having been appointed together with Sir Francis Acland, Viscountess Astor, Mr. James Brown, Sir William Jenkins, Mr. Lambert, and Earl Winterton to wait upon Her Majesty Queen Mary with a Message of Condolence from this House, appeared at the Bar and reported Her Majesty's Answer as followeth:

I thank you with all My heart for the Message of Condolence which helps to sustain Me in My grief. I am deeply sensible of the warmth of your sympathy and I prize the assurance which you give Me of the unalterable affection of your House.

May I ask the Prime Minister whether he can make any statement as to Friday's business?

In addition to the draft Orders-in-Council dealing with the constitution of Sind and Orissa as separate provinces, which we are to consider on Friday, we propose to take the draft Order dealing with excluded and partially excluded areas.

I beg to give notice that on 19th February I shall call attention to Juvenile Training and Employment, and move a Resolution.

Agricultural Marketing

I beg to give notice that on 19th February I shall call attention to Agricultural Marketing, and move a Resolution.

Hours Op Labour

I beg to give notice that on 19th February I shall call attention to the need for shorter hours of labour, and move a Resolution.

Sunday Observance Act

I beg to give notice that on 19th February I shall call attention to the need for amending the Sunday Observance Act, 1625, and move a Resolution.

I beg to move, big, broad view of life and that statement of his, true as it was then, is a thousand times truer to-day. If we want to know what war does with men and how it reflects on their relationships with one another we have only to read the stories told in the public press and in books as to what happened between statesmen, generals and admirals during the Great War. Also we have to remember what happened during that War to know that John Bright was right when he said that during war all sense of proportion in regard to the truth about our opponents went by the board —all the horrible stories that could be told against them, exaggerating everything about them that was evil. He went on to say that, when the war was over, people discovered how false those statements were. Anyone who has the courage to face the facts of the last War and to understand what our attitude of mind now is towards many of the terrible indictments made against the German people will agree that you cannot really preserve any balance of fairness, to say nothing of equity, in your relationship during a war. That, to some extent, is true whether you are engaged in the war or not. Not only do you lose all sense of what is right and wrong in your relationship towards those you are fighting but, when it is finished, we have to admit the absolute futility of it. That is the main point of what I want to say to-day, the utter futility of war and the further fact that, because of its futility, it gets more bestial with every year that passes.

When it is said that at least some settlement is made which lasts for a short time, the fact remains that all the settlements have to be reviewed and almost always bear the seeds of future wars. I was against the last War from beginning to end, as I have been more or less against every war during my lifetime, but I claim no virtue for that because masses of men—and I believe the Government of the day—thought they were doing a righteous piece of work. Millions of young men went to the trenches believing they were engaged in a great crusade to destroy militarism in every shape and form, a crusade in which they hoped they would establish democracy and build a new world on the ruins that might be made by the War. Since the War we have seen the growth of dictatorship, the growth, not of prosperity, but of poverty and degradation and destitution, millions of people in central Europe and Asia dying of famine and disease. We have not seen democracy triumph in the world. We have seen it, at any rate in Europe, rolled in the dust. Worst of all, we now have to face the fact that there is not a Government anywhere in the world which is not arming, arming, arming. We ourselves in a few days will be discussing defence plans and arguing as to the size of the gun, the strength of the ship, the strength of poison gas or defence against poison gas.

In these circumstances I ask the House humbly, not at all as a person who thinks that he has more knowledge or virtue than anyone else, because none of us has, but just as an ordinary citizen of this country, whether they do not think the time has arrived to make an effort on some other lines. I know that I shall be told what the League of Nations has been established to carry through, and that I have not any faith in the League of Nations and collective security. I have not any faith in any system which relies upon force, and does not at first have its basis resting upon justice and equity. The idea of the League of Nations is very fine, and so were the ideas at the Vienna Congress 100 years earlier, but unfortunately the League of Nations was founded after the Great War and after the peace, which was a penal peace and imposed conditions upon the defeated that are almost unparalleled, certainly in the lifetime of this country, with the result that the League of Nations to-day is not really a League of Nations. Japan, the United States, Germany are all outside, and, in my judgment, you cannot have a tribunal of any sort that should be, first of all, the judge and then the policeman. A League of Nations composed of a large number of small nations and two dominating nations—ourselves and France—that sort of League, cannot, in my opinion, carry out the necessary work that is required for the peace of the world.

I want the Government to take the leàd with the League of Nations in asking that an entirely new conception of League action or action by the nations of the world shall be brought into play. Why do nations want to arm? Why do they pile up these devilish instruments of destruction one against the other? Why do we want these things? We say, "Because we fear attack."Every nation says that. I have been reading a very interesting document which gives the whole story of the Italo-Abyssinian dispute from the days before the War. It has been published, and I daresay that other hon. Members have read it also. It is an amazing document in defence of the Italian case. I have also read a very strong and elaborate statement of the dispute between Japan and China, and I am certain that I could match the defence of the statesmen of both countries for what they are doing by statements made by British statesmen in similar circumstances when they have been wanting to defend invasion and annexation. The real thing is that each nation, first of all, wants something that she thinks she cannot get unless she fights, or, in other cases, the nations want to hold what they have got.

I am just an ordinary person, and I say to Members of the Government that if we, individually, were quarrelling in that sort of way in days not very long ago we might have called one another out to fight, but to-day we should take our case before a tribunal and ask for it to be heard, and for judgment to be delivered between us. At present that cannot be done because there is no real tribunal, but the question is much bigger, of course, than any individual dispute could be. Nations, as the late Foreign Secretary said, who are "have-nots" want something from the "haves," or of what remains. He said on that occasion that the Government were willing to consider the matter. I want them to do something more than consider it. The House should remember that it does not matter what British writers may say about the needs of Italy, Germany or Japan. What has to be considered is what the statesmen of those countries have to say for themselves. We have to face the fact that these countries consider that they want to expand as Great Britain has expanded. I have read the speeches and articles of Japanese statesmen, and the speeches made and the articles written by British statesmen claiming that they are in China because China, like India, is divided into so many sects and somebody must be there strong enough to hold them together. That is the Japanese defence for the invasion and the cutting up of China. But she makes another defence— and that is the defence which we make very often—that she wants markets, raw material that is in Manchukuo and the Chinese Empire open to her so that she can benefit the Chinese people as well as herself. I have heard that statement made here many times in regard to India and other places. The people of the East, as a writer has said, have learnt very thoroughly how to put the case of Imperialism from people like the Americans, ourselves, the French and others.

How are we going to meet that, and how are we going to meet the situation in Europe? Who is there in this House who looks upon the situation in Europe, apart altogether from Italy and Abyssinia, except as a nightmare? And what is the reason for it all? I want someone in this House, speaking for the Government, to face up to that. I want someone to go to Germany and ask straight away why she should be arming in this way, and why should her statesmen make speeches in the manner they do as to her rights in the world? I think that the Germans have as much right in the world as we have ourselves. I do not see anywhere in the world a real facing up to the situation. It is not on1y in Central Europe but also in South-Eastern Europe. The notabilities gathered in Paris are balancing and weighing one against the other. What does it all mean? It means the same thing as that which happened before 1914. A match will be put, perhaps accidentally, to the powder magazine, and before we know where we are we shall be called upon once more to send the young and the middle-aged to fight.

I am asking to-day what my hon. friends above the Gangway and my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Labour party asked for over and over again during the last Parliament, that the economic position of the world should be brought under review by a conference of the world. I have not said how that shall be done, and no one must challenge me on this point, because I shall only fling back the challenge and ask how many people in this House outside the experts of the Government know how the sanctions were brought into existence and how they are working. The House adopted the principle and left it to the statesmen and experts to carry out. I am asking for an ordinary, commonsense thing, that our Government, the greatest Imperialist Power in the world, should go to Geneva and say: "Let us give up all this tomfoolery about guns and poison gas; let us get rid of all questions about armaments and get down to the bedrock of why we want to arm and why the nations want to pile up arms in the way they are doing."

I want the British statesmen to take the initiative. I am speaking only for myself, and I am not sure that I speak for my hon. and learned Friend on this matter, although we think the same on many subjects. I want the British Empire to be big enough to say that the people of India shall choose their own representatives to this conference, that the people of Egypt shall do the same and that in some way we will bring into the conference the peoples of Africa. I am not asking that we shall share out the British Empire, and I am not asking that we shall share out Africa with this or the other nation. I want an entirely new conception, and that is a unified world. I desire that an authority shall be set up to determine how the raw materials of the world shall be organised and used for the services of the nations of the world. In so far as that is possible, I want all the nations to have a voice in how it shall be done.

When I spoke before the summer recess the late Foreign Secretary, and I think Mr. Cordell Hull also said in New York, that it was not so much a question of raw materials as a question of markets. I agree very much with that statement. When I hear discussions in this House about restrictions here and restrictions there, my mind goes back to books that I have read lately on the condition of things in China, India and elsewhere. My mind also goes back to the conditions in my own country and in Europe generally. I do not agree with the theory that there is over-abundance. There is too much from the point of view of present-day methods of distribution, but with anything like organised markets and the free exchange of the commodities of the world between the nations I believe that we should have to put many more people to work before we met the need that exists. I am asking that a world conference shall be called to consider this question.

It may be said from the Government Bench that the nations will not agree, and that it is a terribly difficult thing to do. I want the British Government to give the challenge to the nations and be prepared to put into the common pool of service all that we have of knowledge and material resources. When it is said, as it has been said, that this thing cannot be organised, I would point out that you have been boasting that 40 or 50 nations can be organised for sanctions. You boasted yesterday, and again to-day, that there is agreement among certain nations to come together to support one another against an aggressor. Am I going to be told that that does not need very considerable organisation? Am I going to be told that there is no balancing and no investigation needed in order to make sanctions effective? Everyone knows that there is. I put a perfectly simple proposition to the House. If Governments can organise to destroy and, if occasion arises, can bring pressure on one another in the way contemplated by sanctions, ought it not to be much easier to carry through the humane proposal of sharing the resources and markets of the world in order to prevent wholesale bloodshed and slaughter? If no one else said this sort of thing I should go up and down the country saying it while I had health and strength, because every man who feels as I do ought to do that. I want our Government to go to the world and say that they will take the lead in this matter, and take it with full confidence and hope that they will carry it through successfully.

Finally, I would say this. War is futile. War is hopeless and inefficient in settling anything, because it is action against the law of morals, of religion and of God. It does not matter how we twist it round and talk of wars of defence and wars of offence. The cold, brutal fact remains that the world has made tremendous progress along material lines. We can do things to-day that men never dreamed of centuries ago. We have all the means in the world for a full, happy, peaceful life, and the only reason that we do not enjoy these things is because we have not yet learned how to use them properly. I want us to make up our minds that we will make a tremendous effort in the field of international affairs to bring into play the principles which the workers in this country and other countries are always told they must live up to, that is, that they must preserve the peace, that they must win their way without force and that they must depend upon reason. I want us to depend on reason, justice and equity.

3.40 p.m.

:I want to follow up the arguments which have been put before the House by the right hon. Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury) by giving a few facts and details to support his proposal. Multitudes of thoughtful people in this country and other countries are appalled at the way in which the world seems to be steadily drifting into another war. No one will accuse Great Britain and His Majesty's Government of anything but peaceful intentions, and no doubt most people will agree that there are but three nations in the world whose present actions appear to threaten the future peace of the world. They are Japan, Italy and Germany. What are the causes behind their present attitude which appear to make these countries a war danger to-day? Is it ambition? Is it pride, or lust of power? Is it a desire for domination? Is it sheer lunacy? I believe that the prime cause is precisely the same as that which has operated in the past and brought about the mass migration of people with wars of annihilation on a continent-wide scale.

Let me give an illustration. I would draw the attention of the House to the extraordinary change in the destinies of the world, and particularly of Europe, which arose from the great mass migrations of the Aryan people a good many thousands of years ago. Between 10,000 and 7,000 B.C. the climate of central Europe and Asia changed very materially and the populations enormously increased. There was a big trek of our Aryan ancestors partly southward and partly westward. As a result of this great trek of many hundreds of thousands, indeed millions of people, the whole story of India, Persia and Western Europe was completely altered. The cause of this tremendous migration of people is attributed by all historians to the pressure of population and the need for greater supplies of food— more opportunities for obtaining food. That was the first great movement of which we know anything. It led these peoples in vast numbers to trek across the world annihilating all the peoples with whom they came into contact. The paleolithic and neolithic peoples were all swept away, completely exterminated by the mass migrations of these Aryans. Between 1000 B.C. and 400 A.D. there was another extraordinary movement of a Turanian people in Central Asia. They found that their prairie-grazing grounds were drying up and becoming salt deserts, and they began a vast movement which greatly affected Europe. For centuries they filtered slowly into the rich plains of China, but about 2500 B.C. there arose a strong dynasty in China which built the Great Wall and organised a military defence for the first time. Expansion to the eastward was barred to these Turanian people, and they came westward in hundreds of thousands and even millions and swept into the South-East of Russia, into Europe and the Roman Province of Dacia, and under Attila swept into Italy, and largely contributed to the destruction of the Roman Empire. I believe that we are witnessing to-day in Europe and in Asia events of a similar kind, some of world-wide or continental importance, and others of more local importance. General Smuts a year ago made a remarkable speech in which he said: products in exchange. She now finds that the markets of the world are becoming increasingly closed to her, by prohibitions, tariffs, quotas and other devices, and she sees vast spaces of the earth, which her people could populate, relatively uninhabited—regions like North Australia and New Guinea—but she is not permitted to send her surplus population there. One of the principal Japanese statesmen has said that Japan needed to migrate between 15,000,000 and 20,000,000 of her people at least if the remainder are to survive under tolerable conditions. Japan feels that she must expand or else she will starve. There is one other possible alternative. She might become the workshop of the world, like we were in former days, but as everyone knows that is not a possible alternative in these days. She, therefore, has to expand, and the only way is by taking additional territory by force, exactly as we did in the past.

Italy and Germany are in a like pass, though not quite to the same degree. Italy has a population larger than that of France and a land area only half the size. Her necessities have been acknowledged by the late Foreign Secretary and other members of the present Cabinet. Germany has made frantic efforts in recent years to render herself self-sufficient and self-supporting as regards both food and raw materials but she has hoplessly failed. It may be said that she has wasted and is wasting much of her resources in constructing armaments, but that applies to other nations besides Germany, and even if she were not spending some of her substance in building up military, naval and air forces, yet, as regards foodstuffs and necessary raw materials she could not control and could not alter her situation in present world circumstances. I notice that, recently, several German statesmen have made remarkable pronouncements on this point. The leader of the Labour front said a couple of months ago: at all of five. Japan has adequate supplies of three only, some supplies of five and of 17 no supplies at all. Germany has adequate supplies of four, some supplies of two and of 19 no supplies at all. Italy has adequate supplies of four, and of 21 no supplies at all.

If these figures are even approximately correct, it means that there is a group of nations who may legitimately describe themselves as the "have-nots" of the world. I suggest that it cannot be expected in these times that virile, enterprising and spirited nations like those I have mentioned are likely to sit down quietly and accept a situation in which they are restricted in self-development, deprived of the necessaries of a modern civilised life and deprived also of comforts while many of their people are actually in a state of semi-starvation.

One has to ask oneself, why do we possess a sufficiency of these things? Why have we these supplies? There can be only one answer. It is, of course, because we were first in the field in seizing, often with brutal violence, territories that were delectable and exploitable. The problem, it seems to me, is that certain actively growing and developing nations have insufficient land, insufficient homegrown food supplies, and insufficient home sources of the raw materials necessary to a civilised community, while other nations have as much as, or more than, they want, and some of them, like ourselves, have territories which they are making no attempt to develop. In such circumstances it is only human nature that the "have-nots" should endeavour to obtain some of the possessions of the "haves." It is also human nature to expect the "have-nots" to combine among themselves to get some of these necessaries of modern life. Indeed if we can trust the Press, the most responsible Press of this country, there seems to be a definite move in that direction at the present time.

We have had in the papers during the last few weeks, stories of meetings of all the Japanese naval attachés in Europe with the officials of the Admiralty in Berlin. We have had stories of meetings between the military attachés of Japan and Germany in a conference under the presidency of Herr Von Ribentropp. Our Press suggests that there is actually a definite understanding, if not a semi-military alliance, between Germany and Japan at present and when we consider what will probably be the embittered state of Italy when this Abyssinian trouble is over, one may well anticipate that Italy will ally herself with the other malcontents and want something more. It seems to me to be a matter of ordinary inference that a new war is bound to come unless there is a radical change in the orientation of the economic policy of Western nations, particularly Great Britain. I suggest that there must be a voluntary economic reorganisation of the world, and that, coupled with this, there must be also some agreement as to the partial restoration of the free movements of people. All that the present Government have offered in this connection up to now is the kind of promise given by the late. Foreign Secretary at Geneva, that there should be an inquiry into the rights of access to raw materials.

I notice that one of the Amendments on the Paper suggests that other nations are just as free as ourselves to buy raw materials and to obtain their necessaries. Yes, but to buy a country has to sell, and these foreign nations that want to purchase raw materials from our Colonies and Dominions cannot pay for them because of the present policy of the closed door by means of tariffs, prohibitions, quotas and so on. I gather from the press of this country and from the foreign press that our policy of practically closing markets to foreigners has enormously increased the bitterness of the have-not Powers. They are deficient in raw materials and they now find barred to them the only normal method of purchasing those materials. They are unable to buy and they are suffering in consequence.

The question is, what is the way out of such a situation? At present our policy is, as the Mover of this Motion said, "What we have we hold." In view of the world's needs that seems to me to be a policy of selfish greed. Our defence policy admittedly is based on the attitude that we have got certain territories, that we have acquired them in the past by force and that we mean to keep them by force. The real policy of this country was stated with great frankness and bluntness a little while ago by a Conservative Cabinet Minister, then Sir William Joynson-Hicks. He said:

I suggest that sooner or later the have-not nations are going to make a most desperate effort to get a place in the sun for themselves, and that if this country will not agree to voluntary economic reorganisation of the world the only alternative is a bloody universal world war. I do not think there is going to be any escape. I do not think it matters if you raise your £200 million or £2,000 million or even a £20,000 million defence loan. I do not think it matters-if you reintroduce conscription and quadruple or quintuple your Air Force. That will not protect you. I believe that the struggle is destined to come unless we are prepared to agree to a fairer distribution of the world's land surface and of the raw materials which are needed by modern civilised nations. But there is a way out; there is no necessity for a clash. I am sure that time presses and that we cannot postpone a settlement indefinitely.

I take it that the overwhelming majority of the Members of this House believe that the world is founded upon a moral order. If they believe that, if they 'believe in the principles which are explictly or implicitly proclaimed at that Table every day in this House by the Chaplain, I suggest that the way out is the application of those principles, the deliberate and conscious application of those principles to international affairs by this nation, and by the world under the leadership of this nation, as I hope. "Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you," treat other nations as you would desire to be treated by them if you were in their shoes. It is because of the lack of appreciation by the statesmen of the world of the place of spiritual value in human life that I consider civilisation is in danger at this moment.

Would the hon. Member make some more definite statement as to how he proposes to carry out in practice this division of the raw materials we possess?

:I am dealing with general principles at the moment. I am quite prepared at the appropriate time to go into more details. I have already done so in a publication. This afternoon we are considering the principles upon which our conduct as a nation, and international conduct, should be founded, and I suggest that in view of the principles which I have enunciated Imperialism as we have known it in the past is incompatible with such principles. In the whole story of the world there is not an Empire that has not come to grief for the very reason, that it has relied on force and trampled ruthlessly on the rights and the interests of other countries and other people. The Mussolinis and the Hitlers are doing the same to-day in their own countries. They will have their little day and then cease to be. They will fade away. It will be the same with the British Empire if it is not prepared to adopt the better way, the higher way, the Christian way. You may say that of course it will involve sacrifices and risks. I admit that both sacrifices and risks are involved. But the alternative is an even more frightful risk. Nay, it is almost a certainty—a world war in which the Empire as a whole and even our own home land itself will perish and civilisation will be blotted out. I believe there is still time for the Government to take such steps as may be necessary in order that such a consummation may ultimately be reached.

4.12 p.m.

I beg to move, in line 3, to leave out from "is," to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof

We have to consider the great conflict, the great gulf which exists between the ideals which prevail in the world to-day. On the one side are those ideals which we find expressed by the Nazi Government of Germany, the belief in blood and soil, the belief in the racial predominance of the German people, a doctrine which is ruthlessly carried out in the persecution of the Churches, the Jews and the political opponents of the Government. That is the internal development in Germany to-day. It is, as it were, an inward sign of their attitude to other nations. The rapid re-armament which is taking place day by day and week by week is causing alarm among the neighbours of Germany and in this country. As the armament programme grows so do the threats of the German leaders become louder and louder. The French are justifiably afraid of the remilitarisation of the Rhine zone. The Poles were reminded the other day by Dr. Schacht that the division of Silesia was abhorrent to the Germans and that they wished it to be changed. The threats against Austria and Russia are notorious. We in this country are being continually reminded by the German propaganda that Germany requires colonies.

There is, on the other hand, the belief in this country in liberty and constitutional government and our imperial system is based on toleration for every creed and every race. Our political qualities and our great imperial experience do, I believe, make the people think, and think rightly, that they can play a major part in the creation of a new international order. The whole trend of opinion in this country is quite clearly on the side of (making a determined effort to create an effective League of Nations. During the last six months we have had a great deal of experience with regard to the way it works. We have seen the difficulties and dangers, and we realise the expense that it may involve, but I do not think for a moment it is the desire of the people of this country to depart from the policy which they have made up their minds to pursue, and it is just as well that the world outside should realise that that is the idealism which is driving this country along. Dr. Goebbels in a recent speech said he believed in guns and not in the Covenant. We believe in the Covenant not in guns. He went on to say that there was a bomb in the centre of Europe which might go off. It is our task to see that the bomb explodes inwards and not outwards. Dr. Goebbels speech should provide much cement for the collective system. There is then a deep conflict of ideals between Germany and those countries which believe in the same creed and this country and those nations which believe in liberal institutions. It is being borne in upon us every day that the words of Benjamin Franklin apply to us, that to take protective measures. I cannot help feeling, much as I sympathise with the right hon. Gentleman's aims and objects, that the present time, from the political point of view, is not very propitious, not on account of the unwillingness of this country, but on account of the reluctance of Germany. I would remind him also that at the present time the Italians are pursuing a course of aggression which has led to their being condemned by the League, and it does not seem to me that the Italian representatives would be very useful members of the conference which he suggests.

I would turn from the political side to the economic aspect of the right hon. Gentleman's Motion. Every effort, after all, has been made by the present Government to bring about some kind of easing of the economic position. I would remind the House that it was His Majesty's Government which called together the World Economic Conference especially in order to try to overcome the difficulties with which the world is faced. The failure of that conference cannot be laid at the door of this Government. Again, the right bon. Gentleman the Member for Chelsea (Sir S. Hoare) in a memorable speech at Geneva made certain practical proposals. An hon. Member opposite said there was not very much in them, but I think he is unfair both to the Government and to the right hon. Member for Chelsea, who made an offer which might well lay the foundations of a better order. We must avoid the danger of mistaking economic for political causes. Let us consider for one moment the actual position of the Italian Empire. Italy has a colonial empire seven times as large as Italy itself, and it has a thousand miles of Mediterranean littoral. In Eritrea, where the Italians have been in control for over 50 years, there are, it is estimated, 2,000 square miles suitable for white settlement, and there are to-day in that area only 400 non-official Italians and only 84 engaged in agriculture. It does not seem to me that that part of the Italian Empire is likely to provide for the surplus population of Italy.

Again, before the War there were very few settlers in the German Colonies of Africa. Africa is not suitable for white settlement on a large scale. My own experience of Africa is confined to regions South of the Zambesi, but I believe that my experience applies to the major part of the Continent, and there, wherever there is a white settlement, it is in the nature of a governing caste. The proletariat is always native, and in the Union of South Africa there are, I think, 1,500,000 Europeans and a native population of between 7,000,000 and 8,000,000. Nowhere in Africa does it seem to me or, I believe, to those who are more expert on this question than I am that there is room or scope for a large white population. And, after all, the country is not unpopulated at present. There is a large and increasing native population, which is growing as a result of the cessation of tribal wars and an improvement in the health of the people. The parts of the world in which there can be real white settlement on a large scale are in North and South America and possibly in parts of Siberia. These areas are closed at the present time, and the problem of emigration is just as acute for this country as it is for Germany or Italy. The density of population in England is double that in Germany or in Italy, and that seems to me to be the answer to the proposition that this is as much an economic as a political question.

The right hon. Gentleman touched on the question of raw materials. There is a certain part of East Africa in which there is equality of economic opportunity, but, so far as I know, there has been no very great development of either German or Italian trade there. I would remind this House that the vast majority of raw materials which are imported into this country come from areas of the world's surface which are not under the fiscal control of the British Empire. We all know that the real causes underlying the difficulty in obtaining raw materials on the part of Germany and of Italy are international currency difficulties and trade restrictions.

Hon. and right hon. Members opposite have raised the question in the last few months of the handing over of our Colonies to the League of Nations. I want to know what they propose should be done with the Colonies when once they are handed over to the League. Should they be handed over to the dissatisfied Powers? Are the wishes of these Colonies to be taken into consideration? This problem cannot be settled by saying we should hand the Colonies over to the League of Nations. It must be more carefully thought out, and it requires answers to these particular questions. If Italy and Germany are making the complaints which they are making with regard to their over-population, should they not take steps to prevent the growth of population, or at least not to stimulate it, as they are doing? I think the time has come when, if possible, we should take up these questions. I am sure the Government are anxious and ready to discuss all these problems and to make our contribution to their solution, but let us be clear in our own minds that this is going to be no one-sided arrangement. I trust that there is no question, so far as the proposals which may be put forward from this country are concerned, of trying to buy off the so-called dissatisfied Powers. We too are dissatisfied. We want peace, and we want limitation of armaments and the establishment of the League as an effective instrument. The Berlin correspondent of the "Times" said, in his article this morning: "The-path to England lies through Geneva." He might have said that it also lies by way of a limitation agreement. While the policy of this country should and, I believe, will be to leave no stone unturned in an endeavour to find a settlement of the economic and political difficulties which exist in the world to-day, I do not believe that we can act alone, or that we can act at all with any prospect of success if we are not strong-enough to carry out our obligations, both political and those which we may have-undertaken with regard to economic-problems.

4.29 p.m.

I beg to second the-Amendment.

The right hon. Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury) spent the first part of his speech in denunciation of war. With all respect to him, I would suggest that perhaps that was to some extent a; waste of time, because, after all, there is no party in this House or in the country that does not abominate war. I do not believe there is a man in the whole world who is so fiendish that he really wishes to launch the world into another catastrophe; and I think, therefore, we can take the fact that war is horrible, hideous, and monstrous as read and not dwell any longer upon it. The only question with which we are concerned to-day is, What are the best methods that we can take here and now to preserve peace? I find not very much with which to quarrel in the Motion moved by the right hon. Gentleman My only disagreement with it is that it seems to me to be based too much on the economic interpretation of history. Economic rivalry plays some part in the fermenting of war, but, in my judgment, it is not, as the party opposite appears to think, the sole or even the main cause. The right hon. Gentleman asked a very pertinent question when he said, "What is the cause of armaments?" I would venture to answer that I believe the root cause of war and preparations for war is fear.

Fear of what?

Fear of attack. If one travels, as many hon. Members have done, from one country to another in Europe, one hears everywhere the same sentence on the lips of statesmen. They do not suggest any attack upon their neighbours, but they are afraid of an attack from their neighbours. They say they are surrounded by enemies and must re-arm. I think that to a great extent fear was responsible for the Italian action; it was Mussolini's fear that Italy might be attacked in Africa or that he might have to face a revolutionary upheaval at home if he did not start some adventure abroad. Surely, the problem which we have to face is, how are. we to banish this instinct of fear? I suggest that we can only do it by making nations realise that their only hope of security lies in the authority of the League rather than in isolated re-armament, I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bow and Bromley would accept that proposition, because it is a fundamental one. If you believe in the League as the only means of banishing fear, because it is the only organisation that can resist an aggressor, you must give the League power to resist an aggressor.

Surely our object is to establish in the world the reign of law, the conception that we are, each one of us, whether as individuals or as nations, responsible for the maintenance of law. That idea is pretty well understood in this country, and over and over again we see that the ordinary man is determined, whatever may be the risk to himself, to resist violence and to apprehend the truth. It will be within the recollection of the House that when Sir Henry Wilson was murdered one summer afternoon by Sinn Feiners on the steps of his London house, the murderers were pursued and captured by the ordinary passers-by, the lorry driver and the errand boy, at great risk to themselves because the murderers were firing right and left. If we could only transfer from this country to the world the idea that we are all of us individually responsible for the maintenance of law, I believe that would take us a long way towards the solution of our peace problems. There is no gangster rule in this country, because we have an incorruptible police force which is armed in the last resort. If we could only apply that principle to Europe and to the world, just as we have no gangsters here so would we have no gangster nations in the world.

It seems to me that the supreme task of our generation is to establish in the world a police force similar to that which we have in our own country. But I agree that this police analogy is in one respect dangerous. The police in England, and in other countries where the rule of law is the same, secure obedience because the great majority of the people are willing to obey the law. Why are they willing? It is because they know that by their votes they have in part made the law and that in the same way they can change it. That, however, is not true to the same extent of international law. International law is static, and the world is dynamic. Surely one of the most dangerous features of international relations to-day is that up to now no international boundaries have been changed except by war. Our problem is to discover what can be done to alter that dangerous situation. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bow and Bromley calls attention in his Resolution to the necessity for access to raw materials and to markets. I wonder whether that would really help. There is to-day no dearth of raw materials. There is no difficulty whatever in furnishing France, Germany, Japan, Poland, or any other country with all the raw materials they require. The difficulty is one of paying for these raw materials, and, if I may say so, my right hon. Friend did not face that difficulty in his speech.

What is the situation with regard to Italy? Italy wants, above all else, coal. Her imports of coal from Great Britain in August, 1935—the last month before sanctions were put into operation—were 280,000 tons, and it is known that if it was possible to sell coal at a rate at which Italy could buy, she could take more coal from Great Britain than she has up to the present. How does the right hon. Gentleman suggest that Italy should pay for that coal? He talks about sharing the markets of the world. With whom does he suggest they should be shared? Who is going to pay the price? If Italy cannot pay for the coal, how is she to be put in a position to pay for it? She cannot now pay for it at a price which would enable the miners of South Wales to enjoy a decent standard of living. Are those miners to accept a lower standard of living in order that Italy may share our markets? Are the miners of South Wales to work harder and longer for Mussolini? I submit that these are questions which the right hon. Gentleman and his friends must answer, for they cannot' be smoothed away by a well-turned peroration. They are hard, stubborn and cruel facts.

Unless countries are allowed to sell their own products in exchange, they cannot buy without destroying the value of their currencies, and that is really the key to the whole matter. I suggest that what is needed is not so much access to raw materials as a return to the old methods of paying for them, and that can only be done by freer trade and the reopening of the old channels for goods and services. To-day nations are living in watertight compartments with no migration and no freedom of trade. The result is that they are in their present plight and are seeking by dictatorships and swollen armaments forcibly to burst their bonds.

The right hon. Gentleman appeared to think that it is very easy to secure an international agreement on armaments, and I wish I could think the same.

I do not remember having said that, and if I did so it was a mistake. What I did say was that surely it could not be any more difficult to obtain an agreement regarding raw materials and markets than to secure an agreement on defence in the Mediterranean or on sanctions.

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his correction. I had always understood that his whole argument in favour of unilateral disarmament was that if only we gave the lead—

I have never advocated that without coupling it with an economic agreement for a complete rearrangement of the trade relationships of the world.

I accept the right hon. Gentleman's correction, but others have taken the line to which I was referring. I always understood that the whole argument was that if only this country gave the lead, other countries would be equally ready to take the opportunity to abandon their armaments. My reply to that is that it is not so easy, and I think everyone will agree that one of the difficulties is that at the present time there is being created in Europe a vested interest in armaments. As I understand it, one of the great obstacles to agreement in the case of Germany is that any agreement involving a severe reduction in her armaments would at the same time mean the unemployment of thousands of men in that country. There is being established in the world a vested interest in the production of these murderous weapons, and I agree with the right hon. Gentleman to a great extent when he said that the only thing to be done is to find employment other than in the manufacture of armaments for the populations of the various countries. That cannot be done without making some new arrangements regarding migration.

I particularly support the emphasis that is laid in the Motion on migration. It seems to me to be vital to the whole question of a settlement with Italy. Before the War, something like 600,000 people left Italian shores for foreign countries each year, whereas to-day there is no migration of any kind, and at the same time the population of Italy is increasing by approximately 400,000 a year. Whosoever the fault may be, it is obvious that Italy now has to face the position that either she must expand or great numbers of her people will be reduced to a starvation level of existence. There are welcome signs that the British Government are alive to these vital considerations. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bow and Bromley and his friends are always calling on the Government for a lead. They have given a lead on this question, and when my lion. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Emrys-Evans) mentioned the late Foreign Secretary's speech at Geneva, I saw a sign of dissent on the face of the right hon. Gentleman. I would, however, remind him of the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Chelsea (Sir S. Hoare) at Geneva on 10th September, when he said very clearly:

Obviously, such an inquiry as that suggested in the Motion does require calm and dispassionate consideration. Such consideration cannot be achieved in an atmosphere of war and threats of war. What I missed in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bow and Bromley was an appreciation of the conditions in Central Europe to-day. I wish that there were other great statesmen in the world as disinterested and as high-minded as the right hon. Gentleman. I suppose that if one tried to think of two men in the world to-day more completely different from one another, one would think of the right hon. Gentleman and General Goering. I cannot imagine their having a very cosy talk. I would remind the right hon. Gentleman, when he talks about demanding an international conference, of the kind of spirit that is manifested in the country which in that international conference would play a most important part. This is what General Goering said, as reported in the "Times" of 18th January:

No, no.

Is there anything for which the right hon. Gentleman would put up a show of resistance? There appears to be nothing. I am not sneering at the right hon. Gentleman; I admire enormously his sincerity and courage—

I do not want you to admire it.

I think it is true to say that there is nothing for which the right hon. Gentleman would fight.

I have made it clear that there is nothing for which I would take the life of another human being. There are other methods of fighting than killing somebody, and I would not in any circumstances do it.

The inconsistency of the right hon. Gentleman is quite incredible. Here he is getting up and saying that in no circumstances would he fight.

I said to kill.

I will take the right hon. Gentleman's correction. In no circumstances would he kill, but he has voted in this House for armaments for other people to kill.

The hon. Gentleman has said that before. The only time I have done that was when I was a mem- ber of the Government. Whatever contempt the hon. Gentleman cares to pour on me—he can say that I sat in the Government to get money or position— [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] I do not care what people say. What I want to say in this House is that I will stand whatever condemnation is put on me for those two years during which I was a Minister. I only wish I had never taken office, because I think that I did betray my pacifist principles while I was a member of that Government. If I were a young man I hope I would have courage never to do it again. The sort of resistance that I believe in is the resistance that Gandhi put up in India.

He started the biggest row there ever was on earth.

He caused, a great deal of bloodshed, and I do not really think the right hon. Gentleman can get away with that. I am not making any personal attack on him. I am only trying to find out what his attitude is. The difficulty with him and his party opposite is that they say one thing in office and a different thing out of office, one thing in the House of Commons and another thing on the platform, one thing at a by-election and another thing at a general election. It is, therefore, extremely difficult to get to grips with them at all, and I am sure I will have the sympathy of the House when I try to elicit from them where they do stand. We have, at any rate, got this, that the right hon. Gentleman will not kill and that he thinks that will lead to peace. I think that such a policy pursued by this country would inevitably lead to wholesale killing. The policy of the right hon. Gentleman of giving away, or at least of adopting the Gandhi attitude to General Goering, would lead direct to war; so, too, would the policy of wholesale concessions.

You cannot buy off the wolves by throwing them from time to time a titbit from the British Empire or anybody else's empire. Militarism grows by what it feeds on. The history of the last two lamentable years shows that each concession made to Germany has only been the starting-off place for fresh demands. If there is to an arrangement about raw materials and a new outlet for surplus population, it can only be part of a general system of pacification. It must be accepted not as an instalment, but as a final settlement of outstanding grievances. It is impossible to negotiate under threats. It is impossible to negotiate with such a speech as was delivered by General Goering. The first essential pillar of peace before we discuss anything else seems to me to establish steady and collective resistance by the League to all acts of unprovoked aggression. When you have done that you have a basis of negotiation. Aggression must not be allowed to pay. If the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bow and Bromley had his way, aggression would always pay.

I am confident that the Government have learned their lesson from the astonishing uprising of public opinion against the Hoare-Laval peace plans last September, and that in the lifetime of this Parliament no similar surrender will ever be proposed. We have now a Foreign Secretary who, by his drive, initiative and courage, has done more than any statesman in Europe to-day to uphold and extend the authority of the League. He has the congratulations of the whole House in his new appointment, and I am sure he has in no small measure our sympathy as well. The world is entering this year a new danger zone more terrible, perhaps, than any it has ever entered in its history. If it is to emerge from it without shipwreck, it can only do so if Great Britain has at the helm in foreign affairs a man who not merely knows his course, but means, whatever the risks, to pursue that course to its end. I believe that we have such a man in the new Foreign Secretary.

5.0 p.m.

I shall do my best to avoid introducing anything which savours of personal controversy into this Debate, because the situation is far too serious for partisan conflict. I take an alarmist view of the international position. When I read in the papers this morning that my right hon. Friend had put down this Motion I was frankly delighted that the House was to have an opportunity of examining the position at the earliest possible moment. I am glad that it was he who did it, because he is in an independent position and in this matter is not speaking for1 his party. For the views which he holds in this matter he has made very great personal sacrifice. I do not share his views. I am not a pacifist and would not go as far as he does, by any means, but no one doubts his sincerity, and I feel there is a great advantage in having an independent Member whose sincerity is above challenge, to raise this issue in the House. There are men in this House, as there have always been, who object to the shedding of blood. There is a very influential religious sect which takes that view. Those people have always been in a minority, and I think the vast majority of this House, and not merely of this House, but of the whole country, would, if there were any vital interests concerned, either the interests of our native land, the interests of the Empire or the interests of humanity, be prepared to make whatever sacrifice is necessary to champion the honour of the country and the security of the world. But, none the less, men who take the view expressed by the right hon. Gentleman have received the respect of the greatest statesmen in this country, including men like Pitt, who was a great War Minister.

I am very glad this subject has been raised, because what is the position? Since I saw this Motion I have been looking into the position. When my right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham (Sir A. Chamberlain) was Foreign Secretary he negotiated a treaty which filled us all with great hope that it was going to be a real turning point in the history of the world towards peace. I shared that view. It was the Treaty of Locarno. I ventured then to say that its success would depend entirely on the extent to which it would be followed by practical measures of disarmament. Shortly after that treaty was negotiated there was the Kellogg Pact, which outlawed war. What has happened since then? The Locarno Treaty was negotiated in 1925, 10 years ago. Between 1925 and 1932 the armaments of the world increased by 50 per cent. The increase then was not an increase for which Germany was responsible, because Germany had not increased her armaments at that date. It was an increase in France, in Italy and, I think, in the United States of America. It was an increase among those who had negotiated the Treaty of Versailles, which pledged all its signatories to reduce armaments to the lowest minimum compatible with security.

In 1932 came the great economic crisis, and the race in armaments was arrested.

The world had other things to think about. Since there has come a certain measure of economic recovery all over the world, not merely has there been an acceleration in armaments but the growth has been wild and frenzied. It is not an acceleration, it is a precipitation. Armaments to-day stand at more than double what they did when my right hon. Friend negotiated that valuable treaty. If my right hon. Friend, the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill) is approximately accurate in his estimate of German rearmament, it is far more than treble the figure of 1925. That is a very serious position. Are we at an end of it? On the contrary, we are face to face with a programme of re-armament on the part of this country. I am not discussing its merits. It is quite clear that if all the world is re-arming we cannot be defenceless, and therefore I am not for the moment criticising the programme but just stating the actual international conditions. I do not know what the proposals of the Government are, but, in so far as there have been any indications in the Press, they are of a very substantial character. Japan is arming—increasing her armaments enormously. The Budget speech of the Finance Minister of Soviet Russia was a tremendous declaration. France is doing the same thing; we know what Italy is doing; and the United States of America say that if Japan is arming they must arm. The hon. Gentleman opposite talked about fear. I think he underestimated the effect of the economic factor—that is not by any means the sole factor—but I think he under-estimates the importance of the economic factor very much.

Take the factor of fear. There are in Europe at the present moment two great countries which are apprehensive of encirclement, a fear which had a good deal to do with the War of 1914, the fear of Germany that she was being encircled. There was Russia, and France and Britain—and Germany talked of "a ring of iron." To-day we have two countries suffering from that obsession, if it be an obsession, Russia as well as Germany. Germany is frightened of encirclement by two immense military Powers, the most tremendous military Powers in the world in their skill on the one hand and in their resources and virile man-power and infinite courage on the other. The French Army is a powerful force led by men of extraordinary intelligence and great capacity for leadership. In Russia we see about the bravest and the most dauntless people in the world, and they are well equipped. Germany sees Russia with her population of 150,000,000, with her army of 6,000,000 trained men, including reserves, with a very powerful air force, and with her equipment infinitely better than it was in the Great War in transport, in artillery, in tanks and in everything which makes an army of that kind irresistible; and it is an army with great numbers behind it.

What about Russia? Russia is frightened of Germany, and well she may be. The Russian armies in the Great War would have smashed their way through Austria-Hungary had it not been for this great people who led the Central Powers. The German Army cracked Russia. And the German people are now re-armed; and they are the same people with the same military and mechanical skill. Further, we see Japan more powerful than ever, more ambitious than ever, more aggressive than ever, marching through China, picking up province after province, menacing Mongolia, which Russia regards as practically her own, crossing and re-crossing frontiers. Russia is frightened of Japan. There are two of the most formidable military nations on earth, which have been making war for unknown centuries, with war in their traditions and war in their instinct and blood, both frightened. A courageous animal which is frightened is a most terrible beast when aroused. What is to be the result? I do not know what Germany is spending. My right hon. Friend the Member for Epping gave us some figures, and I saw them confirmed in a very remarkable quarter, in an article in the "Daily Herald," when I was in Morocco. The figures were far too much like the figures which my right hon. Friend had given in his speech to make one feel very comfortable.

£800,000,000.

The City editor of the "Daily Herald" gave those figures. I do not know about them; nobody knows. We are in a fog. What is happening under the mantle of the mist? Nobody can tell and I am not going to try. I heard the Prime Minister get up in this House and say that Germany had—I forget how many hundreds of aeroplanes. He had received that information; it was official, it was not his own. The War Office as a rule has got every means of examining these propositions. He stated the figure here. In a few months he had to admit that he was absolutely wrong. Herr Hitler himself gave a figure which, I think, was about double that which the Prime Minister stated here. I am not blaming the Prime Minister. It only shows that we do not know what is going on— except that we are certain that all these countries are using every spare penny they can raise, and a good deal more, for the purpose of armaments and becoming more and more menacing to the peace of the world.

It is no use asking who is responsible for what has happened—if I did that I should be getting into a controversy—or asking why Locarno went wrong, but if anybody wishes to get an answer to that question let him read very carefully the whole story of the Disarmament Conference. He will find misunderstanding after misunderstanding, misconception after misconception. When there seemed to be agreement, suspicion intervened. There was blunder after blunder, muddle after muddle—not always on our side. What did Stresa mean? But, first of all, let us ask what Locarno meant. The final protocol of the Locarno Conference, 16th October, 1925, ran as follows:

Then came Stresa. If Stresa meant anything—I am dealing now with the psychology of fear—it was summoned to call attention to a definite breach of treaty by Germany, a definite repudiation of a treaty. I am not going to enter into her defence. She had a defence. But Stresa was undoubtedly because of a repudiation of a definite treaty, and three great Powers came together to deal with it. They passed a resolution

What did that mean, in so far as Germany was concerned? "You have broken a treaty," said these three great Powers, "and we are going to deal with it." It is as though a firm of solicitors were to write a letter and say: "We are instructed by our clients that you have broken clause so-and-so of a contract, and we mean to deal with it." No firm of solicitors would send that letter unless the client said that he meant action. I am speaking now in the presence of a very distinguished member of the same profession. Suppose they had called attention to an infringement of a patent, and said: "You have broken the patent, and we propose to deal with it"; they would not do that unless action were intended. Germany was entitled to believe that those three great Powers meant to take action, because it was inconceivable that the leaders of those three great Nations should come together and pass a resolution of that kind calling attention to the breach of treaty, and should then merely send a letter and put the resolution in their pockets and say nothing more about it.

Herr Hitler said: "We have no time to lose." He borrowed, and went on increasing his armaments. Every month that we delayed because nothing could be done, meant that the position became more difficult, until at last it became quite impossible. But we are responsible for creating the atmosphere of fear. There is the fear of encirclement in Germany; there is the fear of encirclement in Russia. Is it impossible to break this circle of death before it is too late? Are we to go on saying: "If others arm, we must arm. If others arm, we cannot do otherwise."? They are all saying exactly the same thing. I would ask the Government not to give a plain negative to this proposition. There is not a word in it that implies censure. It is not moved by my right hon. Friend as a Motion of Censure. If the Government accepted it, it would not be an admission on their part of anything which would involve discrediting what they had done. It does not even commit them to the date of summoning a conference. Obviously a Government must have time to consider whether this is the moment at which it is desirable, and whether you could do it without considerable inquiry and discussion and establishing contacts. You must not have a conference like the last Economic Conference, which was obviously unprepared and inoperative and when the Government themselves were not prepared to make any proposition. Neither was the United States Government prepared. A conference which is a failure aggravates a situation very much.

I ask the Government to consider whether there is not a possibility of some prospect of this kind, before the world goes any further. I know that people have for the last two or three years been predicting war. But Germany was not prepared. She is more prepared to-day than when I heard those predictions first. Russia was not prepared; she is prepared now. I do not think that there is very much time to throw away. If you had a conference you would know what is happening. You would at any rate have rays which would penetrate the fog. There is nobody to tell us exactly what is happening in Germany. There is nobody to tell us exactly what is happening in Russia. There is nobody who can quite tell us what is happening in Japan. It is very much easier, with dictatorships, to arrange your finance and your preparations than in the old days when you had to submit your budgets to Reichstags. All we know is that preparations for war are going on at a, furious speed everywhere. I do ask the Government not altogether to dismiss the possibility of some economic conference.

The hon. Member for North Bristol (Mr. Bernays) said that wars are based on fear. But Japan is not invading China because she is afraid of her. That is not fear; that is economics. I do not agree that Signor Mussolini is invading Abyssinia because he is afraid of the Abyssinians invading his territory; I believe that he honestly thinks that Abyssinia would help Italy econmically. Just before I came here I read a document. I have a lot of propagandist documents from Italy, and I have no doubt that every Member of the House has received them. I picked up a pamphlet that was written by Luigi Villari, and I read it because, quite frankly, I have a great respect for him. He states Italy's point of view very moderately on the whole, and I believe that what he says is absolutely true. He says one thing that rather concerns me. He said that I have been responsible for repudiating an agreement made at St. Jean de Maurienne and thus depriving Italy of certain concessions. As a matter of fact there was no agreement at the St. Jean de Maurienne Conference. The agreement he refers to was one made by Mr. Asquith in 1915 when Italy came into the War. Whether it was at St. Jean de Maurienne or in the agreement of 1915 is a small matter. As a matter of fact I stood by that agreement at the Peace Conference. But that is not the main point he makes. He gives figures of the increase of territory under British, French, Belgian and Italian sway, as a result of the war of 1914, and he states that Italy was given 100,000 square kilometres with a population of 90,000. That was a part of the British Empire. We gave them Jubaland. S. Villari says that Jubaland is only sand and crocodiles.

They got the Dodecanese.

That was in the Turkish war. That was taken in the war between Italy and Turkey. Let me give the other figures. Great Britain, 2,620,000 square kilometres with a population of nearly 9,500,000; France, 922,000 square kilometres with a population of about 4,500,000; Belgium had territories with a population of 3,000,000 as a result of the war. She lost 500,000 men and more.

Does that pamphlet make any reference to Italy's European gains as a result of the war?

Only to the 100,000 square kilometres. That was not Very much—

With a 90,000 population?

I am not accepting responsibility for the pamphlet, but am only citing from it some figures which show roughly the disparity between the gains of Italy and the gains of other countries as a result of the War. The economic consideration is a very important one. It is no use saying that the raw materials of all these territories are free to anybody who goes to buy them. We go there, and for what we buy we pay in sterling—our own coin, anyway. France does the same thing; she pays in her own coin, and it does not affect her currency. But if Italy buys in any Dominion or in any territory under our sway, she has to pay in a currency which she finds it very difficult to obtain, and the same thing applies to some other countries. I am not in favour of giving away bits of the British Empire. That is not the point. But I do put forward this plea quite seriously, as one of the three or four who were responsible for drafting the Treaty of Versailles. Under the Treaty of Versailles these territories were not given to us as British possessions; they were given to the League of Nations, and the legal right is vested in the League of Nations.

No.

My right hon. Friend has his views about that, but I do not agree with him. At any rate, however, he will agree with me that they are in a totally different position from the other possessions of the British Empire. Very well; let us put it in that way. I agree with him to this extent: Before the League of Nations came into existence, the Allied and Associated Powers had to apportion the territories, but it was thoroughly understood that they were territories where we were mandatories, and where we were not the legal possessors, as it were. That is my interpretation. I do not believe that you will have peace in the world until you reconsider the mandates. That is my view quite frankly, and I should be doing wrong unless I said so. I feel an obligation, as one of those who represented the British Empire in negotiating that treaty, to take this opportunity of saying so in the House of Commons. There is Belgium, with a population of 7,000,000 or 8,000,000. She has got the best bit of German East Africa; she has the whole of the Congo. Portugal, with a small population, has millions of square miles. Holland is in the same position. And here you have the German Empire—

Those are not mandated territories.

I am putting the general proposition that each of these countries has great tropical territories, while Germany has none, and Italy practically none. I do not believe, and I am bound to say it here, that you can make peace in the world unless you go there and meet them all frankly, and say that the British Empire is prepared to reconsider the question of mandates. You cannot go to another great international conference, as you did in 1931, with nothing. I earnestly plead with the Government—I am not asking for their answer now; obviously they could not give it without the most serious consideration—first of all to consider whether the time is not coming, and whether it ought not to be soon, when all the nations of the earth should be summoned together. It is no use doing that, I am sorry to say, under the League at the present moment; you will not get them there. What you want is to have them there. Has not the time come to ask them to say what it is they are after, so that we may see whether there is not something which contains an element of negotiation? I have seen statements of the claims of Germany. They did not seem to me to be very extravagant. That does not mean that we ought to say "Yes" to every one of them, but they are of a character, I think, that is sufficiently moderate to make it possible to have a basis of negotiation.

Has the right hon. Gentleman seen what Herr Hitler said only a few days ago about the black and the white races?

That is nothing to do with it; I am not going to be drawn into a controversy which is quite irrelevant. You cannot rule out Germany because of the speeches delivered by Herr Goering, or Herr Hitler, or anyone else. We have all made foolish speeches. If a country is to be con- demned because of the follies in speech or in action of its politicians, past, present or future, God help it. It is time that we should come to realities. If we do not, realities will come to us, and they will come in a very grim form. I beg whoever answers for the Government not to shut the door. There are many harsh things that could be said about Germany; there are many harsh things that could be said about Italy; there are many harsh things which I have heard said about Russia, who is our friend— about shaking hands with murderers, and so on. I have heard all these things, and probably there are many harsh things that might be said by others about us. But this is a world which is getting very crowded. We have got to live together in it, and we can only do so by overlooking, whether in private or in public, a good many things that have been either said or done in the past by individuals, by groups, by parties or by nations. I think the time has come for the Government, who are here with a mandate for five years, with the power established in their hands, with the future of this nation and of the Empire, and the future of humanity, possibly, in their hands, to make some move.

5.38 p.m.

We have just listened to a speech which I confess I found it very difficult to understand. My right hon. Friend began by drawing a picture—I will not say an exaggerated picture, but a very sombre picture—of the fear in Germany of France and Russia, and of the fear in Russia of Germany and Japan; and his conclusion is that we should surrender some colony in Africa to Germany or somebody else. How is the problem which my right hon. Friend stated so forcibly at the beginning of his speech going to be affected in the slightest way by the conclusion which he put forward? Is Germany going to be less afraid of Russia if she has Togoland given to her? What colony could we offer to Japan to make her less afraid of Russia? What colony could we offer to Russia to make her less afraid of Germany? It seems to me that there is no connection whatever between the fundamental problem of ancient animosities and new ambitions with which my right hon. Friend dealt at the beginning of his speech and the curious conclusion to which he came. Before that, as a prelude to that conclusion, he suggested that we should have a conference. Surely, if any man in this country has experience of conferences, it is my right hon. Friend, and surely he of all men should know that, unless there is some measure of agreement, before a conference is opened, as to what you mean to do, that conference is doomed to futility. We saw the futility of the International Economic Conference of 1933. What hope is there, if a conference were convened to-day, that any of the Powers concerned would come into that conference prepared to surrender any of their territory? What hope is there, after the experience of 1933, that any of the Powers concerned would come pre pared to alter their economic system? Then what is the good of summoning a conference? Coming to the question of reconsidering mandates, my right hon. Friend's argument was not only one for reconsidering mandates, but for reconsidering colonial territories altogether—

I do not know why my right hon. Friend should say that. I specifically disclaimed that.

I am glad that my right hon. Friend disclaims it, but he went on to talk, not only of what Belgium has got out of the War, but of the whole disparity between Belgian, Portuguese and Dutch Colonies and their possessors, and the only logical inference is that these small countries which have great colonial empires should have them divided up. Divided up to whom? It is true that Germany had a Colonial Empire, though it only played a very small part in her economic life and only took a minute handful of settlers. She lost it in a war which she herself provoked. Why should she have a special prior claim over, say, Scandinavia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Switzerland—the whole of Europe? If these matters are to be settled on a basis of abstract principle, those countries have a case for having colonies too. Again, take the question of over-populated countries like China and Japan. If over-population is to be the basis of claim, Japan, China, Belgium, and this country have at least as good a claim as Germany. How can it be said that a division of this sort is really going to make any contribution even to the economic problem?

What Germany wants to-day, and what she claims, is space for settlers, room for enlarging effectively her economic entity. She is not going to get that if you give her Togoland, or even Tanganyika. Does anyone suggest that we should, or could, give her half of Australia, or half of Canada? Where she hopes to get territory, where through 1,000 years the German race has extended, is eastward towards Russia, and there you come up against the real problem which my right hon. Friend touched upon, but with which he did not deal. There is, on the one hand, Germany's fear of the spread of Communism—a fear that is by no means unjustifiable. On the other hand there is Germany's hope of winning a territory on which she can settle, not a few thousand officials and planters, but millions of German peasants, and build up her strength in Europe to a level to which she believes herself entitled.

Will Russia come to a conference prepared to surrender territory to Germany? Then what is the good of dealing with these great issues by a conference? There are, after all, great issues in the world which sooner or later are settled by force, whether by a revolution within a country or by war without. The right hon. Gentleman who moved the Motion is not a believer in dictatorship. Does he think that some of the dictatorships in Europe to-day are going to be altered by the peaceful evolution by which we change our policies? They can only be altered by force, in fact, by that very method of war, domestic or external, to which he so strongly objects. The same remains true, and will remain true for a long time to come, of some of these profound divergences between nations, and their armaments are their methods of postponing that issue if they can. You talk of war as futile, never effecting anything. Where would western civilisation be to-day if Greece had not defeated the arms of Persia centuries ago? Where would our liberties have been if we had not defeated the Spanish Armada and Napoleon? Even the last war, possibly futile from our point of view, at any rate costly, had this result, that we have not borne all that we should have had to bear if we had been defeated. At any rate, for many nations in Europe it meant the completion of those national aspirations which for a century led up to the War. You may say that war is terrible, you may deplore it, you may hope that better methods may some day solve even the most insoluble problems, but to say that it does not settle things is a refusal to face the elementary facts of the situation.

To come back for a moment to the question of mandates and colonial territories, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) was entirely mistaken when he said that those territories-were surrendered by Germany to the League of Nations. They were surrendered by Germany to the allied and associated Powers, completely and irrevocably. Those Powers agreed among themselves that they were not going to take them over to exploit them. They were going to take them over in the interest of the population of those territories and, to make that intention clear to the whole world, they pledged themselves to administer them under the terms of a convenant which was to be framed by the League of Nations. The League of Nations was the designer and is the guardian of the terms under which these territories are governed by us under our sovereignty, or the collective sovereignty of the allied and associated Powers, but not under the sovereignty of the League of Nations, and certainly with no remnant of Germany sovereignty attached to them. The essence of the mandate was our obligation, our trust to the peoples concerned. Is that trust going to be better fulfilled by handing them over to Germany or to any other Power that wishes for a larger economic field? Nor would the situation of these land-hungry or Empire-hungry countries be in the least appeased or modified if they were put under an incompetent international rule. After all, there is something in national pride in administration, for British, French, Belgian or Dutch administrators to make the best of the administration for the honour of their country. You do not get that in a mixed international administration with no common patriotism. That would be no advantage. Free trade in the mandated territories they have already. It is not much good to them. No amount of free markets is going to help European nations against competition from Japan and some day from China.

The root of this whole economic question was touched in the very able speech of the hon. Member for Bristol North (Mr. Bernays). It is the dislocation of world trade in recent years which has made it so difficult for some of these countries to make any use of the markets that exist in the world. I do not believe that you can find a way of salvation by restoring the old free trade and the old single currency system of the world. National tendencies are far too strong. Is there no way of meeting the needs of some of these countries by an arrangement which may fall short of the ideal of world free trade but will give the countries concerned what they need? It is true, as the right hon. Gentleman said, that Holland, Portugal and Belgium have colonial territories disproportionate to their home territory, capable of producing even more than their home markets can absorb. Why should not those countries enter into some mutual economic arrangement with the great markets of Central Europe for mutual trade, with mutual preference, and follow the good example which the nations of the British Empire set the world at Ottawa?

If you could bring about freer trade and mutual co-operation among nations which are complementary to each other, the development of the Dutch, Belgian, Portuguese and French colonies would afford ample scope for all the energies of the whole of Europe if only they could be got together. The main obstacle to their getting together is that unfortunate remanet of the nineteenth century economics, the most-favoured-nation clause, which prevents the nations of Europe, with their colonies, helping each other as the British nations have helped each other in recent years. It is that constructive idea, namely, that by these economic groups it might be possible in large measure to solve the economic problems of to-day and make, at any rate, a contribution to the general problem of political peace, which I should like to submit to the House for what it is worth.

5.55 p.m.

I think if we were to choose who in this House is furthest in outlook and in ideals from my right hon. Friend the Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury), we should choose the right hon. Gentleman who has just spoken. His Imperialistic idea contrasts definitely with the humanitarian and peaceful outlook of my right hon, Friend.

The intervention of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) has invested the Debate with an importance which, I think, otherwise it would not have had. I believe everyone in the House will welcome his intervention. What he said caused me to think very sadly indeed about what might have been. I see in him the statesman who at the end of the so-called Great War, great only in the misery and degradation that it brought, was the statesman with the greatest power in the world. He went to Versailles to make a treaty as it was called, to impose a treaty I should say, upon the enemies who had been defeated. As the result of what he did at that time we now find the necessity for putting such a Resolution as this upon the Order Paper. The right hon. Gentleman took part in sowing the dragon's teeth, and now he is bemoaning and regretting the crop that has grown up. I am sorry he is not here to hear me say that I think that, with the power that he had to endorse the idealistic appeal of the President of the United States or to give way—I do not want to use ugly words—to the grasping and revengeful Clemenceau, he could have made it a very different peace treaty from what it turned out to be. He did not use his power aright.

I wish he had had the mind of a predecessor of his who at the end of a war did not take the line that was taken at the end of the Great War, but a line that really met the needs of the people against whom we had fought and whom we had defeated. I am talking, of course, not of a Welshman but of a Scotsman. I am talking of Campbell-Bannerman and the settlement that he made, which worked out well for the peace of the world, 4 for this country and for the other nations of the world. I wish that there had been more of that kind of spirit in the mind of the right hon. Gentleman when he was involved in the imposing of those peace treaties. When he points out the extent of territory which came to this country and to other allied Powers, he must hold the responsibility for the fact that there are countries from whom that territory was taken who are looking jealously at the position in which we find ourselves as compared with them.

I turn to the Motion itself. I find it possible to endorse and approve every word of it, and impossible to allow myself to be misled, as, I think, I would be misled by the Amendment which has been moved. In short I do not feel confident that His Majesty's Government, constituted as it is and with the ideas that it has, will secure a better understanding between the peoples. When talk is made of the barriers to world trade being a menace to peace, we must remember that it is part of the policy of His Majesty's Government to-day to maintain those barriers to trade between the different countries in the world. But, dealing with the Motion, I do not think that anyone, at least anyone who has reached a little more than adult age or has reached something approaching middle age, will deny the, futility of war. We have had it in our own experience. We have seen how absolutely futile war is to settle anything. The fact is that you cannot achieve anything in the way of real settlement by force of arms and by defeating an enemy. I would have been even stronger in the drafting of this Resolution. My right hon. Friend refers to the "grave menace" of the world-wide preparations for war. I would class this also as futile. Surely, we remember the position which faced us between 1905 and 1914, and more intensively perhaps between 1908 and 1914. We were then very largely in the position in which we are to-day. We were told by the Government of that day and those who supported them that if we would maintain peace we must prepare for war, and up to 1914 the world had never been better prepared for war than it was at that time, and yet war came along. I make definitely the claim that the preparations for war had something to do with the precipitation of war, when it came.

I think that hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite who take the view of opposing this Motion are very illogical. They talk about the rule of law and the upholding of Jaw when they try to relate, as some of us do, the individual position to the national position. I want to do the same and to point out the analogy between individual murder and mass murder which is represented by war. I do not read murder trials or anything with regard to murders in the ordinary newspapers, but I can see the tremendous amount of space which is devoted in the newspapers when some hot blooded individual perhaps because of some cause, because of a reason, takes the life of another. We find immense trouble being taken over the loss of one life in the heat of the moment, and yet when we come to what is equally murder—mass murder —those who are responsible for it are looked upon with very great respect. When the end of the time comes for those waging war, they are very greatly rewarded and we look up to them with very great respect. That is due to the outlook that we have, the illogical stupid outlook, I would say, with regard to the taking of life.

Recently, during the Recess, I have been celebrating the birth of Scotland's greatest son of all time, Robert Burns. Robert Burns was one who, very definitely, would have favoured the point of view that is represented by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bow and Bromley. He had no illusion at all about war. All of us know of his desire, his urge for the brotherhood of man

May I ask my hon. Friend if the policy of his party and the policy of sanctions of the League of Nations do not contain the possibility of war and support of war, and is he repudiating the policy of his party?

:I am speaking for myself, expressing quite plainly my own point of view. I say quite definitely as an individual that, with regard to the preparations that we are told the Government are making and are intending to make to increase the armaments of this country, I certainly cannot, even if they do wish to act along those lines, support them in the idea of expanding armaments. I think that here is to be found an alternative even to-day in the difficult position in which we find ourselves with regard to other countries. It is necessary that one country must break the vicious circle of those who are going in for vastly increased armaments, and I would like it to be to the honour and credit of this country that we should take that line. Right hon. Gentlemen opposite indicate themselves as being quite willing to pour out vast sums of the wealth of the people of this country in taking what I believe to be the risks of making huge preparations for war. Some of them at least express themselves as being unwilling to make what I look upon as a very much smaller expenditure, to take a very much smaller risk of making a real contribution out of the great resources of the British Empire along the line that is suggested by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bow and Bromley in his Resolution, which I have very great pleasure in supporting.

6.12 p.m.

I only intend this evening to take up the time of the House for a few minutes. This is, after all, a Private Members' day and it is, I understand, the view of the Government that Government speakers should not take up the time which rightly ought to be given to Private Members. At the same time, I would, first of all, like to say how very fitting and proper it seems to all of us that the first Private Members' Motion of this part of the Session should have been moved by so very distinguished a Private Member as the right hon. Gentleman the late Leader of the Opposition. Many of us regretted not seeing him speaking from his old place at the Front Bench, but, at any rate, whenever he makes a contribution in this House, it will always be welcome to all of us, and especially when he initiates such an extraordinarily interesting and important discussion as that this evening, which has transcended in importance almost any Private Member's discussion I remember since I have been a Member of the House.

I am also in the happy position this evening of being able to say that the Government are largely in agreement with the right hon. Gentleman's Motion, and that where there are differences, they are differences rather of degree, and, one might almost say, of pace than of substance. With the proposition that war is futile, one would have thought that there would have been no disagreement in any part of the House. I listened to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Sparkbrook (Mr. Amery), who said that war was not futile because it achieved something, but I did not take it that was the intention of the meaning put into it by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury). He meant that it achieved nothing good, and in that sense I think we are all in agreement with him.

It is true that throughout the long ages of history war has always been considered a necessary matter of course, an un- pleasant necessity. That, perhaps, is because mankind on the whole is by nature conservative and men do not like a new idea until they have had plenty of time to get used to it. Certainly, in the last few years there has been a fundamental change so far as this country is concerned. I believe that may be put down very largely to a new factor in international affairs, and that is the growth in the scope and intensity of war. In the past, war was very largely a professional affair. It was carried on by professional armies and professional navies. It did not really interfere very much with trade. It had little effect on the life of the average citizen, unless he lived in a war area or had relatives in the armed forces. Battles were few and far between and casualties, judged by modern standards, were almost negligible. I believe I am right in saying that during the whole 20 years of the Napoleonic wars the British casualties amounted to about 100,000 men, that is, 5,000 a year. Compare those figures with the casualties in one year of the Great War. [An HON. MEMBER: "What was the difference in population?"] Even so, the casualties were on a very much lower scale. War was in fact brutal and bloody, but it was not quite intolerable. It was, therefore, accepted by the general run of the population as the only possible way of settling international disputes. Then came the great wars of the 19th century, culminating in the war of 1914, when men saw whole nations conscripted to fight, undefended towns bombed and trade ruined and disorganised.

The state of the world was such after the last war that men came together and said: "Is this really the only way in which international disputes can be settled?" The result of that consultation, as we all know, was the Covenant of the League of Nations. The right hon. Member for Bow and Bromley spoke, I thought, rather slightingly of the League. I understood him to say that it was a very imperfect instrument, that it contained only two great nations and a number of small ones, and that it could not be expected to do the job. It is true that in its present state the League is not a perfect instrument, but I hope very much that the right hon. Gentleman did not mean that he would like to scrap it. If it is not perfect, it is infinitely better than nothing. That is the overwhelming view, I think, of the people of this country and it gives proof that they agree with the first proposition of the right hon. Gentleman's Motion that war is futile. Nor is there disagreement with his second proposition where he states that we view

Every speaker whose speeches I have read, representing every nation, statesmen of countries who are arming and of countries who are disarming have said that they want peace, and would be prepared for peace if other people would do something in that direction.

The fact is that there is one great nation which has just gone to war, and there are many other nations at the present time who are making speeches not of a very peaceful character. If we cannot have the ideal, what is the next best? The next best is that no nation should dare to go to war because the forces of order are so strong that it is bound to be beaten. That is not the best, but it is the next best. That, as I understand it, is the principle of collective security to which, I believe, hon. Members opposite as much as ourselves, are attached. But if the situation changed and an opportunity were given for an all-round reduction of armaments, I am quite certain that not merely the Government but everybody else in this country would grasp it with both hands.

Now I come to the right hon. Gentleman's third proposition. He suggests that

There were other questions of a wholly different kind, referring directly or indirectly to the speech at Geneva made by my right hon. Friend the late Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. I have been asked, in effect, whether the policy of the Government has changed with regard to the statement he made at that time respecting the collective examination of many economic problems. The right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs said he hoped that the Gov- ernment would not give a flat negative and would not bang the door. The Government have no intention of banging the door. They believed then, as they believe now, that international discussion of these issues might be, and would be, immensely valuable, and might play a very important part in the eventual solution of our difficulties. But as the right hon. Gentleman himself recognised, these questions are not easy. They are exceedingly complex. I need only remind hon. Members of the questions raised in this Debate. The hon. Member for West Bermondsey (Dr. Salter) raised the question of markets, tariffs, quotas and prohibitions. My hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Emrys-Evans) raised the question of currency. Therefore, a discussion which started with Colonial raw materials might very rapidly lead to a discussion of all raw materials. A discussion of all raw materials might very easily lead to a discussion of markets and currencies and might lead to a new World Economic Conference.

Can any of us say that the time is now ripe for another World Economic Conference? We had one three years ago, in 1933. That Conference was not a success. It was a failure because the world, as the right hon. Gentleman said, was not ready for it, was not prepared for it. Can we honestly say that it is prepared for it at this moment, "immediately"? "Immediately" is the word used in the Motion. I doubt it very much, and if there was another failure it would not only be unfortunate, but it would be disastrous. The time for the next step to be taken cannot be fixed here and now this evening. It must depend upon circumstances. The Government are not shirking this issue. Preliminary examination of the problem has already begun, but we cannot fix the date, until circumstances permit, for any further negotiations.

We ought to consider this question in its true perspective. Economics are not, as is indicated in the Motion, the only factor that is causing the present lamentable position. There are many other factors and all those factors must be taken into account and balanced against each other if a solution is to be found; otherwise one nation may be asked to give its near neighbour some benefit and receive no compensating advantage in return. The only result would be that it would refuse to negotiate, and the situation would be much worse than it was before. It is for that reason that I hope the House will accept the Amendment that has been moved by my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire. He does not rule out altogether or in any way rule out the right hon. Gentleman's proposal. The greater includes the less. He accepts the first part of the Motion and ends with the words

6.30 p.m.

I was pleased to hear the Under-Secretary of State say that the Government were in general agreement with the Motion of the right hon. Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury). So far as hon. Members on this side have to make up their minds, we cannot accept his invitation to support the Amendment. He will notice that it expresses confidence in His Majesty's Government, and he cannot expect us to agree with that. We prefer the Motion of the right hon. Member for Bow and Bromley. I am not sure that it is recognised that the policy which it contains and which, as the Under-Secretary of State mentioned, was opened up by the speech of the late Foreign Secretary at Geneva, was first of all carefully framed and put forward, before the right hon. Member for Chelsea (Sir S. Hoare) spoke at Geneva, at the Trade Union Congress at Hastings. At that conference an important decision had to be taken, a decision to support sanctions, but at the same time it was realised that you cannot adopt a policy of supporting the League of Nations by a very powerful instrument unless you are willing to accompany it by an equally radical policy for peaceful change. If Article 16 is to be carried out—you cannot have a static world—you must take the boldest and most venturesome measure to see that the change is carried through by peaceful means. The policy enunciated at Geneva was first put before the country officially by the Labour party, but it is the case that it only dealt with the fringe of the subject. The right hon. Member for Chelsea, proposed at Geneva an inquiry into the powers of obtaining and buying raw materials, and he pointed out that there is no difficulty in buying raw materials because every mandated country and Colonial possession found that the only difficulty is to get purchasers for the materials.

In this matter we must see where we stand, and it is a truism to say that it is not possible to buy raw materials from the Colonies unless you have facilities for selling your goods to the Colonies. On that point the whole position has deteriorated since the last Government came into office in 1931. Increasing difficulties have been put in the way of selling goods in the Colonies, and there is reason for apprehension on the part of foreign countries because the position gets worse and worse. It is not extreme, I admit, but hon. Members will agree that the Conservative party contains many extreme and reckless people, editors of Conservative newspapers, who propose to go far further than anything the present Government have done. There is another reason why foreign nations should feel apprehensive as to whether in the future access to the Colonies will be as easy as in the past. The combinations to restrict the output and sale of raw materials which the Colonies produce are getting more powerful every year. There is scarcely any raw material in which a combination has not been formed or attempted, and although the first attempt may not have succeeded it is undoubtedly a development that in future years the machinery for making these combinations effective will be perfected. You cannot mention any raw material which is not now the subject of a powerful combination, which can affect its output over the whole world. There is tin, a combination supported possibly by the British Government; there are rubber, potash, lead, aluminium, mercury, and now steel. There is no raw material which you can mention in which there is not a combination, and, therefore, the obtaining of raw materials from the Colonies by the world is becoming more difficult owing to the development which modern capitalistic control is now able to possess and perfect.

There is one matter upon which I must say a word. It has been said that the Labour party proposes to give away bits of the British Empire. There has never been a word said by any responsible person or in any official declaration of policy put forward which entitles anyone to say that. What we have suggested is that our colonial possessions might become the subject of inquiry by the Mandates Commission.

Is it not true that it was suggested at the Brighton Conference that the whole of the Crown Colonies of the British Empire should be handed over to the League of Nations?

No, it is not. Let us be quite clear on this matter. What I have said is that it is our policy that our possessions should be under mandate.

Thank you; that will satisfy me.

And in regard to Lord Lugard, I have carefully read his articles on the subject and he by no means put it as a proposition that ought not to be seriously considered. He says that it is a proposition which is entitled to very serious and respectful consideration, and from his own experience he suggests that we should give a guarantee to the world of an absolutely open door in British Colonies, which would sweep away the proposals of the Ottawa Conference, and that the supervision necessary to see that that pledge is carried out should be left to the Mandates Commission of the League of Nations. A great part of the Debate has been devoted not so much to the question of colonial possessions as to the dangers now facing Europe, which I recognise will become more tangible when the rearmament of Germany is completed.

Our view is the opposite of that taken by the right hon. Member for Spark-brook (Mr. Amery). His view is that in the perils facing Europe we should refuse to do anything. Our view is the opposite, and that if these dangers have to be confronted now, before we act under the threat of duress, we should put ourselves absolutely in the right and make it clear that so far as there are legitimate claims for a change in the world the League of Nations offers means by which these changes can be carried through by peaceful methods. We say that we who control the greater part of the raw materials of the world should show that we give the pledge in all seriousness by coming forward with the proposals which the Labour party originally made, and then if in those circumstances, and in spite of all that human foresight can do there are still threats, through sheer malignancy, to the peace of the world, we are likely to meet them in a far more determined fashion and with a clearer conscience than we can at present.

The right hon. Member for Sparkbrook also objects to introducing any new principle at all into our treatment of colonial problems. What are we doing at the moment? What is the main problem, the greatest tangible issue at the moment? If Signor Mussolini had done 50 years ago what he is doing now there would not have been this national uprising. The fact is that we are now saying that a new principle has to be introduced into our treatment of colonial problems and we are trying to enforce that principle on Signor Mussolini. If we are enforcing this new principle on him then it is inevitable, it is only decent, that we should accept the new principle for ourselves. The right hon. Member for Sparkbrook has a very limited belief in the League of Nations. On the contrary, we say that quite apart from its international aspect the League of Nations is a supreme British interest. The world has to change. We cannot retain possession of nearly a quarter of the whole globe on terms without any change at all. There has to be a change and there is no nation in the world to whom it is so great a necessity that that change should be made by peaceful means, through the League of Nations, as Great Britain.

6.45 p.m.

Members will agree this this has been an intensely interesting Debate. I rather regret that the Amendment which has been taken and which I intend to support is rather colourless. Speaking as a simple Englishman, and I believe representing the view of a great number of British working-men who returned His Majesty's Government to power, I believe that speeches of the kind which we have heard from time to time, in favour of getting rid of the British Empire are utterly abhorrent to vast numbers of the people of this country. Therefore, I wish that we had before us something a little more definite than the wording of the Amendment. We listened with interest to the speech of my noble Friend the Undersecretary. He treated the words of the Amendment which appears in my name on the Paper as if they were unnecessary because the Government were sound upon this point. I am delighted to think that that is so and I rejoice at my noble Friend's speech, but I think the speech which immediately followed his showed the necessity of urging the Government not to give any hope of anything of the kind which we have heard suggested from the Opposition Benches.

We have heard some remarkable speeches this evening, and the most remarkable of all, I think, was that of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George). The first part of the right hon. Gentleman's speech was one of the most impressive of the many impressive declarations which he has made in this House. It was, without any attempt to introduce party polemics, a great and grave warning to the people not only of this country but of the world as to the danger of a return of world convulsion. We are grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for the impressive manner in which he placed that question before the House. I wish I could say that I liked the last part of his speech as much as I admired the warning in the first part. He rightly pointed out these great dangers and wisely spoke with respect of the aggressive dictators of the world—because you will never kill dictators merely by insulting them. But when we see the fears that are being created by great and growing armaments, especially in a country whose people some of us learned very much to respect as fighting men, I cannot believe that it is wise to talk about holding a conference and even before our people have had any opportunity of considering these questions, suggest that this country is ready to feed the lions because they are growling so loudly in various parts of Europe.

I believe that any Government which gave the impression that this country had become so week-kneed that, even before the delegates to such a conference met round the council-table, it was ready to say, "Please do not go on arming because we are ready to give you back the mandated territories in the near future," would be swept out of existence. There are hon. Gentlemen on the benches above the Gangway who would go even further and say, "We will give up the colonies of the British Empire, whether the inhabitants of those colonies want it or not to the mandate of the League of Nations." I give this warning, and I have not always been wrong in my predictions in this House in the last 26 years. Any Government which attempted by a proposal of that kind to placate those who are doing wrong in the world and creating fear throughout the world, would be kicked from power by an indignant people.

I wish now to refer to the interesting speech of the hon. Member for West Bermondsey (Dr. Salter). He gave a well-informed and interesting account of early Asiatic history. Before he left that point however he pointed out how the floods of invasion ceased to pass over China when the Chinese organised their defences, and built the Great Wall. The stream of invasion he said then turned to the West. In that, I think, he gave a complete answer to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury), who, I understand, is in favour of baring not only his own breast but the breasts of the women and children and everyone else in this country to any foreign aggressor who chooses to endeavour to assault us. The hon. Member for West Bermondsey asked us to realise that these nations—he was speaking specifically of Japan, Germany and Italy, and I think he ought to have added Russia—were virile, spirited nations, and he said that we ought to do what we could to meet their views on the subject of land hunger and population.

Why only the virile and spirited nations? Why not the 50 small nations who are supporting the Foreign Secretary at Geneva? Why is this proposal to be limited merely to those who shake their fists? I cannot help thinking that the hon. Member takes a wrong view of the matter. If some nations are so poor that they cannot buy raw materials but yet are rich enough to spend on armaments sums such as have never been spent in that way before in the history of the world, I think it not wise merely to say that you want to satisfy Japan, Germany and Italy and that in order to do so you propose to have a wholesale division of the colonial territories of all the countries in the world. I do not know whether any of the other Imperial Powers have been consulted, but I venture to think that even if you are going in for such a redistribution, you ought not to single out for your favours only those who are showing the mailed fist.

I never made such a suggestion. I merely took those three countries as illustrations.

The House will realise that we are getting on. Apparently the British Empire is not to be divided up only between those three nations. The hon. Member proposes to bring in all the other nations to share. The hon. Member laid particular stress upon the needs of Germany and quoted a speech made, I think, by General Goering. He might also have mentioned a more recent speech by Dr. Goebbels.

No, it was Dr. Goebbels whom I quoted.

I beg the hon. Member's pardon. At all events, he said that Germany must have raw materials and food and clothing and then, I understand, went on to speak of tropical and semi-tropical Africa. I happen to be interested in tropical and semi-tropical Africa. I have grown 15 different crops in East Africa and I say that no one who has made a study of the question could possibly accept the suggestion that it is possible to satisfy Germany's economic and population needs by handing over to her part of East Africa. Take the case of Tanganyika before the War. Does the hon. Member know how many Germans went to colonise Tanganyika? Kenya is a much more popular colony with white people and four years ago the white population there was 10,000. I do not know what the white population of Tanganyika is but I should say that it is much less than that of Kenya.

Two thousand whites.

I should have guessed it to be about 3,000, and I am indebted to my hon. Friend for giving me the correct figure. Even taking it at 3,000, I ask the hon. Member for West Bermondsey whether that is going to solve Germany's population problem. Can anyone who has studied Kenya, Nyasaland, the Rhodesias, Tanganyika and Uganda say that such proposals as we have heard are going to solve any population problem? I go so far as to say that in the next 10 years the whole of tropical and semitropical Africa could not absorb more than 100,000 white settlers. Are we not unwise then to encourage false hopes and to lead the people of this country and people elsewhere to imagine that such proposals as these are going to provide a solution of the problem, either with regard to territory or with regard to raw materials?

Most of those connected with East Africa have been faced with ruin in the last five or six years because they could not sell their products. If anyone were prepared to buy my small property there, how glad I would be to let them have it to-morrow at the original figure which I spent upon it 20 years ago. Nor is it true that we are withholding raw materials from the rest of the world. The raw materials of the Empire are available for everybody in the world. The only fair point I think to be made in that connection is on the question of currency. I can understand that that is a point which calls for consideration. But the truth of the matter is that our Colonial policy has never been such as to limit the possibilities of purchase by foreign countries from the British Empire. On the contrary, all our Colonies are offering their goods to the rest of the world and would be only too pleased to sell those goods anywhere.

With regard to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bow and Bromley, I feel, like others who have spoken this evening, that we can regard him as a truly courageous and sincere exponent of a particular point of view. It is not long since I sat on a very respectable platform with him. We were expressing differing views and on that occasion Lord Cecil said he preferred the right hon. Gentleman's views on a particular matter to mine. I take this occasion to say that on some matters I prefer the views of the right hon. Gentleman to those of Lord Cecil. I can accept and understand the view of one who is a complete pacifist, believing in pacifism, voting for it and prepared to stand by it. What I cannot understand is the view of those who organise peace ballots in the country and then adopt a policy which may conceivably involve us in great tragedies without warning the country of the necessity to prepare and to train its men and to have a fleet and an air force capable of carrying out its responsibilities. It is with great sympathy that I turn to the right hon. Gentleman's speech and attempt modestly to reply to him. He says that war is a futility. I am not sure that that is the right word. We should surely learn what futility was if we took no steps to defend ourselves.

What is the right hon. Gentleman's policy? It is that we ought not to attempt to defend ourselves, whatever happens, by killing or having resort to arms. Surely that means opening up the world to pagan violence. I have heard it suggested by eminent divines and by some hon. Gentlemen of the party below the Gangway that we ought at once to give up the strategic points of the Empire. Why? Let us have the real answer. It is so that we might soften acerbities on the Continent of Europe, so that Herr Hitler and other great men of that description might have free play to advance towards their ambition. I ask the right hon. Gentleman to believe that it is not only those who are declared pacificists who want to avoid war. I suppose that during the War I was as near to the Germans as any man in this House for a considerable period of time, and I respected them very much. I saw war at first-hand, even after I ceased to be a regimental officer. My staff was almost completely wiped out practically in my presence. Some of us know what war means, and it is only because I can conceive no greater folly than to dope people with the idea that they are going to be made safe by getting rid of armaments, that I beg them not to listen to the words of the right hon. Gentleman. The right hon. Gentleman's proposal really means the complete enslavement of your people if they are attacked. Are you going to stand on one side when India is attacked, or when any of the self-governing Dominions are attacked? The right hon. Gentleman is going to do no such thing. He has to go to the rescue, otherwise all honour is gone. He may say to me that he who takes the sword shall perish by the sword. But does not that suggest as clearly as any words can that the man who takes the sword for aggression will perish by the sword—by somebody else's sword? That is exactly the position in the world to-day.

I believe that it is not wise to tell this country and the world that you can solve these problems by any such idea as that the raw materials of this Empire are going to be made more accessible. Consider it by all means if you like, but do not raise false hopes, and let us be perfectly certain that we can help the world in this respect before we commit ourselves to such statements. There is no mandated territory where the British Empire is allowed to exercise its influence where there is any hope of solving economic or population problems, except perhaps Palestine. Is it suggested that Palestine should be handed over to Germany? Of all these races we have been discussing there is only one which can possibly provide people able to engage in manual labour in tropical and semi-tropical climates. Is it suggested that the small territories of this description which are capable of settlement in Tanganyika should be handed over to Italy? I doubt it.

With regard to the idea of the Socialist party that the whole of the Colonial possessions of the British Empire should be handed over to the League of Nations, I want to say this. I know a good many of these territories, and nothing can do more to shake the confidence of our countrymen in encountering the most difficult conditions in these countries to-day than the belief that, without their consent, you are going to drive them from the British flag. Are we wise and right even to contemplate for a moment that natives under British rule should be handed over without their full consent to any foreign flag or to any combined flag? If you were to take a poll of the nations in any country under the British flag they would practically unanimously desire to stay under the Gracious Sovereign with whom they have found freedom and liberty and justice such as they never had before.

7.5 p.m.

:I want to approach this question of war from an entirely different point of view from any that has been put forward. I am one of those who fought against the last War from its first day to its last. I will fight again against any attempt to use the youth of this country in a predatory war. There has been much talk of the "British Commonwealth." I have even heard my right hon. Friend the Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury) talk of it as a bulwark of civilisation. But the British Commonwealth of Nations is the product of continual wars, and there is nothing so futile as the futility of those who talk about the futility of war while they hold tenaciously to the gains of war. The right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) told us with a throb in his voice that Belgium, with a population of 8,000,000, had a slice of Africa and that Germany had none. Is it to be wondered at that wherever you go you hear of perfidious Albion, and continual talk about the hypocrisy of the political leaders of this country? Belgium, with a population of 8,000,000, has a slice of territory in Africa. The right hon. Gentleman did not think it worth while to tell us that Britain, with a population of 45,000,000, has nearly the whole of the world.

Where do wars come from? We used to hear a lot about the Kaiser and his evil deeds, but everybody knows that the War of 1914 was prepared for by everyone of the countries for years before in the fight for territory, markets and profits, and the greatest of these is profits—not prophets from the sunny hills of Wales, but profits in hard cash. While there is the fight for profits there will be war. Speaking at a meeting in Warwick the Foreign Secretary said, according to the "Times": We are not anti any country. We are not pro any country." How can we be for peace if we are not for the countries which are for peace? How can we be against aggression if we are not against the countries who are making or preparing for aggression? The right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs said that Germany was not ready for war, and that Russia was not ready for war. What he should have said is that Ger- many is preparing for war, and he should have followed that by saying that Russia is ready for and continually fighting for peace. [ Laughter. ] Hon. Members laugh. The right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs said, and others have said it also, that Italy wants territory, Germany wants territory, Japan wants territory. Is there any hon. Member or right hon. Member who would have the audacity to say that Russia by word or deed has indicated any desire for territory?

What about Outer Mongolia.

Russia could have had Outer Mongolia freely and with the willing consent of Outer Mongolia if she had desired it. Never by word or deed has Russia given the slightest indication that it wants territory. Why? Because in Russia you have common property in the means of life. Where you have private property in the means of life you must sell your goods outside the country to get your profits. Therefore, always looking outside the country for profits brings about the diplomatic trouble that leads ultimately to the military struggle for markets. Soviet Russia is for peace, and has demonstrated that to all the world. Will we make a pact with Soviet Russia? Will we make a pact with those in France who are also concerned in making peace? Here you have an advance to a big stage in the concentration of forces making for peace.

The right hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Lees-Smith) has correctly said "the British Empire is going through a process of change." As that process goes on it would be folly to believe that the British Empire could continue to exist indefinitely. The peace terms in connection with Abyssinia that were proposed by the former Foreign Secretary represent a giving away of the British Empire such as nobody on this side had ever dreamt of or suggested. If you had given Italy the new strong bases proposed in Eritrea and in the South of Abyssinia, it would only have been a matter of time until Italy had the whole of Abyssinia. Then between Abyssinia and Libya the Sudan would be sandwiched, and you could not have held the Sudan. You have in the ex-Foreign Secretary and in certain newspaper proprietors a type of man that is prepared to sacrifice the British Empire in order to strengthen the reaction in Europe directed against the advance of the working classes. Nobody could say that the peace plan of the ex-Foreign Secretary was anything but a sacrifice of the British Empire. Italy would have become a great power in North Africa, dominating not only the Sudan but the Red Sea route to India.

This side of the House stands for sanctions because sanctions represent peace, not war. This side of the House is absolutely opposed to war, and will fight against war by every means, and sanctions are imposed for the purpose of stopping war. It has been suggested that if oil sanctions are imposed, it will be impossible for Italy to conduct the war in Abyssinia and Mussolini will become so desperate that he will start another war in Europe. This is the kind of argument we get, but the fear which they have is not the fear of war in Europe; it is the fear of a collapse of Fascism in Italy or in Germany. German Fascism would never exist to-day if it had not been for the financial and political support given from this country. Therefore, I want those who are concerned about the British Empire not to allow the British Empire to be sacrificed in order to try to maintain reaction and the enslavement of the working classes, such as can be seen in many countries in Europe and such as can be seen in this country too, if we look around, but to throw the weight of the British Empire into the great movement for peace and progress.

Let the Government accept this proposal, and let them go forward boldly in association with the peace countries of the world. If the Foreign Secretary says we are for peace, then let him declare that the Government are solidly with and for those nations which are for peace. If it is true, as he says, that we are against aggression, let the Government openly and frankly say they are against Japan, against Italy, against Germany, and against the preparations for aggression that are being made. Let them take this stand, and on this basis, in unity with the other peace nations, go forward to such a conference as has been proposed by the right hon. Gentleman; and the British Empire, even while it is going out of existence, will be rendering a measure of service to the future of humanity.

7.17 p.m.

:I regret that I cannot agree entirely with the hon. Member who has just resumed his seat. I view the suggestion for a pact between Soviet Russia, France, and ourselves as something very much like the pact which existed before the war between the Triple Entente, and I am no more in favour of a proletarian Triple Entente than I am of a capitalist Triple Entente. The speech made by the hon. and gallant Member for Bournemouth (Sir H. Croft) reminded me very much of a remark made from the Government Benches yesterday, when, during the discussion of the Cotton Spinning Industry Bill, one hon. Member said: "We are having a new technique." As the hon. and gallant Member was speaking to-night, I thought we were listening to a new technique in jingoism. It is "Rule, Britannia," written in a different key. I do not propose to weary the House by delving into history, but I would like to remind hon. Members of the late War. Some of those who are present in this Chamber must have taken an active part, as I did myself, in that period known as the Great War. That war was ostensibly caused by the murder of an Archduke and an Archduchess in Serajevo, and millions of young men were immediately launched into war. What was the cause then? Was it economic, or was it dynastic? When we talk about causes of war, I am not at all sure that We have finished with the dynastic causes of war. I view with grave suspicion some of the events which are taking place to-day in Paris in which nobility and royalty are engaged, and I fear that future wars will not be caused entirely from economic causes, as many hon. Members seem to suggest.

After the last war had finished, we had a so-called settlement in which the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) took a very active part. I do not intend to be too critical of him or his actions at that time, because evidently to-night he has seen sanity, and so, as we are told: would be well advised seriously to consider. As I listened to the Noble Lord replying for the Government, there was no indication in his speech that His Majesty's Government are prepared to take active measures to bring about what one of their own Members, when he spoke at Geneva, said this country was prepared to do. I refer to the late Foreign Secretary. What exactly did he or His Majesty's Government mean when they talked of considering the access to raw materials which lie in what is known as the British Empire to-day? Was there any real meaning and sincerity in those words? If so, what do the Government propose to do in the future? What circumstances would be favourable towards creating some conference to discuss tangible measures?

The Noble Lord has asked us on this side to support the Amendment moved by the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Emrys-Evans). In effect he has asked us to give the Government a vote of confidence. We cannot possibly do that. The state of affairs which resulted in the Government losing their Foreign Secretary just before Christmas is within our memory, and that shameful state of affairs has left a bitter taste in our mouths and those of the country. For that reason alone, we cannot believe that the Government are sincere when they say that they are prepared at a suitable moment to enter into such a conference as is suggested by the right hon. Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury). The late Mr. Arthur Henderson, however much hon. Members may disagree with him or his political economy, did make a definite attempt to bring sanity back to Europe, and I suggest that his efforts were not helped as they ought to have been helped by the Government then in office.

No, Sir, we cannot support this Amendment, for the reasons I have given, but I would suggest that there is an aspect of the matter which we might consider, and that is individual responsibility. In previous wars it has been the Governments that have been put in the dock, and at the end of the last war it was suggested that we should indict the Kaiser. There were very good grounds for suggesting that, but there are better grounds to-day, when we have supreme and omnipotent dictators in charge of national affairs. I believe that just as we bring individual criminals into the dock and try them for their crimes, it is necessary that if these dictators cause war, as they undoubtedly do to-day, we should put them in the dock as soon as we can get hold of them. [ Laughter. ] Hon. Members laugh. Is it suggested that it is impossible for us to get hold of them? Do hon. Members think that the people of Germany are whole-heartedly behind Herr Hitler? I am not so sure that they are. I am certain that the youth of Germany is not prepared to follow Hitler or Goebbels or Goering into another war such as the last. They do believe that they have been unjustly treated under the Treaty of Versailles, and I think they are right too, but I do not think they would follow Hitler to the bitter end. Therefore, if war did break out between Germany and us or other nations on the Continent, I believe it would be a feasible proposition to indict Hitler at the appropriate moment, just as it was suggested at the end of the last war that we should try the Kaiser for his crime.

I have listened to the speeches made here by right hon. Gentlemen who are known, I believe, as elder statesmen. I listened to them as a young politician, and as one who took part in the last war and who would take part in another war only if my country was attacked. I say that, because I cannot agree wholeheartedly with the sentiments that have been expressed by the right hon. Member for Bow and Bromley. I realise my duty to my country, and I love my country as much as does any Member of this House on the opposite benches, but I am not blinded to some of my country's own faults. It is because of that that I am sitting on this side of the House. I also believe in a new technique, and it is because of that that I am proud to call myself a Labour Member.

Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."

The House divided: Ayes, 137; Noes, 228.

Question put, "That those words be added."

The House divided: Ayes, 207; Noes, there 125.

Words there added.

Question put,

"That this House affirms its profound belief in the futility of war, views with grave concern the world-wide preparations for

war, and is confident that His Majesty's Government will take all practicable steps to promote international prosperity and a better understanding between peoples."

The House divided: Ayes, 164; Noes, 118.