we hope some solution of this problem may be found in their determination which will be of real lasting benefit to India.

We have had two speeches from that side of the House which consisted partly of historical muck-rakings and garbled accounts of disastrous happenings in the East and partly of the picking out of incidents of the present time which, in view of the size of the country and the huge number of its inhabitants, are insignificant. On that they have built up a case of destructive criticism and abuse of the Government, both in India and here, and they have abused the man on the spot and read out insulting remarks about him in a perfectly disgraceful way. The hon. and gallant Gentleman, who has served His Majesty in India, read out a letter in which a collector who was trying to do his best, who was in the firing line, to use his own words, was described as a milksop because he did not turn out the troops and fire indiscriminately into a raging mob. We have not had one constructive suggestion as to what my right hon. Friend should do. The hon. and gallant Gentleman wound up by recounting the atrocious murder of Mr. Saunders, which everyone deplores. When did that take place? Was it the result of two years' rule by the present administration? It took place in 1928, after nearly four and a-half years of Conservative rule.

The whole point of my -argument was not so much the brutality of the murder as the fact that Bhagat Singh had been raised to the position of a martyr, and that was leading to further murders.

The Conservative Government was in office for seven or eight months after that murder. In any case, the whole, case made out by the right hon. Gentleman, the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill), and those on that side who support him, is that, before we came into office, India was peaceful, happy and contented with nothing ever happening at all, whereas we have had the terrible events quoted by the hon. Member for Oxford University (Sir C. Oman). We have had a long story of massacres and terrible happenings at Cawnpore and elsewhere under the present Government. We have had two years in which to try to put right the mistakes—and there have been many blunders in spite of many good points in our administration in India—of 150 years of responsibility by the two older parties. We are like a man who inherits an estate in an embarrassed condition and has to do his best to put things right, and the former tenants, who have been turned out for mismanaging their farms, are all the time criticising, hampering and trying to trip him up. There has not been one constructive suggestion from the two hon. Members who have spoken. They have simply used the unfortunate differences between Moslem and Hindu to attempt to put back the settlement that we are working for.

I would ask the House to have a sense of proportion when they discuss this question. India is not the only country where there are religious differences. My right hon. Friend was taking part in the Round Table Conference in the Minorities Sub-Committee, discussing this very communal question, when the Government received its worst defeat in the House, at the hands partly of its own supporters, on the British communal question over the Education Bill. You have had very serious riots in Liverpool and other Cities in the last few years over our own communal question. We have enjoyed democratic government for 800 years. India is only at the beginning of democratic developments. The hon. and gallant Gentleman referred to certain happenings in Cashmire. There you have the case of a great State nearly as large as Franco, the great majority of whose inhabitants are hill Mohammedans and therefore belonging to a fighting race. The ruling house is Hindu. I believe it is the first trouble they have had in Cashmire of this nature for 50 years. It was put down. There have been some very minor communal disturbances in some of the smaller Indian States, but in practically all cases there has been complete immunity from trouble.

The reason, of course, is not far to seek. You have in the Indian States a government, whether we altogether approve of its composition or not, which is accepted by the people themselves. It is their own government from their own stock. You have a Government based on the people's will. The trouble in British India is that we are losing touch with popular support. It is all very well for the hon. and gallant Gentleman to talk about what Generals Lawrence or Nicholson would have done. Things are not as they were then. You have had 70 years of very considerable education of the middle class in India, and a knowledge of English has opened out the whole literature of liberty and nationalism to them. We have been in the past great antagonists of Imperialism. We fought against Imperialism in Europe hundreds of years ago. We had to fight our own civil war for the liberties which we are to-day enjoying in this House, which the hon. Member for Oxford University has abused, and you cannot expect India not to have learnt the lesson.

The question now is to get some form of government in India which is responsible to popular will and based upon the people's desire of Government. The hon. Member for Oxford University and the hon. and gallant Member for Wycombe (Sir A. Knox) must remember that soldiers are all very well in administering martial law for a certain time, but sooner or later the civil power has to take charge. We have to get a system of government in India which is based upon the respect for law and order by the nationals of India. This is the great subject which is going to be further explored in five or six weeks' time. When the hon. Gentleman opposite talks about the sacrifices we have made or the risks we have run in order to get the extremists of Congress to the Round Table Conference he is talking utter nonsense. The extremists are not coming to London at all. We will have the moderate sections of the Congress represented. There is a very strong moderate section in the Congress, especially if it is given a chance and public opinion is not too much inflamed by a section of the Conservative party, and which, I am very glad to say, as far as one knows, is coming here, I hope, with excellent results. Hon. Gentlemen opposite are going to make it almost impossible to hope for any outcome at all from these deliberations if the country is led by them, and the position will be worse if Parliament listens to the case put forward by them.

I want to address my right hon. Friend on one particular point. I hope that during the Recess, when he has a little more time and is freed from the weekly badgering from our die-hard Friends opposite, he will look into certain questions of administration in India, particularly with regard to the future of defence and with regard to the army in particular. I have only seen what has appeared in the Press, and, as far as I can make out from the right hon. Gentleman, that is all that he has seen, but I ask the right hon. Gentleman to realise that the proposals which have so far emerged from the so-called Sandhurst Committee in looking into the question of practical steps following up the work of the Round Table Conference are altogether inadequate. What is it desired to do? It is absolutely essential—and it is no use burking the fact—to create an army in India that will guard the frontier, in the first place, and, secondly, will maintain order on the plains, and which can be used in cases of further Cawnpores. That army must be an Indian army under Indian officers, and the sooner it is raised the better. There are holding King's Commissions in the Indian Army, according to an answer given by my right hon. Friend, some 3,000 officers of whom, I think, 120 are Indians. I am not talking about officers holding Viceroy's Commissions. On 22nd April of this year my right hon. Friend told me that there were 114 of such Indian officers at the end of March, and 39 untrained. I then asked him what was the annual wastage of officers in the Indian Army. I am not talking about the 60,000 British troops, but the 120 units of the Indian Army. The annual wastage of officers by retirement, death, and so on, is 120 a year.

The Sandhurst Committee proposes to have an annual intake of 60 Indian officers. That will not even make up the annual wastage. It will take, at that rate, 70 years to Indianise the present army in India, and, supposing we double the figure and make it equal to the present wastage of 120 a year, it will take 35 years to Indianise the army. I most respectfully, and in a most friendly way, represent to my right hon. Friend that there will have to be a different policy. We shall be judged very largely by those who are our friends in India, and want to help us, and to stay within the Empire, by the way we tackle this problem. The great landowning class, the peasantry referred to by the hon. and gallant Gentleman, and I believe, the great majority of working men in India, certainly a great number of Mohammedans, the Sheikhs most certainly, the great Indian Rulers, the Indian princes, are those who, while not wishing to stand in the way of the orderly advance of India along the road we in this country have followed, wish to work with us in this tremendous change, which is, I believe, the greatest experiment that has ever been attempted in the world, far greater than what was done in South Africa or in Ireland. It is the greatest attempt that has ever been made, and the change must lake place in an orderly way. India should have a great national army, not of Englishmen, who would be mercenaries, but of their own troops under their own officers.

We shall be judged by the way we tackle the matter. If we go about it in the way at present suggested, with elaborate colleges and curriculum, and apparently instruction tin English, and that sort of thing, taking in officers at the rate of 30 or 60 or even 100 a year, it will be thought that we only pay lip-service to our great ideals and to the policy of the Labour party, and that actually we are trifling with the subject of India's future Government. I suggest to my right hon. Friend that no time should be lost in this matter. I know that from his previous speeches he is fully alive to this question. He has had two years. We have not yet had one college established in India for the training of Indian gentlemen to hold His Majesty's Commission in the army. It is absolutely essential that we should have, not one college, but several colleges, in the North, South, East and West of India. It is absurd to imitate Woolwich, Sandhurst, Dartmouth or Cranbrook in setting up those colleges. The conditions are absolutely different in India. If you are Indianising the army, for Heaven's sake Indianise the training.

There are plenty of Indian officers in the armies of the Indian States. If anyone chooses to jeer at those troops—I have heard them spoken of lightly—I would refer him to the published remarks of Field-Marshal Sir William Birdwood, whose experience of India is absolutely unrivalled and whose achievements as a soldier cannot be praised too highly. I advise anyone who thinks lightly of the Indian State troops to read the published remarks of Sir William Birdwood in which he speaks most highly of the way they train the troops, their general bearing, discipline, and devotion and loyalty to the Service.

It is the fashion among certain professional officers of the British army to pretend that you can never Indianise the Indian army. I am afraid that it will be made an excuse by the die-hard section of the party opposite to prevent India from getting her just deserts. Therefore, we shall really have to tackle this matter as an emergency question. When we needed officers for our own Army in the War we did not set up elaborate Sandhursts and Woolwichs. We took them and trained them and sent them to the front. We got the right material, and they did extremely well. All this complicated training is quite unnecessary. What is the alternative? We are running an appalling risk. We may not be able to hold on to India. I believe that the next great eruption in India, if we have not prepared the ground, will be a repetition of what has happened in China. We may not be able to survive the next outbreak and may have to improvise another Government in a hurry. We do not wish to have our own troops to serve there as mere mercenaries. There is the danger of independent Tuchims setting themselves up, with their private armies, and with general anarchy and chaos as a result of our handing over power without proper preparation. That is what I am thinking of. I do not take too seriously the attempts of the King Canutes opposite who are trying to prevent the tide coming in. I want to see that, when the tide comes in, we are on the high and dry land of a strong Indian Government, and that can only be done if there is a force that can keep order within the frontiers of India.

That force must be drawn from India's sons. There is any amount of excellent material, if you only look for it in the right place. All the talk about not being able to get one caste to serve alongside another, and of Mohammedans not being willing to serve with Hindus is utter bunkum. Indian leaders have performed some of the finest military feats in the history of India. It is perfectly absurd to suppose that, because we have ruled in India for 150 years, all the martial virtues have passed away from the inhabitants of India. The matter has to be tackled in the way that we tackled the same problems in our own country during the War. There is no time to be lost. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for India has, in my humble judgment, about seven or eight years in which to create an Indianised army. He has had two years so far to do it, and he may have a few more months, or perhaps years, to lay the foundation. We must have a good foundation; at present, we have not yet passed the committee stage.

The hon. and gallant Gentleman who has just spoken said that the Secretary of State for India was leaving the House of Commons in order to enjoy a little more leisure—

I did not say that, I said "a little more time for his administrative duties."

Would the hon. and gallant Gentleman please allow me to finish my sentence? I was going to say, "a little more leisure from Parliamentary Questions and speeches." I am sure that that will be some little consolation to the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State. I would like him to leave this House this afternoon with this one thought uppermost in his mind, that the condition of affairs in Lancashire is just as serious as ever it has been in the past 12 months, and that the great depression in the cotton industry is still largely due to the existing situation in India. A few weeks ago the Secretary of State for India gave me figures of our exports to India, and of the exports of Japan to India. Our exports certainly showed an improvement, as compared with the Japanese exports, and I was encouraged to hope, as I believe certain of my hon. Friends were, that this indicated an actual increase in our own exports to British India. Imagine our disappointment a few days later, on the publication by the Board of Trade of the trade and navigation returns! In those returns I found that the general figures for the export of British cotton goods to India wore actually less than the figures for May.

In April of this year, we exported to India 39,195,000 square yards of cloth. In May, a drop is shown to 36,132,000 square yards, and in June there is a still further decrease, although not so large, to 36,076,000 square yards. If we consider the figures for the first six months of this year, as compared with the first six months of the two preceding years, we see clearly how alarming the situation is. From January to June, 1929—I only give round figures here—we exported to India from Lancashire 727,000,000 square yards; in 1930, that had dropped to 597,000,000 square yards, and this year we have only exported 211,000,000 square yards, during the corresponding period.

The boycott of goods in India is supposed now to be economic in character. I have already told the Secretary of State that I fail to see the difference between a political boycott, and an economic boycott which is worked by a political organisation. I think it is clear now to the right hon. Gentleman that the picketing has been by no means peaceful and that there have been breaches of the Irwin-Gandhi agreement. I asked a question a few days ago of the Secretary of State, as to whether his attention had been called to the threat of bloodshed and incendiarism made by the Association for Freedom's Battle, against the merchants of the Bagerhat district who continued dealing in foreign cloth. The reply I got was:

"I have seen a statement in the Press, and am asking for a report from the Government of India."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 29th July, 1931; col. 2286, Vol. 255.]

I wonder whether the Secretary of State has read the pamphlet which was issued by this organisation? I can only quote from Reuter, who generally reports these matters very accurately. This pamphlet states:

"You have seen the staves of the police besmeared with the blood of volunteers. In connection with the boycott of foreign cloth, the mothers and sisters and the people of Bagerhat have undergone all manner of sufferings and indignities. But still your stony hearts are not melted. We have therefore determined to do away with foreign cloth from Bagerhat. If you do not abstain—"

and I emphasise this—

"from selling foreign cloth, such punishment will he inflicted on you as will horrify the residents of this place and of India. We have no scruples against bloodshed or incendiarism."

Can the right hon. and gallant Gentleman give me the name of the author of the pamphlet?

I am just coming to it. The association is called "The Association for Freedom's Battle," but it is true to say, and I admit this, that the association declares it has no connection with the Congress. It also says that it has no faith in non-violence, which is rather interesting. It is fairly obvious that they have no faith in non-violence, otherwise they would not have published such a pamphlet as that. The right hon. Gentleman said that he is calling for a report with regard to the pamphlet; surely this threat is punishable at law. I will quote, if I may, Section 503 of the Indian Penal Code, where it says:

"Whoever threatens another with an injury to his person, reputation, or property, or to the person or reputation of anyone in whom that person is interested, with intent to cause alarm to that person"—

I will not read the whole of it, but such a person—

"commits criminal intimidation."

I think there is no doubt, and so I maintain, that this is an outrageous threat, which is bound to cause great alarm, and I hope that this association will be dealt with promptly and with the full force of the law. I also hope that, as a result of the investigation which is being carried out at the present time by the Secretary of State for India, that the people who are responsible for this pamphlet will receive the punishment that they deserve.

The secretary of State has repeatedly said that our troubles in Lancashire are due principally to the reduction of purchasing power of the people of India. I will not deny it; I think it is true. At the same time I maintain that that is no excuse for the boycott, which has certainly made matters worse. Whereas in 1913 Lancashire sent to India 3,000,000,000 square yards of cotton piece goods, Japan in 1913 only sent 6,000,000 square yards. In 1923 the amount sent by Lancashire had dropped by half, to 1,500,000,000 square yards, while the amount exported to India by Japan had increased sixtyfold, to 323,000,000 square yards. The decline so far as Lancashire was concerned at that time was obviously due to economic reasons, because the boycott was not in existence. To some extent, therefore, that drop might be attended to by the manufacturers of Lancashire, but the further decline in 1930 to half the exports of 1928, is equally obviously due in part to the boycott, and Lancashire cannot attend to that. It is a political question which can only be dealt with politically by the government of the day.

Responsible Congress leaders have made recent speeches which have certainly aggravated the situation. A recent pledge which was produced by the working committee of Congress sought to force dealers to agree not to sell foreign cloth. It is futile for the Secretary of State to say that so long as there is no discrimination against British goods the Indians have a right to boycott in the economic interests of India. I agree that if there is no discrimination, we in Lancashire would certainly have a very much weaker case than we have at the present time, but I state emphatically that there is discrimination and there always has been discrimination against Lancashire goods ever since the boycott began. I have in my possession a piece of cloth, which is called a dhooty, and on the selvidge of that cloth are woven the words, all the way round; "Boycott British Goods", not "Boycott foreign goods." I do not know—I must be perfectly honest—the date of the manufacture of that dhooty, but I know that it was manufactured in Bombay. It has only recently come into my hands, and I have reason to suppose that cloth with that marking is still in circulation, is still in stock, and is still being sold. I would ask the Secretary of State if he would be good enough to make inquiries in India as to whether or not this is true and that this cloth is still being sold, because if so it is a clear breach of the Irwin-Gandhi agreement. In the meantime, that dhooty is interesting as a definite evidence that the boycott all along has been, and still is, if my information is correct, discriminatory against British goods, and also that it is an indication of the advantage that the Indian mill-owners are taking of the activities of Congress.

The secretary of State knows that intimidation is still taking place in India. It may have declined; I hope it has, but is obvious that intimidation does still take place. In a recent publication, "The India Trade Review," I find this statement:

"Although conditions in India remain very unsatisfactory, there have been rather fewer reports of disturbances, and, on the whole, the political outlook seems to he a little brighter."

I was very glad to read those words, but the words which follow are certainly rather alarming:

"The boycott of foreign goods, however, is still effective, and dealers are afraid to purchase."

Cannot the Government of India, I ask this in all sincerity, devise some means of giving to the merchants in India that confidence which will enable them to purchase our goods, without fear of the consequences.

There is only one further matter that I desire to raise. At Question Time yesterday I asked a supplementary question, which you quite rightly ruled out of order, Mr. Speaker, whether the right hon. Gentleman, if and when Mr. Gandhi comes to England, would take Mr. Gandhi on a personally conducted tour of the cotton districts of Lancashire. I did not suggest that as a joke. I would like Mr. Gandhi to see the poverty which his action is creating in Lancashire. For what purpose is it being created? I am told, and I believe it to be right, that Mr. Gandhi's desire is to foster what are known as the village industries of India. It is his great ambition to get the people in the country districts more prosperous by manufacturing in their own houses and their huts goods which Mr. Gandhi believes are being imported into India at the present time, and are preventing those villagers from earning a living. His whole desire is, apparently, to foster the village industries, but I maintain that that is not the effect of the action he is taking. The villagers spin and weave very rough and very crude cloth, so rough, that I doubt very much whether it could be manufactured in Lancashire with the machinery which we have at the present time. In the main therefore it is true to say that we do not in Lancashire compete with the village industries of India. The cloth that we make in Lancashire is not cloth of the kind made by these villagers.

If there is competition we compete not with the villagers but mainly with the mills of Bombay and other large centres. When our Lancashire goods are kept out of India it is not the villagers in India who prosper as a consequence, but the mill-owners in the cities and towns who make their profits, in the (main, out of most deplorable conditions of labour which would never for one moment be tolerated in Lancashire. Therefore, I suggest, quite sincerely, that if Mr. Gandhi does come to this country he should visit Lancashire and that he should see the pitiable conditions existing in the towns of Lancashire. They are well known to the hon. Member for Rochdale (Mr. Kelly), who represents a town where there has been a great deal of suffering. I would suggest that Mr. Gandhi should realise our poverty and that that poverty is creating additional wealth for wealthy people in India and is not doing what he imagines it is doing, namely, helping the industries in the small villages of India. If Mr. Gandhi is sincere in his desire in regard to the village industries, and I have no reason to suppose that he is not, and if it is his desire to look after the welfare of the village industries, he will assist and not hinder the trade of this country.

Mr. Gandhi is supposed to be, and I believe he is, a very religious person. If he is the religious man we believe him to be, he must surely see that in the interests of humanity it is far better that the people of Lancashire should work under decent conditions rather than that they should starve in order to assist not the village industries of India but to assist in the making of large profits under a system of sweated labour.

I want to conclude on another note. The right hon. Gentleman when replying to a question the other day insinuated that I was taking advantage of the existing situation in Lancashire in order to obtain party capital. I do not know whether I can convince him that that is not true, but I should like to assure him that the prosperity and happiness of the workers in Lancashire means a great deal more to me and to any representative of a Lancashire seat than our own personal success at the poll. We live amongst them and we know their sufferings, which in the main are endured in silence, and I ask the Secretary of State also to consider the interests of these people. I can assure him that if he does he will find that they are worthy of the deepest sympathy he can afford to them.

In the first place, I should like to apologise to the hon. Member for Oxford University (Sir C. Oman) for my absence at the beginning of the Debate. It was due to the fact that a meeting of the Council of India was fixed for this morning, but as soon as I heard that the Debate had commenced I came down to the House and I was fortunate to hear most of the speech of the hon. Member. Let me first deal with what is fresh in our minds, and that is the speech of the right hon. Member for Chorley (Mr. Hacking). As regards the leaflet I do not know how much importance to attach to it. It is obviously an inflammatory leaflet and I should imagine that it is actionable. Who issued it? I do not know. They themselves say it is not Congress. I have asked for a report, in deference to the wishes of the right hon. Member and I will let him have the information as soon as I get it, but at the same time I think it is a matter which he can confidently leave to the local government to deal with under the ordinary law. There is nothing in the conversations between Lord Irwin and Mr. Gandhi which affects the operation of the ordinary law in India. That is frequently misunderstood. There is nothing in the conversations which affects the validity or the operation of the ordinary law in India.

With regard to his remarks about Lancashire and the cotton trade, I should like to congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on the note which he struck. It is a very helpful note. It is not for me to outline any programme for Mr. Gandhi, or any other distinguished Indian leader who may come to this country for the Round Table Conference, but anything which can inform them of the conditions in Lancashire, and anything which can inform us more of the poverty and conditions in India, must be all to the good, and such plans would have the good will of all who desire to see the prosperity of India and Lancashire. How much of the reduction in the purchases of Lancashire goods is due to the boycott and how much is due to political causes I do not know, but if the right hon. Gentleman will give me the piece of cloth with its discriminating motto I will bring it to the notice of the Government of Bombay. I think it is a piece of cloth which was manufactured under conditions which existed before any agreement was made.

Generally speaking, I think we can claim, although I would not say that pressure is not brought to bear of a subtle kind, that law breaking has stopped. There is no doubt that pressure of one kind or another exists, and that I cannot pretend to deny. How it is to be handled I do not know and I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman can give me any definite suggestion on that point. The Government's policy in this matter is that by fostering a spirit of good will between the two we shall in time get rid of that sort of temper, and in the market appropriate to us, on account of the better quality of our goods, we ought to be able successfully to compete with other external supplies. I know that the figures are disappointing, but I believe that the ill feeling is disappearing and on that we must base hopes, which we all share, of seeing a restoration of our own trade.

I do not intend to detain the House at any length on a day when our minds are set on other things, but I should like to refer to the two speeches which have been made, the historical speech of the hon Member for Oxford University and the well-informed and sincere speech of the hon. and gallant Member for Wycombe (Sir A. Knox). I am not here to say that we have not had great trouble, that there have not been fatalities and disasters—the word "disaster" may perhaps be too strong—but on the whole the effort that we are making to restore good will by methods of discussion and co-operation are being successful. It was a very risky thing to have six months interval between the adjournment of the Round Table Conference and its reassembly in September, but it could not be helped, circumstances made it imperative that there should be this interval, but we are nearly at the end of it and everything promises well for the reassembly of the Conference.

There are communal difficulties we know, but I would suggest to hon. Members, who are well informed on the historical and present day aspects of these things, that little good can come by exhibiting these differences here or by making an attack on one religion and another. Surely the one good purpose we can serve in this matter is to try and harmonise and atone these differences which exist rather than to draw attention to them, and to attempt to reproduce in this House the sort of bitterness which exists in some quarters amongst the communities in India. I do not intend to dwell upon that aspect of the matter, except to say that there is not on the part of the Government the least intention that any of these minorities should suffer in any settlement that is made. Finally, I want to say this one word. When the hon. and gallant Member for Wycombe spoke about the safety of the lives of our officers he struck a responsive chord in my heart. I have met a number of these men, honest, frank, earnest and sympathetic men, and apart from our general duty we have a particular duty with regard to their safety which I feel as much as the hon. and gallant Member himself.

The fact is, as anyone can perceive from the tone of the speeches and the resolutions passed in India, that public imagination is in a very bad state. I could quote honourable exceptions where men have stood up and said roundly that this sort of thing should be condemned, but there is the fact that there is a reluctance to condemn. I do not know how you are going to handle that. It is a symptom of a frame of mind which is dangerous. The only general way to handle it is to attempt to restore good relations between the people concerned, and that we are striving to do. The hon. and gallant Member may say "that is your general policy, I disagree with it, but what are you doing in individual cases to protect these men?" To that question he is entitled to have an answer. I do not know whether the House realizes that in Bengal, where Mr. Garlick was assassinated the other day, more rigorous powers reside in the hands of the Government than in any other part of India, and than would be tolerated for one moment in this country.

In 1925 the Bengal Criminal Law Amendment Act was passed for five years. It expired in April 1930. I did not see my way to take the necessary steps to renew it because I instinctively abhor powers of this kind and was anxious to see if we could do without them. A few days after it had lapsed—it became quite obvious that, harsh as these powers arc, they must be restored and by ordinance they were restored in April 1930. Then I said that, inasmuch as these powers in the judgment of reasonable men are necessary to be in the hands of the Government in view of the terrorism in Bengal—I am not speaking of Congress but of the terrorist movement—surely the Bengal Legislative Council will understand it quite as well as I can. Accordingly I asked the Governor to bring a Bill before the Council and to see if he could not get their approval. He did so, and he did get their approval.

So, by the action of the Bengal Legislative Council itself, there exists to-day in Bengal for five years this Bengal Criminal Law Amendment Act. In the first place it sets up courts of special commissioners to try terrorists under certain sections of the Indian penal code. The courts can pass any sentence, subject to appeal, in the case of death sentences, to the higher court. What is much more formidable is the power to make orders controlling the movements or detailing without trial persons suspected of various offences under sections of the Indian penal code. Those cases are examined by two judges in secret. These are very formidable powers. They are repulsive to me, as I am sure they must be to every Member of this House. They are powers which have been taken under the Act of the Bengal Legislative Council itself, the elective council of the Province. Therefore, when the hon. and gallant Gentleman asked me whether I am willing to give such powers as are necessary to protect the lives of our own people who are discharging their public duty, I am entitled to say that under this Act they have a weapon about as sharp as anything that can possibly be devised.

The hon. and gallant Gentleman may say "Do you operate it?" My reply is that there have been 576 persons arrested, and that at the present time there are nearly 400, actually 374 persons, detained under the Act. I do not rejoice in that at all, but I say that is absolves my conscience. We have a large police force in Bengal and have given additional police, as we did last year, and when the Bengal Council itself has taken powers of this terrible and drastic kind, and when the powers are being operated, at least I can claim that this deplorable incident was not due to any lack of precautions on the part of the Government. I specially wanted to make that point, so that the House would understand that India is not sinking into a state of inoperation of the law. The Irwin-Gandhi Agreement did not affect the ordinary law in the least. What we are striving to do, and I hope will do successfully, is to get a better atmosphere and a better spirit, and I believe the hon. and gallant Gentleman himself will admit that if it were possible to restore relations of good will we might hope at the coming Conference to see the beginning of a new era in the relations between ourselves and India.

I wish to ask a question with reference to the situation in Burma, as to which there is considerable anxiety. Recently the names of members of the Federal Structure Committee in India have been announced. There is no representative of Burma on that Committee, because the idea is that Burma is to have a constitution of its own. But the Burmese people are naturally inclined to ask when their Committee is to be appointed. They are looking forward anxiously to a statement on that subject. In this matter we have the support of the moderate element in Burma, who are anxious to co-operate with us and fully believe that we intend to carry out the promises that we have made. But we have not yet definitely stated that Burma is to be separated from India, although that is generally understood. On the other hand, there are certain extremists in Burma who take the line that England cannot be trusted, that we do not intend to carry out our word. Any delay in the announcement is simply playing into their hands. The situation in Burma is wholly different from that in India. The races are different, there are no communal troubles, and there is great good will towards this country. It would be a great pity if through any lack of action in this country, or any unnecessary delay, there arose misunderstandings and suspicions in Burma—

I had hoped to make to day an announcement that would gratify the hon. Member, but it must be delayed for a few days.

I put on the Order Paper a number of questions to which the Secretary of State has given no answer that could reasonably be considered as satisfactory. These hush-hush tactics about Indian policy seem to be absurd. They mislead the public and show to the Indian agitators that they are very well represented not only in India but in this House. But if the Secretary of State refuses to read out to the House the number of assassinations or attempted assassinations of British officials in India, I shall do it for him now, because I think it is a matter of the most urgent public importance. The Secretary of State has sent me a list of British officials who have been murdered or whose lives have been threatened in India, and when one looks through the fist the full shame of our policy in the last two years must come home to us. Let me give a few extracts. In April, 1931, Mr. J. Peddie was murdered in India. He was the district magistrate at Midnapore. In February, 1931, Capt. IT. A. Barnes, Assistant Commissioner, was murdered. On December 9th, 1930, Captain P. W. McClenaghan was shot. So I could go on reading the immense list. I was particularly anxious that the Secretary of State should to-day read that list, because it would have brought home to the public the seriousness of the Indian Government's absolute abnegation of all sense of responsibility in regard to law and order in India. But we cannot leave it at that.

Another question arises, and that is the farce of this whole Gandhi-Irwin Pact. During the last two days two important members of the late Round Table Conference, one an eminent Moslem and the other Mr. Gavin Jones, have publicly declared that the pact is an absurdity; that the British Government and the Government of India are attempting to carry it out, but that Congress treats it with the greatest disrespect. The "Statesman," a most eminent newspaper in India which has continually attacked hon. Members of this House for raising questions of importance to India, says now that it is sorry that it ever recommended the acceptance of the Gandhi-Irwin pact which has proved a complete farce. [I hope I can have the right hon. Gentleman's attention. I know that he is a great defender of the pact, and I hope he will listen to my remarks, though I cannot compel him to do so, if he will not do so out of courtesy.] As I have already said, two of the delegates to the last session of the Conference have openly declared that the pact is a farce, but we have that on even greater authority, the authority of Mr. Gandhi, who in a public speech said that the pact was being broken by his own Congress supporters. A number of his followers have gloried in their abuse of the pact, and yet the Government continue to support it, though it is not being kept in any respect on the Congress side and though it restrains the proper administration of law and order in India.

As I listened to the speech of the hon. Member for Oxford University (Sir C. Oman) I wondered at all the stories about Mr. Gandhi's great objection to violence. Mr. Gandhi may claim to be a non-violent person, but his whole attitude is rooted in the most ferocious form of violence. The hon. Member for Oxford University quoted a speech in which Mr. Gandhi said that either the Moslems or the Hindu community in India might have to be wiped out in order to bring peace; that the solution might in the end mean either that the whole Moslem community of 70,000 people should be wiped off the earth, or that the vast Hindu community should be subjected to that abattoir process. When we consider a speech of that kind from the chief apostle of non-violence, who can doubt the disingenuous character of the present situation? I maintain that the main cause of the assassination of all the people mentioned in this list of the Secretary of State for India lies in the actions of Mr. Gandhi. A few days after the signature of the pact Mr. Gandhi presided over a conference at Karachi and gave approval to a resolution which glorified a person called Bhagat Singh, a bestial brute who gloried in his murder of a British servant in India. After a long drawn-out trial he was hanged. Yet Mr. Gandhi, knowing that the blood of a British official was on this man's hands, went to Karachi with his hands still covered with the ink of the signature of the Gandhi-Irwin agreement and presided over a Congress conference, and thus gave the greatest encouragement to assassination and murder that could be given by any eminent man. Yet he is the gentleman with whom the Secretary of State wishes to negotiate.

The British Government and the Government of India, in view of circumstances of that sort, ought to put Mr. Gandhi on trial for incitement to murder, but they do no such thing. They invite him to London, and give him the freedom of St. James's Palace. It passes all understanding. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"] I am not commenting on the understanding of the hon. Member opposite. He may himself hold the view that it is a good thing to murder British officials in India, but I do not hold that view, and I say that it passes all understanding why the Government or any English politicians should sit in council with a man who glorifies murder, thereby inciting all the succession of assassinations which have occurred since the signature of the pact.

We had all this about Ireland seven years ago from the hon. Member's Friends. They made the same points.

I see. The hon. and gallant Member wishes to turn India into another Ireland.

Yes, I do.

Now we know the object of the Socialist party. It is that by assassination and by the most brutal form of intimidation, the British Government should be kicked out of India. We have it from the hon. and gallant Member, who boasts of his knowledge of the Indian princes' mentality, and whose photograph appears in the "Tatler" almost every second week, as staying the week-end with one of these potentates.

I am sure that the hon. Member does not want to misrepresent me. I may point out to him that there is a Government in Dublin and that Ireland is extremely peaceful, and much more prosperous than this country.

Yes, having wiped out all the debts that they incurred in the War, Consequently they are certainly much more prosperous, and they have not a Socialist Government. If they had, I am afraid they would be even more poverty stricken than this country. It is a very sad thing to consider this succession of murders and the position of the mothers and wives and other relations of those people who have been murdered. In listening to the apologias occasionally made from the Front Bench, these people may well say to the Government, as I now say, to the face of the Secretary of State "By your defeatism you have largely encouraged these crimes and the disturbance of law and order in India. Even at this pen- ultimate moment, will you not take your courage in your hands and govern firmly, and put an end to these assassinations." I think Members of all parties in the House ought to take the strongest course against these assassins. We ought to feel that the representatives of the British people in India are worthy of some consideration, and that we, their compatriots at home, ought to stand up for them. Some of those who have been the right hon. Gentleman's supporters in India, have already admitted that the agreement is a farce and we ought to demand that it should be denounced without delay. It is a brake on the administration of law and order in India and is an encouragement if not an incitement to the continuance of these violent crimes.

I recently asked a question which you, Mr. Speaker, ruled out of order, quite rightly because of its length, but to which I think we ought to get an answer on this occasion—what is the attitude of the government of India towards the official who does his duty by his contract, if I may so describe it, with the Secretary of State? I take the case of a distinguished civil servant, Mr. Lal Dar, Deputy Commissioner at Rae-Bareli, who was removed from his position because he attempted to enforce the law. This official took his duty seriously and prosecuted a number of persons who were advocating non-payment of rent, but he got no support from the Government to which the right hon. Gentleman belongs. On the contrary, he was thrown out of his post in circumstances of the utmost degradation. His case is an example to Civil servants in India to betray the duty entrusted to their charge. They know now that anything may happen to a civil servant. Mr. Sale, of Cawnpore, was removed from office because he did not show enough strength. Mr. Lal Dar has been removed because he showed too much strength.

When an example to the Civil Service! No wonder that men are inclined to resign from the service. No wonder that youngsters of ability in this country who wish for the opportunity to serve the King in India are saying "We will boycott the Indian civil service because we know that our careers will be Broken by the Secretary of State for India if we attempt to do our duty and that if any occurrence takes place involving bloodshed, that we shall be fixed upon as the victims." These people know that the Government of India and the higher officials will receive commendation for a policy of defeatism, but that the man lower down who, on the one hand, attempts to enforce the law or, on the other hand, takes encouragement by the defeatist example of his superiors, will in either case be crushed. We have this unhappy situation that whatever course the Indian civil servant takes he will be sacrificed by this Socialist Government.

Recruiting for the Indian Civil Service from the Universities is excellent.

I dare say that you, Mr. Speaker, have noticed that when anyone addresses a question to the Government, the Government are immediately defended by the hon. and gallant Member for Hull (Lieut.-Commander Ken-worthy). I cannot help thinking that it is a great pity that with his sense of duty in that respect and his most greedy ambition for office he has not had his eminent services rewarded so far. [HON. MEMBERS: "Withdraw."] I certainly withdraw if it offends the hon. and gallant Member, but I would also say that I would prefer the hon. and gallant Member in the office of Secretary of State for India, because he shows some appreciation of the fact that you ought not to collogue with murderers and reward sedition by invitations to St. James's Palace. It is the colloguing of this Socialist Government with these extremists that is destroying our prestige in India. But if I have offended the hon. and gallant Gentleman, I will withdraw.

The hon. Gentleman's remarks are in extremely bad taste—he will know better when he has been longer in this House—but they only amuse me.

I have not been here as long as the hon. and gallant Member, nor have I been in one part of the House and ratted to another, and if I took his example, I should be ruined, because he has left one party, which he has betrayed, and joined another party, which does not respect him. But I will not indulge in these recriminations, because I have great respect for the hon. and gallant Member's peregrinations. To come back to what is very important from the point of view of maintaining law and order in India, the Secretary of State has invited to England Mr. Gandhi—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"] I hear hon. Members of the Liberal party say "Hear, hear." The leader of the Liberal party is unfortunately away. I believe that he is probably one of the greatest of living statesmen, and that he would say, and say rightly, to any Member of the Liberal party who attempted to cheer a man who has encouraged the murder of British people in India, that such a Member was a very unworthy member of his party. [HON. MEMBEKS: "Hear, hear!"] I do not want the point of view of the Liberal party expressed by hon. Members opposite.

Nor by you!

If it satisfies the hon. Member for East Wolverhampton (Mr. Mander), I will say this, that I am just as good an exponent of the Liberal party's policy as he has been, because—

I would remind the hon. Member that the Question before the House is, "That this House do now adjourn."

I humbly accept your Ruling, but the provocation has been enormous. I would say to the Secretary of State: Does he really believe there is going to be any future in India if he gives recognition to forces which are working for the destruction of British rule? Take the case of Mr. Nehru, who went around India advocating a peasant republic and that British Government should cease at once in India. This gentleman, according to the Secretary of State for India, has been publicly honoured by an interview with the Viceroy. He accepted an invitation to be received by the Viceroy, although he is pledged by his public speeches to the destruction of the King-Emperor's rule in India, and yet this seditionist goes to Government House, at Simla, and is received as an honoured guest. He has been going all over India preaching sedition and at the same time saying, "I have the ear of the Viceroy at any moment, and always the attention of the Secretary of State for India."

When one considers the whole of this situation, it is one of the most melancholy instances of defeatism which has ever occurred in our history. We have had from the Secretary of State to-day an official paper showing how far he has succeeded in maintaining law and order there. We have also had the sad catalogue of murders and attempted murders of gentlemen whose only offence has been that they have tried to do their duty by their Sovereign. They have borne those attacks with little or no belief that if they stood up for their rights the Government would support them. I had a letter only the other day from one of my own constituents, the widow of an official who was murdered in India, asking me what England intended to do and whether this country was going to stand up for her own or simply going to follow Mr. Gandhi's seditionist lead. I do not suppose that the Secretary of State for India will answer that question, because he has done his best to exalt Mr. Gandhi and those Hindus—or I should say those babus—who form Mr. Gandhi's entourage.

There is a great issue at stake. We have received in the House of Commons to-day, for the first time, I suppose, since the Irish question was settled, a long list of people who have died simply because they have attempted to enforce the duty which has been placed in their hands by the right hon. Gentleman and his predecessors. Their kinsmen, and their brethren in the Service, may well re-echo that age-long cry of those who have been sacrificed:

"How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood."

But an appeal to the Secretary of State to defend these faithful servants is a farce. We have tried again and again to bring their fate to his attention, and every time he has refused us information and has clouded his argument with a large dose of mush. Indian questions in this House have been dealt with by him in a spirit of giving no information at all, or if any information is available from other sources it must be either misleading or reflecting on someone. Many of us will leave this House to-day full of doubt and heart-searching as to what may happen in India in the next few months, because we know that we have a Socialist Government in office who care nothing for the interests of British people in India or for the interests of the Indians, but who have exalted Mr. Gandhi and his Hindu extremists and have created more difficulties between Moslems and Hindus than any Government in the last 200 years. We have a Secretary of State for India who openly declares that he hopes at the earliest possible opportunity he may be able to clear out of India altogether and hand over his duties to some local minister.

With that record in front of us, who can doubt that all over the country to-day there is a growing feeling of rage against the right hon. Gentleman and his followers who have done their best to break up the great Empire of India to which they succeeded. When the late Lord Birkenhead left the India Office, he left India comparatively quiet. When Lord Reading, that eminent Liberal, left Delhi, he left India peaceful. The right hon. Gentleman and the instruments who serve him have reversed the process. They have torn up the whole plant by the roots in order to discover if they can improve it, and the only hope that is left—and it is rather a doubtful hope—is that in a short tame we shall get some Ministry that will take the place of the Ministry opposite. [An HON. MEMBER: "You!"] I would not be so bad as some hon. Gentlemen opposite. We want a Ministry that will really govern India, a Secretary of State who will not be filled with an inferiority complex. The right hon. Gentleman has only to meet an Indian to say, "I realise that I cannot govern you." If we do get this change of administration, I hope that we shall get it fairly soon because the only constructive achievement of the Socialist Government so far has been to do their best to sever India from the British Empire. If they are proud of that achievement, their continuance in office is one of the greatest menaces which has ever confronted this wretchedly overburdened island.

I do not speak on this subject as a tourist, or pose, like some persons who are well-known, in the role of "Paget M.P." I want to make a few observations as a plain Englishman who looks at the Indian question from outside without any specialist or expert knowledge, but only from a commonsense and a plain man's point of view. But what appears to me is that we see on every hand a weakening of British rule and a perpetual attempt at all costs to conciliate. In this process of conciliation, the control of law and order has been allowed to slip away. The attitude is taken up that at all costs we must have a successful conference. The result produced among those who come home from India, or write to us from India, those well acquainted with Indian opinion itself, is that the British Raj is going, if it has not gone. Are the Government going to stake everything on the; success of this Conference, and withdraw the British Raj before they have started anything else? That would be a crime to India itself. Not only should we be losing our reputation, besmirching the reputation of government in India, which it is our duty to support, but we should be doing wrong to the people of India themselves.

Until something else is established in India, surely the Government ought to carry on. We have not had one word in this Debate to say that the British Raj is not ended, and that if these conferences and negotiations break down the Raj will have to go on; that meanwhile the Government means to stand firm and to maintain law and order, means to stand by its friends, and will see that those who raise disturbances, whether in mobs or groups or individuals, are punished. We have had no declaration of that kind, either in India or here. The right hon. Gentleman has not given us any statement on behalf of the Government that they are not going to be intimidated, and that although they are anxious to make changes—which I will not discuss or express an opinion upon—they will maintain meanwhile law and order and protect British subjects, whether natives of India or Europeans.

I want to turn to another question. The right hon. Member who spoke from our Front Bench raised the question of the boycott of British cotton in India, and I need not say another word on that subject; but there are other economic questions in India, and I am sur- prised that we had not heard during the last few months or in this Debate one word from the Secretary of State for India on the economic question of India itself. India has its economic difficulties. There has been a very great fall in the power to purchase there. The decline has been as much as 80 per cent. in the last two years. The rupee is less valuable than it was, and that raises questions of great moment. The Indian cultivator is unable to sell his crops and to pay the advances which he has had during the process of cultivation.

India is a silver country and the gold standard has undoubtedly hit the Indian people very hard. The drain of gold into the United States particularly has withdrawn from India the gold necessary to support her silver currency. Are those questions being considered or investigated? I would have liked to put this point before the right hon. Gentleman spoke and to have heard his reply. The Government fixes by law, I believe, the relation of the rupee to the £, and they fix it at 1s. 6d. instead of 1s. 4d. Is that a correct ratio, because it is 12½ per cent. to the disadvantage of India compared with the old ratio of 1s. 4d. Is that matter being considered by anybody in India or in this country? It is astonishing that no attention is being given to this question either here or in India.

No attention is being given to these economic questions in India, which are pressing very hard upon the people, and we are largely responsible for the difficulties in which we find ourselves. I request the attention of the Government to these questions which ought to he dealt with immediately. They have been greatly neglected in the past, and I ask for some assurance that these points will be considered in the future. Meanwhile, people are losing confidence, because the Government are allowing chaos, massacre, murder and all kinds of breaches of the law to occur. British rule is being brought daily into contempt in India, and we see no serious attempt made to deal with these dangers. It is the clear duty of the Government to deal with the facts as they find them. It is the duty of statesmen to deal with facts and leave the theories to others.

The Government are not dealing with Indian questions as statesmen.

There seems to be an impression among bon. Members opposite that you can plant new institutions in Asiatic countries and expect them to fructify. Those who have studied Asiatic and European conditions know that they are quite dissimilar, and you can never successfully plant Western institutions in India or in any Asiatic country. I desire to deal mainly with the difference between the Mohammedans and the Hindus. Arguments have been adduced proving that the prestige of Great Britain in India today is far less than it was two or three years ago. I wish to draw attention to the position of the Moslems question. It appears to me that one charge that can be made against the Government is that they place the Hindu in a predominant position while neglecting the Moslem. To-day the difference between the Moslems and the Hindus has been considerably accentuated by the fact that they consider that they have been treated very unfairly in regard to what has been taking place in India during the last two years. What the Mohammedan thinks appears to be this: "Your government have been worshipping the Hindu wooden idols while they have been neglecting the living Moslem God. Here are we, 80,000,000 people, certainly a minority, but a very large minority, and very little attention is paid to us, while you are elevating your Hindu, in the form of Gandhi, into such a predominant position that, when you are thinking and writing of India, it seems to be Gandhi all the time."

I do not think that Mr. Gandhi is a criminal; I think he is a clever man—the man who turned the late Viceroy round his finger, and who, apparently, has twisted the present Minister round his finger as well. He is probably imbued with some good objects, and, when Lord Irwin—himself a deeply religious man—met him, he probably believed that Mr. Gandhi was a deeply religious man as well, and so he gave him privileges which, one would imagine, a man in Lord Irwin's position would never have offered to a man in Mr. Gandhi's position. One recognises the immense difficulties of governing India. One recognises the diffi- culties which the Secretary of State has to meet. But our charge against the Government is that, if they had met those difficulties with firmness, the position would not be as it is to-day, that is to say, anarchy practically from one end of India to the other. The right hon. Gentleman has stated that the present position is better than the position a year ago—that it is gradually becoming better. We on this side of the House cannot see that. Mr. Gandhi has been elevated to the position of a kind of Krishna of India, and, as long as he occupies that position, he will wield in the minds of the masses of India a power far greater than he is entitled to wield, and his influence upon the progress of our negotiations in connection with the future of Indian government must be greatly in advance of that which he himself is entitled to demand.

Take the position of Congress. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill), speaking in the House in the last Debate on India, charged the Government with offering to the Indian tiger, in the shape of Congress, cat's-meat. I think he was wrong. I think that what the Government have been offering to the Indian tiger is honey—a most unsatisfying food. If they had offered the Indian tiger a hard dog-biscuit on six days in the week, and a little honey on Sunday, the position today in regard to law and order in India would be very much better than it is. I think, also, that the Secretary of State must agree that his optimism with regard to peaceful picketing has proved to be entirely wrong, and that the so-called peaceful picketing in India has been suppressed coercion. That is admitted today by all parties in India, and it was proved from the Front Bench this afternoon by a quotation as to what Congress itself has published in connection with this peaceful picketing.

Civil disobedience, again, is one of the greatest dangers in India to-day and probably will be to-morrow. The Government have not tackled it in the way in which they should have done. They have allowed it to grow. After a certain time, when it had raised its head a little too far and become dangerous, they attempted to tackle it, but it was too late. What has been the result? You have these aspiring young men, the disciples of Congress, moving from village to village suggesting to the poor peasants that they should pay no rent. That has ended in the peasants declining to pay rent to the landlord. The landlord then cannot pay his taxes to the Provincial Government, and the Provincial Government finds itself in financial difficulties entirely owing to the want of control of Congress by the Government in allowing Congress to do that which they could not allow any similar organisation in this country to carry out.

Another charge that I want particularly to make against the Government is as to the license of the native Press. If you read the extracts from the native Press that come to this country, you find a license which would never be permitted in this country, and this gutter Press is a means of disseminating sedition and creating disorder, bringing bloodshed in its train. It is very pleasant to find that at last the moderate elements are waking up and at the Calcutta meeting this week, which was very largely attended, the revolt of the moderates was expressed not only by the Anglo-Indians but also by representatives of the Hindu and also the Moslem community. The want of support by the Government of the officials and of the police is bringing about such a state of things that these officials are afraid to act in the way they would have done without hesitation a few years ago. The Government are looking forward to being able to crown themselves with laurels at the coming conference.

The last conference appeared to me to be a kind of balloon filled with gas and containing very little solid matter. Since the end of that conference the gas has gradually been oozing out. To-day the balloon is quite flat and empty, and now the Government are trying to fill it again, but this time with some solid matter. They know perfectly well that as long as the difference between the Moslem community and the Hindu community in India is as wide as it is to-day no possible success can come to any conference, whether it is in London or in India. It is bound to be just as great a failure as the last, and when the conference meets in London and the Government have to face it with the admission that they have been unable to enforce law and order in India, there will be an additional reason why the conference will end in failure, because of the utter want of confidence in the Government to carry out any of their own decrees.

I wish to make a statement, from the point of view of those hon. Friends of mine on this side of the House who represent the great aims of our party, with reference to speeches which have been made from our side. Unfortunately, some of the speeches made from this point of view weaken the case by exaggeration and sometimes by ignorance and not understanding the effect of such utterances. That gives a great handle to those who are on what seems to be a one-sided track in regard to this question not to recognise what is at the bottom of the movement. No one could more strongly support the general line taken by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea (Sir S. Hoare) and others in objecting to exaggeration or mischievous statements which may have a very serious bearing on the future discussions between India and ourselves which are so critical at the present time. I hope that those who are concerned will look over the exaggerations and mis-statements which are so often made through ignorance of the real facts. There is no question that, not only in our party but throughout the whole of the country, a very strong feeling lies at the bottom of those statements. It was rightly expressed by Lord Irwin when he said that the reason why we stand for safeguards is because of the interests of India.

I maintain that the interests of India and of ourselves must be on common lines. We have to have a common solution, and it is not in opposition to the interests of the British Empire when we say that our proposals are for the sake of India. When we say we stand for safeguards, we stand for them as being essential for the good of India and Indian government. Whatever form of government takes place in India in the future, we must maintain the sanctity of those safeguards with regard to finance, defence, and particularly the social services of India and the protection of minorities. It is essential to have those safeguards. There has been a general fear, not only in this House but throughout the country, that we are giving away those safeguards, and those who know India feel that we are undermining the anxieties for proper government in India, even by Indians themelves. That is why there is so much discontent and anxiety about the conversations which are going. I hope that all those who will take part in those most important deliberations of the Conference which is to be held, will feel, even if it is not always necessary or advisable to state it, that this country is intent upon maintaining such safeguards as seem to us essential for the proper government of India.

I hope that this statement will go out, quite as much as the statements that have been made in ways liable to be misunderstood, because it represents a really genuine feeling on the part of the great masses of people of this country and of the Empire overseas. That feeling is that, in the interests of India and of seeing India put on her own legs in what must be a tremendous change of Government, it is essential to establish and maintain those safeguards, and to maintain law and order, more than has been the case in recent times, to the utmost of our power, for the sake of India.